Antisemitism

Rezmovit answers Kerler's question about songs in the camp. He recalls fear of the Germans, German songs, and the Hitler Youth throwing snow and stones. He describes work for the elderly and an encounter with a Hungarian policeman who asked whether they were still alive, showing that others knew where the Jews were being taken. He says he felt hatred everywhere, though a few non-Jews were decent.

Herbst recalls how at about age ten or eleven he went to cheder in Rakhiv, sleeping at the melamed's house and eating 'days' with different families, including a rich sawmill owner. He attended four classes of the school in Berlabash, then a year in Rakhiv and a year in Oyber-Vishev (Vișeu de Sus), where his sister lived and he was near a large yeshiva. He recounts a fight in which yeshiva students drove off hostile attackers.

Rezmovits recalls Polish and Lithuanian Jewish refugees in Debrecen, who spoke in the local prayer house about what was happening to Jews. The Hungarian Jews would not believe them. He then discusses writers, among them Ilya Ehrenburg, Elie Wiesel and Soviet Jewish writers, with Kerler offering to send him a photocopy of a Yiddish book. They also discuss Rezmovits's own short piece on the Satmar Hasidim.

Rezmovits recalls wartime scenes involving soldiers, Russian and Jewish officers and shooting at Germans, and says that Polish people were hostile to Jews and that many Jews were betrayed or had to hide. He then discusses with Kerler books and films about the Warsaw ghetto uprising and its Jewish historians, including Rezmovits's reading of one such book in Hebrew, and how many Germans were killed by the insurgents. The discussion turns to the importance of the fact of Jewish armed resistance.

Rezmovits speaks about a Polish official who, according to him, helped the Polish administration yet saved many Jews, and about his son, who became the first prime minister after communism fell. The talk then turns to Kerler's book of poems, which Rezmovits has begun to read and praises. He mentions that he writes in three languages and was told about Kerler by a woman, Sonya (?).

Pearl describes working for a non-Jewish firm whose director was an antisemite but decent. He says he gave out false non-Jewish papers to people and used some himself, but gave them up when people were caught and killed, so he reported for labor service. He says he knew his parents had already been deported and had no alternative.

Pearl tells how David Spira had a Polish friend, about eighteen, who tried to cross into Romania but was caught at the border and brought back to Budapest. The young man jumped from the train and spent a night with Pearl, and Pearl describes wearing no yellow star at the military factory. He recounts hiding a tall man in the factory cellar when German soldiers came looking for him, and later taking him to his family. He did not want to stay in Budapest because he was living on non-Jewish papers.

Pearl recalls his childhood schooling: from age four he attended cheder and the village Evangelical Christian school, because there was no Jewish school. His two melamdim were Mushkovitsh and Mordechai Stern, and he studied Humash, Rashi and Gemara, naming tractates, up to age twelve or thirteen. Kerler asks whether Maimonides or Tosafot were studied. After his bar mitzvah he went to a trade school and became a locksmith, since the quota for Jews in high school was six percent, and he went on to study during the war.

Pearl says he stayed attached to Jewish life under Communism, kept out of the party, and made patents as a scientific worker, three of which were accepted, and is working on another. He could keep Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at the factory, where colleagues knew he had a holiday. His children went to the Sunday school and he sent them to cheder, and he tells of being checked once about where he lived and how he raised them. The Russians asked for him as a specialist in Russia but local officials would not let him go.

Pearl describes attending synagogues in Budapest, including a Polish synagogue and the Belzer rebbe's, where he alone was let in at age twenty. He recalls the straw on the floor and the sleepless night there. He turns to Budapest during the German occupation, when people were seized and killed daily, and recalls Polish and Slovak refugees. He worked in a military factory but concluded it was not worth staying in Budapest.

Pearl describes his job at a factory in Budapest during the war. He says he told the director and a young woman asking about his identity that he was a Jew, and was kept on. He shows gravestones and photographs of his parents and relatives, and mentions a grandchild and cousins in America. He says he visited America and attended congresses in Germany and France.

Asked about the best time of his life, Pearl names his childhood, with family Sabbath meals and harmony at home until 1938. He did not want to emigrate despite an uncle in America; his son did leave. He says he is dissatisfied with the situation in Hungary today and with antisemitism, and he speaks about the wartime bombing of Budapest in 1944.

Blobshteyn tells how his father, in Czechoslovak times, avoided army service because Sabbath would conflict with carrying arms, and how a friend who worked on Sabbath was in trouble. He recalls the Hungarian entry into Mukacheve and his father's call-up to a labour service in the 1940s. Blobshteyn mentions his own Russian, and Kerler and he discuss the Kleinbart family of Mukacheve and its members in America.

Blobshteyn explains the word for a disturbance (krivaln?) and a story about a Jewish girl who left with a non-Jew, and talks about fire brigades and Jewish work on Saturday. He then speaks of religious life under the Soviets: synagogues taken, Yom Kippur services broken up, and fear of arrest. He says that his friend, the chief of the militia, warned him about planned antireligious actions, and that he was able to buy flats for his two children.

Kerler and Doman briefly discuss the state of Yiddish and Jewish life in Russia, including a rise in antisemitism there, in eastern Europe and in western Europe. Kerler then outlines the interview plan, asking about the difference between Yiddish and the German used in the yeshiva and about Yiddish in Budapest. Doman says he studied in four yeshivas, naming Verpelét, Dorog (?) and Galánta, the last now in Slovakia.

Reti explains a memorial stone near the Orthodox synagogue and the mikvah, and a larger monument to the Jews of Debrecen in the cemetery. He says Jews come each year from across Europe. Asked about relations between Jews and non-Jews today, he says there are big conflicts. He describes antisemitism in present-day Hungary and the wearing of a right-wing party flag.

Reti recalls that before the war many Jews of foreign origin who had been born elsewhere were expelled from Hungary as non-Hungarians, with a brother's help in a village matter. Reti dates this to 1943, and Kerler then recalls a prayer for relief.

Altman talks about postwar religious life, saying that Jews who tried to pray in a house were driven out, with prayer books burned. She then answers a long series of questions about Yiddish vocabulary and usage, including words for honest, pious, Hasid, convert, sick, 'please', street, river, well, bucket, vodka and flowers. In between she comments on non-Jews and prayer and expresses distress at news of violence in Moscow. She says people may speak Yiddish differently from her.

Dzigifker describes her father's wealthy Goldenfeld-related family, with a distillery, mill and estate, and her father's trading business. She says robbers' gangs threatened Jews in the district, and her father was warned that his name was on a list, so the family left for Mărculești. She tells of the father's illness, a treatment in Czernowitz, and his contribution to the first kibbutz in Israel, which put him in the Golden Book. Mundrian adds memories of a 1930s antisemitic scare and of the family later living in Căprești.

Boltykh says his mother attended a Romanian school but could pray in Yiddish from the siddur. Recalling her stories, he describes Jewish Briceni with many tradesmen's clubs and a Jewish hospital where the wealthy paid for the poor. A relative of hers crossed the border illegally to Palestine (?) and later lived near Washington. He also mentions robbers who attacked the rich before the war and the lack of rights for Jews afterwards.

Roif talks about the present day: speaking and losing Yiddish and Hebrew, his daily unpaid community work, help to sick and elderly Jews through a German sponsor, and payments made to homebound people. He then speaks about Romania's official recognition of the Holocaust, the denial of it by ordinary Romanians, and the estimated numbers of Jews killed in Bessarabia. Kerler asks which government recognised it, and a passage on Jews without citizenship follows.

Shpitalnik answers questions about contact between Jews and non-Jews in Chișinău. She recalls that around 1938 the family moved to a house among Jews, and says that under the Romanians Communists rather than Zionists were persecuted. She recalls that after the Soviets arrived in 1940 Zionists were arrested and sent to Siberia, including Zalmen Rosenthal, editor of the paper Undzer Tsayt, and others; Kerler asks about Rosenthal's first name.

Bengelsdorf recalls spending his childhood with other actors' children at the Birobidzhan Yiddish theater, then speaks about his work as a pianist and music critic in Chișinău. He describes Yiddish concert life, including the compositions of Zlata Tkach and singers such as Eliashe, and a festival in Birobidzhan with guests from Moscow, Israel and America. He also discusses Russian composers' interest in Jewish music and Shostakovich's Jewish song cycle. Interviewers ask about Prokofiev, the performers and the Russian texts. The passage ends with preparations for filming music, with Russian talk about microphone placement.

