MDV 622 · Mariia Moshkovna Groisburg

Questionnaire session with a woman, partly in Russian, covering Yiddish words for a cross (Ukrainian and Catholic or Polish) and for thank you, plus a few words of farewell chat about the team leaving.

Walking in the street after the interview; only a few words are intelligible, with talk about the way to the hotel in Russian.

Town footage on the way to Ovruch with scattered talk in Russian and Yiddish about a house number; the team ends by greeting a man and asking whether he speaks Yiddish.

The team arrives at Dorfman's house and introduces itself; first names are exchanged, and they explain that they heard there were Yiddish-speaking Jews in Ovruch and ask to interview him and a woman present.

Preliminary chat about who the team is and about a Jew from Slovechno found in Ovruch; Dorfman says he was born there.

Dorfman gives personal information: he was born in Slovechno, which the Germans burned down in the war so that not one house remained. Katz asks how he is called, and he is Boris Dorfman, called Berl.

Dorfman talks about his family. His father was born in Slovechno, worked as a shoemaker and later traded in fish and mushrooms; his mother and her maiden name are discussed, and he names his grandfather as a very honest man with a white beard. He had a brother in Israel and two sisters, one in Israel and one who died in Canada.

Dorfman says he was a boy before the war; afterwards he finished an institute and worked as a supervisor of building repair for nineteen years and as foreman for eighteen. Katz then asks about his earliest childhood memories.

Dorfman recalls Slovechno as a Jewish shtetl, about ninety percent Jewish, with shoemakers, tailors and smiths and no antisemitism. He attended a Yiddish school until age six(?), then a Ukrainian school with seven grades before the war. He cannot name children's games, mentions friends Motl and Asher, and begins to tell about the tsaddik of nearby Velednik.

Dorfman tells how in 1939, at the time of the war with Poland, a Jewish young man came from Poland, sent by his mother to visit the Velednik tsaddik. They rode by bicycle twelve kilometers to Velednik and a wheel fell off the cart as the young man had half-joked; he describes it as seen with his own eyes and his father's reaction. He then recalls the start of the war and soldiers going out against the Germans.

Dorfman says Slovechno was a friendly Jewish town; no cheder or melamed existed in his time, only before. He studied three grades in the Yiddish school (Yiddish, literature, arithmetic), remembers Itsik Fefer, and says there was no hostility to the pious before the war.

Dorfman talks about Sabbath before the war: his pious grandparents, his mother baking Friday and doing no work on Sabbath, a non-Jewish woman milking the cow, the wooden synagogue that burned, candle blessing and Sabbath foods such as cholent. Kerler asks about sweet fish and Hanukkah latkes of buckwheat flour, and Dorfman names the dreidel and a Purim noisemaker.

adds Hanukkah and Purim items and the wooden synagogue

Dorfman says the Velednik tsaddik helped people, for example children who could not speak. After the war the little house was repaired, kerosene was sold there and visitors were not allowed. He himself did the first repair, and people from Uman later did a major one. He offers the address of a 98-year-old man who can tell more.

adds the postwar repair of the house and a possible further interviewee

Dorfman recalls Passover before the war: baking matzo at home, his father's seder, the four questions, Elijah, stealing the afikoman and no chametz in the house. He recalls Yom Kippur and kapores. After the war there were several minyans that the militia dispersed, and kosher meat was available while a shoykhet lived, but none after his death.

Dorfman describes religious life today in Ovruch. Two young men from Israel, sent from Zhytomyr by Shlomo Vilgenets(?), come for the major holidays and help organize them. They speak Hebrew, not Yiddish.

Dorfman says non-Jews in Slovechno spoke Yiddish, citing a school friend, a non-Jewish boy raised among Jews. Some non-Jews in Ovruch understand it today, and a few old Jews still speak it. There were no conversions either way.

Dorfman lists the Jewish trades of Slovechno (shoemakers, tailors, smiths, masons, painters), says Jews were not in the fire brigade there although an Ovruch fire chief was Jewish, and says football and volleyball were played informally. He was not in any Jewish youth movement.

Dorfman recalls Yiddish periodicals: Sovetish Heymland and Der emes, possibly Der shtern, in the prewar and postwar periods, and talks about actresses (Klara Young) in prewar Slovechno and Ovruch.

Dorfman answers questions about Jewish weddings in Slovechno: the huppah, klezmer music, a freylekhs dance, and the town rabbi. He does not recall other details (the badkhn, a mitzvah dance) or any melamed in his time.

Dorfman answers whether there were Hasidim in town: he did not see men with sidelocks, and there was no rebbe or tsaddik in Slovechno, only a rabbi he does not remember.

Dorfman gives the name and address of a possible interviewee in Ovruch, Benyamin Feldman, aged 98(?).

Katz and Dorfman briefly discuss how to say a house number in Yiddish (twenty-two), then Katz moves on to further questions.

Dialectological questionnaire with Dorfman, mostly led by Kerler. Items include a good place, a good Jew, litvak and misnaged, vodka, charms against the evil eye, mourning customs and graveside signs, dybbuk, a clay golem and greetings at different times of day. Other items are Russian phrases for translation (please, thank you, mouse, book, the cold entryway, skin, window panes), and Dorfman often says he does not know the Yiddish.