MDV 407 · Iosif Kunovich Burg

Burg speaks about the graves of three generations of the Vyzhnytsya rebbe's dynasty in the cemetery. He describes how the old Jewish cemetery was turned into a sports ground and the gravestones reused for Soviet monuments. He recalls the First World War, when Cossacks killed two of his aunts in Vyzhnytsya; a Ukrainian carpenter buried them and a gravestone was later set up. He then speaks of Austrian-era tolerance in Bukovina, which in his view persists in Chernivtsi today, contrasted with antisemitic newspapers in Galicia and with Romanian rule between the wars.

Adds the family of the aunts, an uncle's rescue of the narrator, and a comparison with Galicia and Romania.

Burg talks about the arrival of Soviet rule in 1940, which Jews welcomed as a protection against the Nazis. Persecution soon followed, and the wealthy, politicians and Zionists were deported. He recalls a night in June when half of Vyzhnytsya was taken away in trucks and many never returned. Kerler then asks him to read one of his stories.

Adds the night-time deportation in Vyzhnytsya and Kerler's request to read a story.

Burg reads aloud his own Yiddish story about the binding of Isaac, which draws on his childhood. It describes his birth on a Friday evening in May, his mother's songs, his father's tales and the cheder teacher who vividly retold the Torah. It ends with the Holocaust, in which many Isaacs were killed in gas chambers. Kerler thanks him afterwards.

Burg returns to childhood Vyzhnytsya and the Hager rebbes, naming Rebbe Israel as the fourth in the line, whose annual visits were festive occasions with torchlight processions. He tells of the local priest and the rebbe, whose mutual respect is shown by the priest throwing a cross aside to greet him. He gives the town's population and says Yiddish was the language of the town, even of Christian neighbours. He recalls his mother taking him to the rebbe for a blessing at about ten or eleven, when the rebbe said he was already blessed.

Adds Rebbe Israel as the fourth in the line, the population figures and the torchlight welcome.

Burg speaks about his memory of the weekly Torah portions and his bar mitzvah haftarah, then recounts the Jacob and Rachel passage he was told to review. He calls it poetry, history and Zionism together, and defends cheder education as the source of Yiddish writers. He answers Kerler's questions about cheder and yeshiva in Vyzhnytsya, whether he was called a heretic, and his religious practice today. He describes Sabbath in Vyzhnytsya, including his father's pipe, and compares the town's moderate Hasidim with Hungarian ones, with a remark on Yom Kippur in Chernivtsi.

Kerler asks about Hasidic Jews in Vyzhnytsya, and Burg describes men with sidelocks and the knaplekh (?) Hasidim of Hungary. He says he knows of other Hasidic centres only in a limited way. He remembers his father telling stories about the Baal Shem Tov, and winter nights by the fire by the river in a poor household.

Adds the question about which Hasidic centres were known; the barber episode is not clearly present in this stretch.

Burg answers Kerler's questions about holiday foods: potato cheese-pancakes (kayzlekh) for Passover and latkes for Hanukkah, with the word barbolyes (?) for potatoes and tatshn baked potato dishes. He discusses Shavuot greenery, Tisha B'Av customs, reading the Song of Songs on Passover and the haggadah at home. He recites part of the Four Questions in Hebrew and Yiddish. Kerler also asks how long he attended cheder.

Burg tells how the family moved from Vyzhnytsya to Chernivtsi when he was about twelve. His father, a timber trader, continued traveling to Vyzhnytsya and lodged them in a tenement room, and died in 1938; the mother stayed on for two years until the Soviets came. He says Chernivtsi had seventy-six prayer houses before the war, and discusses the synagogues near where they lived.

Adds the father's timber trade and the mother's two further years in Chernivtsi.