Agriculture and kolkhoz

Smajovics says about sixty families lived in Velyka Kopanya and that it had a large synagogue. He left his studies in 1938 at the time of the Czech mobilization, at around sixteen and a half, and took over the field work and driving for the household. Then the war came.

Herbst recalls that the family had a cow, geese and hens but did not sell milk, because eight children needed it. His mother baked round bread and challah and some flat dough cakes, and they ate meat on Sabbath only rarely. He mentions a goose slaughtered once a year in winter and a simple dessert of noodles with sugar.

Pearl says his family spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. His father, a shopkeeper, was born in Tállya in 1883 and his father's family came from Sighet. His grandfather and great-grandfather are named, and Pearl says he was named for his mother's father and has a son Shlomo in Syracuse. Because of the antisemitic laws of 1938 shops had to close, and the family kept animals and raised rabbits for wool. He sold the wool and fur goods, which his mother and sister made, in Budapest. Kerler and S2 try to find the Yiddish word for rabbit. Pearl gives his mother as Berta Rosenberg, born in Tállya, says he visits the family graves each year and describes how the Jewish community sold the synagogue, mikveh and rabbi's house.

Katerberg describes Berlinți before the war as a village of about thirty-odd Jewish families, with small shops and a bit of land. There was a primitive prayer house, later a Soviet club, and he recalls a teacher.

Roif and Lemster talk about Passover food: fattening geese, using goose fat, and potato dishes. Roif recalls his father making basturma and a visiting official who came to his kolkhoz to eat geese and fish. Roif was a kolkhoz chairman for many years. Lemster and Kerler ask how the geese were marinated and smoked, and Kerler asks for the Yiddish term for what is left after rendering fat, with griven and an unclear word offered.

Shmid describes her wartime experience. She lived in Chișinău after her marriage and fled with her parents-in-law while her husband was drafted. They were taken to a kolkhoz in Russia and then to Uzbekistan, where they worked for several years. Her own parents were left behind in the village and her father fell ill and was hidden by strangers.

Shpitalnik gives personal information and speaks about her parents and grandparents. Her maternal grandmother was widowed when her husband, from Staro-Konstantinov, fell in the Russo-Japanese War in 1905. Her mother finished a Russian gymnasium and worked as a cashier. Her father, from the Jewish colony Dumbrăveni, near Soroca, was an accountant and a member of the Yiddish Kultur-lige. She was an only child.

Roif talks about her husband's twenty years as kolkhoz chairman and the apartment that the authorities gave them, which they renovated and furnished. She says her husband often spoke up for prisoners in the local court, and many were released early or sent to work elsewhere. She stresses that they only ever did good and that their faith in God is about doing good. Katz explains that she is speaking to the archive and not to the others present.

Dajch answers a long series of dialectological questions, with Lemster and Kerler prompting in Russian and Romanian: greetings, 'please', luck, house and room, colours, deaf, cold, ill and sleep, believer, apostate, peasant, and others. Around 29:40 she talks about Jews in Nisporeni working the land: only one did, and a Jewish field worker is recalled. Further items include 'from where', midwife, 'on this street', river, well, potatoes, flowers, everyone, 'only Jews', attic, hazan's place, rich men, and enemy.

Mundrian gives her Yiddish name and birth year (1937) and says she was born and lived in Susleny until the war. She talks about her father Yisroel, whose place of origin the transcript renders as Orhei (the catalogue gives Novoseltsy). The family worked five hectares of land with a horse and cart, and her mother, Khane Abramovitsh, was a housewife. She recalls her grandfather Moshe, a Cohen, and her grandmother Freyde, after whom she is named. She was an only child, as two brothers born before her died.

Plotnik describes Dumbraveni as a Jewish town with several synagogues. Her father died when she was about seven, and she recited Kaddish for him for a year, going to the local synagogue. Her widowed mother ran the family field with hired workers and kept the family from feeling its loss. Her older sister studied at the gymnasium in Soroca.

