Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › Warsaw 2018

AHEYM-2018-016 · Warsaw

Warsaw (Varshe in the project's index) 2018-06-18 25 min · 9 stretches · 1 questions about words Yiddish 99%

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.

Summary

Recording in Warsaw, 18 June 2018, in which Kerler interviews a woman named Sara Arm (?) who was born in Warsaw to Polish-Jewish parents and learned Yiddish only partly. It begins with chat about the previous evening's opera and with her consent to be recorded, then covers her family's flight into the USSR, return to Poland in 1946, schooling, years in Israel and France, and her later translation work on Ringelblum's archive. The file is one of three consecutive files of the session and begins mid-conversation.

Stretches

00:00–02:34

Informal opening chat. Kerler and the woman discuss the previous evening's opera performance with Polish and Israeli singers, a Carmen and a singer named Mansburg (?), and the short expedition of only two or three interviews. She asks Kerler if he went to the opera.

Informal life today

02:34–03:22

Kerler asks for her permission to record and use the interview, and reassures her it is not sensitive material. She worries that she has too little of interest to say.

03:09–05:44

She says she was born in Warsaw, and that her parents came from a town whose name is garbled in the transcript. They spoke Polish or Russian at home, not Yiddish. She had no chance to speak Yiddish and learned some at a Yiddish school in Poland after returning from Russia in 1946, because she was thrown out of the Polish school.

05:30–07:34

She describes arriving after the war in a small, formerly German town in Silesia, which she names as Bistritsa Klatska (?), where the last Germans were being expelled. A priest expelled her from the Polish school, and Kerler discusses the town's location with her. She remembers little of the time before the war.

after the war SchoolingAntisemitismLiberation and returnLocal Jewish history · Bistritsa Klatska (?), Silesia

07:34–12:20

She gives her family name and tells what her mother recounted about the German invasion. Her mother was a seamstress, and German women asked her to sew for them. Her father, a Jew and communist, fled with a friend and sent a card from Bialystok. The mother then travelled with the children to find him and crossed the border with a friend's wife and son, with chocolate as a bribe.

11:50–14:01

She mentions that she sang in a Yiddish choir until recently. She tells of the family's arrival in Bialystok, where the large synagogue no longer stands, and of a rainy day outside the synagogue. Her mother, holding the children's hands, suddenly saw a friend of her husband and they were reunited. The father had worked in a place called Sarne (?), and when the war broke out in 1941 they fled.

during the war Family historySynagogue and prayerEvacuationSongs and music · Bialystok, Sarne (?)

13:58–17:40

The family was found in Kazakhstan, in a kolkhoz in a village whose name is unclear, and stayed until 1942–43. The father was called into the army, then they lived in Guryev (?) on the Ural River until April 1946. The father, a director of the Polish-Jewish group, handled their return to Poland. She names her father as Leon (Leybl) and her mother as Faige (Semiatich?), and mentions an older sister who lived in Israel. They went to Israel in 1957.

during the warafter the war EvacuationFamily historyArmy serviceLiberation and returnEmigration and relatives abroadPersonal information · Kazakhstan, Guryev (?), Moscow, Poland, Israel

17:40–21:50

She recalls her years in Israel in the 1950s, where she learned some Hebrew and studied geology at the university in Jerusalem. Her parents died in Israel and her sister now lives in Canada. She also discusses time in France and her return to Poland, with Kerler asking about the expulsion of Jews in 1968, which she says did not affect her. She notes that she speaks Polish with a French accent.

after the warlife today Emigration and relatives abroadSchoolingPersonal informationFamily historyAntisemitism · Israel, Jerusalem, France, Canada, Warsaw

Questions about words

  • 23:08
    Kerler supplies the word 'farglaygt' for her unfinished phrase about proposing her material — the usual Yiddish word for 'proposed'