Lipovetskiy remarks that today's Jews in the community do not know Yiddish. He describes prewar relations with non-Jews, with Romanians calling Jews by a Romanian word and not allowed into the synagogue. He then speaks of postwar hunger, Stalin's rationing and cards, and the cosmonaut Gagarin.

Mitlaeva recalls the Baptists in the village of Chudei in the Chernivtsi region, Bukovina, where she taught for ten years after the war. She says the Baptists were Romanians who sang Christian hymns in Yiddish, and Kerler asks why. She then tells of being sent to a village among Kuban Cossacks and of a Russian man who spoke against Jews until she told him she was Jewish. The passage ends with an anecdote about her grandson.

Mitlaeva says that after Bukovina she worked as a teacher in Străşeni, a large town with several schools, including Russian and Romanian ones. She recalls a pogrom there in tsarist times, a conflict with a colleague who was dismissed, a Jewish surgeon and Jewish veterans working in the town. She also says she knew Romanian well and speaks it today, though she has never been to Romania.

Kerler asks how to say 'come here' and 'go there' in Yiddish, and Mitlaeva gives forms and says she has not heard others. She mentions a stay in Chernivtsi and an episode involving antisemitic abuse, then answers questions about God and religion. She says she was an atheist and a Communist Party member and describes being valued as an honest communist. Kerler then begins a question about postwar prayer in Chișinău.

Goldman names the streets on which her family lived and notes the changes in their names. She worked as a tailor in Bucharest until 1940, recalls fear of violence against Jews there, and a Romanian landlord who protected them. She says she always preferred Chișinău.

Kerler asks whether Jewish history and holidays were taught in the Yiddish school. Manevich says they were not, since it was a Soviet school in an essentially Russian city. She says that outside the home people spoke Russian rather than Yiddish and that a person can be Jewish without Yiddish. She mentions speaking Turkish during the war, and recalls a time in Moldova when only Moldovan was supposed to be spoken, and how the Jews were regarded by others.

Gordin says his mother died in 1947, in the hunger years, after the family returned to Moldova. He tells of finishing school, failing to enter an institute in Leningrad, serving in the army, and studying chemistry in Vladivostok. He then returned to Chișinău and worked a year in a village before taking factory work. Kerler asks what he studied. The year he finished school is unclear in the transcript.

The man from Mohyliv talks about his parents and the saying of his mother that a Jew has two things, Torah and wall. Katz then asks several other men their names, which are given as Roznshteyn, Bortnik and Brekhman (?), and asks whether they know Yiddish songs. A man answers about 'poor people' with Russian explanations. Another says Jewish life is better now and there is no hunger; those who were in the ghetto get compensation from Germany while the younger ones suffer. Bortnik tells how Hitler was said to be a Jew's son and about a Moscow paper.

Katz explains the interest of the researchers in folklore. A man talks about the current situation of Jews, with antisemitism, religion and a destroyed cemetery. Kerler and Katz question him; the Yiddish is hard to follow. At the end the interview closes and Kerler addresses an interviewee in Russian.

Sharhorodskij talks about a neighbor who was a German prisoner of war in the First World War and did not expect the Germans to kill Jews, and about those who evacuated. Kerler asks what he learned in Ukrainian and German classes; he names Ukrainian writers (Shevchenko, Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Marko Vovchok) and Yiddish writers (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Bergelson, Pfeffer), recalling the lives of Sholem Aleichem and Mendele.

Sharhorodskij says he cannot recall the rebbe's melodies. He asks about Kerler's residence and discusses America and politics, comparing the American slogan to the German one. He says the Jewish situation in Moldova is painful because few Jews remain. He says that belief in liberation helped him survive the ghetto, and describes working in a German hospital, where he met a Hamburg field-feldwebel who read the paper and said Germany had lost after Stalingrad. A political argument with Kerler follows over fascists in Russia and democracy.

Mirenburg continues her war account. Her group was sent to Yampil instead of Rîbniţa, and she tells of a family friend from Sguritzy who survived a massacre of a column. Then come the march through Ukrainian towns, food rations, and the Potashna cowshed, where she fell ill with typhus and had a dream while ill. Her brother and then her father died. In Bershad the family begged in the villages, and a Ukrainian village elder beat her and her mother. She also tells of a boy who was tied to a motorcycle. Kerler asks about a song the village boys sang.

Milevskaya recalls her pious grandfather, who prayed constantly with a Torah or prayer book and a black velvet bag embroidered by her grandmother, now with her sister in Israel. She remembers her grandmother baking matzo a month before Passover and making potato latkes, and her mother's subscription to a Yiddish journal from Moscow. She also mentions school antisemitism and the former rabbi Fishl who celebrated all the holidays and has since left for Odesa.

David speaks about singing Hanukkah songs with children at the synagogue today. He says there are no antisemitism problems in Botoșani and that the synagogue has not been vandalised. He also mentions money received through the federation to repair the synagogue roof, and ends by telling how little the community needs. Kerler then asks about the Botoșani rebbe.

Cohn tells how he was taken to Tiraspol with his father during the war. They broke stones in a quarry and spread them on roads under Romanian guards, with beatings, hunger and no German guards. His mother and two brothers stayed in Botoșani. He recalls being beaten by a Romanian gendarme for stealing food from a field. They were brought home as the Russian front approached, in 1944.

Cohn speaks about the great hunger in Romania just after the war and the Joint, which ran soup kitchens in the Jewish towns. He describes life under Ceaușescu as very bad, with Jews fared worse. He moved to Botoșani in 1941, a few days before the war, because Jews were no longer allowed to live in the royal towns. Houses were set on fire. After the war he worked as a metalworker and glazier, and is asked for the word for window glass.

Grunfeld says relations between Jews and Romanians were normal, though there was always some antisemitism and there were strict laws against Jews; the situation before and after the war was almost the same. He answers Lemster's question about Hasidism, saying he saw Hasidim in Cluj and had a friend from Maramureș, and says he is considered religious in Cluj and attends synagogue.

A song about the rebbe's house and the messiah's arrival is sung. Kerler explains the archive project, and Freundlich speaks about a Hungarian radio program on religion and Jewish matters. She talks about Jews in town today, with mixed marriages and a bar mitzvah.

Asked what should be remembered about Jewish life in the region, Hershkovich mentions the Jewish rabbi there. He says people used to learn respect for one another and had closer ties. Today, he says, there is more enmity among Jews. Kerler asks about life with non-Jews, and Hershkovich says it was harder in antisemitic periods but otherwise not much of a problem.

Kraus recounts that he studied at the yeshiva in Cîmpia Turzii in 1940, at age 17. He recalls the Iron Guardists' violence against Jews that winter, with the rabbi and young men forced outside into the snow, and many Jews killed. Kerler asks about the Guardists and Transnistria. The other speaker explains the Guard and the Cuzists.

They discuss the Iron Guard and Cuzists, the Guard's January rebellion in Bucharest crushed by Antonescu, and Antonescu's refusal to deport Romanian Jews. One speaker claims a rich Jewish leader who had been his university colleague intervened. Kerler comments that Jews were useful as workers.

Asked about his childhood, Shaia describes the 1940 pogrom in Dorohoi as he and his brother heard it. Two soldiers, one Jewish and one Christian, were killed. The Jewish soldier was buried in the Jewish cemetery, and soldiers fired on the Jewish funeral procession. He cannot give the exact numbers killed. At the end Lemster asks about school and the year 1941.

Walking outside with the team, Isidor points out the former Jewish streets and says Dorohoi is more truly Jewish than Iași. He names the Jewish owner of the large mill and the former large synagogue and describes the 1940 pogrom, caused by soldiers from Chernivtsi. A Jewish soldier who shielded his officer was honoured, and soldiers were shot for it.

Hirsch describes his family as semi-modern and recalls fears of the evil eye and the custom of quenching coals. He says Passover play-acting of the four questions and card-playing at Hanukkah were not practised, though children played with the dreidel. He explains that on Purim only children took part, with no purim-shpil, and that a honey pastry (called something like kindli, ?) was made. Costumes were not customary because of antisemitism. The passage ends with the beginning of a discussion of Tisha B'Av and what children did.

Finkelshteyn recalls a hard childhood: his father's work was seasonal, and in winter his mother preserved food and rendered fat for the family. He says he was born in 1923 and the family lived through the Depression and rising antisemitism. The children attended four years of Romanian school, and at eleven he began learning his father's trade, working as a carpenter until his pension. His sisters worked as seamstresses and two brothers as sales clerks.