Goldshteyn answers Lemster's questions on Jewish organizations in the village. There was a cheder and a synagogue but no Zionist or Communist organization and no halutzim. A relative went to Palestine (Haifa) after learning the carpentry trade in Chernivtsi and Khotyn. He contrasts the occupations of Jews and Christians: Christians did the farm labor and Jews paid them. He also mentions about sixty or seventy Jewish families, Christian vineyards and wine-making.

Finkel remembers Jewish occupations in Sulita such as tailors, shoemakers and others, and weddings held in a hall. She says Gypsy musicians played waltzes and tangos, and cannot say if there was Jewish dancing. Under questioning she says some Jews owned land and kept sheep and grew grain, potatoes and similar crops, as the non-Jews did. She says she remembers little of the town, which had a beth midrash and one Jewish school.

Hershkovich describes religious life in the village: Sabbath and holiday services drew people from neighbouring places into a room that served as a prayer room with one Torah scroll, since there was no synagogue building. He then says what the other families did: his grandfather had an inn, a shop and fields, and another family of Kohanim also owned fields.

Kraus gives his birth in October 1923 in Zorein, a village some sixty kilometres from Bistrița (?), and says he studied in Cîmpia Turzii in 1939/40. His father Zelik was also born in Zorein and was deported; he worked the land and kept horses. His mother Golda, a seamstress, was born in nearby Feldioara. He names his grandfathers and siblings: three brothers and four sisters, with one brother killed in a labor battalion. He says that Yiddish was spoken at home and that the village had a minyan.

Lipovici says the sheep belonged to the family, who had four brothers working with them. Lemster asks which language he used with the sheep, Yiddish or Romanian. Lipovici says he knows some French, learned at school. He says he did not study at a Jewish school, but remembers a Jewish teacher. He repeats the story of gluing the melamed's beard in cheder and Kerler asks about the burrs thrown at Tisha b'Av. He also says he does not remember his grandparents.

Lipovici answers questions about his work as a shepherd, how far he took the sheep and where he grazed them. He says he worked as a shepherd for most of his life. He lists his surviving family, including a sister in Israel and brothers who have died. He says there are no Jews left in Mihăileni (?) and no shoykhet now, and that a lamb goes with Purim and Passover.

Lipovici discusses the Ceaușescu period and the shooting of Jews during the war. Lemster and Kerler ask about his life with sheep in the field. They also ask whether kosher certification was needed for cheese and milk, and how cheese is made from lamb's rennet.

Chajim says he chose his wife as a poor girl, not a rich one, and gave wine at the wedding, with a shoykhet slaughtering for the meal. He describes his home today, with a vineyard, apples and a garden, and his wood for heating. He says he leaves enough money to his daughter, and mentions a relative in Germany.

Leichtner says one brother went to America and has died, and the other lives in Israel. Asked about the time before the war, he describes a good life in the village among 25 Jewish families who all had a livelihood, including a shoemaker, a carpenter and a tailor. His paternal grandfather, Moshe Leib, lived in a nearby village and farmed and kept sheep. He says he rebuilt the family house, and that after returning he worked for a cooperative buying produce.

Pivnik says she studied milling at a technical school in Odesa, a Jewish technical school, and was in the Komsomol and sent to courses. Lemster asks about Jewish kolkhozes before the war. She speaks about her sister's daughter and grandchildren, who study at a Jewish university in Odesa, and her own eight years in Israel, where she managed with Yiddish and some Hebrew. She talks about being old and staying home, the family's trips to Uman, and her reflections on memory. The interviewers talk about where they themselves live, and Balta's Yiddish name.

Angelova gives the names of her grandfathers and grandmothers, and says one grandfather was a kulak who kept pigs. Lemster and Kerler also ask about the date of collectivization and about her grandfather's origin in the Rashkov area.

Answering Kerler, Shor describes Orhei as a Jewish town, 90 per cent or so Jewish (?), where people traded and lived well in Moldova's good climate. His mother's brother lived in a village with large wine-making holdings. Shor remembers sowing tobacco and wheat there, and says the estate was later dispossessed under Soviet rule.

