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 (index: Dorfman, Boruch; Lviv, 28 May 2015) of an elderly man in Lviv, the middle file of a longer session. He talks about the Jewish population of Lviv after the war, the synagogue, rabbis and the Soviet closing of Jewish institutions, and the present state of Jewish life and Ukrainian nationalism. He also tells of the cultural society he helped found, his working life and Moscow Yiddish writers, and ends with Metropolitan Sheptytsky and the June 1941 pogrom. Second half of a Lviv session (28 May 2015) with Boruch Dorfman, recorded on audio only. He first finishes the story of a rescued brother and sister, Alexander Sorel and his sister, and the memorial he put up at the killing site near Radna (?). He then talks about his Yiddish journalism and his Zionist upbringing in Bessarabia, and about writers and Jewish institutions in Lviv, Odessa and Kishinev. The recording ends in a Russian exchange about why the team chose to interview him.
Dorfman describes the Jewish population of Lviv when he arrived in 1949. He speaks of Galician, Polish and refugee Jews, a Jewish population of about thirty to forty thousand, and the deportation of many to Siberia and Central Asia. He also mentions the surviving rabbi David Kahane, rescued by Metropolitan Sheptytsky and later a rabbi in Poland and Israel, and the revival of synagogue life centred on the synagogue after the war.
Dorfman recounts the destruction of Jewish institutions around 1962 and 1966 (?): the closing of the synagogue and the taking of the cemetery. The president of the synagogue was imprisoned for distributing aid from America, and Dorfman mentions his daughter Tsilia and her husband Binyomin, who emigrated. Kerler asks in what year this happened.
Dorfman describes present-day Lviv Jewish life: gathering a minyan, the weak local rabbi with thirteen children, Melekh the shoykhet, and weekly Sabbath attendance. Kerler asks whether he is Chabad or Karlin, and they discuss the Karlin and Chabad communities in Kiev and the Jewish school there. He also speaks of emigration and the lack of work.
Dorfman talks about the Jewish cultural centre he founded with Lizen and others around 1990 with Ukrainian support, and compares Jewish culture in the Baltic states and Vilnius. He and Kerler discuss Bohdan Khmelnytsky, Petliura and Ukrainian nationalists' attitude to history.
Dorfman talks about his working life in a pharmacy business, where Jews were gradually pushed out, and about the ban on Jewish music in the Soviet period. He tells of Jewish university admission quotas and an anecdote about a young man from Kishinev. He describes a lecture where a Ukrainian nationalist professor was challenged and a quarrel broke out, and notes nationalism in Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk and the Jewish population statistics for Ukraine.
Dorfman talks about the number of Jews in Ukraine and a Kiev rabbi's claims. Asked by Kerler about the dead souls, he describes Jewish life under Soviet rule: weddings, bar mitzvahs, matzo at Passover, and a painter who made matzo. He speaks of Jews leaving Jewishness and joining the Party, and of the founding and decline of minyanim in Lviv. He also describes the dispute over a reform synagogue, the rabbi Rosenthal, and Hasidic visitors going to Medzhybizh and Uman.
Dorfman mentions tsadikim's graves in small towns and pilgrimage to Zhydachiv. He then recalls his friend Shrayer (?) of Drohobych, who died in Warsaw and was a pupil of Bruno Schulz, and the Jewish community leader Veys (?). He recounts the cultural society, Sunday school, ensemble and orchestra, and sponsorship by the Gertner (?) family from Vienna. He also mentions guiding foreign tourists to Jewish sites and, with Kerler, the visit to Zhovkva and its synagogue, and the cantor Pepe (?) and his sons.
Dorfman mentions the B'nai B'rith business, a twentieth-anniversary concert, and his grandmother's directorship of the Sunday school. He discusses the synagogue in Zhovkva being restored with money from England and the poorly attended synagogue on Simchat Torah. Russian talk, recorded by the second recogniser, is interspersed about the future of Jews in Ukraine. He begins on the Czernowitz Yiddish conference.
