Oradea(Nagyvarad in the project's index)2013-05-1611 min · 4 stretches · 2 questions about wordsYiddish 97%
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
A woman from Sighet (Máramarossziget) is recorded in Nagyvárad on 2013-05-16; the index gives no name. This is a camera file from a longer session. Kerler asks her to retell in Yiddish her wedding story, which she began in Hungarian. She then talks about shopping trips to Slotvina (?) in Czech times, a Soviet soldiers' raid on a ball, a Yiddish theater visit, and the Jewish town.
Stretches
00:00–03:09
After a Hungarian opening, Kerler asks the woman to retell her wedding story in Yiddish. She says she married on 1 September 1945 and had trouble finding a dress and shoes. The civil ceremony was at the registry office (primărie) and the chuppah followed the next day, as the war with Japan ended. It was held in a restaurant, with a party of about 120 people and a Gypsy band that played and danced all night. She says she lived with her husband for 65 (or 56) years.
Answering Kerler's questions about Sighet, she recalls how people went to Slotvina (?) when the Czechs were there. The Czechs came to Sighet to shop and Slotvina was poor. She remembers Bata shoes, stockings and underwear being cheap there.
She says that after her return Slotvina was already under the Soviet Union. She was in Sighet in 1948 (?). She describes a winter ball where Russian soldiers arriving by train burst in, ate the buffet and wrecked the party. Going out at night was then dangerous because soldiers robbed people. She mentions a man who dealt in gold and was killed and robbed. Kerler also asks how to say 'train' (zug).
Kerler asks for a song from Sighet and whether people danced or sang there. She says not much was sung in Yiddish, but she remembers a visiting actress, whose name sounds like Sidi Tal (?), and a Yiddish theater to which all the Jews went before the war. She also recalls a travelling singer with his wife who visited when she was a child. Sighet was a large Jewish town, half Jewish, and the Hungarians drove the Jews out. She ends with remarks on the present crisis and hard times.