Finkelshteyn says Yiddish was the only language at home and that his father wrote and read it. He talks about cheder, praying and synagogue attendance, which working Jews could not manage, and mentions the Iași pogrom as something too terrible to tell. He explains how he worked as a carpenter until his pension, mostly in a state factory in Soviet times, and how Jews were expected not to work manual jobs. He describes his apprenticeship with another carpenter and the market in Iași.

Finkelshteyn talks about non-Jews who apprenticed with Jewish craftsmen and about the rise of antisemitism, which led to trade schools for Christians. He speaks of visitors from abroad who no longer know Yiddish and need a translator, and of rabbis and yeshiva students who come to Iași. The synagogue is now closed. At the end he says his life was full of troubles.

Karuel talks about his postwar studies and his service in the Romanian army, where he met both antisemitism and decent people. He recalls Sukkot at his grandfather's, and speaks about Yiddish-speaking non-Jews. He lists Jewish organizations, including Maccabi sports clubs, and discusses libraries and books. He also recalls Yiddish theater before and after the war.

Davidovich says she was born in Frumușiţa(?), and that her father was a teacher at a Jewish school in Odobești. In 1940 the family visited her grandparents and could not return because the war began. Her father was taken to Botoșani and then to forced labor in Edineț(?). She, her mother and her grandmother were evacuated to Botoșani, left on an empty field, and took shelter with Jewish families, among them the Leibovich family. She also tells how her grandfather was attacked and robbed on the road in 1941, and died of his injuries in a hospital in Iași.

Shwartz says he returned home in October 1945 from Mauthausen and found no family left. In 1950 he married again and has lived with his second wife until now. They have no children; he gives reasons that are hard to follow. He describes receiving his first wife's card and a sleepless night, and adds that he returned to find antisemitism. Kerler asks him about the Purim play.

Freund responds to Kerler's request to describe prewar Jewish life in his town: it was a beautiful life in which people helped each other. He lists institutions: a synagogue, rabbi, judge, two slaughterers, a cheder with a teacher, a Talmud Torah, a mikveh with bathhouse, and no yeshiva (the nearest was in Sighet or Satu Mare). He says difficulties came with the antisemitic regulations.

Mehler and the team enter the Vatra Dornei synagogue; the camera then films while she talks about contemporary religious life. The congregation is small and old, with holidays such as Shavuot kept with dairy food; Passover seder cannot be held. She speaks about the gendarmes and the guarding of the synagogue, and about relations with non-Jews, and mentions visits by communal officials and a Hanukkah event.

Mehler describes Jewish life after her arrival in Vatra Dornei, mostly in Romanian. The Jews of the Bukovina region were deported to Transnistria in 1941. The rich sometimes bought themselves out, and one family avoided deportation by faking illness. After the war many returned to find nothing and emigrated in a mass departure, up to about 1961. She also talks about prewar Jewish trades and the good relations before Antonescu, and about the Romanian Jewish leadership. The passage ends on Ştefăneşti.

Steiner reads from the Michalovce community book. It contains rules for the synagogue: no sermon where the bimah is not in the middle, no weddings in the synagogue, no innovations. He reads out the signatories and the community leaders, and Kerler comments. Steiner mentions a man from Veľké Kapušany, a miller's son. He then talks about the Michalovce cemetery with its ceramic tombstones and lists other small Jewish communities (Trebišov, Kráľovský Chlmec, Veľké Kapušany). Last he mentions a postwar pogrom in Kolbasov in Poland, with a second place in Poland.

Weinberger goes through a book on the Stropkov Jewish community and the many photographs. He remembers local people: a tailor, a shopkeeper he carried milk to, a bank manager, a man who was driven through town with non-kosher sausage, and a Gardist who was a Jewish coachman's son. He also shows wartime Slovak antisemitic publications and speaks of Jews being gathered in the synagogue before deportation, and of selection at Auschwitz. He says he was a forced laborer in Sereď, and that there was Yiddish among non-Jews of Stropkov. He regrets there is no one to speak Yiddish with at home. At the end he gives his birth date (18 November 1927) and says he lives in Košice.

Weinberger talks about Jewish émigrés from Lithuania and Russia who became prominent in Israel, and Kerler comments on Litvak Yiddish dialects. He recalls meeting Jews from Leningrad and Moscow on a visit to Sochi, where a fellow Jew warned him about a suspicious stranger. He also recalls a concert by the Barry Sisters there.

Weinberger talks about life in Budapest, where he spoke Yiddish mainly with Polish Jews and kept apart from the Hungarian Jews. He tells of the German occupation in March 1944, when the Polish Committee was seized and Poles were persecuted. Under a new name, Yosef Panko, he used false papers as a Subcarpathian Rusyn. He recalls going back to Slovakia, being arrested by the Gestapo with a group but released because of his Russian name, jumping on a train in Levice, and a second border crossing. Kerler asks about words such as advent and about money. He also mentions Polish Jews who had surgery to restore the foreskin.

Khotenko describes her return from evacuation: she worked in a kitchen, her sister lived elsewhere with her husband, and her mother worked at a pig farm and later with the harvest. She mentions a relative hanged in Odessa and the hunger of 1947. She then recalls a neighbouring Jewish doctor named Viner (Iosif), arrested before the war in the late 1930s (the year is uncertain); he had cured her of scarlet fever. She also describes shortages and fear of arrests, and Lemster asks whether there was antisemitism.

Borukaeva talks about her postwar working life, including night work and a photographer's job, and how she met her husband on a train from Odessa; he spoke pure Russian. She then speaks about her cousin Vadim Mulerman, a singer who performed Yiddish songs and was reportedly forbidden to sing for about twenty years, and who later visited Balta and her home. She also mentions his Yiddish, his brother and the family burial in Kharkiv. Her own singing is brought up.

Asked about life in Khmelnyk before the war, Zhovtis recalls it as good and speaks of low prices. He recalls antisemitic insults, the fear he felt under the Germans and keeping quiet about being Jewish. In reply to Kerler he describes the synagogue, Sabbath and weekday prayer among older men, and not having seen a rebbe. Kerler then asks about Passover, and he describes koshering utensils with a stone and hot water, and pancakes or dumplings made of matzo meal.

Zhovtis discusses non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, including Romanian soldiers, and their attitude to Jews. He recounts being beaten and the arbitrary violence under the occupation, and being made to wear a cross-like sign (?). There is talk of a mayor, of Purim fare and of Passover utensils, and of not eating pork.

Berman recounts postwar work: a post as district health head in the Bila Tserkva region and suspicion over his Jewish colleagues, then return to Bila Tserkva as a famous doctor. He describes writing in Yiddish for Birobidzhaner Shtern and Sovetish Heymland, and his article on Ehrenburg's unpublished letters. Kerler and Berman compare their debuts in print around 1958. They also discuss a folklorist friend, Shlomo (?) Kuper (?), Berman's patient, with whom he corresponded.

Bublitskaia says old Romanians in Chisinau could speak Yiddish and that there was no antisemitism in her street, where many Jews lived. She recalls reading in Romanian at school. Her brother was interested in Zionism, and a rebbe's son from Calarasi lived with the family and studied with him. Her friends, both Jewish and Romanian girls, spoke Romanian with her.

Skobilitskii recalls anti-religious propaganda that called religion an opiate, and that school subjects were taught in Yiddish. He remembers mocking plays about Jews staged at school, with Yiddish songs. He also mentions a Jewish theatre troupe that performed Sholem Aleichem, cantors in the Koch shul, and the Jewish owner of the fire brigade with white horses.

Soyfer discusses religious life in Berdychiv. All synagogues were closed before the war; after the war the communists were asked and a synagogue reopened within a year, though children were not allowed to attend. He recalls charity before Passover, the closing of Yiddish schools, antisemitism in Kyiv, and being evacuated.

Soyfer describes being evacuated, in the Northern Caucasus with his grandmother, who was later killed by the Germans, and then to Kazakhstan, in Alma-Ata. He tells of antisemitism, being beaten, and working as a child. His uncles' fates are given, one killed in the war and one living in Moscow, and he says his grandmother had six children.

Soyfer says that his father had remarried and that he found them on his return to Berdychiv in 1945. He mentions antisemitism, Jews being mocked, and that he was in Moscow. Kerler asks questions about the family.

Soyfer speaks about army service, which began in about 1950 (?), where Jews were mocked but not beaten. He was a Communist for thirty years and worked for thirty-five years. His family's apartment was taken, and he has one daughter.