Dorfman recounts the ninetieth-anniversary Czernowitz conference and Gendler's non-invitation. He recalls his visits to Moscow and the Sovetish Heymland editorial office, with writers including Shuster, Vergelis, Gordon and Mishe Lev. He tells how he urged Lev to preserve archives and how the materials were lost.
Kerler asks about the railway station in Lviv from which transports went to Auschwitz. Dorfman instead tells of the pogrom of June 1941, when about seven thousand Jews were killed, and how the reform rabbi Lewin (?) and two others went to Metropolitan Sheptytsky and were later seized and killed.
Dorfman talks about the family of the rebbes who survived with Sheptytsky's help, one of them a businessman in New York whom he visited. He then tells how a boy and a girl, grandchildren of a local householder, survived the Lviv liquidation. Their family was taken in a village called Radna (?), and the children hid in a shed with a Polish caretaker. Afterwards they were placed in a children's group, travelled via Poland, Germany and Italy to Israel, and Alexander Sorel became a notable figure, president of B'nai B'rith in Tel Aviv. His sister was in a convent and he brought her out with difficulty.
Dorfman describes returning to the killing site where the parents were shot. He set up a marker, held a meeting with the villagers and brought a minyan from the synagogue for a memorial reading. Later Sorel came, and a permanent monument was made with inscriptions in Hebrew and Ukrainian, and a bishop spoke at its opening. He also mentions his work seeking out non-Jews who rescued Jews, applications to Yad Vashem and Kyiv, and the book by Sorel, now translated into German and presented in Hamburg.
Dorfman mentions his visits to German cities and the Birnbaum society. Kerler asks whether one could speak about Israel in Moscow in the 1980s. Dorfman answers that he read Sovetish Heymland and became a Yiddish activist. He tells how the editorial secretary Shuster asked Jewish readers in Lviv to get subscribers, and how he wrote for the Birobidzhaner Shtern and got to know its writers. He also visited Yiddish writers in Kyiv, Minsk, Kishinev and Chernivtsi, photographing them, and mentions the writers of the Moscow literary institute.
Kerler repeats his question about the atmosphere in the editorial office. Dorfman answers with an anecdote about a Lviv journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Demarski (?), who was expelled from the party after a brit milah was held for his son by the grandfather. Demarski later built a stadium, emigrated to Israel and became a sports commentator. Dorfman and Kerler then settle the plans for Kerler's next trip.
Kerler says he is travelling on to Mukachevo. Dorfman speaks about the weak state of Jewish institutions in the region, which depend on support from abroad, and about young people studying Yiddish with him. He regrets that young Jews show no feeling for Yiddishkayt.
Kerler asks what Yiddishkayt means. Dorfman answers that it is a feeling for those who bore and raised you, and tells how he learned Yiddish from Sovetish Heymland and from Alexander Lizin. He then recounts his Zionist childhood in Bessarabia: his mother was a Zionist leader, and he attended the Zionist congress in Kishinev in 1940. He talks about the Gordonia organization, about Dr. Samuel Perfer and the loss of his parents, and about saying Kaddish. He also mentions the book his wife wrote and his library in several languages.
Dorfman mentions anniversaries of Peretz, Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Moykher Sforim, and the grave of Mendele in Odessa and the Yiddish figures he met there. Kerler talks about Odessa and his father's studies there in 1935. Dorfman recalls the Yiddish theater and Jewish institutions in prewar Kishinev, and Kerler asks which language was used at the Zionist congress in 1940, which Dorfman thinks was mostly Russian.
Dorfman names Bessarabian towns and speaks about the Jewish organization in Ukraine led by Suslensky. He then tells about the Yiddish newspapers from the 1920s and 1930s he sorted in a Lviv library. Near the end Kerler and the second person speak Russian about why the team chose to interview Dorfman.