Interview with Eisikovits in Baia Mare on 19 May 2015, a mining engineer originally from Botoșani who speaks Yiddish with Kerler. It begins with a Jewish cemetery and a list of Jewish names, then moves to Yiddish in Botoșani and Passover customs, wartime deportation to Transnistria, and holiday foods. It ends with his career as a mining engineer, a posting in the Soviet Union and a story about the diamond industry. The speech is Yiddish, with the speakers often talking over each other. Second half of a long interview with Eisikovits in Baia Mare (2015-05-19), mostly in Yiddish with Kerler. It begins with Antwerp, the diamond trade and Auschwitz, then turns to a childhood town with its non-Jewish New Year and Purim customs, his sister's death in Transnistria, antisemitism, Purim plays, 1492 in Spain, and Soviet and Romanian history. It continues with his father-in-law's medical studies and the family killed at Auschwitz, another man named Eisikovits, his own career in the mines, and some word questions. It ends with exchanging addresses and chat about his wife, with hospitality arrangements at the close.
00:00–04:38
Opening mid-conversation about Jewish life in the community. Eisikovits compares being a Jew with being a gentile in some places and takes up the idea of a gentile who serves as sexton for a Jewish community (the phrase is garbled). He then speaks of restoring and cataloguing the gravestones in the cemetery. He needs a list of Jewish names, women's and men's, and mentions a woman's name he could not find and a talk with the rabbi of Bucharest. Kerler offers to photograph or copy the list.
04:38–09:57
Kerler explains the AHEYM archive and its plan to put the interviews online, with material from Ukraine, Moldova and Moldavia. Eisikovits says few Yiddish speakers are left in Botoșani and that he spoke little Yiddish after finishing his studies in 1958. They compare how the words for mother, father and sick were said in Botoșani and in Podolia. They discuss Purim and Tisha b'Av as later or mourning days and the work allowed on them. Eisikovits also complains that visitors from abroad refuse to pay a fee at the cemetery gate. Kerler asks about the humorous Passover questions and about slang words for money.
10:05–16:18
Eisikovits says he has travelled widely in Russia, Siberia, Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. They talk about the Jews of Berdichev, the Jewish population in Russia and Kamchatka, and emigration in the 1960s. Eisikovits then discusses the pogroms and killings of 1940–41 in Dorohoi, Bucharest and Iași. He names a friend, Moses Rosen, as the source for a figure of sixteen thousand killed in Iași. Kerler mentions Babi Yar, Chernobyl and Chernihiv, and says he has been to Abrutsh (?).
15:47–19:47
Eisikovits talks about museums in Russia and the painter Isaac Levitan, whose gravestone with Yiddish letters he remembers in a Moscow monastery cemetery. They go on to Turgenev and Chekhov and the size of Russia, then China and Birobidzhan. Kerler asks how old he was when the war began.
19:47–22:18
Eisikovits says he was five or six years old when the war began and was in Botoșani. He and his family were deported, not specifically from Botoșani. His mother came from Burdujeni (?), near Suceava, and they went to Burdujeni (?) for the High Holidays and Sukkot. He recalls the deportation to Mogilev and then to Sharhorod, which he calls a hell, a camp where many Romanian Jews died. Kerler then says he interviewed people about Sharhorod. Eisikovits asks where Kerler was born.
22:18–29:33
Kerler says he was born in Moscow in 1958, and Eisikovits recalls three weeks in Moscow, the Bolshoi theatre and Leningrad. He mentions the taiga and Alma-Ata. Kerler asks how bar mitzvah was said. They discuss Hanukkah foods (fritters boiled and then fried), latkes at Passover, and a story about a Jew who orders salad in Japan. They then discuss Sakhalin and the Russian classics. Kerler asks about tatshikelekh (?), and they describe how gefilte fish was made. This is made from fish that is skinned, ground, seasoned and stuffed back into the skin, or made with false fish (fake fish) when no real fish was available.
29:33–44:06
Eisikovits recounts his studies at the lyceum in Botoșani and the university and polytechnic in Bucharest, and his work as a mining engineer and tunnel builder. His professor was Viktor Schmid, a German from Mannheim. He tells how in 1958–59 he worked in Steinach (?) with the Russians and then came to Baia Mare, and how a Jewish colonel-doctor helped him leave a sanatorium posting in Czechoslovakia. He talks about the minerals and mines of Maramureș and how Kerler's father worked in a coal mine in Vorkuta. He describes a Jew from Anvers who gathered Polish Jews to work with diamonds and what he saw at a diamond exhibition in Brazil and San Francisco. He also mentions Antwerp and King Baudouin.
44:06–45:21
Talk about Antwerp and the diamond trade. After the war the Belgian king is said to have appealed to Jewish diamond workers to come, offering housing and monthly money. The interviewee knew acquaintances who earned well there, and his son worked in Antwerp. He remarks that he expresses himself poorly in Yiddish and that Romanian would come more easily.
45:25–47:03
He says his life was simple, and Kerler replies that every life story matters. He says he could never visit Auschwitz and cannot bear to see such places, and mentions having seen the museum in Washington. Kerler mentions Kraków and a Romanian Jewish acquaintance who directs a museum there.
47:03–48:55
Back to Antwerp: he calls it a beautiful city with a Moroccan Jewish community, and says he asked them how they get on with other Jews. He gives a Jewish population of about twenty thousand (?). He recalls a cheder classmate, Natan Malik, who became cantor in Antwerp. A Romanian-language aside from a second speaker interrupts around 47:03.
48:55–51:44
Childhood recollection of a Christian woman who came to the Jewish home around 1 January and scattered wheat as a custom, naming St. Vasile. Another saint's name (unclear in the transcript) is linked to Purim. Kerler asks whether the custom word is Romanian too. The interviewee says the non-Jewish neighbours had no Yiddish, though they lived among Jews, and that one non-Jew knew a little.