Soyfer tells how his father was summoned by authorities about the synagogue, probably about 1949–50. The church was closed rather than the synagogue, and Jews could pray but not bring children. The official's remark that a gentile is not a Jew is told, though the transcript is garbled at places.

Soyfer speaks about relations with non-Jewish coworkers and neighbors. They lived peacefully, worked and ate together, and helped one another with burials. He says antisemitism came mainly from educated people. Kerler thanks him and the interview ends.

Berzon tells of a mixed marriage in the family, and says that before the war a Jewish child did not marry a non-Jew. She says the couple's children were taught Yiddish by the rabbi's wife and went to synagogue. Kerler asks about other non-Jews who speak Yiddish, and she mentions antisemitism among the young.

Kogan recalls being drafted at seventeen and sent to the front for two months, and speaks of antisemitism among soldiers and many Jews wounded.

Vainshelboim speaks about a school director who understood Yiddish and says that before the war Berdychiv was a Jewish town with many Jewish schools and many children. Lemster asks whether he remembers Sholem Aleichem having visited Berdychiv; Vainshelboim says the writer was loved and comments on his philosophical view of God and the Jews. He adds that there was no antisemitism before the war.

Soyfer explains how, before the revolution, Jews were barred from living in many places and from owning land unless they had served long in the tsar's army, or converted. He gives a story of a Jewish family in a village forced out unless it converted, and speaks of the cost of gymnasium for Jews. He says Berdychiv was a place where Jews could live and mentions pogroms, emigration to America and his grandmother's languages. Kerler then asks for his birth year (1930) and he begins to speak of his mother's death.

Soyfer says he served in the army after the war for three and a half years, in Ukraine, as the only Jew in his unit, and describes antisemitic mockery and beatings there. Asked what he found on returning to Berdychiv, he says he lived with his father and married. He then describes the postwar reopening of a synagogue by Jewish officers, praying outdoors in 1945 and a Yom Kippur in 1946, and recalls saying kaddish for his mother in 1938 in a private house minyan.

Vainshelboim guides the team through Berdychiv and tells of the German occupation and the roundups and killings of Jews. He tells of the murder of 960 young men, the grave pits, and his own escape when his father was shot. His mother, sisters and brother lie in the mass grave. He also mentions a brick factory and a pit for hiding Jews, the Soviet memorials, the erection of the Star of David, and gold-seekers digging up bones.

Feldman tells a story about a Christian woman whose grandchild could not stay awake and who went to the synagogue with money and food seeking help. She then speaks about circumcision, how it was done in the past and how it is now, and mentions a grandson who is studying at a Jewish school in Zhytomyr. She also recalls antisemitic abuse of Jewish men in the past.

The second man opens by explaining that the synagogues were closed before the war and that after the war only a few were allowed. He recalls that a synagogue building stood on a spot in Bershad', and points out the main street, which became Lenin Street. Sklyarskiy then gives his name and patronymic and says he was orphaned young (his mother died when he was three, his father when he was seven) and brought up by an aunt and uncle in the shtetl Zhornysche, where about two thousand Jews lived. He tells how in 1942 the Jews were driven out by police, he was shot at and wounded, and the family hid in a dugout in a field. His sisters and their children were killed when he went out for food; he then joined the partisans and was wounded again. He describes his father as a carpenter, his sisters, and his schooling: a four-year Yiddish school, then a Russian one. He talks about the shtetl before the war, a rabbi, holidays in the synagogue and the postwar murder of a Jewish man. Kerler asks about the length of the hiding and the number of people in the dugout, and asks him to retell the first shooting and the forced labor under the Germans, including burying dead soldiers.

Sklyarskiy speaks in Russian and Yiddish about the Bershad' ghetto, the Romanian zone, and the killings elsewhere. He recalls working on roads from 1941 with the police chief named Zavalinskiy (?), and the way the forced labourers were treated. Kerler asks when the Germans entered; he answers that it was at the start of the war. Kerler then asks him to talk about life after the war.

Asked about songs, Kupershmidt recalls fragments of a camp song about children. He returns to the ghetto period and the German 'Judenaktion', and to anti-Jewish propaganda posters. He tells of a Polish Jewish officer who was mistreated by the police, and of a boy he rescued. The officer's later fate is unclear.

Khavin recalls the cheder, where a melamed taught him and two other boys, and being put in a Yiddish school for half a year before his siblings moved him to a Russian school. Answering Kerler, he explains the move partly through growing antisemitism and the situation under Stalin, and says he attended the melamed until about 1932. He describes the teacher as a cultured man who taught Chumash and prayers, but says he himself did not pray until after returning from the army.

Kerler tries to establish when Lifshitz left Birobidzhan; Lifshitz says he arrived in 1936, was drafted into the war, and left in 1947 (?). He repeats that his brother was shot by police, in the taiga in 1945, because he was Jewish. The sequence of events remains unclear.

Bielaia says little was sung or spoken in Yiddish because of politics, and people were afraid to be known as Jews. She contrasts this with today, with the Hesed and synagogue.

At a memorial Kerler and Khavin read the inscription asking passers-by to stop and bow to the memory of fellow citizens. Khavin says that 7,500 people are commemorated, but that the plaque says only Soviet citizens and does not name the Jews; he says the authorities did not want to show this. Kerler asks whether a new plaque is possible now, and Khavin says it needs to be redone. As they get back into the van he points out his technical school.

Khavin and Kerler talk about religious life in Chernihiv today and about the minyan after the synagogue closed, which gradually became hard to gather. Khavin tells the story of Maksim, who lived in a village in Byelorussia, kept Jewish observance at home, and was killed after an incident with a militiaman. He ends with remarks on his own limited observance and on payments and parcels from Israel.

Burg addresses Jewish writers in postwar Chernivtsi and his own return from Russia, where he had spent the war. He recalls attending the funeral of Mikhoels in Moscow, the anti-Jewish campaign of 1948 and his graduate studies in Moscow. He worked at a pedagogical institute and studied with Nusinov. He mentions Moscow Yiddish writers he knew, including Markish, Bergelson and Fefer, and discusses a few present-day Yiddish writers. He ends with an account of Fefer being brought from prison to meet Paul Robeson in Moscow and not telling him what had happened.

Burg reflects on the fate of Yiddish culture. He names Hitler and Stalin as destroyers of Yiddish writers and culture, and the State of Israel as sharing the blame for weakening Yiddish. He lists great Yiddish poets and writers such as Leivick, Manger and Halpern. He notes that Hasidim in Israel still speak Yiddish, and that younger people elsewhere do not. He recounts a Berlin evening commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz and speaking Yiddish there, and receiving letters from Germany about Yiddish study. He tells how the German journalist Michael Martens (Frankfurt) visited him in Chernivtsi and Vyzhnytsia and wrote a small book about him; Kerler remarks on the German interest in Yiddish.

Gimelbrandt speaks of her husband, a tailor, who died at 56. She first says she had three children, then corrects herself to two sons. Her daughter, who was ill, died at fourteen, and her husband died a few years later. She raised the sons alone and walked to the Sadgora paint factory at night. She tells of having them circumcised, and of a non-Jewish doctor who asked about it.

Shekhovich attended a Polish school for ten years and, besides it, cheder; she remembers little about the rabbi or the lessons. Polish was spoken at home as well as Yiddish, and she took part in a Jewish youth organization with singing and dancing. She says she felt no antisemitism before the war, since she moved among Polish children. She talks about an assimilated Drohobych acquaintance (Shreyer, whom she names) who knows no Yiddish, about Bruno Schulz, and again about the 'Russian Jews' who came in 1939 and were seen as a different people, with Kerler and a second voice asking questions about Poles, Lithuanian and Vilna Jews.

Schreier describes prewar Drohobych, with about 42,000 inhabitants, now about double, and its mix of Poles, Jews and Ukrainians. He mentions the oil industry, the many Jewish professionals and mild antisemitism such as boycott slogans. In the gymnasium the groups sat together and nobody asked who was what. For religion lessons each group had its own teacher, including his uncle Dr. Bernard Schreier for the Jews; he blames Hitlerism and Stalinism for later hostility.

A formal interview, mostly in Russian, with an elderly woman from Odesa who says she knows no Yiddish. She recalls her grandfather's Passover seder and her father, who trained as a draftsman and architect in Odesa and studied in Switzerland. She also describes her private Russian gymnasium, antisemitism around Palm Week, and the hardships of revolution and civil war. She speaks of regretting not learning Yiddish, a Ukrainian husband who knew a few Yiddish words, and an episode at work in Bershad' when she could not understand a conversation in Yiddish.

