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.
Camera file (second of four consecutive files) from the June 2017 session in Ger (Góra Kalwaria) with Henryk Prajs, a man who kept up the Jewish community there after the war. He talks about tallis and tefillin and his bar mitzvah, Passover food, the end of the Jewish community in Ger and the restoration of the rebbe's tomb, then cheder, his Yiddish writing, and sings songs.
The interviewee talks about his tallis and tefillin: when he wears them, and that he received tefillin from an uncle, a scribe, for his bar mitzvah at thirteen. He describes his bar mitzvah in the beis medrash, with the reading from the Torah and maftir, and the satisfaction of his grandfather and the rebbe. He then reflects on Jewish life before the war as cultured and mostly sober, on Jews in Russia today, and on the Jewish people's survival.
Answers Kerler's questions about Passover food: matzo brei, kneidlach for the wealthy, a jam-like preserve, and what could be eaten. He describes keeping his own home kosher for Passover, with separate dishes. Talk turns to gefilte fish and Sabbath eve with guests brought home from the beis medrash. Sabbath songs (zemirot) are sung, and the interviewee says he does not know much by heart.
Kerler asks about false fish, and the interviewee describes the Passover seder for the poor that is held every year in a Jewish hotel in Warsaw, with three hundred people. He then tells a story, heard from older people, about Jews leaving Egypt via the Red Sea and Ukraine and arriving in Poland. He mentions the Polish and Russian names for the Red Sea and that he served half a year in the Russian army.
The interviewee describes the decline of the Jewish community in Ger after the war. About 37 came in 1945 and most soon left. Fifteen remained, then four, and there was no minyan. He says Jewish communities now remain only in Warsaw, Łódź, Kraków and Wrocław, and he mentions the yeshiva in Lublin.
He tells how the cemetery was destroyed in the war and how he restored it. After the war a rabbi came and the first grave was built, and the ohel was later rebuilt with an engineer. The tomb holds the Gerer rebbe and his grandfather. He describes the rebbe's funeral before the war, attended by thousands. He also tells of Abraham Mordechai, who went to Palestine, and of an Italian diplomat who helped rescue the Gerer rebbe via Trieste during the war, with a man named Schindler.
Asked about cheder, the interviewee names several teachers, including Meir Khazn as the best, and the texts he studied. Kerler asks about reading Yiddish and Hebrew. The interviewee says he wrote about his life in Yiddish in Folkshtime in Warsaw after the war.
The interviewee and S2 sing the song about Belz, my little town. He says he sang it for visiting groups after the war. Kerler also asks about Dybbuk and the song about the mother's letter. He sings a children's cheder song (Hulyet, kinder) and a Zionist song of the halutzim, and remembers Hatikvah. Kerler then asks whether he knows the name Bialik, and the interviewee mentions Jabotinsky.