Mikhail (Meyshe) Zakharovich Ocheretianyi

Continuation of the museum visit. The guides show books, newspapers and a songbook from a festival at which songs were sung in Yiddish, and mention a play about Janusz Korczak. They describe the activities of the regional association of Jewish shtetls: outreach to small towns and villages, finding people of Jewish descent, Holocaust lessons in schools, Jewish participation in the Red Army, a regional Sunday school, a family camp, festivals, community programs and charity. They add that the Jewish population is aging and shrinking, with some emigrating to Germany, and that the programs depend on volunteers and have funding problems.

The guides also speak at length about the association's programs, volunteers, Jewish soldiers in the Red Army and emigration, beyond the books and documents.

The team enters Ocheretianyi's house, greets him and settles in. Kerler says the interview will be held in Yiddish and gives the date, 24 June 2005.

The passage shows the arrival and greetings at the house, and the date and language of the interview.

Ocheretianyi gives his surname and his Yiddish name, Moyshe, and talks about his family. His father Zelik and his grandfather were blacksmiths (the exact Yiddish word is unclear), and his mother Sosye was a housewife. His father was born in Korsun in the 1890s (?), and the Yiddish and Russian names of his father and grandfather are discussed. He had two brothers; one served at the front and later worked on a kolkhoz as chairman, and the other, Shloyme, lives in Haifa and wants him to visit. He then describes his own work as a cutter of shoe leather and later a brigadier and factory director, his army service in the 1940s, and his schooling in a Ukrainian school after the Yiddish school was closed.

Beyond the family, the passage covers his own trade as a shoemaker, his army service, his schooling after the Yiddish school closed, and the names of his relatives.

Ocheretianyi describes the family's evacuation when the Germans approached: they travelled by horse and wagon as far as Voronezh and then by train to Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan his father and brothers were taken into the army. They returned to Korsun in 1944, and his father built a forge and worked there. Later he himself was drafted.

Ocheretianyi answers briefly that he served in the army in western Ukraine.

Asked about his childhood, Ocheretianyi recalls that the synagogue was closed before the war, and that after the war prayer was held in a house bought for the purpose. He describes his father, who was observant: he did not work on the Sabbath, wore a tallit and prayed, kept the holidays and had prayer books, which he later passed on to a friend. Ocheretianyi cannot read Yiddish, though his brothers could.

Ocheretianyi recalls prewar holidays in his parents' home: his mother's Sabbath cooking, his father fasting on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, and Passover matzo baking with the house kept free of chametz. He recalls Purim, with singing in the Jewish streets, mutual gifts and filled pastries, and a Jewish musician who played at weddings and made wedding speeches in rhyme. He also remembers Hanukkah, when children went round for money, and the dishes made (fried fish, gefilte fish).

The passage also covers the Purim customs, the musician at weddings and Hanukkah money, as well as the holiday foods.

Ocheretianyi compares prewar and present Jewish life: before the war Korsun had about 2,500 Jews, and now very few remain. He returns to Hanukkah foods and Passover at home, then recalls non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, especially a wagon driver, Ivan Nahayets (?), who learned it living among Jews. Under the German occupation he was suspected of being a Jew and was checked physically before being released. Ocheretianyi also notes that he worked among Jews in a shoemakers' shop where many non-Jews spoke Yiddish.

Gives the non-Jewish Yiddish speaker's name and his near-arrest under the Germans, and compares the prewar and present Jewish population.

Ocheretianyi talks about Shavuot, when dairy-based baked foods and dumplings were eaten, and about Yom Kippur. His parents fasted, and after the war his father prayed with a friend at home. Kerler asks about the pre-fast meal and about food terms.

Kerler and Katz ask a few dialect items (the words for a dybbuk, ears, quick, pious, paradise and the afterlife). Ocheretianyi then talks about life today, which he says is neither better nor worse, and about his brother in Haifa, who phones him and invites him to visit, though the trip is expensive. Katz asks for lively memories of the shtetl, and Ocheretianyi starts to speak about the town madman and his family.

The questionnaire items come first, then the brother in Haifa and the town madman.

Ocheretianyi talks about his uncle, a strong man who worked on a kolkhoz and at a factory before the war. Under the Germans he was killed, and the sons of the family were taken away as teenagers. The passage trails off.

Ocheretianyi answers questions about a kolkhoz office, drinking and the Yiddish word for vodka, then about the prewar synagogues, of which there were two, and a women's one. He describes childhood games with nuts and hide-and-seek, and his honest father, who collected money for the poor. He recalls how a house was bought for a prayer house after the war and how his father, a soldier, lost part of an ear and was imprisoned. A teacher named Yankl Meir taught Jewish boys, and Ocheretianyi says he cannot recall prayers. The passage closes with a Yiddish word elicitation and Kerler's remarks about an old house.

Also covers a dialect word question and the teacher Yankl Meir