51:28–53:14
About a revolution (the interviewee's father was born around then) and the antisemitism that accompanied it. Jews had carriages with a coachman, and in the revolution a coachman was set to claim that no Jews lived there. He says antisemitism has always existed and that in Hungary today it is somewhat masked. Kerler asks his father's name, and he answers Gershon.
53:14–54:40
He recalls his sister Pesse, who died in Shargorod in Transnistria. He remembers the cold winter and the lack of food there. His mother used to read the Tsenerene in the synagogue while the women wept, which he places in a town whose name sounds like Botoșani (?).
54:40–55:50
On Purim plays: poor Jews performed them, on Purim and also at Hanukkah and Simchat Torah, in masks, as short scenes. Kerler asks whether presents of 'makhes' were given at weddings. The interviewee says this was not the custom in his area, and Kerler places it in Bessarabia and the Moldovan Republic.
55:51–59:12
He mentions the statue of Ștefan cel Mare (?) and a Jewish doctor, Shmuel, in the voivode's service. He turns to 1492 and the expulsion of Jews from Spain. He says Jewish financiers and cartographers supported Columbus, Isabella sold her jewels, and ships were full of Jews. He explains that converted Jews were called Marranos, and contrasts the limited time Jews had to leave Spain with Portugal.
59:12–1:02:55
Conversation about Russian literature and Soviet history. The speakers discuss a Russian writer and drunkard who took his own life, Ehrenburg as head of the Soviet writers and a peace committee, and Stalin and Khrushchev. They go on to the Jewish general Kreiser and the defence of Moscow, and a plan for a Jewish territory in Crimea after the war. Kerler tells of a Jewish soldier who had to expel Crimean Tatars, one of whose officers was Tatar. He then says his father would not have survived at Vorkuta.
1:02:44–1:04:13
Discussion of Stalin-era figures: Molotov was not Jewish, Yagoda was a Jew who was shot, and Trotsky is named by his birth name Bronstein. The interviewee tells of a relative of his son's good friend (?) who was linked to Trotsky in Mexico and later shot. The attribution of some family details is unclear in the transcript.
1:04:13–1:05:27
The interviewee asks where Kerler lives in Israel, and Kerler says Jerusalem. The interviewee says he once stayed with an acquaintance in Ramat 'Dalet' (?). They talk about the growth of Jerusalem and opposition to its internationalisation. He mentions a synagogue dating from 1882 and that he once showed them it. Kerler remarks that they are taking too much of his time.
1:05:29–1:07:32
Kerler asks about Purim plays. The interviewee recalls only a rhyming scrap about a girl, and Kerler then performs a scene he knows: a chimney sweeper arrives at night from Prague, and a boy dressed as a girl taunts a suitor seeking a bride with a good living. The interviewee does not know the chimney-sweeper scene.
1:07:01–1:11:59
About his father-in-law, who studied medicine in Budapest before the war. When Jewish students were expelled, a hundred of them wrote to Masaryk and were allowed to continue in Bratislava. He later worked in a large hospital there under a Jewish director named Strauss. The interviewee tells a long story of a night when a diabetic patient was brought in and died after an insulin injection, and the professor's reprimand. Kerler and the interviewee briefly discuss the word for 'peasant' within the story.
1:12:04–1:14:28
His wife's family was murdered in Auschwitz, including about thirty-three relatives of his mother-in-law and his father-in-law's first wife and child. The mother-in-law came from a place that sounds like Shramkut (?). Her husband worked as a doctor and she as a seamstress. She is ninety-two (?) and he died at ninety-one (?). The father-in-law spoke Hungarian and German, some Slovak and Russian but no Yiddish, and the speakers discuss how easy Slavic languages are to learn.
1:14:20–1:17:59
Kerler compliments his Yiddish, and the talk moves to another man named Eisikovits, a prominent figure in the Jewish community. The interviewee says he has no relation to him and recalls telephoning a professor who headed the Cluj community. Kerler mentions that the man's uncle was a composer (?) and that the name Eisikovits is from Maramureș/Sighet. The interviewee repeats that he cannot say much in Yiddish and would tell it better in Romanian.
1:17:36–1:18:46
Kerler presses him to tell more, and the interviewee says he liked places where it was hard to be a Jew. Kerler asks how a non-Jewish cemetery was called in Yiddish, and the interviewee gives a short answer. Kerler compares Podolia usage.
1:18:44–1:20:34
The interviewee says his father grew up in the Crimea in Jewish kolkhozes, and Kerler's grandfather was also there. They discuss how beautiful the Crimea and Caucasus are, and how the Germans killed almost all the Jews of the Crimea. Mayakovsky's film about Jews on the land is mentioned, along with the suicides of Mayakovsky and Yesenin.
1:20:04–1:21:02
The interviewee recalls a professor of Russian from his student years and a classroom exchange about Bazarov. His account is hard to follow.
1:20:54–1:24:57
He talks about his working life in mines and the accidents he faced, including an inquest after each death. Kerler asks about taking a bird (a canary) into the mine, which the interviewee says was not his practice. He describes a New Year's night accident in which twelve miners, who entered drunk, died, leaving widows and orphans. Kerler asks whether a Yiddish saying about a worm in horseradish exists in Romanian, and the interviewee says it is Yiddish. He says he had what a normal man needs, and that his son wants him to come abroad.
1:24:51–1:30:17
Closing talk about exchanging addresses. They discuss an email address and a postcard, with Baia Mare and Maramureș named in the address. The interviewee says his wife, Sheindl, is retired and a former professor of mathematics who uses the computer. Near the end he asks who is driving for Kerler and offers a drink.