Vainshelboim describes his prewar home: six children, father a painter with seasonal work, mother selling herring and oil at the market. He recalls the famine of 1933, with rumours of cannibalism and selling of human flesh, and shortage of food. He explains that collective farms were still weak and grain was exported, and recalls soup made from grain. Sara remarks that people in America should not know what they lived through.

Vainshelboim speaks about the postwar period: his pension, a plot of collective-farm land and growing wheat and potatoes, and grinding grain at a small mill. He describes a salad. Kerler asks about a bread called malke's bread, which is not recognised. Vainshelboim lists French rolls and prewar bread prices, says no challah was baked for Sabbath and begins speaking about the Cook's synagogue.

Snook says she was able to study little and attended a Czech school, which cost money. Her father was a middle-class man who kept a cow and a pair of horses. She also mentions a rebbe's grave in a nearby place where people go (the name is unclear), where a building has gone up.

Snook says she went to the village synagogue with her parents, and that her father prayed at length. Her parents kept a cow and horses and worked the land. She describes cheese made kosher with rennet and meat salted at home, with a shoykhet. Kerler then works with her to reconstruct a childhood song about a girl who marries and eats up the household.

Pustilnik says her daughter speaks Yiddish and wants to go to Israel, while her son has lived in Israel for eighteen years and has forgotten the language. She never saw her father or a photograph of him; she mentions an aunt, Tabe, who helped them after the war, and describes her maternal grandfather Avrom, whose surname is unclear (Pleyder (?)), who worked in a kolkhoz. She says she studied in the village school and did well in mathematics.

Kelmenson confirms the surname Kelmenson and her maiden name Shtivelband, and talks about her family, including her father's family. Her grandfather had a tea plantation in Staraya Sinyava, was dispossessed, and went alone to Crimea in the 1930s, where he died. Her father was a Soviet employee. She says that during the war the family went to Tashkent, where her mother worked as an accountant.

Lifshitz describes Birobidzhan and the Jewish kolkhoz at Bergefeld (Birefeld), where the family was given a house, a cow and chickens. He says life was hard but better than in the surrounding villages. There was a Yiddish school, and he recalls no Yiddish songs. He left after the war and came to look for his parents, his father having died before the war.

Geller explains a prewar kolkhoz brigade term and sugar beet quotas, naming several non-Jewish kolkhoz workers in Kuzmin. He then tells about the Jews of Kuzmin being driven into a ghetto and shot in a village nearby, where a memorial now stands; he no longer has relatives there and he and his wife visited several times.

Katz gives his personal details: village near Khust, 8 km away; his names in Russian, Czech and Hungarian; his father Usher; and his birth in December 1926 in Czechoslovakia. His father was a coachman with two horses. He was the eldest of seven children; his mother was a housewife with the maiden name Lazarovich. He names the cheder teachers, the grandparents and the siblings. He describes transporting timber to the Khust station for a factory in Danzig, and helping his father. His father was taken to a labor battalion in 1941 (as heard), and he carried on the work alone. His maternal grandfather Leyzer later died in the Iza ghetto. Both grandmothers were named Etie.

Zak continues her wartime account: the family caught the last train out of Miropol' and ended up in evacuation, working in a kolkhoz with little to eat. Her father died of hunger there. They returned to Polonne in 1944, where she worked in an orphanage speaking Yiddish with the children, and in 1945 she was asked to organize a children's library, where she worked until her retirement in 1988.

Rusakovskaia talks about the family house with its garden and her mother, who ran the household. She names her two sisters and tells what became of them. The eldest, Polia, became a dentist in Kyiv and died in a hospital in 1975 (?). Beba worked as a bookkeeper and has been dead for some years. Rusakovskaia mentions her own illness and operation, and the family's cow Manke.

