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.
Recording of the elderly Tulchin interviewee Perl Kolodenker, 24 May 2015, a continuation of a longer session. Kerler first asks her to explain the story of a synagogue whose building went wrong because of birds, and she tells about a rich man called Roykh-Shalom (?) and a building with painted birds. She then recounts her wartime experience in the Pechora camp, her escape with her mother to Tomashpil, and the postwar hunger. A second woman, who says she is 85, joins in at times.
Kerler says he never understood the story of the synagogue that was built and the birds, and asks Kolodenker to explain it. She first mentions interviews given in America and Moscow. Kerler passes on greetings from Sasha and Masha in Moscow, who had visited her. Brief chat about visitors from abroad and about where the visitors come from.
Kolodenker tells the story of a rich man called Roykh-Shalom (?), who had twelve rooms full of gold and money. He tried to eat the gold, lived on for a time and died, and he was found dead where the money was kept. She mentions a large building with several floors by the road.
Kerler asks about the story of the birds and the synagogue that was built. Kolodenker describes a large three-storey building whose walls were painted with birds. Two rabbis quarrelled over it, so the building could never be finished or used for prayer, and someone died while trying to seal a window. Kerler checks that the quarrel of the two rabbis is the point of the story.
Kolodenker recalls the Pechora camp: the Moldavian Jewish prisoners, the squalid sleeping places and the cellar into which she and her mother crept. She describes hunger, fear and her illness, and her brother, her father in the army, and a neighbour who gave her bread. Afterwards she and her mother escaped to Tomashpil, where an old woman took them in. Kerler asks whether this was after the war.
Kolodenker recalls her mother staying in Pechora, her small brother, and her own begging for bread in Tomashpil. She tells of a wounded, drunken soldier, a Georgian, and of her father who drove passengers to Zhuravlevka (?). Kerler asks what she did in Tomashpil; she says she begged for bread, and confirms she fled from Pechora with her mother.
Kolodenker speaks of her husband's family, his mother and four brothers, who were taken to the front. She tells of a woman, Golde, who sheltered her mother. Following the account of the knock on the window, the women were convinced that there is a world to come. The woman had also escaped from the camp with two girls. A second woman says she is 85.
Kerler asks who first knocked. Kolodenker names the landlady, and gives more about the journey from the camp, a soldier with a cigarette, and a grandmother in the camp who asked for water. They had to walk down about three hundred steps. She mentions that her husband served seven years in Germany and learned German, then speaks of postwar hunger and her return to Tulchin. Kerler asks about her eldest brother, who also went to the army, and recalls visiting the family.
Informal talk about tiredness, vitamins, and a Jewish neighbour with a sick daughter, Klara. Kerler recalls his first visit in January 2009 and later visits, including a trip to Pechora with Sasha and Rita. He recalls a brother who said that those who died young did not have their years.
Kerler continues the remark about having one's years, and Kolodenker returns to Pechora: she tells of her mother cooking, the police putting out the fire, and German and Romanian sides of the camp. Kerler asks who was in the camp, and she answers. He asks whether the word for Romanian or non-Jewish people was used. She recounts searching for food with a girl, a frozen pit with beets, and a Jew called Yankl Telmer (?) who hid them. The second woman asks for water, and the recording ends with her remarks.