MDV 302 · Haia Macarie; Golda Salamon

Brief chat among the team members, with a remark about how a word is said in Bessarabian Yiddish and the name Artur.

Travel from Oradea toward Sighet; the transcript is mostly garbled, with Russian talk and repeated recogniser loops. The voices appear to discuss the route and comment on a town said to resemble Kolomyia.

Mostly garbled; shows a Russian remark comparing a town to Kolomyia

The team meets the head of the Sighet Jewish community, who says he knows little Yiddish and speaks English and Romanian. Kerler and Lemster ask about the community and its centre and which language to use; they then ask whether the building is a Jewish house and which synagogue it is, and Kerler asks how many Jews live there today.

Shows language difficulty (Yiddish, English, Romanian) and questions about the Jewish house and synagogue

Marcus answers questions about the Sighet commune and the town, and the number of Jews today, but the transcript is largely garbled. Russian, Romanian and Yiddish fragments mix, and the team asks about looking at the synagogue and filming.

Mostly garbled; includes mention of the commune and filming plans

Chat with community members, then a visit to the synagogue with footage while the guide speaks. The transcript is very fragmentary, with repeated phrases and Russian and Romanian bits. A speaker remarks that Sighet was a Jewish town.

Little beyond the synagogue visit; a remark on Sighet as a Jewish town

Driving with Marcus, who speaks mostly English: he says Jews were about seventy percent (?) of the town's population before the war and points out Elie Wiesel's house. He says eight synagogues stood before the war and only one survived, four being destroyed during the Shoah under the Horthy regime, and explains this in English, which Kerler checks.

Gives the share of Jews before the war and the number of synagogues destroyed

The team arrives at Salamon's house; there is talk with Marcus about who came from the United States and from Israel, and then the greeting. Lemster and Kerler say they seek Yiddish speakers and ask whether she will talk, and she is hesitant about her Yiddish.

Salamon speaks about Jews in her neighbourhood today: there are few and many are of mixed descent, with one grandparent or a neighbour Jewish. Kerler tells her she will tell her story, and the speakers touch on an address.

The formal interview begins. Salamon says her father was a yeshiva student in Bratislava (as the transcript reads, 'Presburg'); the family spoke Yiddish, Hungarian and Romanian at home. She grew up with four brothers and three sisters.

The transcript gives three sisters, against two in the catalogue, and the languages spoken at home

Kerler elicits how Yiddish speakers say 'house' (shtub versus hoyz) for a Romanian word, while Salamon sits down, learns the interviewers' backgrounds, and says she spoke Romanian and Hungarian with earlier visitors. She agrees to speak Yiddish as at home. The catalogue's remarks on Auschwitz and her father's yeshiva do not appear in this stretch.

This stretch is mainly a word elicitation and setting up the interview, not family and Auschwitz

Salamon recalls her childhood and says she was born in this house, as was her mother. She gives her mother's name Beyle and her father's name Ezra Malik, her names Golda and her husband's name, and her birth in 1926. She had seven siblings (four brothers and three sisters); she alone survived and returned after the ghetto and Birkenau.

Gives parents' names, birth year and the fate of her siblings

Salamon tells of being liberated by the Americans at Mauthausen after more than a year in camp. She describes how the camp was to be blown up before liberation and how prisoners were held three days without water.

Asked about prewar life, Salamon says her family lived happily and had animals and land, and speaks of grandparents and Sabbath observance, with her father a yeshiva student. The children sang zemirot, which she later sang in the camp for extra food; she also did other jobs there, such as tending a block leader's hair and clothes. She describes roll call, the food and German women guards (or prisoners) with striped clothes, and recalls Yiddish songs from the theatre.

Salamon speaks about songs at home: zemirot, and her elder sister who danced and sang; on Sabbath afternoons her father examined the boys, who went to cheder. She describes her bedridden grandmother, who read a large tkhine and predicted the deportations; Kerler asks the grandmother's name and origin. She recalls Italian then Hungarian arrival, trains with Jews passing her garden toward Galicia, and the ghetto, where several families shared a house.

Gives the grandmother's name and origin, and the Hungarian arrival

Salamon speaks about prewar holidays, especially Passover with her father leading the seder and her brother stealing the afikoman. She tells how her sister married and wore a kerchief rather than cutting her hair, to her grandmothers' displeasure.

Passover seder customs and the dispute over hair-cutting; the grandfather's house is not clear

Salamon describes her own weddings after the war, held in the courtyard under a chupah, and compares them with prewar weddings with sheva brokhes and dancing. She mentions her husbands and their age differences, and tells how an aunt was not allowed to marry a lawyer deemed insufficiently observant, and was married to another man with whom she had six children.

Both of Salamon's postwar marriages and the aunt's story

Salamon speaks about relatives with many children and an uncle who was a journalist. She attended a Romanian school, then Hungarian after the Hungarians arrived. She had no children, with either husband.

Salamon speaks about an uncle who was a wedding jester and how it supplemented his income, and about women's work and dowries before the war. Asked about Purim, she describes the big Purim feast, baking, and sending of shalakhmones, and says there were performances she was too young to see.

Salamon briefly recalls the ghetto in 1944 and the trains of Jews. She then talks about Purim: masking, which she and her brothers did not do, the visits and verses recited on Purim, and Jews visiting a local official named Smug (?) at his house, where they were given food and drink.

Purim masking and the visit to the official Smug (?)

Salamon describes her return home to a house used as a stable and stripped of its contents. She says she returned hoping relatives had survived, and tells of the selection at Birkenau where she lost her mother and younger siblings, the tension with Polish Jewish prisoners, and forced labour in a commando with guard dogs. She describes the camp, its electric fence and the Arbeit-macht-Frei inscription, and says they marched to work with music.

Salamon says she returned in 1946 and describes the loss of faith among camp survivors in Jewish life after the war, who asked where God was; she also says some kept hope. Lemster asks about the reopening of schools.