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MDV 656 · Abram (Arkadii, Abrashe) Khaimovich Vaisman and his family

Sharhorod, Ukraine 12 July 2002 Interviewed by Dov-Ber Kerler, Dovid Katz, Jeffrey Veidlinger Part 4 of 4 38 min · 1 passages

One conversation with Abram (Arkadii, Abrashe) Khaimovich Vaisman, continuing over MDV 654, MDV 655, MDV 656.

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Passages

0:00

Klava Vaisman (Abram's daughter) used to work as a machinist and typist, although she has never learned how to work on a computer. The camera cuts to the Vaisman family outside their house, speaking about contemporary Jewish life in the town and why they do not want to leave. Abram leads the research team to the old Jewish cemetery where the local tsadikim (righteous men) are buried. Shots of the street leading away from cemetery. Passing the plant on the road, Dov-Ber Kerler explains thistles, which are thrown in the hair of those crying on Tisha b’Av. Abram leads the team to the home of Faina (Feyge) Rivelis. The researchers go into Rivelis’s house and begin a formal interview. She remembers her parents, Shmil Khayem and Sheyve Srulovna Rivelis, as very pious. Her father was a tailor and had four kids, of whom she was youngest (b. 1916). She remembers the shul (synagogue) in town, and religious holidays, including Passover. As a child, she attended Yiddish schools where she learned to read and write in that language. Faina lived in Germany for a year, but returned to Sharhorod to be between her “fir vent”, her “four walls”. Rivelis recalls how the Jews in her town survived the war years, but nevertheless lived through hardship and hunger. Faina worked for fifty years in the village government. Rivelis answers a series of dialectological and linguistic questions about the Yiddish language. Outside Rivelis’s home, the researchers also talk to Faina about her father’s old prayer books. Shots of the town’s old synagogue. Video of the team driving on the road at night.

From the machine transcript

Outside the Vaisman house the family and the interviewers talk about a document Abram Vaisman was seeking and about the daughter's former typing and stamping work. They discuss computers, a Yiddish word for the harm screens do, and what is left of Jewish life: roughly forty Jews in town and delegations visiting. The family explains why they stay in Sharhorod and not go to America or Germany, and one family member answers in Ukrainian. Vaisman then leads the team to the cemetery of the two tsadikim, with talk of gravestones, inscriptions and a story of a man shot by soldiers. He also speaks of the prewar Jewish population and emigration. Kerler explains the thistles thrown on Tisha b'Av, and Vaisman brings the team to Feyge Rivelis. In the interview Rivelis speaks about her tailor father, her pious parents, and holidays and the Passover seder. She also speaks about a Yiddish school, Sholem Aleichem, the war years of hardship and help from peasants, and her year in Germany. She says she worked fifty years and knows little of Hasidim. She answers a few word questions and Kerler asks about her father's books. The last minutes are garbled.

Adds the family's reasons for staying in Sharhorod, the cemetery and a story of a shooting, and the word questions at the end of the Rivelis interview.