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 Evgen Grunfeld in Cluj (Kloyzenburg), 5 June 2012, audio track, with a woman present who speaks Hungarian and is addressed by Kerler. It opens with his grandmother and parents, then covers schooling, wartime forced labour, the postwar years and the factory where he worked. After a refused emigration to Israel and a short exchange about languages, he recalls holidays, Purim, Sabbath food and religious schooling in his home village, and ends with the Passover seder in Cluj. Second half of an audio recording with Grunfeld, made in Kloyzenburg (Cluj) on 5 June 2012. Kerler asks about Yiddish reading and theater in Bucharest, the food and customs of holidays, the synagogue, kosher practice and Hasidic and non-Hasidic communities in Transylvania and Maramureș, and gefilte fish and the drink 'shlivovitz'. He then asks for Purim plays and songs, a rebbe visited by the father, and wartime places (Tiginia (?), Vendar (?)). The recording ends in unclear side talk.
Grunfeld speaks of his grandmother (Kerler introduces her by a name that sounds like Yente), who died in 1945, and of his parents: his mother died at about fifty-seven, his father lived to about eighty. He tells how long he attended cheder (until about twelve), then at about thirteen attended a Romanian lyceum in Bucharest, where he had a friend, and he gives the years of his stay there.
Grunfeld recalls the war years: he was taken to Romanian forced labour (digging trenches) near the border, and he was freed in August 1944. He says about 18,000 Jews of the region were deported and that his parents were moved to a nearby town, then to Turda (?). After the war he came to Cluj, trained in cellulose and worked in a factory, where he headed a section of some 200 people; at retirement 1,800 people worked there. He also talks about the Hungarian–Romanian border at the time.
Grunfeld explains that his father left for Israel in 1950, while his own repeated applications to emigrate were refused. He stayed on in Romania; a brother lives in Tel Aviv and a sister in Vienna. His father visited him several times from 1969 on. A short exchange follows about the woman's Yiddish and Hungarian.
Kerler asks about holidays in Grunfeld's home village up to age twelve. He recalls the quiet of Sabbath and festivals, shops closed, and village women counting the stars to see when the Sabbath ended. He talks about the cantor competition at the holidays and about Purim, when children in costume visited the Romanian teacher and Jewish families with a Purim play, though he can no longer recall the text. Kerler and the woman discuss where the community lives in Cluj.
He talks about the gifts of baked sweets sent with children to Jewish families at Purim, and about Sabbath food: fish from the river and the local fish dishes, among them stuffed fish. He says they came home from synagogue after the Sabbath songs.
Grunfeld recalls his religious schooling: cheder at home, then half a year in the talmud-torah in Cluj around 1930, under a teacher named Rothschild, before the Bucharest lyceum. He remembers passages of Gemara (Bava Metsia) and the discussion of finders of lost property. Kerler asks about yeshivas in Sighet and Satmar. He also describes his bar mitzvah at thirteen, when he read the haftarah and his grandfather Abraham spoke to him.
Grunfeld talks about Passover: in the old days handmade matzo only, machine matzo only among the Neolog Jews; the seder lasting until midnight; the children stealing the afikoman at his grandfather Abraham's seder. Today he attends the community canteen seder, where about a hundred people are seated and he has his place. The last lines are about attendance at the Yom Kippur memorial service (izkor).
Grunfeld says that many of the people who come to the communal canteen for the seder are not religious. He says he is not religious himself now. As a child he wore sidelocks and cried when they were cut off in Bucharest.
Kerler asks about Yiddish theater in Bucharest, which Grunfeld attended. They discuss the directors and writers Jacob Shtern (?) and Sternberg, the poets Itsik Manger and Jacob Glatstein (?), and Bessarabian writers. Grunfeld says he read Sholem Aleichem, Peretz and Sholem Asch in Yiddish in his teens.
Kerler asks about gefilte fish, what kind of fish and whether it was sweet. Grunfeld refers to a novel he read and says the local fish were pike and carp and it was not sweet. Brief exchange about a stone synagogue built by a miller and the women's section divided by a wall.
Kerler asks about children's holiday customs. These include Simchat Torah flags with candles, the dreidel at Hanukkah, dairy food on Shavuot and the nut-throwing game at Sukkot. The group also mentions fasting on Tisha b'Av and Yom Kippur.
Grunfeld says grapes were eaten at the pre-fast meal. He describes his rich home region and the Jews of Moldavia who did not eat stuffed goose and duck. After the war some kosher practice continued in Cluj, with a kosher meat store (frozen) for Ashkenazim and Sephardim.
Grunfeld compares the Jews of Maramureș, who were more Hasidic, with those of Sălaj, who were religious but not Hasidic and more progressive. He mentions marrying a 'Maramureșan' woman, and that nobody wore a shtreiml at home, including his grandfather.
Kerler asks what gefilte fish was called and why it was made when fresh fish was plentiful. Grunfeld says it was a delicacy and gives the Romanian and Hungarian words for the dish. He describes childhood in a village that was mostly Romanian and Hungarian, with about twenty Jewish families, and his grandfather's Saturday exams after kiddush. He then speaks of toasting with schnapps and 'shlivovitz' kosher for Passover, called brantfn in Yiddish.
Grunfeld recalls a children's rhyme about the rebbe telling them to drink brandy, not wine. He tells of a Hasidic shoykhet from Poland who lived in Cluj in the 1950s and drank a hundred grams of brandy. A second speaker sings a lively drinking song about dipping in wine.
Kerler asks about Purim plays, including one with a chimney sweep who plays a matchmaker. Grunfeld recalls performing in a group at a Romanian teacher's home and describes couplets and dialogues. He recites a short matchmaking verse about slippers and bundles, sung to a tune, and doesn't remember a Joseph song.
Kerler asks about songs and stories. Grunfeld says he used to sing zemirot and heard tales of rebbes and Hasidim. He tells of a miracle he saw himself, where a rebbe enters water and comes out dry.
They discuss Yiddish names of towns, including Sutchava and Bukovina towns, and a rebbe of Buhush (?) whom Grunfeld's father visited when Grunfeld was about five. He says the visit was for a blessing, which led to the birth of a son. Kerler remarks that this was not a Hasidic father but a respected man.
Grunfeld talks about wartime in Bessarabia, where he was sent in a labor battalion. A Yiddish-speaking non-Jewish policeman at Vendar (?) and a place called Tiginia (?) are mentioned. Kerler also asks whether his father, whom he calls an honest man, was Hasidic, and Grunfeld says not.
Unclear closing exchange between Kerler and a second voice, partly in English and about arranging a phone call and an address.