Baia Mare2013-05-1911 min · 3 stretchesYiddish 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 10-minute camera file from the 2013 Baia Mare session, with no named interviewee in the index. It appears to be set in the home of an elderly artist who painted a series about her wartime experiences and Jewish scenes. Kerler looks at and asks about her paintings, then prompts her to recall Purim plays, Sabbath afternoon gatherings and a rhyme she is asked to repeat, and finally talks about arrangements for the next morning and how she came to painting. The speaker attribution is uncertain throughout; the transcript puts most of the speech under Kerler's label.
Stretches
00:00–04:10
The conversation is about paintings on Jewish themes: a Jewish street scene, a painting with bagels (?), and another dated 2012. Kerler notes her series about wartime experiences. One painting shows children going to cheder, and one is of the Rozenfeld brothers, one of whom the speaker was with in a camp and who never came home. They discuss why the children carried their shoes, because shoes were expensive and were spared wear. Another painting is of a shoe seller nicknamed Berl Bilik (?).
Kerler asks about the Purim play and what she remembers of it from childhood. She recalls her grandfather's house, where Sabbath afternoon gatherings (shalshudes) were held, and her grandmother's cooking of fish. They mention mamaliga and a rhyme that Kerler asks her to repeat. Some Hungarian is heard and the speaker translates.
Kerler tells the speaker not to worry about their visit and sets the next morning's meeting for between ten and half past ten, since they must travel afterwards. He mentions the president of the Sziget community, who he says is unhelpful. He asks when she began to paint, and she says she started at the gymnasium but stopped for many years, and has recently done some articles. She mentions a Jewish street with a large synagogue where she had her bar mitzvah (?).