Grigorii Mikhailovich Shraibman; Lazar Eilovich Burshtein

Brief discussion of the successive names of his hometown. Kerler states the date and place of the recording. Shraibman explains that his patronymic was changed in his army-college documents in 1949 and how a general reacted to it.

The passage also covers the town's changing names and the army-college general.

Shraibman, born in 1930, was due to start school in 1937. There was a Yiddish school in the town, but it was closed, so he attended a state (Russian) school. His father, a gymnasium graduate, began to teach him, but the war ended his studies.

Shraibman gives the names of his parents and of both grandfathers; the two grandfathers were brothers and his parents cousins. One grandfather starved to death in the war. He also mentions his archive research, including the story of a girl in the records. He says history is his hobby and that he served 26 years in the army.

The passage also covers the family names and his archive research.

Shraibman describes his army career: ten grades, the army college, a lieutenant's rank in 1952 and discharge as a major after 26 years. He spoke Yiddish with non-Jews and met few Jews in the army. He describes the value of mame-loshn and recalls an Argentine girl who spoke Yiddish. He also served at a site where an atomic bomb was tested on living people, and he mentions being behind the German lines for about a week and a half.

The passage also covers the role of Yiddish, a meeting with an Argentine girl and the atomic-test site.

Shraibman describes his grandfather the tailor, who served the villages around the town with a sewing machine. Old non-Jews still remember him and speak Yiddish in the town. He says that few Jews are left, whereas before the war the town was about eighty percent Jewish, and he recalls his grandmothers.

Shraibman describes the war: they fled in the summer, were taken to Tambov and then to Uzbekistan, where hunger killed six of twelve family members. One grandmother stayed behind and was killed by the Germans together with the remaining Jews. Kerler asks for the grandmothers' names (Beyle, Gitl).

The passage also covers the grandmother left behind and killed in the town.

Shraibman recalls his father, who was sent to collect wheat in the 1930s, received damp grain that spoiled, and was imprisoned for three years. After his release the father worked as a bookkeeper. His mother was a housewife and a sister died in infancy; he was an only child, and he describes growing up in the household of his two grandparents.

Shraibman talks about religion in the family: the grandmothers were very pious, while his grandfather kept holidays but smoked on Sabbath. He tells how during the Civil War an armed band (Budyonny's men?) nearly shot his grandmother. Katz and Kerler then greet someone arriving and mention their song collecting.

The passage also covers the grandmother's brush with soldiers and the arrival of a visitor.

Shraibman is asked about songs. He mentions his grandfather, who played the violin and sang, and sings a tear song and a tailor's song. He also mentions Paul Robeson and a recording of Sholem Aleichem's Motl, and a second man joins in a lullaby. The talk then turns to antisemitism in the army.

Shraibman describes antisemitism in the army, with 1953 hard and the Doctors' Plot mentioned. He served at Yakutsk in the 1960s among many nationalities who lived on good terms in severe cold. He left the army in 1975 and settled in Zhytomyr with his mother's sister, and he explains that the relatives who had been planning to leave went to America and Israel.

Shraibman talks about Jews in Zhytomyr today, which has about two thousand, and about its history. He discusses an old Hebrew press, the rabbinical college in the nineteenth century, a card index of victims of the 1930s and rabbis' meetings in the 1920s. He describes working in the archive and what his late wife said of it.

The passage also covers archive research, a rabbinical college and a card index of 1930s victims.

Shraibman describes working after the army, first in a power-supply job and then repairing household appliances. Kerler remarks that this is a handyman and then turns to the atomic-bomb experiments in the army.

Shraibman describes the secret atomic-bomb test of 1954, including the Totskoye exercise. He was a lieutenant who escorted generals to the site, and he reports that about twenty-five of his colleagues died of radiation. He describes the dosimeter rings used and how little was known at the time. Kerler then asks about childhood.

Shraibman recalls two very pious Jews, Moshe Yosl and Zelik, killed by the Germans; at eleven this was a tragedy for him. He describes holidays in his childhood and the grandmothers' Sabbath. Kerler asks about holiday food: foods for Yom Kippur eve, the sukkah of Moshe Yosl, dairy foods and blintzes for Shavuot, latkes for Hanukkah and hamantashn for Purim. He mentions his grandfather, the tailor, who walked on foot to Chernyakhiv, 25 km away, and shows photographs of his family.

