00:00–01:15
Informal talk over coffee and refreshments, with offers of food and drink and a remark about travelling and a lack of sleep. The transcript is unclear.
Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › 2013 Expedition
AHEYM-2013-061 · Baia Mare
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 10-minute camera file from a longer session recorded in Baia Mare on 19 May 2013; the index names no interviewee. An older man, an engineer who grew up in Bârțan (?), talks with Kerler and others present about his cheder teachers, his work in mining and metallurgy, antisemitism, and the Jewish refugees in Shanghai during the war. The file ends with Kerler asking whether he remembers anything from cheder.
Stretches
01:15–03:18
The informant recalls cheder in Bârțan (?) and his teachers, among them Benzion Mark (?), whose son was a colleague of his and became a well-known cantor in Antwerp, and a rebbe called Shaye (?). He describes going to the Romanian school in the morning and to cheder in the afternoon, and playing football with other children. Kerler asks about praying, including on Yom Kippur.
03:18–05:34
The informant says he was very busy in his profession and slept only a few hours a night. Kerler establishes that he worked as an engineer in mining and metallurgy. The informant then cites a Romanian writer or poet on Romanians and gold and on beggars, and he talks about local mines.
05:34–06:25
Kerler asks whether antisemitism was felt after the war. The informant says it was not shown openly but is present, even in Japan where there are no Jews. He mentions visiting Shanghai and looking for a place called Little Tokyo (?). Kerler remarks on Jewish refugees.
06:25–08:44
The informant tells how, in the Second World War, Franco and Mussolini ordered their consuls to give visas to Sephardic Jews and the Japanese emperor Hirohito (?) ordered his consul to give them to Ashkenazi Jews. Many European Jews thus reached Shanghai, where they set up a quarter called Little Vienna (?). A doctor, Michael Blumenthal, later Nixon's minister, is mentioned. A Romanian-language line interjects, and others speak.
08:44–10:29
Talk about speaking Yiddish in the family and in America, where a Russian speaker with no English could still get by in Yiddish, and about Manhattan. Kerler then asks whether the informant remembers anything from cheder, such as a piece of Chumash with Rashi or a saying about Abraham and Rachel's tomb in Bethlehem. The informant does not recall it.
Questions about words
- 10:03Do you remember anything from cheder, from the teacher, a piece of Chumash with Rashi, about Abraham bringing Rachel to the grave in Bethlehem? — a remembered cheder text or saying in Yiddish and Hebrew