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.
Audio recording made in Zhitomir on 27 May 2015 with the singer Lazar Burshteyn, with Fanye Stanovskaya also named in the index. In the first half Burshteyn sings Yiddish, Polish and other songs for Kerler and recites verses from memory. He then talks about languages, his books and magazines, Soviet repression of Yiddish writers, and his flight from the Germans in 1939. The file begins and ends mid-conversation, and the main informant's gender and the role of Stanovskaya are unclear.
Burshteyn sings and recites songs. They include his own song about the shtetl Gavrove and its martyrs' graves, a song of longing for his childhood home and mother, and a love song. The tunes come with an exchange about where they come from (Poland), and he also sings songs about a poor refugee and about a street singer. A song with a refrain about a barrel organ closes the stretch.
Kerler asks about Polish songs, and the informant says he understands Russian and sings a Polish song. He then sings a song on the theme of love, a song about a bachelor's marriage, and a song hoping all Jews will go to the Land of Israel.
Kerler asks for the song about the Odessa pogrom. Burshteyn says he already composed the Gavrove song himself and sings a song about Friday night: father and children singing zmires, the grandmother's story, a Sabbath without cheder. He also sings further fragments, including one beginning with once upon a time. He mentions having a Russian-language songbook.
He sings the Yiddish song about the Jewish mother, praising her devotion and the pain of her absence.
Kerler asks for more songs. Burshteyn sings or recites a ballad about a murderer in a back alley and a song about a woman and money. He also sings songs about Rivke at the mirror and Yankl, and about a Kerler-prompted love theme ('where does love begin'). He says in Russian that he has forgotten many songs and that his songs were taken from him.
Kerler remarks on his good Russian, and Burshteyn says he speaks Yiddish, Russian and Polish. He recalls singing Polish songs on the road with a Pole. He says in Russian that his photographs and an album of his childhood were sent to Israel. He is about to travel to Netanya, his first visit to Israel, and mentions a young man jailed under the Poles for singing Jewish songs.
Kerler asks about the informant's Yiddish dialect: he is from Volhynia, from Polish Volhynia, and he explains how people said 'small' and what his mother said. He then sings Polish songs, and the song about the stepmother and orphan.
He shows a small book of his songs, in Russian says that he sings in the synagogue, and shows a photograph. Kerler reads out the name Mariya Moiseyeva (?), who wrote the book. Burshteyn recalls a Ukrainian woman friend in Kiev who hosted him; he is asked whether Moiseyeva (?) knows Yiddish.
Kerler names Yiddish figures and writers (Nibolsky (?), Polyanker, Yosef Rabin, Bergelson, Markish, Shlomo Mikhoels (?), Lina Shtern (?)) and asks about the writers killed in 1952. The informant recalls their arrest under Stalin. He says Yiddish books, magazines and photographs were taken from his home by commissions, and he says he read Sholem Aleichem and Soviet Yiddish periodicals.
He recalls working in a printing house and being stopped at night to show documents, and says Soviet-era Yiddish magazines like Sovetish Heymland were taken from him.
He recalls Bergelson, Markish and Mikhoels (?) once more, and says Stalin had them killed. In Poland many people on the Soviet side of the border survived. He recalls the German advance in 1939: his family fled, stayed in Ostrov (?), crossed a bridge past marching Germans and met the Red Army, then wandered from town to town. His brother, Pesach (?), later died in Babruysk.