Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › 2013 Expedition

AHEYM-2013-011 · Oradea

Oradea (Nagyvarad in the project's index) 2013-05-16 9 min · 3 stretches Yiddish 34% Hungarian 63%

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

Camera file of a session in Nagyvarad, 16 May 2013, with an elderly woman whose name the index does not give. In the first part she talks with Kerler, in Yiddish with Hungarian interpreting by another person, about her loneliness, her late friends and the lack of visitors from the Jewish community, and about Szigét (Sziget). Her birthday then turns out to be that day: a social worker and the community secretary arrive with flowers and a cake, and the talk is mostly in Hungarian.

Stretches

00:00–02:09

The woman says her friends have almost all died, in Nagyvarad, Israel and America. Only one woman still visits her, and the telephone is silent. Kerler asks whether the Jewish community visits. She says it sends something to the old people and the secretary comes rarely. He then asks what she can tell about Szigét. She answers that she has already told everything and cannot recall more, and that the Jewish town is gone.

life today Life todayCommunity institutionsLocal Jewish historyPersonal information · Nagyvarad, Szigét (Sziget), Israel, America

02:09–03:11

Kerler mentions that the team is travelling to Szigét. She replies that she has no one left there, since her sister-in-law has died and her husband died fourteen years ago. Kerler then realises that it is her birthday and that flowers are being brought.

life today Family historyLife today · Szigét (Sziget)

03:11–09:04

Visitors arrive with birthday congratulations, flowers and a cake, and the woman is called Erzsike (Erzsi). The talk is mostly in Hungarian, with some Yiddish and a little Romanian. It covers the community secretary and social worker, the greetings, the cake, and her husband, who died fourteen years ago. Kerler wishes her a happy birthday. The speech is hard to follow, so the details are uncertain.

Informal life today Life todayCommunity institutions