MDV 598 · Mira Moiseyevna Pasik; Miron (Meyer) Yakovlevich Endelshtein

Closing exchange of the Pasik interview: she mentions going on pension after working in the field, and Kerler asks what lesson should be drawn from her life story and thanks her for the interview.

It is mainly a closing and thanking exchange; Pasik's work in the fields and her pension are mentioned.

The team meets Endelshtein and arranges the interview. He is invited in, says he understands Yiddish but has no one to speak it with, and the interviewers agree to talk and photograph him.

Endelshtein states that he studied at the Talmud Torah until 1938, then at a Romanian gymnasium. He mentions the fascist Iron Guard coming to power in Romania, fleeing to Bessarabia and the arrival of the Soviets in 1940. Kerler then asks where he is from.

Names the Iron Guard and the Soviet arrival in 1940 and ends with Kerler's question about origin.

Endelshtein gives personal information: name Meyer (Russian name Miron Yakovlevich), the street in Mykolayiv, and birth in the 1920s in Bolgrad, near Akkerman and in Bessarabia, then ruled by Romania. He describes the Jewish population, now only about twenty people, and the killing of Jews in the synagogue, including children thrown into a pit. He says the building is now a church and that he installed a memorial plaque there, and he mentions the prewar Jewish population of about five thousand.

Gives the synagogue killing in detail, a memorial plaque, and the present small number of Jews, beyond the catalogue's population and killing figures.

Endelshtein talks about his family: his grandfather Zise is buried in Bolgrad, and after demobilization in 1945 he found his grandmother there; she died soon after. He says there are almost no Jews in Bolgrad and few Yiddish speakers in Mykolayiv. His mother Menukha died in 1978; she was a nurse; his father Yakov worked in a bank.

Gives the names of his grandfather and parents and says Yiddish speakers in Mykolayiv are few.

Endelshtein describes returning after the war and meeting a neighbor to whom the family had left the apartment key when they evacuated. He says she took the documents and later returned them, though the house was looted. He shows his mother's documents, including a diploma, and family photographs of his grandparents, parents, sister in New York, and a brother who was killed.

Endelshtein says prewar life in Bolgrad was good, with a Jewish community. He then speaks about the lack of Yiddish speakers today; he uses Yiddish with the rabbi, whose name is Gottlieb (?). He also mentions an earlier rabbi who drank.

Adds the current and former rabbi and the loss of Yiddish speakers.

Endelshtein talks about his grandfather, a cooper whose customers came from Moldova and Bessarabia, and about the house. He recalls the New Synagogue, a Torah scroll sent by Queen Marie of Romania, and putting on tefillin at thirteen. He describes a Passover seder at his grandfather's house with ten children and sings the opening of Chad Gadya.

Adds the grandfather's craft, the Torah scroll sent from Bucharest, and a sung Chad Gadya.

Endelshtein names his grandmother Leah and his father's siblings, and says his mother's family came from Odessa. He remembers Bolgrad's Jewish shops and institutions and the beginning of the fascist period. He describes classmates being shaved with a cross and being one of three Jews left in his class. He describes the town's population of Bulgarians, Gagauz, Romanians and Roma, and good relations with the Gagauz and Bulgarians, including a few non-Jewish Yiddish speakers.

Adds the Gagauz and Bulgarian neighbors, the Jewish school room in the gymnasium and the number of his father's siblings.

Endelshtein describes how non-Jewish classmates sat in synagogue with Jewish pupils, and that few Bulgarians spoke Yiddish. He lists Jewish trades such as knife makers, tailors and shoemakers, and says Jews spoke only Yiddish at home. He explains the Talmud Torah and Romanian gymnasium education, and recalls fragments of Romanian and Yiddish songs.

Adds trades, languages used, and fragments of songs.

Endelshtein recalls Yiddish children's songs and the old and new synagogues in Bolgrad. He shows a picture of the synagogue, and says a Jewish newspaper piece he wrote describes it; about a thousand people were killed there and it is now a church. He describes children putting on tefillin before school in the small prayer room.

Adds the synagogue's capacity discussion and the children's morning tefillin.

Endelshtein recites the morning prayer Modeh Ani and the bedtime Shema as his grandmother taught him. He describes his grandfather's tefillin and his own bar mitzvah preparation. He says he kept up the prayer during army service in the war.

Adds the grandfather's tefillin, the bedtime Shema and the grandmother's teaching.

Endelshtein describes his mother's Sabbath food (chicken soup with noodles, challah, chopped liver, peppered gefilte fish with horseradish) and fasting on Yom Kippur. He is asked about Kaddish pronunciation and the synagogue in Mykolayiv. Lemster asks where he was born and discusses Bolgrad's status, the writer Batashansky (?), and then asks about the war.

Endelshtein talks about the start of the war in Bolgrad, with Germans arriving in the first days and then Romanians. He says Jews were sent from Bessarabia to Transnistria, and mentions Bemaniovka (?).