00:00–01:38
Kerler gives the date and place and asks Shmukler for his Jewish name and surname. Shmukler says there are other Shmuklers in America, who were not killed, while his own family was killed by Ukrainians. He says he was born in Chernovits.
Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › 2015 Expedition
AHEYM-2015-028 · Shmukler, Yosef
Chernivtsi (Chernovits in the project's index)
2015-05-21
21 min · 7 stretches · 2 questions about words
Yiddish 95% Russian 5%
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
Audio recording made in Chernovits (Chernivtsi) on 21 May 2015 with Yosef Shmukler, born there around 1940. Kerler opens with the date and place and asks for his name, family and birth. The interview then covers his orphaned childhood, deportation and return, his work, marriage, language use, and views on Israel and emigration.
Stretches
01:33–05:02
Shmukler says he did not speak Yiddish at home. He spoke Polish because his parents died and a Polish woman raised him. His parents died in 1941 after being driven out to Transnistria (?), and he names places there, among them a Bodivke (?). He and his brothers were not allowed to leave until 1947. He gives his father's name as Avraham, his mother's as Rezhane, and his birth year as 1940. He says he is the youngest of three brothers, one of them named Dovid, and that he has relatives in Poland, in Szczecin.
04:59–10:09
Shmukler explains that he knows Yiddish from working at a factory in Chernovits among Jews, from Bessarabia and Belarus, from the age of seventeen. He answers questions about whether he knew of Yiddish theater or writers, and says no. He finished a Ukrainian school and reports no formal Yiddish education. He recalls that Romanian Jews sang in Romanian at work. He says he knows Polish only a little and no Romanian, and he speaks Russian and Ukrainian. A Yiddish-speaking co-worker from Belarus spoke a different kind of Yiddish.
10:09–13:36
Shmukler talks about being sent from work to a sanatorium at a Black Sea resort (Krasnye Izvory? Odessa), where he met few Jews. He says he heard of Jewish holidays Purim, Pesach and Hanukkah. He answers questions about his school and work history, a trade school he finished in 1957, army service, and later work at a factory.
13:30–14:57
Shmukler describes life in Soviet times and now, saying it was not bad and that poverty came under Ukrainian rule. He says he receives a pension, and that gas, water and similar services must be paid for. He says he sometimes goes to a Jewish community event (hesed or synagogue), where religion is discussed.
14:52–17:11
Shmukler tells about his marriage to a Bessarabian orphan from Kishinev, who spoke Moldavian and Russian and worked in a factory, and who has since died. He says Kishinev was destroyed by the Germans and Romanians. Kerler asks about the dish mamaliga (mamalyge) and how it differs from the maize porridge called malay (?). Shmukler explains it is made with water or with cheese.
17:11–20:51
Shmukler says the best time in his life was after the army. His wife was Khayke, née Novodvorskaya (?); they have one son, who lives in Chernovits. He agrees to the interview being recorded and used for learning Yiddish. He talks about how Israel was only described negatively in Soviet times, and speaks of the emigration of Jews in 1973 (?). He mentions that wives were in Austria in 1973 and that Austrian German is close to Yiddish.
Questions about words
- 00:17What is your Yiddish name? — Jewish given name
- 16:30What is the difference between mamaliga and malay? — difference between two cornmeal dishes