00:00–02:55
Setting up: seating arrangements, the recorder and the camera, with Russian talk among hosts and team. Kerler explains the interview and asks consent to film. The Yiddish lines are garbled.
Later expeditions, 2012–2018 › Ryb Sigal
AHEYM-2018-061 · Sigal
Rîbnița (Ribnitz in the project's index)
2018-06-28
30 min · 10 stretches · 2 questions about words
Yiddish 33% Russian 67%
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 of Sigal (born 1930), an elderly man in Ribnitz (Rybnitsa), 28 June 2018, as the first of five consecutive files of the session. It is mostly in Russian. After the room is set up, he talks about his parents, brother and wartime losses, his brother's war service and a local rebbe, then sings a few Yiddish lines and speaks about his health and his grandson. The recording ends with talk about the interviewers' own residences.
Stretches
02:56–06:26
Brief remarks, partly in Russian, that speaking Yiddish was not permitted during the war. Sigal speaks of his children, his illness and his disability, and of his mother, Kerler asking for her name. The Yiddish passages are largely unclear.
06:26–11:01
Sigal gives his mother's name as Perl (Polina) and his father as Vladimir Isaakovich, a veteran of the Great Patriotic War who fought from first day to last, reached Berlin and received the Order of the Red Star and a medal for combat service. A brother, Fima, died as a one-year-old in Baku during the evacuation, of hunger. Another brother lives in Philadelphia and another died in 1979 (?). Sigal also describes a village in the Ribnitz district, Gershunovka (?), and a brother who was a violinist and was recognised by his violin playing, both having been severely wounded and in the same hospital in Kislovodsk.
11:01–14:02
Sigal says he is delighted by the visit and invites the team and their acquaintances and his children to come as guests. Kerler asks about the Ribnitz rebbe, and Sigal says that a rebbe lived on a neighbouring street, was very observant, and was taken to Israel or America.
14:02–17:38
Kerler asks whether Sigal remembers a particular man, apparently the rabbi or shoykhet (name unclear). Sigal says he knew him well and saw him in the town, and that he had no children but a wife and relatives who came after he left. As a boy Sigal carried chickens to his house to be slaughtered. The man spoke Yiddish, knew Hebrew and read the Bible, and spoke Russian and Moldovan well.
17:38–20:08
Sigal says he speaks Russian, knows Yiddish and Hebrew only slightly (some dozens of words) and learned some German at school. He then says a few Yiddish sentences (apparently about luck, mazl) and Kerler asks whether he remembers songs.
20:04–21:35
Sigal says he used to have a guitar and knew some songs. He speaks of his glaucoma, which can lead to loss of sight, and of the need to fight on and keep going.
21:36–24:27
Sigal thanks the visitors and blesses them and their children and grandchildren. They ask about his grandson, who lives in Tel Aviv and is also named Semyon Vladimirovich Sigal. Sigal was born in 1930 and the grandson in 1983 (?). The grandson is unmarried.
24:42–27:21
Kerler asks whether he remembers any Yiddish songs. Sigal says the few lines of one about luck (mazl) and recites or sings part of the song about 'this street, this house, this girl', which he says everyone knew and which is also sung in Russian. He mentions Tum-balalayka.
27:27–29:46
Talk about Sigal's relatives in Ribnitz, a niece, the wife of Ilya, and a sister, with Sigal the elder. Another man, Ilyusha, is to be interviewed next. At the end Kerler says that he lives in Bloomington, Indiana, previously in England, and is Israeli.
Questions about words
- 06:03Как звали маму? — the mother's name
- 24:52Вы помните ещё какие-нибудь песни на идыш? — further Yiddish songs the speaker remembers