Ernest Osipovich Halpert; Tubi Halpert

The interview with Halpert begins: he says he speaks Yiddish with difficulty, having spoken it with his parents and in Munkatsh, but not since the family moved to Uzhhorod after the war. Tubi is also from Munkatsh.

The interviewers explain the project and the place name (Ungvar in Yiddish) and the spelling of the surname Halpert. Halpert then tells of his childhood in Munkatsh, where half the inhabitants were Jewish: Hasidic family, father taught at the yeshiva, grandfather in the burial society, cheder from age three until bar mitzvah at thirteen, then factory work. He had two sisters, now in Haifa, and a small family; the Hungarian occupation of the town in 1938 is introduced.

Adds the project explanation and place-name and surname discussion.

Halpert recalls the war: under Hungarian rule Jews were not killed, but after the German occupation in 1944 they were put in ghettos and sent to Auschwitz, where the young were selected for labor in Germany. He and his sisters and wife survived, his parents were killed. He was liberated by the Russians in a camp in Austria and volunteered for the Red Army, hoping to free Jews, not knowing what had happened in Auschwitz.

Halpert talks about army service, which ended with the war, and demobilization in 1947. He and Tubi, long friends, married officially in 1947 and have two sons: Peter in Frankfurt, and another son in Uzhhorod who works with the Hesed; a grandson is in Israel. He worked as an engineer and says they lived well materially in Soviet times, but without a Jewish life.

Halpert speaks about life today and Jewish institutions, and visiting his sisters in Israel since the Soviet period ended. During the passage he is interrupted by phone calls, mostly in Hungarian and Russian, arranging for the interviewers to meet other Jews, such as in a village. This is largely garbled, and a Jewish connection with an Ignats (?) is mentioned.

Adds the phone calls arranging further interviews.

Halpert describes how hard Soviet life was, since he could not admit he had sisters in Israel. Under Gorbachev things improved and in 1988 they visited the sisters for the first time. He talks about Jewish life today: Hesed, children learning Yiddish and Hebrew, the prayer house, a rabbi from America and Chabad, Rabbi Menakhem Mendl Taykhman, Russian-language newspapers and contacts with the Israeli ambassador.

Halpert explains that his sisters stayed in Karlovy Vary after liberation until 1948, then emigrated to Israel when the communists took over. He kept contact only through a cousin who could write abroad, and first met his sisters in Prague in 1964 (?). He now speaks Hungarian with them and with Jewish friends; at home he spoke Yiddish only with his parents, so his Yiddish is now difficult.

Halpert answers Kerler's question about religious life in Soviet times: a small study house continued in Mukacheve for Jews not tied to state work, whereas before the war the town had seven. He notes that the war reached the area only in 1944, by which time the Jews had been deported or killed, that there was no rabbi, and that Jewish life began to revive under Gorbachev.

Halpert talks about weddings: the traditional Jewish weddings after the war were modest, but one in Munkatsh (with rabbis from Zhytomyr and Berdychiv, and Taykhman) was large. Kerler recalls attending one in the late 1960s (?). Halpert then remembers the prewar wedding jester (gramer) Asher Zelik (?) and his jokes, and says much was forgotten after the war.

Halpert and the interviewer discuss the words for war (milkhome, shlakht, krig) and Jews in Munkatsh who spoke a Germanized Yiddish (daytshmerish). Asked what was known in 1941–44 about Jews in Ukraine and Poland, he says very little because of censorship. Under the Hungarians Jews could mostly still live Jewishly, with prayer houses and communities, despite some laws and Jews working as lawyers, doctors and factory owners.

Halpert explains how little Jews under Hungarian rule knew of the fate of Polish Jews or of Auschwitz, which they took for a labor camp. He describes being taken as a young man from the Mukacheve ghetto to a labor camp, then to Austria at the end of 1944, and receiving a letter from his wife. The passage opens with a brief exchange about Hungarian and Tubi's father in the Budapest ghetto.

opens with talk about Tubi's father and Hungarian, and includes the Polish-Jewish refugees expelled from Hungary

Tubi describes the postcard she was told to write from Auschwitz, supposedly from a sanatorium, and her transport from the Mukacheve ghetto in May 1944 in crowded wagons. She tells of the separation from her mother Hinde at selection, the roll calls, and the three months at Auschwitz before about 150 women went to Reichenbach. There she made radio equipment for the army until the war ended in May 1945, in poor conditions.

the mother's name and age, and that the work was making radio equipment

Kerler returns to prewar Mukacheve and Halpert recalls his cheder in the courtyard of a study house on a street whose name is given, with the melamed Reb Mendl, and how he stopped at bar mitzvah to work. He recalls the Shapira rebbe, whose leavings he went to eat, and the grandson who later bought the old court and held a bar mitzvah there.

names the melamed and the cheder curriculum

Halpert describes Jewish life under Czechoslovak rule: full rights, religious instruction in the Czech school, and Jewish books in Czech. He talks about Sabbath preparations at the slaughterhouse and mikveh in the Jewish street, with shochets working on Thursday and Friday. He says Jews and neighbors lived well and that antisemitism came only with the Hungarians, among a few young fascists.