Rusakovskaia recounts the family's evacuation. They left Chornobyl' and were turned back at Kyiv by the crowds, but her father insisted on going on with the children. In Dnipropetrovsk a friend related to Kaganovich took them on a special train. They worked on a kolkhoz near Stalingrad, left when the planes began shooting, and her father repaired another family's wagon. They were then sent east to a town with a military factory in the Chkalov region (Sol'-Iletsk), where they worked until the war ended. She also says when they came back to Ukraine.

Biter says that after his return in the 1950s relations with neighbors were generally good. Only some ultra-nationalists tried to make trouble for him, especially in the kolkhoz meetings, where they made hostile remarks about Jews. Katz then turns to September 1939.

Kislinskaia says that before the war Jews and non-Jews lived together without trouble, and she mentions her daughter's reception in the village market. She recalls non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, among them a man named Ivan and a master craftsman from Zaporizhia (?) who spoke Yiddish with her at work so others would not understand. Kerler asks whether there were converts to or from Judaism (there were none), and she says she read Yiddish books at school. She then talks about her goat and the work of keeping it.

Angelova says she attended a Ukrainian school and that there were no Jewish schools. She mentions that her family farmed. Lemster asks about a sukkah. She explains that she and her parents read and wrote Yiddish, and says she visited Israel. Lemster compliments her Yiddish.

Answering Kerler, Meler explains that his grandmother held a few hectares of land and the father had no steady work. The father sometimes worked for a Jewish sausage maker. He also names Jewish firms in L'viv, including a chocolate factory.

Brandler describes prewar Mostiska: about five thousand inhabitants under Poland, around six hundred Jewish families living in the center, mostly among Poles and Ukrainians. Jews worked as smiths and also as farmers with fields and livestock, and Ukrainian villages in the district spoke Ukrainian at the fair. He mentions nearby small towns and that the Germans occupied Mostiska in 1939.

She recalls her childhood in the shtetl, where the family had land, orchards and fields, and describes the Polish police and school, the Catholic church and the four synagogues. She talks about the weekly Friday visit to the bath house and the mikveh. Kerler asks about the synagogue buildings and colour words, and she recalls her mother's blessing over the Sabbath candles. She says she can speak and write Yiddish well after all these years.

Fiksler speaks of her return, when neighbors gave back what she had left with them but the fields were later taken into the kolkhoz. She says they knew nothing of the deportations before 1944 and recalls an older brother's worried remark when Hungarians first arrived. She also describes the mixed Hungarian and Romanian population of Solotvyno and the Jews living there. She mentions that her family kept Passover.

Snook says she was born in August 1921 in a village called Lazes (?), where about sixty or seventy Jewish families lived with a shul. Her father was named Leyb and worked with horses, and the family kept a cow and lived from the land. She had two brothers and three sisters who were taken away; she was already married by seventeen and living in another village.

Tzentziper sings "Lomir zikh iberbetn". Lemster and Kerler then ask about the kolkhoz chairman, who was a Jew, and about other Jewish colonies, including Romanovka (?) and Berezhnovata (?), and Lemster asks the meaning of a colony name. Tzentziper says a shoykhet lived in Dobroye. He also discusses women working at home, making sukkot until the late 1930s, sabbath work in the kolkhoz, and that people left after the war.

Medved recalls songs sung before the war, in Yiddish and in Russian, including a song about Birobidzhan and a kolkhoz. She talks about Jewish kolkhozes, including in Crimea, and tells a joke about a Jewish kolkhoz worker. She then says that the best doctors before the war were Jews, including one named Rabinovitsh (?) in her courtyard.

After the interview with Dorfman, the team greets Feldman and sets up the recording in his home. He gives his name and birth year, and says he was born in the village of Yanova Rudnya, about 20 km from Ovruch. He talks about his father, who leased a mill and farm from a landowner and was killed in 1919, and about his mother, sisters and five brothers who went to America. He tells of his melamedim and the Velednik tsadik, whom his father followed. He recalls his father's Sabbath tunes, studying and teaching at cheder in Luhyny, and recites prayers (kabbalat shabbat, kaddish, kiddush); the transcript is garbled for most of this. He also remembers Christian farmers in his village and begins to speak about Rosh Hashanah.

