MDV 713 · Rita Davidovna Shveibish; Penia Nukhovich Golfeld

Shveibish tells about her husband Itsik's family from Horyshkivka. His father came from Tul'chyn after the pogroms, he was a craftsman, and there were six children. She describes the Romanian-era ghetto in the village club, a sister who was shot at and traumatised, the siblings who emigrated or have died, and the parents' graves in Tomashpil. She talks about Horyshkivka as the model for Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish theatre troupe in which her husband's father acted, and pogroms in Tul'chyn and Khmelnytskyi's time. She then describes Jewish life in Tul'chyn today (the community's difficulties, no shoykhet, no minyan, a memorial, aged pensioners), and Jewish food and holiday customs, with a recipe for gefilte fish. The passage includes dialectological questions on words such as store, courtyard, well, potato dishes, thanks and please, and idioms.

Adds the dialectological questions on vocabulary and the passage on Kasrilevke.

The interview with Golfeld begins, and Kerler introduces him. Golfeld, born in Tul'chyn, gives his mother's name as Eydye and his father's as Nakhum, who went to war and did not return. His mother was left with three children, and he mentions the arrival of the Germans in 1941.

Adds the parents' names and the father's absence at the front.

Golfeld recalls how the Jews of Tul'chyn were gathered after the Germans' arrival and driven to a disinfection in a bathhouse. They were kept in school no. 2 and then driven out in groups in the rain and winter of 1941, spending a night in a kolkhoz stable, where the first people died. He was nine or ten years old and was driven with his mother some thirty kilometres to the Pechera camp. The camp is a former sanatorium with a gate and bare plank beds.

Adds the kolkhoz stable, a doctor's name, and the thirty-kilometre march.

Golfeld describes the starvation, cold and shooting in the Pechera camp, where Jews were killed by guards for going to the river. He tells of Germans taking inmates to forced labor and killing small children. He recalls Ukrainians throwing food over a fence, eating raw beets, falling ill with fever and walking long distances through the villages in winter.

Adds the killing of children and the food thrown over the fence.

Golfeld recalls leaving the camp to find food in the villages. In Chechelnyk he met a rebbe (whether Hasidic or a teacher he does not know) who took him in for a service and gave him alms. He then tells how a Ukrainian, Mishka Kotsap (?), hid the Tul'chyn Torah scroll and brought it into the Pechera camp. His mother, who could read Hebrew, is mentioned, and Golfeld praises the man.

Adds the Ukrainian rescuer's name and the mother's ability to read Hebrew.

Golfeld speaks about his mother's piety, which the police also respected. She gathered Jews at home for prayer on holidays and had copied out a prayer book in Hebrew. He gives his mother's name as Eydye and her father's as Mordkhe, and starts to speak of other family.

Adds the maternal grandfather's name and a word for 'pious'.