MDV 274 · Bernard (Dov, Boris) Resh

Opening chat among the team and people present in the room, partly about speaking Yiddish and about an American organization; the speech is fragmentary and the date of the recording is stated at the end.

Gives talk about Yiddish speaking and America, and the date, rather than just chat.

The formal interview begins with Lemster introducing the expedition in Iași. Resh gives his Jewish name and birth year 1924, and speaks about his parents: his father, from Rădăuți (the transcript says Radovets, Bukovina), was a bookkeeper at the Chernivtsi town hall and secretary of the Maccabi football team, and his mother was born in Przeworsk, Galicia. He names his grandparents, his siblings, and relatives in Israel and America.

Adds the father's bookkeeper work and Maccabi role and names several siblings and grandparents.

Resh speaks about his life after the war. He served about one and a half years in the Soviet army, then emigrated with his family to Iași. He worked thirty-nine years as director in the Iași meat industry and retired in 1986 (?).

Resh recalls his childhood in Chernivtsi: Romanian-language schooling, the ethnic makeup of the town, and the Soviet arrival, which ended his schooling. He says he went to a Jewish cheder for about a year after a private tutor had come to the house, and describes children's games (nuts, buttons, football) and the town's many languages. He also mentions deportation to Transnistria.

Adds the town's ethnic composition and multilingualism.

Resh describes prewar holidays in his parents' home: a kosher household with pork not allowed inside, his father blowing the shofar and going to synagogue on holidays, his pious mother and her candle-blessing. He explains Sabbath food, including cholent kept warm, and gives the recipe for Jewish gefilte fish, which he still makes himself, as well as how his mother salted meat.

Adds Sabbath candles, kosher home and salting of meat.

Resh talks about Purim in his childhood and the good relations with non-Jewish neighbors before the war, who visited at Purim while Jews visited them at their holidays. He says there was no antisemitism in Chernivtsi, describes masking and singing at neighbors, and Simchat Torah processions with flags in the synagogue. Lemster asks about Purim songs and a purim-shpil, which Resh does not recall, and then about Yiddish theater.

Adds Simchat Torah customs and the absence of a purim-shpil.

Resh names actors of the Yiddish theater in Chernivtsi and retells a humorous anecdote about a rich man's invitation. Asked by Lemster about holidays, he speaks about the sukkah, dairy dishes at Shavuot, and potato dishes in Hanukkah and in general in Bukovina. He says he married late, at 37.

Adds Yiddish actors and an anecdote, and Hanukkah and Shavuot food.

Resh says he was in Transnistria (near Mohyliv) during the war and then was drafted into the Soviet army; after demobilization in 1946 he returned home to Chernivtsi and the family left for Romania. He worked in the Iași meat industry as director for thirty-nine years (?). He speaks about Jewish Iași, its large prewar Jewish population and the 1941 pogrom, emigration to Israel after 1947, and his oldest sister's attempt to reach Palestine in 1948 when the British stopped her ship and she swam for hours.

Adds the Iași pogrom, emigration after 1947 and the sister's sea journey.

Answering Lemster, Resh lists Jewish organizations in Chernivtsi (Maccabi, Borochov, Hasmonea, student and Zionist groups), but says he was too young to know writers. He speaks about children's games and about non-Jewish children who spoke Yiddish, the rarity of conversion, and good relations. He is asked about a Jewish fire brigade; the passage ends with his mention of the ghetto.

Resh says that all Jews of Chernivtsi were in the ghetto, where he stayed two months before deportation to Transnistria. He then describes Maccabi's sports sections and the football teams of the other nationalities in Chernivtsi, naming the German, Romanian, Polish and Ukrainian clubs, and says his father was referee and general secretary of the Maccabi team and his brother-in-law also played for it.

Adds the football clubs of other ethnic groups and the father's referee role.

Resh answers questions about prewar Jewish culture in Chernivtsi: he recalls German but not Yiddish newspapers, mentions a Jewish theater, libraries, hospital and the Jewish street, and says there were no Yiddish or Hebrew books at home. He says there were Hasidim and many synagogues, and mentions Rabbi Marcus, shot by the Germans in 1941. Lemster then asks about terms such as a good place and a good Jew; Resh defines a good Jew as one who helps others.

Adds the rabbi's fate and the terminology questions.

Resh recalls Polish Jewish refugees who arrived in Chernivtsi in 1939, including a lodger in his family's home. In answer to Lemster's questions he discusses the terms Litvak and Galitsianer, the Austrian background of Bukovina and Galicia, and the dialects of Yiddish in Romania, saying that the children and grandchildren in Israel no longer speak mame-loshn.

Adds the Litvak/Galitsianer terms and the language of the younger generation.

Resh answers Lemster's questions about weddings: the chuppah, matchmakers and klezmer musicians, which he knows from his childhood, and says he did not know a badkhn. He recites a few lines of a Yiddish song and recalls his mother's lullaby, but says he can hardly remember them.

Resh and Lemster talk about Jewish food and its terms: falshe fish made from meat, potato latkes, mamaliga from cornmeal, kugel, lekekh, flodn with raisins and sweets for Purim, beans with tsimes, Jewish sausages and pastrami, and the names of plums and cucumbers. He says he is no specialist in baking, and kvass was not known in his home.

Resh answers Lemster's questions about folk healing and customs for the evil eye. He describes older Jewish women who quenched coals and uttered spells over a sick child, natural remedies, compresses, cupping and bloodletting, and says that families usually had one general doctor, with many Jewish doctors and professionals in Chernivtsi.

Resh addresses the occupational structure of Chernivtsi Jews: many were officials, merchants and craftsmen (tailors, watchmakers, carpenters), but fewer intellectuals than in Iași. He then answers questions on terms such as gvir, dybbuk, mamzer, golem, and the words used at a cemetery, which he mostly does not know.

Adds the cultural terminology (gvir, dybbuk, golem, cemetery).

Resh recalls a Yiddish saying, and a woman says she has one daughter. Lemster then puts the AHEYM questionnaire in Yiddish: greetings, request and thanks formulas, 'mazl tov', words for house, room, apartment, colors and adjectives, pickled cucumbers, body words, short sentences with tenses, comparatives, pronouns and 'barely'. Resh answers with his own forms, often not knowing the form.

Adds the questionnaire items and the mention of a daughter.