Feldman says he studied until 1923, and that the family worked land at Yanova Rudnya. After the revolution, in 1928 (?), the landowners' land was divided among the Christians, and he was given a plot at Skrebelychi, which he worked. Later a kolkhoz was formed, which he joined for a few years, and no Jewish trade remained.

Turovskaia talks about holiday observance and food. She did not eat bread on Passover even in Siberia, and she describes her mother's baking and foods for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath. Geese were fattened and their fat rendered for Passover, and matzo was bought in Opshtshina (?). Before the war the family kept their own cow, sold milk to the hospital and neighbors, churned butter, planted potatoes and made wine from currants and cherries.

Turovskaia talks about her prewar friends in Volednik, including Reyzl and Manya, and says they spoke Yiddish with Jewish friends and Russian or Ukrainian with Christian classmates. She describes her grandfather's family working a plot of land and how non-Jewish neighbors covered the hay when rain came on the Sabbath. Lemster then asks how she knows of her father's three encounters with bandits.

Turovskaia recounts the evacuation: her mother's fear for the girls, her grandmother's refusal to go and the wagon to the last train, kolkhoz work, being separated from her mother and searching for the family. She mentions a gypsy fortune-teller, a telegram, and finding them in Mordovka (?) and later a village in the Buryat ASSR where she worked as a brigadier. Her grandmother died in Siberia, and Lemster asks about the Feldman/Ferdman family name.

Outside, Geller shows his yard and garden to the camera, including flowers, hens, a rooster, ducks, former rabbits, potatoes, onions, apple and walnut trees, raspberries and the stones removed from the ground. Kerler asks the Yiddish names of plants and animals. At the end he asks Geller for a Kotovsky story.

Continued questionnaire work on words for a bad person or apostate, a non-Jew and a Christian, headache, church or monastery and peasant. Talk of a kolkhoz with Jewish members and pronunciation variants such as boymele, followed by sentences on dates, 'you are right', paying for a night's lodging, crying, and the word for grandmother. It ends with a question about charms or spells against illness in her town.

Formal interview with Sapozhnik, who says she is a native of Tomashpol' and speaks Yiddish with her brother in Israel. She talks about her parents Nusn and Rukhl and the kolkhoz, her siblings, the old synagogue and how women prayed, her father's siddur and her poor childhood. She recalls the war, with her brothers drafted and the killings and ghettos under Germans and Romanians. She also mentions the town's remaining Yiddish speakers, and answers Kerler's questions on Yiddish words and on fish, melay and Passover food. Katz adds a general question about the best years.

Interview with Sapozhnik in her yard. She describes how hard her life is now, living alone, not eating well and missing her teeth. She gives her name, birth in Tomashpol' in 1924, her parents Nusn and Rekhl and the family surname, and lists her brothers and sisters, with their birth years and where they ended up (Israel, Moscow, the Far East). She recalls the kolkhoz where her parents worked, the old house with mezuzahs, the Romanian occupation and the ghetto with refugees and killings, and her marriages and the deaths of her husband and son. She also describes Sabbath, Hanukkah and Passover food and fish dishes, the old synagogues and the Yiddish school she did not attend, Yiddish-speaking non-Jews, and a rabbi killed in the war. She tells of her garden and sea-buckthorn oil, and of her mother's folk healing and cupping.

Sapozhnik shows Kerler and Lemster old photographs. They include the kolkhoz, which she says was Jewish, and her husband, son, brother Leib, her father, and a granddaughter in Moldova whose mother was non-Jewish. They ask when the kolkhoz photo was taken, and about window frames and a cellar. She also speaks about the ghetto and forced labor, a sister-in-law who emigrated, and her complaints about the repair of her house, the toilet and the local official. The team thanks her and leaves for the next interview.

