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Interview with Dora Fixler in Slotfina (Solotvyno, Transcarpathia), 29 May 2012, a return visit after an earlier interview in 2005. She recalls her childhood schooling, her parents and siblings, and deportation to Auschwitz and return, then talks at length about Sabbath and holiday foods, languages, the town's Jewish institutions, and her books, grandchildren and the family's decision not to emigrate. Hungarian-speaking family members are also present.
Opening of the session. Kerler gives the date, 29 May 2012, and notes that he is interviewing Fixler a second time after the first in 2005. She says she is from Klein-Solotvyno and her husband from Schwarz-Tumer, three kilometres away. She says she has forgotten most things and recalls being deported to Auschwitz in 1944, around Shavuot, when her parents' generation was killed. Kerler asks about the time before the war.
Fixler describes attending a Hungarian school in a Hungarian-speaking mining area, where salt is dug. She lived under Czechoslovakia and then Hungary, spoke a little Czech and was taught in Hungarian. Her father taught her to read Hebrew letters because she did not go to cheder. There was a girls' cheder and a hakhshara in Greater Solotvyno, but her father did not let her go. She names her father as Avrom Yankev.
Fixler gives her family background: her father's surname, her own name taken from her mother, and the civil registry marriage her parents had. She was born when her father was 59 and her mother 42; her mother was his second wife. She lists half-siblings from the first marriage and full siblings, and says some died after deportation to Galicia in 1941. One brother, in a labor battalion, married in Yasina (?) and his family was murdered. She was freed together with one sister and came home; she gives the sister's name as Tsetsilye (?).
Fixler says she was in Auschwitz with her sister, and the siblings came home and later separated in Sighet and elsewhere. They kept in touch by letter. Kerler asks about her grandchildren: one in Solotvyno and others in Israel. They exchange blessings.
Kerler asks whether she remembers a Purim play she once taught a grandchild. She recalls only a few lines of a Purim rhyme and says she has forgotten the rest. A grandchild, aged fifteen, is mentioned; Fixler spoke only Yiddish to her from infancy, while the girl's mother and father speak less.
Kerler asks about the Jewish foods of old, and Fixler describes them. She names cholent and kugel for Sabbath and what went into the kugel and the cholent pot. She names mock fish and says how she made gefilte fish and chopped fish and the broth. Her husband liked cimes, and she describes making a dish from carrots and plums.
Talk about foods continues. They discuss a large pumpkin, called by a word Fixler gives, and its Russian counterpart. They discuss a sweet dish, a flaudn, made with flour, sour milk and fruit, eaten as a dessert. She says she no longer bakes much, and her daughter makes it for her.
Kerler explains that he found Fixler through her daughter's husband, who speaks Yiddish and was a teacher. She says she can pray a little and recalls a minyan in town after the war of about twenty to twenty-two people. It later dwindled when people left.
They discuss the Jewish community before the war. There were a large shul and four prayer houses, and the town was said to have five hundred taleisim. There was a rabbi, a shoykhet and a dayan, but no great Hasidic rebbe. Kerler asks about the evil eye and dybbuks, and she says she heard of the former but does not believe it. She mentions Bushtyno as the home of a good Jew people visited. She describes trips to Sighet to shop for cheaper goods, with a passport, in the Czech period.
Languages: Fixler learned Romanian, speaks Russian more easily than Ukrainian, and learned to write Russian in a Hungarian school. She has many Hungarian books and offers to sell them.
Fixler shows her books and papers, speaking in Hungarian for part of the time. They look at a prayerbook, a siddur, a Korbn minkhe (?) and a machzor, some of them her husband's. She says she has a Hungarian calendar from 1944. She and Kerler talk about what will become of the books when she dies. Great-grandchildren are mentioned. Kerler talks about a man from Solotvyno he knew in England.
Kerler asks about the best time of her life and she says childhood, with her mother and father. She still has a friend in Israel. She talks with her daughter over the internet, and a grandson is pictured. She says the piano was Czech and was sold.
Fixler explains that in 1980 (?) the family wanted to emigrate but could not take money or goods, and her husband said no. Her son Yankl also stayed. She recalls going to Hungary in 1989 (?). The end of the file has talk about a television and English talk among others in the room.