Not online: the recording is held by the project and is not on Media Collections Online, YouTube or archive.org. Everything below is a paraphrase of a machine transcript, the weaker of this site's two transcript layers — see how it was made.
Recording made in Beregsaz on 27 May 2012 with Vilmos Godinger (Yiddish Velvl/Berl, born 1928 by his own account) and his wife Katerina, with Kerler as interviewer. It opens with Russian small talk, then Godinger recites a Purim begging rhyme and talks about Simchat Torah, Passover, Sabbath food and the synagogues of his home town (given as Seilish/Sheylish (?)). He describes deportation, the camps and labor in Germany, and his return and army service. The wife tells in Russian about dekulakization and the 1930s, and the rest covers candies, couple talk, his names and parents, schooling, languages, and reading Hebrew from cheder. Much of the file is Russian or Hungarian, with the Yiddish in between. Second half of a recorded visit to the home of Godinger (Vilmos) in Beregsaz, 27 May 2012. The conversation is a mix of Yiddish, Russian and Hungarian. It covers his religious schooling and the dwindling Jewish community, hospitality with home-distilled brandy, Purim and children's rhymes, his sister's emigration, a Yiddish rhyme and songs, photographs, and a Russian-speaking woman's wartime memory of the Katyusha. It ends with the interviewer's farewell and a note of his address.
Kerler chats in Russian with a visitor who is leaving. He says he was born in Moscow and mentions relatives in Israel and Birobidzhan and a relative in Moscow. He also mentions that eight of his mother's siblings were in Kremenets, where very many Jews were killed, and says he teaches Jewish studies. After the goodbyes he talks about the rain and explains the Hebrew word for sky and waters.
Kerler asks to hear the Purim-play words once more, and Godinger recites a rhymed Purim begging verse. In it a man comes to a rebbe's gabbai, asks for Purim money, and mentions his wife cooking kreplach. Kerler tries to recall other related verses.
Godinger answers questions about Simchat Torah in Seilish (?), where about twenty Torah scrolls were danced with, compared with thirty in Beregsaz. He recalls children's little flags on the holiday and what was eaten at Passover. His mother kept a strictly kosher home, and for Sabbath there was meat, cholent and kugel baked in the neighbors' ovens. He says there were five synagogues in Seilish (?), and that Hasidim used to arrive from Hungary by car before the holidays to visit a rebbe he names as the Funker rebbe (?).
Godinger describes being taken from the ghetto in wagons through Poland to Kraków and arriving at a camp that he first took for a bakery. People were burned in the open on wood, and clothes, shoes, tefillin and tallitot lay in heaps. He says he was twice nearly sent to the fire and was pulled out by the sixteen-year-old (?) at the selection, with Mengele named. He then worked in Germany, in Dachau and Augsburg, in an aircraft factory, and was liberated by the Americans.
Godinger tells how he came home to Seilish (?), arriving at a Jewish wedding as a guest. He worked in a clothing factory whose director was a Jew named Lebovitch. At twenty-one he was drafted and served four and a half years in the Soviet army.
Katerina tells in Russian about her own and her family's experience under Soviet rule. Her father died when she was six months old, soon after building a house, and the house was then confiscated and her widowed mother with three children was almost sent to Siberia. Villagers intervened and they were given a roofless hut. She describes the hunger of the collective-farm years and the 1933 dekulakization, in which grain and a slaughtered pig were taken, and she calls Hitler and Stalin two devils. Godinger adds that his father was also imprisoned, and the talk is mostly in Russian with Yiddish glosses.
Godinger speaks mostly in Hungarian about the German camps, Mengele and a sixteen-year-old (?) boy at the selection. He says about 3,000 Carpathian men were taken from Munkács for forced labor in wagons, hauling stone and sand day and night. He says he was left alone of a family of eight. When Kerler asks him to tell it in Yiddish, he says his parents and siblings perished apart from a sister and a brother in Israel, and that a sister died after a long illness.
Kerler tells Godinger and his wife in Russian about his visits to Moscow and says he lives in a university town near Novosibirsk (?). He explains that the young people with him are his team working in Hungary. The Yiddish exchange with Godinger is largely unintelligible.
Talk about the poverty of Hungary, with children going hungry. Kerler asks for the word for a candy and the group discusses sugar-free candies brought from Hungary that are sold here, with the Russian words konfetka and kasha mentioned. Godinger's wife adds that speculators bring them over.
