Listengurt talks about the microbiologist Vladimir Khavkin, who studied in Odesa and fought plague and cholera. She mentions his work in India (?) and the Volga cholera epidemic, and that he was refused entry to Russia because he was a Jew and a social democrat. She then mentions Mechnikov, whose mother was Jewish, and says she cannot speak of contemporary Jews. Kerler then steers her back to his question about neighbors in her courtyard.
Focuses on Khavkin and Mechnikov; the catalogue's 'contemporary Jewish life' is only a brief complaint about present-day Jews.
Listengurt talks about prewar Jewish life in Odesa and initial expectations of Hitler’s occupation. She then talks about Jewish life at the beginning of World War II.
Answering Kerler about Jews who awaited Hitler, Listengurt recalls her mother's account of educated Germans who visited their home. She discusses German science, Niels Bohr and Jewish physicists in the atomic bomb effort. She then describes Hitler's expulsion of Jews, the poor remaining while the rich fled and were stripped at the border, and Stalin's role in letting Jews in. She also mentions deportation to Siberia.
The passage is largely a political digression on Germans, the atomic bomb and Jewish refugees, more than Jewish life in Odesa.
Listengurt compares conditions for the rich Jewish refugees with those of ordinary Jews in evacuation. A second speaker asks about the postwar period. She talks about a man named Aleksandrovich (?) who came from Romania, and about Gromyko as Stalin's foreign minister, whose wife was Jewish.
Listengurt talks about the founding of the United Nations and the vote on Israel, arguing that America, Britain and France stayed silent while Stalin's Soviet Union and satellite states voted in favor. She describes the Jews' suffering and the statehood declaration of Ben-Gurion, criticizes the refusal of countries to admit Jewish refugees, and mentions a film (Kerler names its Hebrew title). Kerler then asks about the time of the doctors' plot.
Gives her view of the UN vote and Israeli statehood, not just the founding of Israel.
Prompted by a question about Kaganovich, Listengurt describes him as a transport minister without formal education and mentions his Jewish daughter. She speaks of her mother as a Trotskyist and her father as a Stalinist. She then recalls the 1923(?) Crimea plan for a Jewish republic, a three-day pogrom, and Stalin's postwar deportations, and mentions the Karaites. She also touches on the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee.
Includes her parents' political divide (Trotskyist mother, Stalinist father) and the Karaites.
Listengurt continues on the Jewish plan for a republic in Crimea and the 1923 pogrom. She then explains Stalin's deportation of Germans and Tatars, Khrushchev's role, and the later Jewish settlement in the Birobidzhan region between two rivers. She describes a bare area and what an acquaintance said of the Crimea's beauty, then moves to the doctors' plot at Lemster's prompt.
Includes Birobidzhan and the deportation of Germans and Tatars; Khrushchev is also mentioned.
Listengurt talks about Stalin’s politics and the doctor’s plot of 1952/53. She recalls that period during her studies at an institute and the subsequent public antisemitism.
Listengurt recounts the doctors' plot of 1952–53 and Stalin's last years, with Lemster correcting the years. She tells of Khrushchev, an anecdote involving Kaganovich and a newspaper, and of the threat of pogroms in the city. She recalls that as a girl of seventeen she was afraid to walk the streets, and of food shortages and hunger afterwards. She describes attending evening courses and the antisemitism in town, and Kerler asks what she worked as.
Adds Khrushchev, the Kaganovich newspaper anecdote and hunger afterward; the details of her studies are vague.
Answering Kerler and Lemster, Listengurt says she studied at an evening school in Odesa, reading biology and chemistry. She talks about her mother, whose Trotskyist views she did not want to hear about as a girl, and of the family killed by Hitler. She mentions having one daughter. Lemster then asks which Yiddish writers she knows, and she recites a Russian children's poem.
Adds her mother's Trotskyism and the recitation of a Russian poem.
Lemster and Kerler ask Listengurt about Yiddish writers; she recalls Leib Kvitko and Itzik Katzenelson (Kerler says she means a Ukrainian-language poem) and recites lines in Ukrainian, which Kerler questions. She says she knows no Yiddish poems. She mentions Beyderman and Note Lurye, the latter known to her mother during his arrest, and her mother's limited schooling.
Adds Beyderman, Note Lurye and her mother's connection to Lurye.
Listengurt tells Kerler about Odesa Yiddish writers and about contemporary Jewish life: she attends a synagogue on Pushkin Street and compares crowded high holidays then with now, when many non-Jews come. She says that at the Hesed a woman named Anna Lvovna (?) can tell about the music competition and violinists. She names Wieniawski, David Oistrakh, Buzya Goldstein, and Leybele Weisbein.
Adds the Hesed, the Wieniawski competition and Jewish musicians.
Listengurt talks about her sister, who studied at the Odesa Medical Institute. She served as a nurse during the war returned home from Romania. She then talks about her life after evacuation in the Caucasus. Listengurt’s sister finished her medical studies after the war and worked as a doctor.
Listengurt talks about her sister, who entered the Odesa medical institute and studied there after the war; she resisted party pressure to become chief physician. She recalls evacuation to the North Caucasus, where the family used false non-Jewish names. Kerler asks about the sister's wartime service as a medical assistant, which reached Romania; the sister is no longer alive.
Adds the Caucasus evacuation, false names and Kerler's questions on her wartime service.
