Plotnik discusses holiday celebrations before the war, including Yom Kippur, Succoth, Simkhat Torah, Hanukkah, Purim and Passover. She also recalls food customs prepared by Bulgarian 8:39 Jews on Passover in the ghetto.
Plotnik recalls how the holidays were kept in her parents' home before the war. She goes through the period after Yom Kippur, Sukkot (eating in the sukkah, her mother going to the synagogue), Simchat Torah, Hanukkah and Purim. Her mother gave Hanukkah money, and Plotnik recalls the dairy dishes of Shavuot. For Passover she describes the special dishes kept in the attic, koshering them with a hot stone, and the matzo and potato dishes. She notes that the Bulgarian Jews in the camp or ghetto made matzo, and that at the seder as a child of about seven she remembers the hidden afikoman, opening the door for Elijah and her father's singing. Katz and Lemster prompt her on each holiday.
Also covers Purim customs, the Passover household routine and the seder, and her father's singing.
Plotnik says she does not remember songs from her youth. Prompted by Katz and Lemster, she recalls that young people of different political leanings sang together, and then sings two songs. One is about hunger and cold on the street; the other, a cheerful song, is about forgetting troubles and cooking potatoes. She breaks off the second song, saying she cannot remember more. She also answers questions about songs her mother sang and about mixed Yiddish-Russian songs.
Gives the girls' and boys' singing among neighbors and her mother's singing.
Plotnik describes how Shavuot was prepared for, with decorations, and the dairy foods her mother made, such as rice with milk and varenikes. She then says non-Jews in Dumbraveni, shepherds among them, spoke Yiddish, even better than she did, just like the Jews.
Plotnik answers questions about cultural terminology and discusses folk customs, including averting the evil eye. Her mother would go with Plotnik to Jews and non-Jews to avert the evil eye.
Plotnik answers Katz's questions about the meaning of a few Yiddish words, including dybbuk and golem. She describes how she was treated against the evil eye: her mother took her to Jewish and non-Jewish healers, an old Christian woman and a Jewish woman called Malke, who used spoken charms and a knife. She also describes pouring wax for fright. Lemster asks whether she remembers more, and she says she does not bless properly.
Includes explanations of the words dybbuk and golem, and wax-pouring for fright.
Plotnik talks about the town's rabbi, Shternberg, whose children went to Israel, and says he asked her to say Kaddish. She recalls that her father often quarreled with the rabbi over money collected for the community. She tells how her father foresaw his own death, with his late father appearing to him in a dream, and describes his last illness. Katz and Lemster then ask whether she remembers more songs, and she says she does not.
Adds her father's dream and death, and the closing request for songs.
Plotnik answers questions from the dialectological questionnaire, with a second voice giving Russian prompts and Katz asking for explanations. The items include words for sick and sleepy, to run away, honest, a believer and a pious person, to convert or apostasize, headache, and 'from where'. Others are bed, oil, small tree, ten, thousand and twenty, street and road, river, potato, flowers (roses), and the sound of speech.
Plotnik sings a Yiddish song about collecting documents, before she sings the well-known Yiddish song "Papirosn" (cigarettes). She then sings a Yiddish children's song about learning the alphabet.
Plotnik sings a song about the difficulty of collecting papers and documents from lawyers, then the well-known song 'Papirosn' about a child selling cigarettes in the cold. She then sings a children's alphabet song in which the boy names each letter and the rhyme runs through the letters. Lemster and Katz respond in between.
