Evgeniia Isaakovna Krasner

Krasner tells of a swindle by a woman who took money from her; this turns into a conversation with Katz about Katz having been born in Brooklyn. The passage includes Yiddish lines about a young man who sits thinking all night whom to marry, which looks like a folk song.

The transcript shows a complaint about a swindle and a Brooklyn connection, not clearly the Tum balalaika song.

A noisy exchange in Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian as a neighbor joins and greets the team, remarking on the filming. Krasner and the others talk about the neighbor and the garden, and she is asked for another song.

A Ukrainian-speaking neighbor greets the team; Krasner speaks of a neighbor in Yiddish.

Katz asks Krasner for more songs, and she recalls Hanukkah songs and sings a song about a merchant, which she says she learned in a camp. She mentions a Romanian Jewish girl called Tutsa from whom she learned a Romanian song, and the Romanian word for dog. Katz and the others then discuss Brooklyn and Canada.

The transcript shows a camp song with a Romanian girl, not obviously the song Papirosn.

Katz and S2 explain to Krasner that they are recording how people speak Yiddish for a university in America, and a drink is offered. Krasner writes down her name for the team.

Includes a drink and Krasner's name being written down.

Informal talk with Krasner about health and her knowledge of Yiddish; she says she has little opportunity to speak it. The team says it is from Lithuania, and a team member comes from Vilnius.

Adds a conversation about Lithuania and Vilnius; no clear proverb.

Lighthearted talk about drinking brandy, with a reference to a rebbe, and a toast. Krasner mentions her brother's wedding in 1948, with a chuppah (?).

Shows a toast and the brother's 1948 wedding; no Nahman of Bratslav is visible.

Krasner talks about her brother's wedding, held in Kyiv. She mentions that her brother now lives in Bila Tserkva, and talks of gravestones photographed.

Krasner and the team discuss Canada and America, and a team member asks in which year she was born, to which she answers 1936. She says she knows Yiddish from home and speaks Ukrainian since school, which was the Shpykiv secondary school. The group mentions a meal at a restaurant in Sharhorod.

Adds Krasner's birth year, her Yiddish at home, and the Sharhorod restaurant.

Chat about a cat and kittens, with Katz asking how to say cat in Yiddish. A neighbor is called Rafael, and conversation turns to the names Ben Khaim and Ben Yosef, and a team member's Lithuanian Yiddish, whose father came from a town near Donetsk.

Krasner says she reads small religious books in Russian, because she cannot read Yiddish. She is not religious, but says one reads a little at a holiday. Her favorite holiday is Passover. She says she bought a few books from a Christian woman, and the talk touches on Sholem Aleichem.

The team asks Krasner whether there was a ghetto in Shpykiv; she says she lives among Christians now and asks where the Jews are. Talk of Jewish houses and a plan to walk down the street. Someone asks about the poems of Perets Markish.

Includes a ghetto question and Perets Markish.

Katz asks Krasner about Perets Markish, and she says he wrote stories and novels. She says she studied and worked as a librarian, and the talk continues in Russian and Yiddish.

Krasner says she went on to the Cultural Institute in Kyiv and qualified as a librarian.

Informal chat in Russian and Yiddish about visiting the cemetery by minibus, cats, and gifts; Katz asks Krasner repeatedly to speak Yiddish because the team is studying how it is spoken. They discuss the meaning of a mitzvah and the microphone and batteries.

Camera material from the garden and house, with a few remarks in English, Yiddish and Russian; the team asks to sign the guest book, and S2 asks when electricity came.

Krasner explains the history of the house. After the war, Christians lived there during the war and left when the family came back, and before the war her uncle and aunt lived there, whose daughter lives in Brooklyn. Someone then wants to show an album.

Adds that the daughter of the aunt and uncle lives in Brooklyn, and the album.

Krasner shows family photographs: her brother Mendl (a surgeon), his wife (a gynecologist) and their children, her mother Khaike, and her mother's sister who lived with the family. She says she is Shaindl, daughter of Khaike. She mentions a former mayor, and photographs from before the war.

Krasner shows family photographs: her mother Khaike, an aunt Mindl who lived with the family, and cousins. She points out a picture at Pechera, saying the window there was theirs, and tells in Yiddish and Russian of Germans loading people onto a truck, with prayers and cries in the camp. Kerler asks whether her written memoirs are in Yiddish (they are in Russian), and she comments on Romanians who were good to people. She ends with a story of a girl needing a match, a childhood photograph, and a brief exchange about Rosh Hashanah.

Also family members including aunts, and her written Russian memoirs.

Informal talk while the team prepares to go out for a walk: Kerler repeatedly asks Krasner to speak Yiddish rather than Russian. They discuss homemade liquor and a story of someone taken to the forest, and Kerler asks for children's rhymes and counting rhymes. She recalls playing with a doll as a girl, and tells how she led her blind uncle to the bread shop, where they were told not to speak Yiddish. Some words are asked, such as the Yiddish for cherry. The passage ends with a Russian-language exchange on rings and a Jewish singer.

Includes the dialect questions (rhymes, words) and the Russian-language exchanges.

Krasner and the interviewers talk about dialect differences, with an example of the verb for falling and a Lithuanian-born woman in a mixed marriage. She describes her mother as a mimic and storyteller who made fun of people, a trait she says passed to herself. Her father, a bookbinder before the war, and her brother are mentioned. The passage ends with Kerler asking who the local tzaddik was.

Includes a dialect question and talk about a Lithuanian woman and her mixed marriage.

Krasner speaks about the local tzaddik Rebbe Shlomo (as the name appears), also known by other names, and his daughter Feygele. The daughter married beneath her status, the son of a shoemaker or tailor, and the couple emigrated to Romania in the early 1920s. A boy of the rebbe's household drowned bathing in the river. Kerler asks how old the rebbe was and whether her mother remembered him.

Adds the rebbe's daughter's marriage and emigration and the drowned boy.

Krasner tells of a Russian customer in a shop, and of being Jewish, then answers questions on words such as 'modest', 'drunk', 'brandy', 'hat' and 'kippah' in Yiddish. She describes leading a group of Hasidic pilgrims to the rebbe's house and grave, with the rebbe's son Itsikl carried by Hasidim, and the dancing at the grave. Left-handedness is chatted about. She recalls the Pechera camp, where prisoners died of hunger and a starving Jewish youth ran about naked.

Adds the Pechera memory of starving prisoners and the dialect word elicitation.

Krasner tells of a hungry Romanian-Jewish youth, Maksik, who begged for bread at Pechera, and of a missing toilet in the corridor. Kerler asks how a word is said in Yiddish; the matter of a Yiddish word for a board or worker is asked, though the transcript is garbled. In Russian a woman is told to put money away safely and to prepare food for the guests.

Krasner and Kerler discuss the Yiddish words for kitchen and a board. She describes how gefilte fish was prepared: cleaning the fish, the onions, eggs, pepper and matzo flour, and the pot. She then talks about the evil eye (nare) and an incident of three women. Finally she recalls Passover at home before the war: preparing the house, searching for and burning leavened bread, baking matzo with a stamp, and koshering with hot stones.

Adds the evil-eye talk and details of matzo baking.