Shveibush, with a second man adding comments, talks about the village of Horyshkivka and its Jewish kolkhoz named after Stalin, where his mother was a team leader with six children. Kerler asks about Jewish holidays kept quietly in secret, about food such as gefilte fish, and about his father's amateur theatre. Much of the talk concerns the village as Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish stage production of 'Tsigele', pigs on the kolkhoz, Simchat Torah customs and kerosene lighting; the passage ends with thanks and goodbyes.

Teplitskaia recalls her prewar childhood in Ternovka. Her father was a worker (the exact term is unclear) and her mother kept house; the family of seven had pigs and a cow and, she says, was not hungry before the war. Kerler asks why they kept pigs.

Shor says a Jewish kolkhoz called the Jewish Peasant was established in Kopayhorod. He describes the famine of 1932–33: his mother was a kolkhoz worker, grain was searched out and taken from peasants, the family became swollen, and many Jews and non-Jews died. Officials survived through special rations.

Furer talks about life before the war. His father died at 43, and his mother was left with three sons. They went to work at a kolkhoz outside town for food, the father working as a tailor there.

Asked about songs from that time, Furer says he does not remember songs, only the singing in the synagogue on the Sabbath, where he still goes. He recalls the hard years of his youth, when he hunted for bread and waited at the kolkhoz kitchen for scrapings of porridge. His father died when he was fourteen. Kerler then turns to Russian words for the questionnaire.

Kerler asks the unidentified man where he grew up. He mentions his parents leaving for farm work and a Jewish collective farm in the Kherson area (?). The rest is arranging a later meeting, with Russian talk about a phone that does not work, an address and Geller's name.

Burshtein recalls the German attack on Babruysk in June 1941, with days in a cellar and bombing, and the family's flight over the Berezina and by train through Belarus toward the Tambov region. He describes the village Strel'tsy near Tambov and then the district of Yelan', where he worked as a shepherd and food was plentiful, and the recruitment of his brother Peysekh into the army. The family went on to the Urals, where winters were harsh and food scarce, and where his parents died. He was sent to a metallurgical training school and beaten by Russian classmates until a Jewish man helped him. The surviving relatives left with Zhytomyr Jews in 1944 and arrived in June, without a place to stay.

Antsis talks about her family and the hunger of the early 1930s. One brother died after overeating when food finally became available, and another died during the war. Of four children two survived, and her sister emigrated to America when many people wanted to leave, then died not long afterwards. Antsis names the sister as Freydele and tries to recall her mother's name (Dania or Datshi, unclear). Her father had a small shop. Her mother later worked on a Jewish kolkhoz near Zhytomyr, while Antsis studied at a technical school.

Antsis describes the war years. Her husband, a lieutenant, was killed in 1943, and her six-year-old child died of malaria in Uzbekistan. She stayed there with her mother, who did whatever work she could find, and Antsis herself worked on a kolkhoz. Kerler asks about the return after the war.

Nibulskaia describes the hardship of attending school in the 1930s. The family lived on a kolkhoz, and she walked seven kilometers to school in Novozlatopil' every day. In winter she lodged near the school, with her bed by the window and snow on her head. She says she nevertheless studied very well.

Shraibman describes the family's evacuation. They went to a village in Tambov oblast and worked in a kolkhoz without passports, then fled the approaching Germans to Fergana in Uzbekistan. Of an extended family of eleven (counts unclear), six returned and several died of hunger. Kerler asks, and Shraibman lists, who was in the family: grandparents, aunts, his mother, a sister with two children. He mentions finishing school in the town before army college.

Nibulskaia recalls the 1933 famine, when her blacksmith father had nothing to eat and the family moved to a kolkhoz near Novozlatopil (the kolkhoz's name is unclear in the transcript) with twenty-eight Jewish houses. The school there had only the lower grades, so she walked eight kilometers each way, stealing produce from the fields. In winter she lived in a cold dugout dormitory with plank beds, and she went on to a Russian school in Korosten after seventh grade. Her mother worked as a cook and kept a garden.