Beigel talks about life today. She has a few younger friends in Hnivan' with whom she speaks some Yiddish, though mostly Russian. She discusses radiation and emigration, saying people stay where it is good, but that Jews are not loved here. She does not remember songs.

Bukshtein states that only Yiddish and Romanian were spoken in Novoselitsa. He recalls the Cuza government in the 1930s and the antisemitic pressure on shopkeepers and customers to speak Romanian, with a joke about a woman buying figs. He then tells about a visit by a cousin from Israel and his wife Mila, a Yiddish speaker from Vashkivtsi, and an anecdote of Mila speaking Yiddish with Hasidim on a plane. He also tells about a Chabad visitor who knew a relative, and about an older sister who went to Palestine after the war.

Geller says he does not remember whether his mother cooked mamaliga and answers questions on food terms such as mamaliga and papshoy. He says he met no antisemitism at work. Kerler and Lemster find Kuz'myn on a map near Staro-Konstantinov, and Kerler judges the speech to be Podolian Yiddish.

After greetings, Later shows Kerler photographs from his war service, including a German officer's interrogation and the liberation of Vienna. He gives his name and says he was born in Smotrych. He names his parents, grandparents and teachers, and says he directed the Yiddish school there. He describes his schooling: a Soviet Yiddish seven-year school, a Ukrainian ten-year school, and Moscow institute courses. He also describes the kheyder and rabbi, the two synagogues, local non-Jews, and the Yiddish amateur theatre circle he led. He recalls the expulsion of the Poles in 1936 and the 'golden night' when Jews were forced to give up gold. The remainder covers the closing of the big synagogue and his brother's death in the war, followed by holidays, Soviet anti-religious campaigns, red weddings, the Jewish court, performers and klezmer musicians, songs, and the Yiddish literature he studied. The recording breaks off during talk of the Yiddish press and the Kyiv Yiddish theatre.

Gaiviker tells of living in Moscow, a fight at work and being jailed; he says the Jewish official in charge treated him more leniently. In 1933 he and others were sent out of Moscow under the passport regime. Back in Proskuriv he found no work and hunger, and he sold his possessions.

A questionnaire on forms and vocabulary: Lemster and Kerler ask for thanks, father and mother, sick, sleepy, peasant, and Lithuanian-Yiddish differences, and a sentence with 'whether or not'. Gaiviker also tells of his army years in Lithuania, Kaunas and Kaliningrad, being pelted with stones, and Berdychiv and its Jewish girls, and Sonya says her grandson lives in Israel. At the end he speaks of his wife's care and food he likes.

Kaviner talks about Shimon Frug, whom Gorky called another Pushkin, saying he died poor and in hunger in Odesa, having married a gentile woman. Lemster asks about Yankev Fikhman, and the speakers discuss whether he was in Soviet Yiddish schools and his anthology.

Kaviner briefly recalls army years and how non-Jewish comrades reacted when they asked about his name and he said he was Jewish; Lemster then asks about lesser-known local writers.

Kaviner recounts the fate of the town's eight prayer houses: some were closed, one became a sports hall, and only the butchers' synagogue stayed open for the Jews after the war and was repaired by the community. He recalls famed cantors who visited, including Kaiserman and a blind cantor from Kyiv. He says that in 1951 the community's leaders were arrested as spies and the synagogue was closed and made into a sports hall until Gorbachev's time.

Snook says that non-Jewish neighbours knew Yiddish and recalls one, Mikhail, a simple non-Jew who even prayed in Yiddish. She recalls baking hamantashn with preserves for the neighbours and discusses the terms for the filling and for potatoes, sending Purim gifts, and drinking at Purim. She tells of her husband Biel, who died fifteen years earlier, and who could lead prayers. Kerler also asks about Sabbath songs.

Katz describes the war years. After his father was called up, he did the coachman work himself, carrying timber and hauling boards, until his father was released ill in 1943. In 1941 Hungarian gendarmes took Jews from the village, and a train went toward Stanislav, where the Poles were said to have been killed. Katz then recalls the Iza ghetto in 1944 (about three weeks), hunger, and how he slipped home at night for food. The family was then taken to the Khust brickworks, with beatings and searches, and sent by train to Auschwitz. He describes the selection, shaving, shower and clothing, then Birkenau, where he received a number, and then Monowitz with his father and the factory work.

Katz says he attended an ordinary Russian school, since Czech schools existed only in the cities, and mentions the languages he understood (some Czech, some Hungarian). He remarks on how Hungarians, Gypsies and Czechs viewed Jews. He then talks about working as a driver in a large garage with hundreds of employees, claiming that non-Jewish bosses treated him far better than Jewish ones, and recounts a dispute over delivery documents at a bottling factory. Kerler ends by asking about the synagogue after the war.

In the Khust synagogue Repkin explains its history in Russian: construction began in 1861, much of it is original, the paintings are original, the lions part came from Oleksandrivka, and the wiring was replaced two years before the visit. He recounts the Khust Jewish population in 1940 and its losses in the Holocaust, the ghetto from April 1944 and deportations to Auschwitz, and that Soviet authorities tried to close it for a club in about 1965–66 and a protest by women and children, apparently, saved it. He describes the books found there, with stamps from villages in the region and Yiddish, Hungarian and Slovak printings, and his catalogue of owners for a future museum. He also describes the repair of doors, donors from abroad, the mikveh-side rooms and a slaughtering knife found in the building, and talks about his own career at the shoe factory and the synagogue's upkeep, caretaker and minyan.

Braverman names her cousins in France and their ages, saying they were four children in her family, too. She recalls relatives she was not allowed to know about because of fear, matzo parcels, and the family's expectation that grandchildren would care for the old. She describes her grandfather, his quiet manner, his shop that was kept secret until 1937, when a regional newspaper wrote that she had not mentioned it on joining the Komsomol, and his cabinet of books and Talmuds. A neighbor's apple cellar and an apple drink are mentioned, and the grandfather's death in the early 1930s (?) is recalled.

Semyon Braverman describes the Zhmerynka synagogues and what they became after the war (a club, a bakery, a library, a militia building). His pious father led the congregation and made Yiddish calendars that were mailed across the country. The father's biography, from a Jewish gymnasium graduate, appears in a published book, and Semyon mentions a police fine for an unregistered prayer gathering. Semyon then begins the story of Zhmerynka friends who wrote a letter in 1948 asking to go to Israel.

Braverman describes how the friends who asked to emigrate were punished with long prison terms, five to ten years. One, a man named Wolf, was blinded in the camps, now lives in Israel and sent him an account of his arrest. He served eight years, until an amnesty. Kerler then asks about Yiddish theater.

Asked for memories of the Great Hunger, Khandros describes documents and a letter from Berdychiv in which a Jewish factory worker, who later died, begged for help, and he says it shows that Jews starved too, against claims that they did not. He discusses the Torgsin shops, where gold was exchanged for flour, and how his mother's gold was broken into three parts. He relates a butcher's story about gold and a hiding place, the mobility of Jews who could travel to Moscow and Leningrad, and relatives in Leningrad who sent rusks. He describes death registers from 1932–33, deaths from eating in summer 1933 and a dysentery epidemic which he survived because his uncle kept him at home instead of sending him to hospital. Kerler remarks that many informants deny Jews died, and Khandros reports letters in Russian that deny the famine.

Rusakovskaia says relations between Jews and non-Jews were normal and friendly, though her close friends were all Jewish, from her street. At school pupils from the Yiddish and Russian schools mixed. After the war there were fewer Jews. She worked in a bank as the only Jewish employee and used the name Raisa, and later as a bookkeeper in a collective with a Jewish director and mostly Jewish staff, where Yiddish was sometimes spoken.

Biter explains the reason for the name Biter, gives his birth year as 1918 and names his parents Kolmen and Yeti and his grandfathers; his father was a middle landowner. He describes the 1941 pogrom by Ukrainian nationalists, forced labor, deportation to Snyatyn and a train toward Ivano-Frankivs'k, from which he jumped through a window. He was helped by three student friends, got papers as a Ukrainian under a different name and worked for a German estate until the end of the war.

After the Soviets returned Biter was questioned about how he survived and was accused of working for the Germans. He was sent to Norilsk, where he says he was held from 1944 to 1952, first at hard labor and later as an accountant. On his return he found his family murdered and houses destroyed, and then worked as an economist on a collective farm covering five villages.

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.

