MDV 185 · Abram Davidovich Kaplan; Maria (Manye) Leibovna Kleyman

Answers questions from Katz in the dialect questionnaire about Yiddish forms. The items include 'tired', 'Jew' versus 'Hebrew', and the plural 'poor people' with its ending. Katz then closes the questionnaire and asks what the speaker wants to tell American Jews.

Talks about Jews from Mohyliv who emigrated to America over many years, how they live there, and that many long for home and visit for weeks at a time. He keeps up letters with former colleagues in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Miami. A few emigrants came back because they could not find work, and two returned from Israel. Katz then asks whether he remembers songs from Mohyliv.

Adds that he keeps in touch with former colleagues in America and that two people returned from Israel.

Katz asks the men present for their names and tries to get a song specifically from Mohyliv in Yiddish. They answer that they do not remember such songs. One man names himself Moyshe, with the surname Bludoy (?). The group then sing a Yiddish song about a tailor, and Katz asks Moyshe to say something about himself.

Adds that the song comes out of the group after repeated requests for a Mohyliv song and that it is a shared song.

The man from Mohyliv talks about his parents and the saying of his mother that a Jew has two things, Torah and wall. Katz then asks several other men their names, which are given as Roznshteyn, Bortnik and Brekhman (?), and asks whether they know Yiddish songs. A man answers about 'poor people' with Russian explanations. Another says Jewish life is better now and there is no hunger; those who were in the ghetto get compensation from Germany while the younger ones suffer. Bortnik tells how Hitler was said to be a Jew's son and about a Moscow paper.

Adds that several other men are introduced one after the other and that the talk covers compensation money and a story about Hitler's descent.

Katz explains the interest of the researchers in folklore. A man talks about the current situation of Jews, with antisemitism, religion and a destroyed cemetery. Kerler and Katz question him; the Yiddish is hard to follow. At the end the interview closes and Kerler addresses an interviewee in Russian.

Kerler opens the interview in Lipcani on 13 December 2005. Kleyman gives her name, her maiden name Shnayder, and her Yiddish first name Manye. She was born in 1928 in Starye Karkushany, twelve kilometers from Briceni, and lived in the village before the war. She spent three years in the camp, returned to the village, married in 1953 and came to Lipcani. Her parents later died here and are buried here.

Adds that her parents died and are buried in Lipcani.

Kleyman talks about her family. Her father Leyb dealt in machinery brought from Romania and her mother Reyze was a seamstress. Her mother was born in Secareni(?) and her father in Karakushan, and she had one sister. Of the original family only a few remain and her three children live apart: a son in Germany and a daughter in Ukraine. She says she and her sister were in the camp and returned in 1945 and recalls her grandmother Feyge and her mother's sisters.

Adds that she talks about her grandmother and the relatives of her mother abroad.

Kleyman talks about prewar Jewish life, in particular a holy rebbe in Stefanesti (Romania) who foretold a slaughter of Jews on one night. A neighbour is said to have believed the story. She tells of her mother-in-law's visit to the rebbe about where to live, and of the mother-in-law's deathbed warning not to leave the house, which had been blessed. She also tells of her husband, who was taken from the camp to the front.

Adds the story of the mother-in-law's visit and her deathbed warning about the house.

Kleyman talks about her husband and his war years in the camp, then gives the names of his father, grandfather and mother. She tells that her husband was buried as a Jew, with his daughter bringing him home in ten days. The passage ends with Kerler asking about her childhood.

Kleyman talks about Jewish life in her childhood village. About forty Jewish families lived among some four hundred people; services were held in the house of her aunt (Khantse), where Jews from Belts and Chisinau sometimes came. She describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles, her limited Jewish schooling, speaking Yiddish with Jewish children and Moldovan with Christians. She tells of a Jewish mother and a Ukrainian father whose children did not learn Yiddish. She also tells of a trip to the rebbe in Chernivtsi at Sukkot and a conversation with Christians about guilt for the death of Jesus.

Adds Kleyman's trip to Chernivtsi and her talk with Christians about guilt for the death of Jesus.

Kleyman talks about a holy rebbe in Stefanesti and another in Boyan, where people still go and light candles. She recalls a childhood game in Yiddish, then an encounter after the war in Ukraine with her father's former boss at a kolkhoz, who wept when she said she was his daughter. She returns to the rebbe and the grandmother who had been to America. She then tells the story of eight thousand Jews in Stryy, killed by the Germans, and of a holy man who spoke before being shot.

Adds a childhood game memory and a visit to a former kolkhoz chief of her father.

Kleyman answers Kerler's questions on food and holidays: her mother baking Sabbath challah, Sabbath dishes such as cholent, fish (kulen, chopped and gefilte fish), vinegar meat and the meal before Yom Kippur. She also recalls Hanukkah money, Purim noodle kugel, and baking at Passover in the oven. She remembers little of the Purim reading and the seder, and speaks of her sister asking the four questions and her mother lighting candles. Lemster and Kerler exchange words with a man from Israel about food terms.

Adds that Kleyman remembers little about Purim and the seder.