adds the mikveh, the slaughterhouse term and the contrast with Hungarian rule

Halpert explains the forms of his name in different settings (home, cheder, Czech and Hungarian school, Russian, the synagogue), and gives his birth year and his parents' names: his father Shiye ran a shop, his mother Perl was from the Kalush family. He recalls Hasidic life and rebbes in Mukacheve, the visit of the Spinka rebbe, and the wedding of the Shapira rebbe's daughter to Rabinovich, with a week of celebration and cheder children greeting the rebbe with flags.

adds the parents' names and origins, rebbes of Spinka and Belz, and the details of the wedding

Halpert describes a typical day as a boy: cheder in the early morning, Czech school until noon, lunch at home, then cheder again till evening. He recalls the strict melamed's Thursday examination, with beating for failures, and his fear of it, and studying with his father and grandfather on Sabbath.

adds the Thursday test with the stick as punishment

Halpert describes the Czech school, where Jewish children spoke Yiddish among themselves and Czech with the teachers, who were not antisemitic. He talks about his reading in Yiddish, Czech, Hebrew and Hungarian, including Sholem Aleichem, Mendele and Wells, and a satirical Yiddish book on Jewish life by his uncle Shloyme Moshkovich of Mukacheve, whose family went to Haifa. Jewish bookshops in the Jewish street sold Yiddish and Hebrew books.

adds the languages read, the uncle's relation and Haifa, and the Jewish bookshop

Halpert and Tubi recall prewar Purim: the children's Purim-shpil going from house to house, with Tubi reciting verses of the rhyme, and shalakhmones, noisemaking and dancing in the street. Halpert recalls one long Purim play about Joseph sold to the Arabs, which he saw once as a child, and Kerler asks who played in these plays.

Halpert recalls the family Passover seder, with his father in the kittel and the stealing of the afikoman, and the siblings' quarrel over it. Asked about songs, he mentions a few melodies and Hebrew and Yiddish songs, and Kerler asks about Mukacheve melodies.

the catalogue's mention of the grandfather Paysekh is not clear in the transcript; the afikoman story is the centre of the passage

Halpert explains the difference between a besmedresh, which was Hasidic, and a shul, which was more modern, and answers Kerler's questions about prewar movements in Mukacheve: Zionist organizations, Mizrachi, the Jewish gymnasium, Hashomer Hatzair, Betar and others, and the absence of the Bund. The passage ends with drinks and a chat about Tokay wine and Jewish communities today.

adds the Bund question and the closing chat about wine and communities

Halpert speaks Hungarian on the phone and then in Yiddish about arranging the team's further interviews, giving an address and a phone number so that a local man, a former head of the Uzhhorod Jewish community who speaks good Yiddish, can be met. Kerler asks about local prayer times (minyan only on Friday night and holidays) and for more phone numbers; then Kerler announces he will put some sentences to translate from Russian.

Also covers local prayer times, and the move to questionnaire work at the end.

Halpert and his wife answer Kerler's dialectological questionnaire, with some input from Katz. The items cover greetings and replies, thanks, words such as groats, cholent, glass, ear, dumpling, and cat and mouse, a children's rhyme about a cat (which they recite), comparatives (cold, high, fast, near), honest, pious, converts, a gentile woman, forms of address (ir, zi), farewell blessings, numbers, and sample sentences. Their answers also show Hungarian-Yiddish usage, for example mizl for luck. They add that few Jews are left in the nearby place and that Halpert remembers better with help.

The catalogue sentence is accurate: the passage opens with games and then goes through the questionnaire; the transcript also shows a child's rhyme and a closing remark about few Jews.

The team meets Naybauer, who says he is the only survivor of six children. They look for a quiet place to sit and drive toward the centre, passing three former synagogues that are now a concert hall, a phone company building and a university building. Naybauer says he was born in a village near Uzhhorod where his father worked at a military horse stud, and that his father's family came from Mala Dobron (Kish Dobron), where they lived until they were taken to Auschwitz. He also mentions needing a visa to travel and recalls cheder and matzo baking in the area.

The transcript adds the introductions and the problem of visas for travel, and that the family's village home is unclear.

At a former religious school and matzo bakery now used by the university, Naybauer says the Uzhhorod Jewish population before the war was ten thousand, and that many more (a figure he gives as fourteen or sixteen thousand) were taken from the ghetto, where he was from the first to the last minute. He says he was born in 1924.

The transcript adds the population figures and the ghetto deportations.

Naybauer describes being drafted in 1944 into the Hungarian labor battalion and being kept in the ghetto instead. At the Great Synagogue, which he says served the Jewish community until the Soviets closed it, he tells how its head, whose surname is given as Bergida (the transcript is unclear), went to Moscow to see Golda Meir to stop the closure and was arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years. He mentions the removal of the Star of David, the many small prayer houses, Hasidic life, the cemeteries, and that in 1944 Jews hid belongings in the synagogues and used a trade school as a hospital. He then talks about his family: he was the oldest of six, his father Avrom was sickly, and he carried goods for a kosher sausage maker. He also notes the family name Neubauer and an uncle named Bookbinder.

The transcript adds the hospital in the commercial school, the cemeteries and a rich uncle in America, and the family names.

At the former Great Synagogue, now a concert hall, the team talks with the staff at the entrance, with Russian and Hungarian talk about whether they can look inside and that they have come from America.