Biter describes the Polish nationalist policies before 1939 and the arrival of the Soviets in September 1939. Jews were pleased, Poles were not and Ukrainians were divided. He recalls Soviet soldiers buying up goods in the shops and the abolition of letters in the alphabet. He tells of a Snyatyn millionaire named Birnbaum who fled to Romania, after which his family was deported to Kyiv.

Biter recalls the first days of the German–Soviet war in June 1941: he had just finished technical school and was assigned to work in the Horodenka district. Hungarian troops then came, followed by the Germans, and Jews were the first targets. He describes crowded ghetto housing, scant food, and the period of the ghetto as lasting from August 1941 to September 1942. He mentions German compensation.

Vider talks about his health and about past synagogue life, including Rosh Hashanah and being called to the Torah. He confirms that he studied at a yeshiva in Iași, which he calls a beautiful city. Kerler asks about the 1939 pogrom there, and Vider speaks of killings by Cuzists and someone being shot; the transcript does not make clear who. Much of the rest is wishes for health, talk of gifts and medicine, and Russian side remarks.

Krotsh tells of an Orthodox priest and his son, in which Romanian words insulting Jews turned up in a note. He then reflects that life under Romanian rule was very hard, though good for the rich.

Skop describes his eight classes at the Yiddish school and the writers taught there, among them Sholem Aleichem, Itsik Fefer, Abraham Goldenberg and David Bergelson. He recalls Sholem Aleichem plays staged in the local Yiddish theater. The school was closed in 1937 and he moved to a Russian school, finishing ten classes with no Yiddish or Hebrew taught. He says antisemitism began to show then, and that the war began when he was fifteen or sixteen.

Leiderman tells of her sister, who finished Yiddish school in Pishchanka, and of her brother, who was refused entry to a medical school as a Jew. Obodovskii says he never heard antisemitic remarks from Russians or Moldovans on his building sites. He describes his work as a construction foreman, and the couple discuss the word for a Jewish and non-Jewish builder.

Asked about the town before the war, Gershtein says many Jews lived in Holoby alongside Poles and Ukrainians. Until about 1936 people lived in peace and he did not know antisemitism. He mentions a non-Jewish man living nearby who speaks Yiddish and works as a journalist.

Asked about the Yiddish press in Odesa, Pensatii says he read a Yiddish newspaper published in Moscow, and a German-language paper. In Russian he describes using German as a Soviet officer in postwar Germany, where he hunted war criminals responsible for killing Jews and sat on a military tribunal. He retells an interrogation of a former Gestapo chief from Zaporizhzhia who explained Hitler's rise, and Kerler tries to bring him back to the interview questions.

Dorfman gives personal information: his Yiddish name, birth in 1923 on Shavuot, and life in Chişinău before the war. His parents, Malka and Mendel Dorfman, were well-known; both were jailed in 1940 under the Soviets, his mother serving long terms and returning later. His father was a skilled workman, and he recalls antisemitism.

Nisman talks about non-Jewish neighbors in her hometown who spoke Yiddish. One was a monastery servant who asked her to help him sweep. She says there was no antisemitism before the war and recalls a non-Jewish neighbor's family helping her when she left to study in Chişinău at fourteen. She says she feels little antisemitism today. Kerler then turns to her first husband.

Leibel describes his family's observance, including his father saying Kaddish for the grandfather. Asked about antisemitism, he says it grew strong only before the war and especially in the late 1940s. He mentions Endek (National Democratic) agitation against Jews and the killing of a Jewish student in L'viv. He also recalls Jewish and non-Jewish children playing football on his street and against the gymnasium team.

Leibel recalls a puppet-theater show for winter festivities at his Polish school, where he was given the part of a Jew and the Polish children beat him in the play. Kerler asks about the genre and the Yiddish word for it. He also recalls a Russian singer performing a Yiddish song at the Safran cinema.

Dorfman talks about Yiddish writers, journalists and editors he corresponds with, and about a film and a Lviv acquaintance who wrote to the Black Book. He discusses Yiddish periodicals in Poland and Birobidzhan and antisemitism. He then describes Jewish life in Dnipropetrovsk — its rabbi, synagogue, wealthy patron, Jewish gymnasium and press. Kerler and Dorfman also talk about exchanging Yiddish publications and about meeting Lviv scholars.

Dorfman recalls the outbreak of the war on June 22: he had finished his third year at the technical college and was living in Bessarabia, and the Soviet army was unprepared. He tells of two articles he published on Polish Jews, one of them an officer who posed as a Ukrainian. He then talks about his work documenting rescuers of Jews for Yad Vashem, including a woman rescued as a child and the Polish antisemitism she knew.

Khonigsman answers Kerler's question about the difference between Polish and Soviet Jews. He says he never met a dishonest Polish Jew and gives examples of Polish-Jewish colleagues who refused bribes. He says he himself never took bribes or favours in his years at the institute and points to the Ukrainian nationalists' writings about him. Much is in Russian and Polish.

Brandler recalls prewar holidays in Mostiska: a childhood Purim in costume, being given liquor at a brit, tashlikh on Rosh Hashanah, and the beadle whipping men symbolically before Yom Kippur. He describes the town's synagogue, two small prayer houses and study houses, a mikveh, Simchat Torah and Hanukkah candles, building the sukkah and antisemitic harassment of it. He also gives the word for the ruffians who threw things, and says he fasted on Yom Kippur and Tisha b'Av.

Shvardovskaia, asked by Kerler to speak of the war, describes first the Polish period, then two years of Soviet rule with closed shops, and the arrival of the Germans in 1941. Jews were confined as in a ghetto, forced to hand over valuables, and the first skilled Jewish worker was killed at once. She describes Jews thrown into pits and shot, her escape and flight into the woods, and a Ukrainian acquaintance who hid her in an attic, where her father and a sister joined her for three months. Later they hid for a year in the forest, fed at night by Ukrainians, escaped a second shooting, moved between villages, and finally joined Russian partisans. She mentions that her father and brother were killed; the details are unclear in the transcript.

Endelshtein tells where he was when the war began in Bolgrad. His family fled via Stalingrad and Saratov to Uzbekistan, where he was drafted and trained. He served in western Ukraine, Romania and Hungary, was wounded near Budapest, and was in hospital at Dnipropetrovsk. He names medals, including one for Budapest, serving as a machine gunner, and says six Jews were in his company. He says he felt no antisemitism in the army and tells how an officer helped with the registration of his name.

Kerler explains the interview, and Listengurt settles in to speak. She speaks about the early Jewish settlement of Odesa and its large prewar Jewish population (a majority). She tells how the Germans and Romanians took the city in 1941 and how long Odesa held out, and she recalls a Jewish history teacher and her own challenge to antisemites. She says Stalin was good to the Jews and names local figures such as the party secretary Naum Gurevich and General Petrov. She also tells of her father, who worked in the port and was a Communist, and of the early days of the war. Her father was nearly blind and ended up in Tashkent. Her older sister served at the front for the whole war, was a medical-institute student and afterwards a nurse (?). She also discusses catacombs and local building stone.

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.

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.

Medved speaks about her mother's kosher cooking before the war, taking fowl to the shoykhet and soaking and salting meat. She then tells about the Beilis-type blood-libel trial, in which a Russian writer defended the Jews and explained Jewish meat practices.

Tokar gives his opinions on politics and Jewish life today. He thinks American Jews are divided between parties and are assimilating; he is hostile towards black Americans, whom he describes as often Muslim and antisemitic; and he says Jews are split into many parties. Kerler mentions Barack Obama. Lemster then asks him for a poem, and he says he remembers many Yiddish songs but cannot sing, naming a few titles.

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.

Feldman says he was about ten at the start of the First World War and was still in cheder. He barely remembers the German occupation, except that they spoke German and some Yiddish. He remembers the 1917 revolution, attacks on Jews, robberies and killings, and says the Red Army defended Jews. Kerler then asks about his father's death.

Feldman tells how his father was killed in 1919 by a band of local peasants, apparently Poles, who wanted his boots; he had refused. The band took him to the forest at night and killed him, and the family searched a week before finding the body. After that they moved to Skrebelychi.

Turovskaia answers questions about Volednik: nicknames and sayings about neighboring Jews, a Christian classmate in her Yiddish school, and whether non-Jews spoke Yiddish. She comments on antisemitism today and reports a news story about a Jewish student killed in St. Petersburg, then Kerler asks when she returned to the area.

Asked about non-Jews who became Jews, she knows of none. She says many Jews became Christians, but the 'fifth point' in the passport remained.