The passage also covers holiday food items, the sukkah and the family photographs.

Shraibman mentions his granddaughter in Haifa and a cousin from America whom he had not seen for 26 years. Kerler asks him to show the town on the map. Shraibman recalls his grandfather's Purim custom of visiting the poor first and then the rich, and shalekhmones are mentioned. He says he likes having guests but has no kosher kitchen.

The passage also covers the map and the grandmother's Purim visiting.

Dialectological questionnaire. Shraibman and Kerler discuss terms for a pious or good Jew, a dybbuk, golem, ladder, house and entrance hall, and the Litvak versus local pronunciation of 'groats' and 'near'. They also cover words for pigeon, ear, drinking up, greetings and building types. A second man joins the discussion of song collecting and of pronunciation, and some Russian words are used to prompt translations.

Dialectological questionnaire with the older man (presumably Shraibman), Kerler and Katz asking for Yiddish equivalents of Russian words and phrases. Items include the Soviet-era words for 'state' and 'work', verbs of looking and escaping, 'honest', 'head hurts', 'where from', 'grandmother' and midwife, 'tree', 'vodka', 'bed', 'well/spring', 'oak', 'shop', 'flowers', 'potatoes', 'ceiling', 'wealthy man', 'fence' and 'suddenly'. Kerler and Katz also test prepositions and grammatical constructions such as 'on the street' and 'on the road'. The informant often comments on whether a word is Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian or Belorussian and whether he used it at home.

Closing exchange of the questionnaire session, with a few remarks among Kerler, Katz and the informant and a short bit of talk about stopping. The words are mostly garbled.

Little can be made out beyond a few closing remarks.

Burshtein, interviewed by Kerler, says he was born in Goworowo, a small town near Warsaw (Polish Goworowo, Yiddish Govrove). The recording date is given as 23 May 2003. He came to Zhytomyr in June 1944 after evacuation in the Urals (a kolkhoz in the Elansk district), having first gone with Zhytomyr Jews, who then left. He recalls that his brother was taken into the army and was reported killed at the front.

Burshtein's birthplace, Goworowo near Warsaw, and the Urals evacuation are given; the brother's death is mentioned in the transcript.

Burshtein tells anecdotes about his family in Poland. His father was waiting for a sister in the woods near a town, where he was followed by two silent figures. Another anecdote tells of a man in the woods in 1938 who predicted the war. His father and grandfather, both tailors, were fooled on the way to a fair by a sack of salt that proved to be a demon's trick. He mentions the religiosity of the family, where men slept in yarmulkes, and an incident in which his brothers entered a Polish sausage shop and the rabbi was told. He then begins to recall the start of the war, apparently in September 1939.

The anecdote about the father's meeting in the woods is placed in 1938; also the shop-and-rabbi story and the tailor-fair story.

Burshtein recalls the start of the war and the bombing of his town. His family took refuge in the prayer-house, where the Torah scroll was opened and psalms said. After Polish soldiers announced the Germans' approach, the family fled by night with his father, mother, two sisters and two brothers. They ran into German motorcyclists and reached Ostrów Mazowiecka, where Jews were driven out of their homes and assembled and some were held for days. He describes hunger, bread thrown over the fence, shooting and a curfew, a German officer's cruel jokes, and the Germans' searches. His father and a brother were held, and the family searched for them. They crossed a bridge to the Russians' side, where the rabbi's wife told how Goworowo's synagogue was burned with people inside.

Katz's question about timing: events in the first week of the war in 1939.

Burshtein recalls the family's flight in 1939. He saw his Polish teacher in the street while German troops marched past, so he could not reach her. He tells of a Bolshevik saved by Jews who dressed him in tallis and tefillin in the beit midrash, and then of the walk with his father through burnt villages and forest to the Russian side. The journey takes them via a town named Zembrów(?) to Białystok, where Jewish families host them for Sabbath, and then on to Babruysk and a kolkhoz commune where his father got work at a factory.

