Shveibish talks in Yiddish about the Pechera camp and the transports of Jews, especially from Tulchyn, with others from Shpykiv and Mohyliv. She mentions a local policeman and the liberation, when soldiers on horseback came. Kerler learns that about 330 survived. She recalls the forced march and the freezing, overcrowded night, the lack of water and toilets, and the deaths. Her father was killed and her mother died within a month. Near the end the talk turns to Russian as they approach the camp and a memorial plaque.
Rita's own account of the march and her parents is included, not only the journey
The team arrives at the sanatorium in Pechera, which was a concentration camp during the war. Shveibish and Kolodienko discuss the history of the camp.
At the former camp, now a sanatorium, the guides explain in mostly Russian where the gate and guard towers stood. They describe the memorial plaque, changed after Ukraine's independence, and how the Germans selected victims. They say prisoners were harnessed to sleds to haul corpses to burial pits in the forest, and that anyone going to the river for water was shot. Kerler checks whether the interviewee understands Yiddish. They discuss the barbed-wire fence and begging at the gate, and the group then debates driving the car into the forest.
The guides' Russian commentary on the gate, towers and plaque, and the car problem
The group reaches the forest where the mass graves lie and looks at the memorials, including a monument of a grieving Jewish mother, erected soon after the war (about 1949 or 1950, as the speaker estimates it). Kerler and the guides identify graves, partly of children and of people from Tulchyn and Mohyliv, and read the Hebrew and Russian inscriptions. They ask why the graves lie so far from the camp and discuss whether candles and mowing are kept up at the site.
The monuments and their inscriptions are discussed, beyond the arrival in the forest
The team returns to the camp in Pechera. Rita talks about how the camp was guarded with two guard towers and about how anybody who tried to escape was shot. She explains that her father was shot the day they arrived to the camp. She talks about the conditions in the camp, particularly the lack of food and water.
Back at the camp, Shveibish describes how the gate was guarded and how people were beaten or shot if anyone tried to leave. Her father was shot on the first day, when he went for bread. She speaks of the lack of food, water and toilets, of lice and disease, and of Romanian Jews held there. She points out the cellar where the dying and dead were kept, and discusses the river Bug and the Jewish police from Tulchyn. Kerler asks about these points, and Russian and Ukrainian exchanges about the walk to the river and the cemetery run through the passage.
Adds the Jewish police, the cellar and the river, and Romanian Jews in the camp
The team arrives at the Vainshelboim home and Kerler asks the couple to speak with them, preferably in Yiddish, which both use alongside Russian. They are the only Jewish family left in their locality. Kerler apologises for not phoning ahead, and there is talk of drinks and baking bread and of driving around Berdychiv together. Mikhail jokes about his wife as housewife, and about the weather after recent rain.
Adds the invitation to speak Yiddish and the plan to tour Berdychiv
Kerler announces the recording in Berdychiv on 9 June 2009. Mikhail gives his Yiddish name as Moshe, son of Aron, named after his grandfather, and the surname Vainshelboim (Weichselbaum) with some wordplay on it.
The couple talk about relatives in America, two cousins on the mother's side. They do not know which city they live in, but the relatives phone on holidays and may visit.
Sara, born in Berdychiv, talks about her family before the war. There were four children, and the elder brother was killed at the front. Her father Yankl Yakov Katz worked in a sausage factory, and her mother Dobe was a housewife. The family lived on the street near the market that was formerly Zhytomyrska and later Lenin Street. She went to a Jewish school and then a Russian one, and was evacuated to Bashkiria. They also remark on the large prewar Jewish population compared with today.
Adds her parents' names and occupations, the street, and evacuation to Bashkiria
Sara recalls that Yiddish actors and singers used to come to Berdychiv. Her elder brother played football for the Progress team, and she remembers going to the stadium that still stands.
Sara recounts the family's evacuation, leaving on 5 July after the war began, and the loss of the family dog. Her father worked on the water and the family travelled by horse-drawn carts. Under German bombing they sheltered among trees on the way towards Poltava and Kyiv.
Sara and Mikhail speak of their return to Berdychiv in 1944. They mention hunger and the rebuilding of a house on Zhytomyrska Street, and that Jews returned only slowly. They compare the Jewish population before the war with the few hundred today, and mention that Jews drive to the killing site on the anniversary of the massacre.
Mikhail tells of his wartime escapes from the police and from a shooting at a pit. His mother hid him in an oven behind baked bread when police came, and his father, a painter, was released. He tells of being held with thousands in a cellar and driven towards the airfield park. He crawled away naked under fire in October and walked to villages. A Ukrainian family hid him for about a year while he begged bread, despite a German reward for turning in Jews, and he escaped pursuers by swimming. He also gives the ages of his parents and siblings and says the elder brother was at the front.
The escape is from police roundups and shootings, and includes hiding with villagers and swimming across a river