Khiterman says there was no antisemitism after the war. Kerler asks about Zionists in Berezhov (Berezov?), which she does not remember. She recounts being arrested in the early 1950s (?) and taken to Kyiv, apparently over a mix-up with a woman connected to a committee. She says her small child died in evacuation at Katta-Kurgan at the age of two and was named after her mother. Her relative, mostly in Russian, describes her poor health and how isolated she is.

Informal talk while the team prepares to go out for a walk: Kerler repeatedly asks Krasner to speak Yiddish rather than Russian. They discuss homemade liquor and a story of someone taken to the forest, and Kerler asks for children's rhymes and counting rhymes. She recalls playing with a doll as a girl, and tells how she led her blind uncle to the bread shop, where they were told not to speak Yiddish. Some words are asked, such as the Yiddish for cherry. The passage ends with a Russian-language exchange on rings and a Jewish singer.

Krasner tells of a Russian customer in a shop, and of being Jewish, then answers questions on words such as 'modest', 'drunk', 'brandy', 'hat' and 'kippah' in Yiddish. She describes leading a group of Hasidic pilgrims to the rebbe's house and grave, with the rebbe's son Itsikl carried by Hasidim, and the dancing at the grave. Left-handedness is chatted about. She recalls the Pechera camp, where prisoners died of hunger and a starving Jewish youth ran about naked.

Kaviner discusses how Jews entered higher education under the Tsarist regime. Admission was highly competitive, and some Jews, he says, converted to qualify. He names several well-known figures, among them Rubinstein and others, mentioning that one died abroad. He begins a story about Jewish converts who became priests in Khmel'nyts'kyy.

Kaviner and Lemster discuss quotas for Jews in Soviet higher education, in the 1960s–70s especially in Moscow, versus easier admission elsewhere. Lemster asks if anyone in Starokostyantyniv can speak Yiddish. Kaviner mentions a man who survived the ghetto but would know little of Jewish tradition. They also touch on the songs Shalom Aleichem and Friday evening singing, and on his war service.

Over tea, Gliazer says young people must understand how many peoples once lived together in harmony before the war, and recalls how Jews and non-Jewish neighbors helped each other. He speaks of his father's service in the Austrian army and the Emperor Franz Joseph's keeping order, blaming Hitler and the Germans for the change. Much of this stretch is in Russian and garbled.

Gliazer gives his views on Bandera and the Ukrainian nationalist organization, which he calls terrorist, and on the assassination of the Polish minister Pieracki. He says Bandera's brothers were communists who were imprisoned with his own brother and killed, probably by the Russians.

A short drive through the town centre, with the guide pointing out the market square and old houses. She says a building was used by the Gestapo, and that Ronald Doctor hopes to move gravestones to the cemetery. Kerler and the guide exchange remarks in Yiddish and Russian.

Tkach, born in 1935 in the small town of Chernivtsi ("Kleyn Tshernovits"), talks about her parents, grandparents and the traditional Jewish house with its mezuzah. She recalls her uncle the gabbai, the synagogue with its women's gallery, her aunt reading tkhines, and the killing of another aunt's family. She describes the war years, refugees and the ghetto, the postwar schools and her brother's studies, and her forty years as a journalist in Yampil'. She then covers food customs for Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah, children's games, Yiddish-speaking neighbors and friends, and weddings with their dances and musicians. She also talks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, the postwar fear of speaking Yiddish and the antisemitism of the Doctors' Plot, and Ukrainian literature. The last part is a dialectological questionnaire: she is asked how various Russian words, phrases and sentences would be said in Yiddish (greetings, house and window words, colors, comparatives).

After opening chat among those present, Shusterman gives her father Toyva's name and says he was born in Tomashpol' in 1901 and died in 1995 aged 94. He worked in several jobs, including at a bank, and wrote well in Yiddish and Russian. She describes him as an honest and pious man who prayed daily and led the Passover seder. After the war he acted as a kind of rebbe, saying kaddish for the dead, and the militia broke up prayer gatherings. She says she cannot tell about Jewish life before the war and then talks about his singing and her own love of music. She talks about her own accounting career, leaving work at 53 to care for her blind father, and then knitting and selling at the market. She also covers her own illness and depression. The few Jews left in Tomashpol' (eight) gather for holidays and yortsaytn, and she explains why she will not emigrate and a relative in Germany. She says antisemitism was present earlier, and she describes her wartime evacuation to Mordovia and the postwar housing and compensation. She also talks about her husband, a non-Jew, and a lost love from Odesa. The passage ends with Kerler's thanks, a promise to send Yiddish songs, and fragmentary talk.

Shveibish in Tul'chyn describes the present-day Jewish community: about 172 Jews, including children, many of them elderly, living on small pensions, with some 35 helped by Hesed and the Joint through patronage. She tells of old people and a man aged 91, and of lost state support and closed factories. She describes organising a bus trip and meeting at Pechera with former prisoners from Kyiv and a school group, with television and radio present, and how she raised money and food for it. She also speaks about relatives of acquaintances who emigrated to Israel or America, about antisemitism, distributing matzo, and says some thirty Pechera survivors remain.

Kogan tells an episode of his time in Berlin. He then answers Kerler on why one should say peasants rather than a word for a non-Jew, and on the Russian word for a Jew. He talks about antisemitism, and an anecdote set in Tashkent.

Presler talks about the time after liberation, the first food (porridge) and the killing of Germans and police. She and Shveibish remember the execution of a hangman and a policeman named Smetansky (?), who served a sentence and is still alive. Presler describes returning on foot to Tul'chyn to find their house destroyed, and says antisemitism continues to this day.

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.

Kogan talks about the end of Yiddish schools and theater in the Stalin years and about the arrests of doctors. He recalls meeting Solomon Mikhoels in Bershad before the war, who asked about his songs. He describes Bershad as a Jewish town with a park where people strolled on the Sabbath. The conversation turns to Yiddish writers and books, with Kerler and Lemster naming Hershl Ostropoler, Polyanker and Glik and Kogan getting a book from the library.

The women describe being held crammed in the school building, without food, water or room to lie down, while Romanians shot at crying children. A Ukrainian doctor beat out the windows in the freezing cold. People died daily and survivors recall starvation. Kerler asks whether the doctor was German.

Teplitskaia talks about relatives in Israel, including a late relative's grandson, and about Jewish-Ukrainian relations. She describes a visit to a rabbi in Kyiv and services there, and fears that Jews might be attacked. She mentions Putin and a Moscow incident, and says she watches many television programs and cannot sleep. Her neighbors urge her to leave. Kerler asks how a Ukrainian phrase would be said in Yiddish.

At the former Great Synagogue, now a concert hall, Naybauer and a guide (Russian-speaking) describe its architecture, including the women's gallery, the pseudo-Moorish style and the hall's acoustics. The hall was built in 1904 (per the Russian). Katz and Kerler ask about the layout of the men's synagogue, the ark and the bimah. Naybauer says he prayed here for some years after the war until it was closed. He regrets that no plaque marks it; one was put up and taken down after a few days, and the guide dates this to 1989. The guide recalls American rabbis offering to buy and dismantle the building, and talks about musicians who played there. Kerler thanks the staff and the group moves on.

Zinger recalls the family's modest life in Velykyi Bereznyi: his father carved gravestones in summer and made picture frames and mended windows in winter. He describes the Sabbath meals, kugel and meat, and the braided challah. At Passover he helped his father bake matzo for neighbours, with women making the dough. He mentions a friend from the Soviet camp who died the day before. He says relations with non-Jewish neighbours were good, with some antisemitism blaming Jews for everything.

Mixed, poorly recorded material at and around the Berdychiv cemetery: talk in Yiddish and Russian, a man saying he was born in Berdychiv, and a long prayer-like text delivered by Kerler. Others discuss a building damaged some years earlier, antisemitism in Ukraine, and Jews emigrating. A name and dates on a gravestone are discussed, and someone photographs. Much of the speech is garbled and the attributions are uncertain.

Under the Romanian occupation the former synagogue became a Romanian administrative office. Pressure began on the rabbi, the Torah scribe and the cantor to renounce religion, and it was announced in the district newspaper; those who refused were sent away. People then secretly gathered to pray.

Chirkova speaks of her parents' graves and her studies at the institute in Vinnytsya. She says she was told Jews and Jewish schools were not needed, and mentions a gift from the institute on its eightieth anniversary. Kerler tries to steer her to his own questions, beginning with what her mother did in Krasne.

