MDV 421 · Rakhil Shlemovna Shames; Shames

A woman (probably Shames, the interviewee of the previous tape) speaks to Kerler as the interview closes. She mentions a non-Jewish woman, a Russian or Ukrainian, and says something about hospitals. Kerler wishes her good health.

The team arrives at Gammer's apartment and sorts out the arrangements. Someone in Russian mentions another interview in the neighbouring room, and Lemster explains that the team speaks only Yiddish. There is brief talk about what language the household uses.

Shows a Russian-speaking woman discussing the room arrangement, and Lemster stating that the team speaks only Yiddish.

Kerler states the date and purpose of the interview, and Gammer gives her name, born Goldis, with her father Fayvesh, and says she was born in Khmil'nyk in 1924 to Khmil'nyk-born parents. Her mother was Eni. Her father was born in 1893 and was a tailor; her mother worked as an employee (a shop cashier, it seems) and died shortly before the war. During the war the family lived in evacuation in Central Asia. A second woman gives her name as Genia, and the town is said to have had about twelve thousand Jews before the war.

Adds the interview's formal opening, the name Genia, the mother's work and death, and the evacuation.

Gammer says Khmil'nyk had about twelve thousand Jews and was a Jewish town. Even the Ukrainians understood Yiddish, though they could not speak it well. She names three prayer houses (the tailors', the shoemakers' and the rich men's synagogue near the sanatorium) and recalls the wealthy Jews. She recalls her father as a poor tailor who sewed for villagers. Lemster then turns to her schooling.

Gammer describes her schooling in the Khmil'nyk Jewish labor school. It taught in Yiddish up to the seventh grade and was then made a Russian school. She lists the subjects, a good Yiddish literature teacher, and the writers read, including Bergelson, Fefer, Markish and Peretz. She sent her Yiddish school books to a museum in Kyiv. She still reads Yiddish and subscribes to a Yiddish newspaper, and the interviewers discuss Yiddish periodicals with her and her daughter.

Adds the writers studied, the books sent to a Kyiv museum, and Yiddish periodicals read today.

Gammer recalls a childhood among poor children, who did not play with the rich. She explains the geography of Khmil'nyk: the old town and the new town beyond the bridge, where the wealthy lived.

Kerler asks whether she remembers poems by Yiddish poets learned at school. She remembers a singing teacher but no Yiddish poetry, and no Ukrainian or Russian poems either. Talk returns to the Yiddish books she sent away and bought after the war. Lemster then raises Jewish holidays before the war.

Gammer says the Jews kept the holidays before the war and that there were two or three ritual slaughterers in town. She notes the Soviet bans on religion and recalls a Yiddish theatre in Khmil'nyk, where traveling troupes also came. She mentions the actress Klara Young, and the theatre director's family being killed by the Germans. After the war there were only concerts with Yiddish songs and dances. Gammer says she herself does not know Yiddish songs.

Adds Yiddish theatre and concerts, the shoykhets, and Soviet restrictions.

Gammer talks about a Jewish wedding in Khmil'nyk after the war. The bride was local and the groom from Chernivtsi, and the huppah was held in the park by the sanatorium. Klezmers came from Vinnytsia, and she attended five or six weddings. Lemster and Kerler ask about the wedding-cake custom and its name and about who led the wedding. Her answers are partly unclear.

Gammer says she studied Yiddish for seven grades, reads it today, but cannot write by hand. She discusses her family. Her mother came from a rich family in Lithuania and knew prayers and Hebrew, and her grandfather Zalmen was a doctor. Her grandmother was Ite Beyle. Her paternal grandfather Shloyme was a poor tailor with six children. The matchmaking of her parents is explained by a Lithuanian typhus loss during the Petliura period. Her father, a young Komsomol member, worked for the Cheka and became a partisan.

Adds the Lithuanian grandfather Zalmen, the matchmaking, and the father's Komsomol and Cheka background.

Gammer recounts that her father was caught by Petliurists together with his brother and a cousin. He was thrown into the old bathhouse by the bridge and held in the mikveh to be drowned, but was dragged out. He survived and later lived as an invalid on a pension. Lemster asks whether he lived, and says he will look at a photograph later.

Adds that the father survived and later received an invalid's pension.

Gammer and her daughter show family photographs. They identify her father's partisan relatives, including Tule (Naftule) Goldis, a brother of her grandfather, and a cousin. Kerler relates one man to the Petliurists.

Gammer recalls being taken to the synagogue by her mother. Wealthy women could not pray, so they gathered around her mother in the rich synagogue and repeated what she said. Kerler asks whether she learned Modeh ani. Her father did not attend services because he was a partisan and a Soviet man.

Gammer answers Kerler's questions on food. Only kosher food was eaten, with animals taken to the shoykhet. She has not heard of Jews raising pigs to sell to non-Jews. The family kept no poultry in the yard. She says she is old and tired.

Gammer talks about her husband Bore Gammer, a first-group invalid who lost a leg in the war as a tank driver. His parents lived in Vinnytsia, and he studied there before going to a tank school in Kyiv. After the war he came to Khmil'nyk. She returned from evacuation in 1948 without parents and was taken in by her mother's friend.

Gammer says she worked 37 years in a bread shop and now lives on a pension. Her daughter is also an invalid. She spoke Yiddish with her husband at home, and her daughter Genia learned to read Yiddish from her father. She comments on Jews who left for Israel, Germany and America, and on the town's Jewish population: about twelve or thirteen thousand before the war and five or six thousand after.

Gammer talks about a rebbe in town before the war to whom boys went. Lemster and Kerler ask about visiting a good Jew (tsadik), whisperers or incantations (oyfshprekhn) and a dybbuk. She says she knows what such healing means but did not witness it.

Gammer answers dialectological questions: the meanings of dybbuk, a clay golem and meshumed. She says she remembers little and cannot recall Yiddish proverbs. She notes that nowadays everyone speaks Ukrainian or Russian and that her old neighbor remembers Yiddish. Lemster praises her memory.

Adds the dybbuk, golem and meshumed vocabulary questions, absent from the label.

Gammer answers questions about prewar Sabbath and holiday food. She mentions challah, fish, noodle kugel, cholent and vinegar meat, and discusses terms for chopped fish and a jellied dish. She recalls Hanukkah latkes and children singing a Simchat Torah rhyme, which she repeats for Lemster to record. There are brief answers on Purim and a Passover memory of her grandfather, the dishes and the four questions, with goose fat for Passover. She says her mother died two weeks before the war, so she has no memories of her blessing the candles.

Adds the Hanukkah and Simchat Torah children's customs, Purim and Passover recollections, and the long list of food terms.