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.
Interview with Moyse Katz in Khust, 28 May 2012, recorded on audio only. He is an elderly man who worked as a horse-cart driver and later as a truck driver. He compares religious observance before the war with today, describes village life, work and schooling, and recalls labor service and Auschwitz. The recording also covers festival food and a Purim rhyme, with questions on food terms from the interviewer. It ends with the wartime deportation and the boy's first work with the horses. A second voice, probably his wife, joins in and speaks Russian. Second half of an audio recording made in Khust on 28 May 2012 with Moyse Katz. Katz narrates his early working years and the 1944 deportation, then his time in a camp near Auschwitz, the evacuation march via Gleiwitz, and Buchenwald. He goes on to the liberation by the Americans, his journey home via Prague, Bratislava and Budapest, and his return to a ruined home. The recording ends with talk of the best time of his life, a few words and Purim rhymes elicited from him, and a few snatches of singing, including Sholem aleykhem.
Katz speaks, beginning mid-sentence, about the family table, with children gathered around a pot while the mother cooks again. He says Jews before the war kept the commandments and the Sabbath more strictly than today, and that a father who was late on Friday evening felt shame. He complains that Jews no longer keep the Sabbath and mentions a Saturday bath.
Katz says about sixty Jewish families lived in his village, among them shoemakers, tailors and a melamed. He remembers the melamed, whose first name was Beyl (?) Binyomen, and the cheder. After returning from camp he worked as a driver for forty years. He describes a Stalin-era order that sent men of his age group to a construction labor battalion near Moscow, with German prisoners housed nearby. He then tells of timber hauling for a Jewish director from Moldova named Steler (?). He says he never missed a Sabbath until he was about sixty.
Katz speaks about the synagogue today. Few Jews remain, the young have gone to America, Germany and Canada, and it is hard to gather a minyan, so he sometimes begins praying alone. He mentions a visiting family of about eight from Israel, with a boy of thirteen celebrating his bar mitzvah, and the custom of throwing sweets at him. He also remarks that his mother was a non-Jew, but the transcript is doubtful here.
Katz and those around him talk about health and age. He says he is 85 and has diabetes (?) and prostate trouble. They discuss diet, salt and the cost of medicines and an operation. Kerler then steers back to his village before the war.
Katz describes his work before the war helping his father haul wood by horse and cart from a forest bought by Jews from Poland. The wood went to a railway station and a factory, with several trips a week and on Sabbath a half day of rest. He recalls how much hay and oats the horses ate and the hard loading by hand. He also recalls how roads were laid before asphalt.
Katz answers questions about the two prayer houses in the village. The wealthier householders prayed on the other side of the water. He describes cheder with a melamed until bar mitzvah at thirteen, learning the weekly portion and translating it into Yiddish. He then attended a Russian school for seven classes. He reads the Torah and had prayed in the synagogue that day on Shavuot. He remarks that modern Haggadot are abridged.
He says there was no yeshiva in the village area and that one in Khust cost a lot. He describes the eight-kilometer road to Khust, the old wooden bridge replaced by a real bridge, and rail travel via Lipsha (?) and Koshelevo (?). He also tells of crossing the water on the timber track and of walking in the morning and back at night, including at age 46.
Katz says he learned a little Hungarian, and some German, from people at a factory in the village of Vishkovo (?) and from the camp. He shows his Auschwitz number, 82..., and says his father had a different number there. He says he had no time for friends before his bar mitzvah, because he worked, and that he disliked working in company with other drivers. Children's winter sledding is also mentioned.
Kerler asks what was eaten at home on Hanukkah and Shavuot. Katz remembers dumplings with cheese for Shavuot and describes baking matzah in the village oven. He recalls black matzah as shmire (?) matzah. Kerler and the speakers discuss the names of the cheese filling and of the potato dish, with a Russian aside by a woman about grated potato pancakes.
Kerler asks about Purim plays, and the speakers recite a children's rhyme performed on Purim, in which a good Purim angel is invoked. A second rhyme follows about food and a book, and Katz recalls festival foods again.
A speaker, apparently Katz's wife, answers a question about Hanukkah foods in English-rendered speech, mentioning baked doughnuts. Katz describes how his mother stuffed geese, salted and stored meat until Passover, and kept goose fat for baking. He tells of the livers, and of his mother and sisters fetching milk from non-Jewish neighbors. He is asked what 'kikhlekh' (?) are, and they are said to be a Hungarian-origin fried pastry. He then moves to wood merchants who bought forest wood and had it cut into meter lengths.