Includes the story of the Bolshevik saved in the prayer house and the stopovers at Zembrów(?) and Białystok.

Burshtein describes life in Babruysk, where his father worked at a factory whose goods were shipped to Germany. Russian Jews were forbidden to speak about the Germans and did not know what was happening to German Jews. He mentions that German Jewish refugees came and that he learned songs from them.

Burshtein sings a refugee song about a homeless wanderer, learned from German Jewish refugees who walked the streets singing in the 1930s, and a second song about life as a game. He explains that the children followed them and the songs were printed. He and Kerler then touch on the towns near the German border and on the refugees' languages.

Burshtein talks about the German Jewish refugees in Russia and the Soviet-German pact, after which nothing negative could be said about the Germans. He tells how people on arrival in Babruysk would not believe the accounts of killings, and recalls Hitler's speeches heard on the one radio in town, in the school. He also recalls a Jewish forced-labour episode and his brother's return home, and reflects on why the Germans were so cruel to Jews.

Adds the pact, the disbelief of Soviet Jews and a radio listened to in a town hall(?) in the 1930s; the catalogue speaks of the school radio.

Burshtein retells a story he says he read, that Hitler's family descended from a Jewish family and that his father cheated over an inheritance. Katz asks when he heard this and Kerler about the name. Burshtein says Hitler was not a Jew, and the talk turns to Jewish names. He then announces another song.

Burshtein sings a series of Yiddish songs he knew from Poland: a matchmaking and wedding song, a song on love as a passion, a Zionist song about all Jews going to the Land of Israel that was sung in the months before the war, and songs on homesickness, a prisoner's oath and a street song about a lonely orphan. Kerler asks about Purim songs, which he does not remember. Katz then asks for a prayer from the siddur, and he answers about how a Jew was addressed.

Gives the content and number of songs, including the Zionist song sung before the war.

Burshtein recites from memory, in a Yiddish and Hebrew mix, a Shavuot piece and parts of other prayers, including the Four Questions. Katz asks about the Passover questions and Kaddish. He says he prays alone daily and learned Rosh Hodesh prayers as a child, and he says he needs a siddur.

Burshtein sings Hebrew liturgical pieces from the Rosh Hodesh service, one of them with the text of Psalm 136. He then answers Kerler's question about the Jews in Gorove, saying it was a Jewish town with one big synagogue and a number of small ones.

Burshtein describes the many small prayer houses in Gorove, each trade having its own, and one large synagogue. The Polish town commandant would come and sit with the Jews there.

Burshtein says most Jews spoke only Yiddish and Poles Polish. He recalls the hostility of the Polish children at school, a teacher who pulled him out of class by his sidelocks, and the corporal punishment there. He describes studying with two rebbes, the second of whom had a whip, and a Polish school Christmas play. Kerler asks about the Russian word for prison.

Katz and Kerler ask about conversion to Christianity and to Judaism and about hasidim in the town, and Burshtein says there were very few such cases. A second voice and Burshtein discuss the rebbe and the "good Jew" to whom people came with questions. Burshtein says there were hasidim who sat in the beit midrash but cannot say whose. He recalls the rabbi, shortly before the war, crying out in the beit midrash that Jews should be taken out of exile.

Covers conversion and the good Jew/rebbe distinction and gives the rabbi's cry before the war.

Burshtein repeats the rabbi's pre-war call to take the Jews out of exile and the rabbi's walking round the beit midrash with the Torah scroll. Kerler asks if the synagogue was wooden. Burshtein describes it as having a Star of David on the roof and a larger interior, with a shammes in it. They then discuss the meaning of a dybbuk.

Short dialect questions put to Burshtein: the word for a golem, a sleepy or slow person, the way to say 'go on', the word for trouble, honest, pious, a pious Jew, and potatoes. He answers each, and says the usage in Babruysk differed from that of Gorove.

Burshtein sings two Yiddish songs: a love song about a young man marrying a girl he met in a park and finding her ugly, and a song about childhood and the loss of his mother. Between them he is asked about the word shlemazl. Katz and Kerler also ask about a song from Russia, which he says he knows.