Kerler asks about a Yiddish song about the coming of the Messiah. Godinger answers mostly in Hungarian and Yiddish about the Hungarians' takeover of Carpathia in 1939 and the Russians' arrival in November 1944. He says people were called up for three days' work and then carried off in wagons, and only a small percentage returned from the camps. He then hums a snatch of a song that the transcript does not make clear.
The couple talk in Russian about their ages and say both were born in 1928, with only days between their birthdays. They joke about their old love, and the wife tells how her daughter laughed at the idea. The talk turns to the hair of a young man (Andrey, probably their grandson) and of his father, who is Jewish, and to the father's property in Chernovtsy oblast. The young man works as a masseur, has a commercial-school qualification, and cannot work in a restaurant because he lacks Hungarian.
Kerler asks about the marks on Godinger's fingers, which Godinger says come from the army in Vladivostok. He is asked his Yiddish name and answers that he was called Velvl and Berl. He says his mother signed as Godinger Eidl and his father as Schlesinger Shimon (?). The father was a heavy laborer who dragged sacks at the mill.
Godinger says he forgot the Czech he once knew from the Czech school. He recalls failing first grade for three years and, as a boy, earning small sums carrying luggage at the station. He describes a poor home of one room and a kitchen with many people, in Hungarian and Yiddish.
Kerler and the wife remark that Godinger knows Czech, Russian, Hungarian, Ukrainian, German and Yiddish. Godinger reads only Russian books and newspapers, not Yiddish, and says he cannot read a Torah scroll. What he knows he learned from the rebbe in cheder, who taught him the Hebrew without translating it.
Godinger says he learned only to read Hebrew in cheder, without translation, and has forgotten most of it, though he can still pray. He says there is a minyan in the town and few people left to speak Yiddish with. A man named Yosi (?) who had been in a camp has died. Godinger and others talk about hard times and rising prices for pensioners, in Ukraine and in America.
The talk turns to hospitality: home-distilled brandy and wine from the household's own grapes are offered and tasted. The guests and hosts discuss samogon and palinka, how it is distilled and bought, and drinking habits in cold and warm countries. Kerler tells them about flying from America and the travel time. Godinger recalls flying to his daughter in Siberia via Moscow and Kemerovo. Much of this stretch is in Russian and Hungarian.
Godinger mentions kosher palinka that his sisters bought in Budapest and sent from Israel, and a debt owed by an American accountant. He recites a Purim rhyme asking for money for the poor and for a glass of wine. Kerler asks about its words, and Godinger repeats it. Kerler then says he hopes to visit again.
The woman of the house says she loves guests and is a cook by profession, and regrets that the visitors arrived unannounced. Kerler explains that they met Godinger by chance at the synagogue three years ago. Godinger recites a Purim rhyme again, then a children's rhyme about a pot of krepel and debts, and a Russian folk rhyme about an old woman and a poker. Kerler gives his travel plans: Mukachevo, possibly Khust, then Ivano-Frankivsk.
They discuss Jews leaving for Israel and America since the 1990s. Godinger says that after liberation in 1945 he met a fellow townsman, and that his sister stayed in the Soviet Union, afraid the border would close. He did not see her for 48 years and later visited Israel twice. He also speaks of four and a half years of military service. He mentions people who perished in a camp and in the crematorium, but it is unclear whose fate is meant.
Kerler explains that the video goes into a university archive and may later go online. Godinger recalls the Hungarian-era Levente youth organization, with drill and singing, and Hungarian songs. He sings or recites a Yiddish rhyme about a kugel. He says he is in his eighty-fifth year and worked for about thirty years selling ice cream outdoors, standing on his feet in the cold.
The family is asked to sing. Godinger recites a rhyme with Hebrew-component word explanations (?), and sings a verse of "Belz, mayn shtetele Belz" and a song about the Jewish mother. They look at photographs, including one of the woman's mother, who lived to 96. Godinger's mother's name is given as Eydl (?).
The family shows more photographs. Godinger sings a Red Army wartime song about Stalingrad and defending Moscow. The woman of the house describes her childhood in Tula during the German advance: Katyusha rocket launchers, the children's fright, and Tula gingerbread and samovars.
Kerler discusses the Katyusha with the family and says he hopes to visit again next year, and the hosts say they will wait for him. At the end Godinger gives his name and address, a street in Beregsaz (?), for Kerler to note.