Baia Mare2013-05-1911 min · 5 stretches · 2 questions about wordsYiddish 100%
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 camera file of about ten minutes from a session in Baia Mare (19 May 2013). Kerler and an elderly man (the index gives no name) talk about whether any Yiddish speakers are left in town, then about food at Passover, the family's return to his birth town, the postwar emigration of Jews, and a non-Jewish teacher who spoke Yiddish. Kerler closes by asking about Hanukkah food.
Stretches
00:03–03:10
Kerler asks whether Yiddish speakers still live in Baia Mare. A man named Eisikovitsh (?), first name Mikhail (?), is mentioned as a painter of pictures of his wartime experience, now ill, with daughters in Israel and America. They then mention a woman aged 91 (?) from Satmar (?) and an earlier visit.
Kerler asks about Passover food. The answers mention a soup with meat dumplings and the problem of keeping separate milk and meat dishes for Passover. Milk was bought from non-Jewish neighbors because kosher milk was hard to get.
The informant describes returning to his birth town after years away, when he knew no one. He says his name is Volant (?). Kerler recalls a visit in 2008 (?), and the talk turns to the community president, David (?). The speakers discuss wartime and postwar conditions for Jews. They were not deported but paid heavy deposits and were barred from the street except for certain hours. Deportation elsewhere, a place near Satu Mare (?), and the postwar period are mentioned, though names are unclear.
The informant describes Jews leaving for Israel after the war. Some waited two years in Cyprus, and non-Jews took over their houses. He says one town had 15,000 (?) Jews and Yiddish was heard everywhere in the street. He tells of Viktor Schmid, a German-born non-Jewish mathematics professor who learned Yiddish and taught his father German. After the war Schmid was taken to Iași and the university there. The informant later sent him postcards for years.