Oradea(Nagyvarad in the project's index)2012-06-0712 min · 3 stretchesYiddish 91% Hungarian 9%
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.
Summary
Audio recording of Malke Rosenberg in Nagyvarad (Oradea), 7 June 2012, the first of two consecutive files of the session. She speaks about an acquaintance from Sighet who moved to America, and about the loss of Yiddish in her surroundings. She then recounts how her interview was archived in Romanian and visits by a Dane who knew Yiddish. She ends with her life in Oradea after coming from Sighet with her husband, and her relatives abroad.
Stretches
00:00–02:54
The informant talks about an acquaintance who sold his flat and went with his wife to Las Vegas, where he loved to gamble. He fell ill and later lived in San Francisco near his daughter. Kerler asks about the friend from Baia Mare (Bayamar, as transcribed) who died about half a year ago. The informant says he saw poorly and was hit by a car, was operated on at night and died on the eve of Yom Kippur; Kerler wishes him a place in paradise.
The informant says she spoke by telephone with a woman who cleans for him, and reflects that few people nearby still understand Yiddish. She describes a visit from a Danish university professor who knew Yiddish from Jewish studies although he was not Jewish. She says she no longer speaks Yiddish since her parents and grandmother died, and recalls what the Yiddish word for a ruble meant.
Kerler steers the conversation to Sighet. The informant names people still living there and describes an interview she gave a woman from the Cluj (Klausenburg) university, published in a Romanian-language book. The book was delivered to her by the community doctor before Passover; she was told her interview was judged the best and was archived. She repeats that a Danish visitor who had been to Sighet asked why she lives in Oradea (Vardan, as transcribed). She came here at 27 with her husband, also from Sighet, who died about thirteen years ago. She now lives alone, has a sister-in-law in Israel and relatives in Los Angeles; at the end Kerler asks for water.