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 with Halpert, an elderly woman interviewed in Ungvar (Uzhhorod) in 2014, with relatives present. It opens with chat about greetings sent by a visiting student and Skype, then turns to her life story: deportation from Munkatsh in 1944, her sister in Moscow, her marriage in 1947 and her children, and her siblings' fates. The rest covers Passover and Purim memories, languages and schooling, and Czech theater. Second half of a 2014 interview in Uzhhorod (Ungvar) with Halpert (called Tubi), an elderly woman who grew up in Munkatsh. She talks about her childhood and her father's early death, her husband, trips to Budapest, and her time in Reichenbach after Auschwitz. After liberation she describes the journey home and the return to Munkatsh, then her children and grandchildren and their languages. The recording ends with Kerler arranging the next steps and promising a return visit.
Opening chat. Kerler passes on greetings sent by a student, Anya (?), who visited the interviewee and made a video. The interviewee had a gift of money from an American woman she mistook for her, and they talk about Skype and new technology.
The interviewee recounts being taken to a concentration camp in 1944 and her mother's death there. She returned to Munkatsh and learned her sister, who had been in Moscow, was working in Ungvar; the sister fetched her in June 1945. Her husband Ernst (Aron) came back from camp in April, served in the Soviet army and was released in 1947, and they married that year.
Discussion of her husband's names: Jewish name Aron, Hungarian and Czech Ernst/Arnošt, Russian Ernest Iosifovich. Wedding photographs are mentioned. The recorded exchanges with others in the room are partly in Hungarian, with cake and coffee.
She describes her family of eight children. Two brothers died in Hungarian labor service, one in a Soviet gulag after going to Russia in 1939, an older sister with her child in Auschwitz. Another sister was in Moscow, and a brother fought in the Czechoslovak army in England. He returned in 1945 and died in 1987(?). He was kept out of the party for having fought for Churchill.
Her father died in 1937 (?) aged 51, and she had to go to work before age sixteen. After the camp she studied a little and worked in a construction office. She speaks of her two sons, one in Frankfurt, and of grandchildren in Israel and Germany. A grandson is named after her husband's family. The couple were married 65 years. Cognac is offered.
She tells about her sister Sara, called Serena in Russian, who went to Moscow in 1939. Her husband, a Czech communist parliament deputy who was not Jewish, was sent to organize partisans, caught by the Hungarians and hanged in Budapest. Her mother was bitter about the marriage.
Asked about the family's religiosity, she says her mother was very pious and wore a sheitel. Passover memories: matzo balls in soup today, and special dishes before the war. Talk of the Chabad rebbe in Ungvar, the community's Passover and the word seder. Kerler wishes her long life.
About her schooling: nine years (?) in the Czech school, then she had to work after her father's death. Her mother taught her Hungarian, and her father, born in a village near Munkatsh, knew Hungarian and German. After the war her sister arranged a three-month course in Russian and Ukrainian, and she worked in an office. She mentions no antisemitism under the Czechs.
She attended Beis Yaakov for three months and learned prayers such as Nishmas, and later forgot most. Purim memories: children in her brother's trousers went around saying a Purim-shpil rhyme for coins. She also mentions the sukkah in the courtyard and boys' flags at Simchas Torah. Antisemitism worsened when the Hungarians came.
Kerler asks how many Purim-shpil songs she knew and whether there was more than one; she cannot recall details. She mentions Czech Yiddish and Hebrew theater, and a brother who acted in England. She mentions a trip to Budapest and Skype.
Kerler notes the Czech word for theater and asks about it. She says she knows Czech better than Yiddish, and compares Czech and Hungarian. Kerler recalls her late husband reading Yiddish and a photograph of him reading the Torah in Zhitomir (?).
Halpert mentions a photograph and says her father died when she was a child. She lived near the rebbe's household and the Jewish street in Munkatsh. She also recalls swimming in the river Latorica as a child and, later, going with her children to a swimming pool.
Kerler asks about Jewish weddings after the war. Halpert says they went to the civil registry, while he recalls a chuppah in Munkatsh and a wedding in Ungvar in 1967. They talk about visitors from Moscow, Kerler's upbringing in Jerusalem, his son and the word for grandchild. Halpert recalls Zionist songs, schoolmates and her husband, and says she is Tubi to them.
Halpert says she had no happy years: the family was poor and her father died when she was about thirteen, so she could not study. Life improved when her husband came home from the army. He was a worker and later chief engineer in a furniture factory with some eight hundred employees (?).
Halpert recalls trips to Budapest before and after the war. Her eldest sister's husband had gone to the Soviet Union in 1939, and the sister was imprisoned as a spy when the war began. After the camps she stayed in Budapest for three days in a Jewish shelter. She says Jews could not travel abroad under Stalin, but could to Czechoslovakia and Hungary under Khrushchev, and the Brezhnev period was a little better.
They compare life under the Soviet regime with the present and agree that one man made the politics. Kerler asks what will happen with Ukraine; Halpert says it is dangerous and that Europe does not want war with Russia.
A short stretch of technical chat in which Hungarian speech is heard at the start; it appears to be about the recording equipment. Kerler says the equipment works well.
Halpert recalls liberation on 8 May and the first morning without German guards. She was in Silesia near Reichenbach and spent two weeks in a German flat. She then traveled by train through Czechoslovakia, Bratislava and Budapest, fearing she would be shot. She returned to Munkatsh and found the house taken, with people searching for gold in the walls. A day later she was in Ungvar, living in a large flat with furniture taken from a fascist.
Kerler remarks that there was no Jewish life under the Soviets. Halpert mentions that her sister's first husband was a non-Jew and that her husband did not believe in God. She describes the radio-parts factory at Reichenbach, where the work was for the army and food was scarce.
Kerler and Halpert discuss how their children and grandchildren have never known hunger and say this is a great luck. Halpert says she tells them about it later. They mention Yura, who is three years older than Kerler.
Kerler says Yare speaks Hungarian very well. Halpert says they spoke Hungarian with him as a small child, and at three he entered a Russian kindergarten. She says another child, Peter, also speaks. They talk about a Soviet-era Jewish history book.
Kerler asks about the heating, and Halpert says she has electric heating and a gas boiler. Kerler says they must leave to see Ignats (?) and travel to Budapest. He notes the date as 1 June 2015, promises to return within a year with prepared questions and sends greetings.