00:04–02:38
Arranging how to send mail to the household. Talk about a Saturday-night concert by two cantor's children and a Budapest speaker coming to a conference to talk about a book he wrote on local history.
Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › 2012 Expedition
AHEYM-2012-233 · Réti, Béla
Debrecen (Debretsin in the project's index)
2012-06-07
22 min · 7 stretches · 2 questions about words
Yiddish 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
Second of two consecutive audio files from the 2012 Debrecen session with Réti, an elderly man who has been in Auschwitz. It opens with talk about arrangements for sending mail, a coming concert and a conference. Réti then answers questions about a village with a clausen and a yeshiva, and about rebbes and his time in Auschwitz. Later he recites a Purim-play passage about Joseph and sings a song of Jewish suffering. The session ends with arranging a ride and looking at a strimml (fur hat) said to come from the Land of Israel. The transcript is partly garbled and has some Hungarian.
Stretches
02:38–05:22
Kerler asks about a Purim play in a village (name unclear) and its Jewish population. Réti says about a hundred families lived there, with a clausen for Hasidim and a Sephardic yeshiva. Kerler asks which rite they pray in, and Réti names it. He mentions a family whose children converted.
05:22–07:48
An incident in which an elderly Jewish professor, about ninety (as S2 says), was insulted on the street in Pest. S2 says he learned of it from the news while in Romania. Short Hungarian passage.
07:48–11:50
Rebbes and Auschwitz. Kerler and Réti speak of the Kosin (?) rebbe Yisroel and his brother Mendele, and of rebbes' visits. Réti says he was in Auschwitz, and a brother worked there as a coachman. They discuss the Tash rebbe, who was in the camp and is said to have been killed there, and boiled bones.
11:50–14:13
S2 recounts that a rebbe with eleven children chose a better railway wagon and the family was taken straight to the gas. Kerler then asks Réti to recite the Purim play again. Réti recites the scene of Joseph and his brothers and the angel, and begins the Rachel episode.
14:13–17:17
Kerler passes on greetings from Perl. Réti sings a lament about Jewish suffering, imploring God to redeem the Jews, and Kerler asks him to repeat it more slowly. It includes a passage about Shomer Yisroel (?).
17:17–22:04
Kerler thanks Réti, says he will phone Perl from America and offers to arrange for him to receive a Yiddish newspaper. They speak of a visit and of the Messiah. Arrangements are made for a ride at a quarter to seven. At the end they look at a strimml (fur hat) and discuss whether it comes from Israel, Poland or Egypt.
Questions about words
- 04:31Which rite do they pray in here? — the prayer rite or nusach of the local congregation
- 21:25Where was the strimml (fur hat) brought from? — origin of the fur hat