Chirkova sings "Lomir zikh iberbetn", with verses that exchange gifts and objects. She then says people at meetings did not let her speak Yiddish, and she tells of confrontations with others, including antisemites, who tried to stop her speaking and singing it. She stresses that she wants to be loved and respected and that others only imitate Jews.

Barshteyn talks about her family today: one son in Vinnytsya and two grandchildren. She says Sabbath services are not currently held in the synagogue because of repairs, so Jews gather on Friday, and older people are afraid to go out at night. She remarks on the amount of antisemitism today, and Kerler then states the date and place of the recording.

Katz says she was told by an official that no Jew was at the front, and she answers that many Jews fought. She lists the many killed, wounded and commanders, in poorly transcribed speech.

Tsodikovich recalls Kopayhorod, whose population was about half Jewish, half non-Jewish. He says there was no antisemitism, and that non-Jews helped during the ghetto. He names Jewish neighbours, a water seller called Avrom Rud(?), the rabbi and the shoykhet Leyb. He says a mohel was brought from Sharhorod or Zhmerynka, and matzo came from Mohyliv(?). He describes festival dishes, and mentions Yankl, the shoykhet in Vinnytsya. He also gives dates: studies in Zhytomyr, army service on Sakhalin and Kamchatka from 1958 to 1961, and a wedding in Kopayhorod around 1961, without a khupe but in the club, with Jewish klezmer in heavy snow.

Tsodikovich recalls a tailor's son in Kopayhorod who played the accordion. He says Yiddish songs were not sung in public, only among friends at night. They discuss the town's Jews after the war, and Yarmolyntsi, where few Jews remained. He mentions a woman from Kopayhorod now in Germany and a barber who cut his hair as a child. Kerler asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish: a classmate, a neighbor named Misha, and a teacher of Ukrainian who speaks it very well. They also discuss a Jewish school director, Weinstein, and the Chabad or Skverer rabbi, then Vinnytsya today, antisemitism and politics. Part of this is in Russian.

Kerler asks why Vinnytsya needs a Jewish mayor or official. Tsodikovich answers that people chose him, that he is doing a great deal of good, and that people are ungrateful. In part he speaks Russian. They also discuss earlier Jewish figures in Vinnytsya, a former deputy, and whether the present official is Jewish. Tsodikovich and Kerler disagree about whether there is antisemitism in Vinnytsya. Tsodikovich says people feel it, while Kerler says they do not.

Asked about languages, Khazin says his father's mother spoke Ukrainian with him and Yiddish with his mother, and he understood it. He explains that his first wife left him; their five-year-old daughter chose to stay with him while their one-year-old son went to the wife's mother. The daughter later went to the mother, whose second husband was a well-known surgeon in Mohyliv-Podilskyi (?), to enter an institute; the son studied at a mining technical school. After the second husband died, the ex-wife took the children to Israel.

Opening conversation, partly with a second woman, about Carpathian Yiddish versus Polish Yiddish and about the interviewers' family backgrounds, languages and birthplaces. Nayman says her granddaughter knows Yiddish and can read Hebrew prayers but not speak Hebrew. Nayman then tells of Hungarian rule, when gendarmes questioned a girl about her name and Hungarian and accused the Jews of not liking them. Kerler closes by saying he will ask some questions.

Lebvol lists Zhovka's Jewish occupations: tailors, tinsmiths, butchers, glaziers and several ritual slaughterers. She says many Jews converted to Christianity and that she doesn't know of non-Jews becoming Jews, that neighbors were non-Jews with whom they got along, and that older non-Jews knew Yiddish. She describes her poor family: bread wrapped in newspaper, herring bought from a shop, and her father the glazier bartering glass for food in the villages.

Geller describes the synagogue, prayer house and Itzik the crooked (der krimer), who served as helper and caretaker. He recalls the Jewish director of the Ukrainian school who had children throw stones at worshippers, and talks about childhood friends, one killed by the Germans. He also speaks of non-Jewish classmates, Passover matzo given to them, and non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, then answers questions on the use of Yiddish at home.

Burshtein recalls people gathering at the school director's apartment to hear the radio and learning of Hitler's speeches and what was happening to Jews in Germany. Jews who had come from Germany told them of the situation and sang Yiddish songs in the streets. He listened to the songs as a small child who started kheyder at six.

Burshtein tells of the start of the war in 1939: Poles shooting from the roofs, the family's week of praying in the prayer house under bombing, and his father's decision to leave by night for an aunt's town about thirty kilometres away. He describes the flight past Polish cavalry, being taken in by Jewish families, then German roundups of Jews onto the square, when he was ten and escaped a soldier. His father and brothers were taken, his older brother was missing for days, and Germans threw bread to Polish prisoners while another photographed them. In the aunt's town a Jewish shoemaker negotiated with German officers for the family's safety.

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.

Burshtein talks about the German Jewish refugees in Russia and the Soviet-German pact, after which nothing negative could be said about the Germans. He tells how people on arrival in Babruysk would not believe the accounts of killings, and recalls Hitler's speeches heard on the one radio in town, in the school. He also recalls a Jewish forced-labour episode and his brother's return home, and reflects on why the Germans were so cruel to Jews.

Burshtein says most Jews spoke only Yiddish and Poles Polish. He recalls the hostility of the Polish children at school, a teacher who pulled him out of class by his sidelocks, and the corporal punishment there. He describes studying with two rebbes, the second of whom had a whip, and a Polish school Christmas play. Kerler asks about the Russian word for prison.

She remembers a Passover seder with an honoured guest, her grandfather, and gives her Yiddish and Russian first names, her father's and mother's names and the family surname. She says her father, a doctor, could not practise after the 1905 revolution and pogroms because of restrictions on Jews, and that she herself later joined the Communists.

Geller speaks about khapers who seized older schoolchildren from the school, taking them away; the text is fragmentary. He remarks that the worst antisemite can be a Jew.

Geller says he remembers one Jewish wedding, held in the large courtyard by the synagogue under the huppah. He recalls watching it, though not the details of the celebration. He then moves to Komsomol members who gathered older schoolchildren and threw stones at the synagogue on holidays.

Burshtein talks about prewar Goworowo and its destruction. There was one large synagogue, where cobblers and tailors also had prayer rooms; the town had a police commandant, and bandits burned the synagogue and killed people. He mentions a letter from a man in Vilnius, and Kerler asks about Polish school. He then recites a Polish children's poem on washing in the morning.

Burshtein says he went to kheyder and recalls prewar Poland: Piłsudski's time, and the antisemitism that grew after his death. He tells how Jews hid Piłsudski in the synagogue wrapped in a tallit. He says his melamed ended badly and describes meeting the rebbetsin, who began to weep when he asked about the rebbe.

Nibulskiy describes the mass grave at the Jewish cemetery, with men on one side and women on the other, and says he visits to light a candle and recite a prayer. He recalls the killing of his grandfather by bandits, who cut off his beard and beat him. He mentions his brother who fell in the war and his parents, and that he himself did heavy construction work throughout the war.

Nibulskiy tells a long story about the Berdychiv rebbe, who was jailed after being denounced, and whom Jews visited in prison for Sabbath kiddush. An apostate Jew sent by the tsar found it was so, and the rebbe told a tale of a foster son who became an emperor hostile to the Jews but changed his policy. He is asked about Rabbi Nakhman of Bratslav and then begins a story about the Velednik rebbe that he heard from a fellow institute student.

Shraibman says the aunt later went to Israel and he stayed. Kerler asks his army rank, and a misunderstanding about the Russian word is cleared up. He discusses Jewish generals in the war and a book on Stalin sent by a friend, saying he does not think Stalin was an antisemite. He explains that an officer had to be a Communist and that he later left the party under Brezhnev.

Shraibman describes leaving the Communist Party in the 1980s by claiming to have lost his party card, and the pressure put on him. He says he was neither a real Communist nor an anti-Communist. He answers Kerler's questions about the campaign against cosmopolitanism and the Doctors' Plot in 1952 and about Jewish cadets. He recalls growing up in a Soviet family where his grandmother Gitl kept kosher and his grandfather was not deeply religious. He mentions his daughter in Haifa and a granddaughter in the Israeli army.

Nibulskiy tells a story from Berdychiv in which the rebbe is imprisoned and the Jews bribe the guards so that they can keep Sabbath and sing there. A baptized Jew sent by the tsar investigates and hears a story about a landowner's son, and the Jews' accusation is shown to be false. Kerler asks where the rebbes lie buried, and the discussion mentions Levi Yitskhok.