Second of two consecutive files of an interview with Litman in Lublin, 29 May 2017, and the end of a session that Kerler says ran more than an hour or two. It begins mid-conversation with Litman's family's flight to the Soviet Union in 1939 and their exile, then covers return to Poland, school, Yiddish reading, Israel, films and theater in Lublin, a trip to Ukraine, the Lublin yeshiva and the origin of the surname. It closes with thanks and an exchange of e-mail addresses.
00:00–03:13
Litman is asked to tell how his parents understood in 1939 that they had to flee, since the older generation did not expect the Germans to treat Jews as they did. The family travelled at night by horse and wagon and crossed the river Bug. They then looked for lodgings, and the mother found no pot and bought a fish pot. They were taken to a kolkhoz in a Ukrainian village where the father worked. A brother died in Siberia, and a sister was born there. She now lives in Lublin and understands Yiddish but does not speak it. A younger brother was born in Kazakhstan in 1945 and now lives in Denmark.
03:23–05:39
Litman says the family came to Poland in 1945/46, went straight to Lublin and have lived there since. At school they studied Hebrew and Yiddish, but teaching was in Polish and Jewish history was taught in Yiddish. He says he has read Yiddish books and still reads some. Tomorrow he is to meet at the university to exchange Yiddish and Polish books, including books from before the First World War about Warsaw Jews.
05:08–08:48
They discuss a book by a Jew who travelled from America to Palestine around 1914 and describes the journey. Litman has visited Israel once and has a brother in a kibbutz (named as Avraham (?), possibly a kibbutz called Lamed-he (?)). His granddaughter learned Hebrew and now learns Jewish dances. He says he intended to go to Israel in the early 1950s, but it did not work out.
08:48–10:38
They talk about Yiddish films shown in Lublin after the war and about a festival in Kazimierz where films were shown. Kerler asks whether Litman saw The Dybbuk after the war and whether he attended the performance by Ida Kaminska's theater in Lublin. They recall the newspapers Nowe Życie (Nay Lebn) and Folksshtime. They also mention Yiddish teaching pages in a Polish-Yiddish publication from Słobodzejewska (?).
10:38–13:25
They talk about young people interested in Yiddish and whether they come to Litman or to the university program. Litman says he has already withdrawn from public functions and that the young people now take over. Kerler tells him he knows a great deal. Litman says he has forgotten much of his Russian. He follows Yiddish spoken slowly but not fast, and he doubts whether he speaks well.
13:25–14:31
Litman recalls a trip to Slavuta in Ukraine in 1968 (the year is as heard) with his wife. They visited acquaintances, landsleit from Łęczna, who later left for Israel. They say Slavuta was a Polish town before the war and that a film of Sholem Aleichem's Tevye the Milkman was reportedly shot there.
14:31–17:50
They discuss films, then the singer and actor Theodore Bikel, who was born in Vienna and knew Yiddish. Litman says he has a newspaper picture of Bikel and that his father also appears with Bikel in a picture. Kerler says he met Bikel once in Tel Aviv, and that his university has a theater to which guest artists come. They then talk about the Lublin Yeshiva, which was never renewed after the war because no one wanted to invest and any revival would have been strictly Orthodox or Hasidic. Litman says his family valued the Lublin yeshiva highly, calling it Chachmei Lublin.
17:50–18:50
Kerler asks Litman about the origin of his surname, Litman, which is spelled with a tet. Many families named Litvin exist, and the name may come from Lithuania. Litman says the family feels no kinship with them and has never researched it. He gives his mother's name, which is garbled in the transcript.
18:50–20:59
Kerler thanks Litman, saying they spoke for more than an hour, and invites him to send a memory, a song or a tune by e-mail. They exchange addresses. Kerler says he is from Indiana University and also explains his Gmail address, with some talk about the word kolobusha (?).
Informal
life today
· Warsaw, Lublin, Indiana