Katz speaks about Khust before the war, with a market every week, horse carriages used like taxis and non-Jews who spoke German. He says Khust had eleven synagogues and study houses, of which only one is left.
Katz tells how Hungarian gendarmes took his family and others by wagon to the border, to a place such as Kamenets-Podolsk (?), in 1941 (the year is given unclearly in the transcript). A Hungarian order halted further transports and the returnees were sent back to Khust. His father, taken for labor, left the family a horse team. When the hired driver failed to come, Katz, aged fifteen, set out alone, worked with his uncles and carried boards and bread. He cried at home afterward.
Katz recalls his youth as the eldest son, working to support the family. He describes field work, carting loads, and travelling alone with a wagon at fifteen or sixteen. He says his father was released from Hungarian labour service in 1943.
After mentioning the 1944 deportation, Katz describes the camp near Auschwitz (Monowitz (?)) with its barracks and a large factory. He tells of the daily march to work, the kapo and brigade system, and digging trenches. His father had heavy work on pipes and drains. He names relatives with him: a cousin and an uncle, and a Moshe. They tried to get lighter work and he was placed with a German in a warehouse.
Katz describes camp food, a watery soup with cabbage. He tells of Russian air raids and running to bunkers, the nightly roll-calls, and the factory being bombed. The Germans abandoned the camp, the barracks were set alight, and prisoners were driven out on a march with a ration of bread.
Katz tells of the march on foot through the night and being let into a barn to rest. He describes the camp at Gleiwitz, where they stayed a week without food and searched garbage for scraps. He tells how three of them sat on a man still alive under a barracks until he died, and how they broke up bread to hide under their shirts.
Katz describes being loaded into open coal wagons, about 120–130 men each, on the transport towards Buchenwald. The dead were thrown out along the way and people were shot. He recalls a nephew finding a piece of bread. At camp they received black coffee and a numbered tin tag to claim one meal a day.
Katz recalls his time in the camp, in a barracks of the youngsters, until the eleventh of April. He tells of German shooting, Russian bombing, and the Americans arriving at the gate. Prisoners seized the Germans and the Americans guarded them. The liberated were fed goulash and put in quarantine.
After liberation an American officer offers the boys a choice between staying as soldiers, a special unit, or going home. Katz did not want to go home. He mentions a boy who offered to take him to America where he had a brother, and that Katz and his uncle and cousin finally went with the Czechs. They travelled on broken-down vehicles to the border and on to Prague, where they were lodged in a hostel for about two weeks.
Katz tells how the boys heard in Prague that Transcarpathia was no longer theirs and could be handed to the Russians. They claimed to be from Slovakia, argued with a captain and soldiers, and were taken to the station. They travelled in wagons with looting by soldiers, waited in Bratislava, and lost sight of the uncle. They then went on by various vehicles, passing Malograde (?), and reached Budapest, where food was provided.
Katz returns home to find everything destroyed and plundered. He tells about the family's horses, which had been taken to the forest at Bistre (?). Only one survived. A man named Adler from an organisation, linked to Rosenblik and Grast (?), took it, and Katz later sold it. The details are unclear.
Kerler asks about happier times and the best period of Katz's life. Katz says today is the best because he can live, though in poor health. He recalls working day and night when young to support his children. The last twenty years were better, in Brezhnev's time, when pensions bought a lot: bread, flour and milk were cheap. There is a brief exchange about a word for oil (shemen) and kerosene.
Kerler asks whether Katz remembers a song from before the war and who sang at home. The talk turns to singing at the yeshiva (a tune or song called arshides (?)), and to songs sung by a rebbe or by his father. Katz says he did not learn the songs. Brief attempts to recall a melody follow, with some Russian from Katz.
Kerler gets Katz to dictate Purim rhymes slowly, so they can be written down. They are about a Purim player, a long beard and a sick wife, and about women eating. There follows a discussion of the word shvirn (?), which Katz glosses via a Ukrainian word for pain and a bruise, and its relation to the word for a boil.
Fragments of singing: Shavuot zmires (?), with S2 and S3 joining in, and Sholem aleykhem. A Russian aside says Katz has talked enough and they want him to speak of cheerful things. Kerler closes by complimenting Katz's Yiddish, which he says he does not understand in the non-Jewish dialect.