Army service

Rezmovits recalls the family's time in Klausen-Leopoldsdorf in Austria near the end of the war, where they posed as Hungarian refugees. They hid a young Jewish man whose looks might betray him, and heard that twenty Jews had been killed nearby. As the Red Army approached, he describes an Italian soldier and a cellar scene, in which German soldiers threw grenades into houses before entering.

Smajovics describes meeting Red Army soldiers, among them Jewish officers who spoke to him in Yiddish and Russian. He helped carry ammunition and saw many dead Germans. About two weeks later he made his way home; in his village he found his house without windows or doors and only four Jews returned. Kerler asks about a mill and the return of the family; Smajovics mentions his sister coming back and his grandfather's house.

Smajovics speaks about Yiddish reading, including Sholem Aleichem, and Soviet Yiddish press and journals, and mentions Birobidzhan newspapers. He tells of a Yiddish concert by American Jews that he attended in Beregszász (?) or a nearby town in the 1960s (?). He describes a trip to Israel and a taxi ride there. Kerler asks about Sovetish Heymland and Yiddish authors. Smajovics then talks about Russian war books on marshals Vasilevsky, Zhukov and Rokossovsky and the Stalingrad front, before Kerler thanks him.

Reti says nobody sang in Auschwitz and describes the brutal forced labor, including a beating that broke his hand. He tells of the last days of the war and a Satmar Jew in the British army who spoke Yiddish to the prisoners. He explains how the camp commander refused an order to shut the prisoners in a tunnel to be killed.

The Katerbergs describe prewar Berlinți as a pleasant village with many Christians; the children played and attended Romanian school together. Semyon says he studied for seven years. They discuss whether Christians spoke Yiddish and say Jews and Christians were not distinguished, even in the army.

Katerberg recounts being elected kolkhoz chairman in two villages, for four years in one and sixteen in the other. He tells an anecdote about a meeting where he answered a remark that there had been no Jews at the front. He says he spoke Moldovan in the Moldovan village and Russian in the Ukrainian one, names other Jewish chairmen, and tells of seminars at which he had to tell Jewish anecdotes. The talk ends with Lemster asking about awards.

Goldberg says life was hard before the war. She married in 1949 in Bravicea; her husband died twelve years ago. She says she met him while working in the hospital, after taking a Red Cross course during the war, and that no matchmaker was involved.

Roif and Zelda are teased by Lemster about how they met and why she chose him; Roif had served five years in the fleet. They go on to acquaintances and relatives, including people in Israel, a Rîșcani book in Yiddish by someone named Yozik (?) and a relative who left as a halutz in the 1930s. At the end Lemster and Kerler elicit a word of Moldovan origin (written as skapet) for something dropped or lost.

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.

Diner recalls a Jewish schoolmate from the third year of gymnasium who volunteered for the Soviet army in 1941 and died near Smolensk, and says many boys perished. Asked for another song, she says she has forgotten the Yiddish ones. She answers questions about her mother's preparations in winter, such as meat salting and preserves, and says Yiddish is hardly spoken today. Kerler asks about expressions and the discussion moves to local customs and eccentrics.

Goldman tells how the family was caught by the arrival of the Soviets in 1940 and evacuated to the Caucasus in 1941, where she met her brother again. He was drafted and trained somewhere in the east. On the road her mother was killed in Makhachkala during bombing and her father was wounded. The family later learned of the brother's death in 1944 and the father died too.

Benderskaia tells of her family's evacuation. Her father had been a Soviet-era village secretary and left with an ox cart as Nisporeni was bombed, and the family fled to the Dniester. At the crossing a commander had the bridge taken down, and a Jew from Lozova took them across with his cart and cow. Her brother Menashe was lost and found again. They continued on foot, then by train to Vladimir in the Stalingrad region, to Tashkent and Andijan, where she worked on a collective farm in a front brigade. Her father and brothers were mobilized, Menashe died after the war and Yosl fought to Königsberg, and her father was released ill in 1944.

Dajch tells how she met her husband: he was a communist who had been in prison, and she was in Iași from 1931 to 1936. He was then drafted and they later registered their marriage without a wedding. She recalls her first visit to Chișinău, where he bought her a record and a red scarf. In 1940 he was held for about a year. After the war she worked as a bookkeeper and came to Chișinău in 1957 (heard in Russian).

Gordin tells of the war years. In 1941 his father was drafted and the family fled to Kisnitsa to his grandparents, then on to Kryzhopil and Zabokrych. There the Germans arrived and Jews were rounded up and killed. They ended up in Myskivka (?), where a ghetto under Romanian administration held them for the rest of the war. His father worked at an oil press and later on forced labor building a bridge. Kerler asks who ran the ghetto.

Boiarskaia says her house survived when she returned and was later given back to her; her husband was taken into the army and she was left with three children. She talks about reading Yiddish books, Sholem Aleichem and Hershele Ostropolyer, in her family and with her husband, and about the lack of prayer shawls and tefillin after the war. She tells of the rebbe's small room near the Dniester where Jews went on holidays and for yortsayt.

Prompted by Lemster to talk about her husband, Rolshut says she met him through a friend from her Romanian school, who was his sister, on a visit to a nearby town (the name is unclear). He studied at an institute in Iași, was mobilized and served at the front, and came back from Germany in 1945. She joined him there, where their son was born. She describes him as a loving husband and good father; he did not read her poetry.

Milevskaya says her Yiddish is poor and that her sister studied Yiddish in Israel. Kerler and Lemster ask who else speaks Yiddish: Teitel, Dora and Sofia Bengard, with ages of about 75 and 70, and someone in Artsyz who is about 85. She then talks about her husband's military training and tank service, and the interviewers ask about other elderly people.

Dunaevskij tells an episode near the end of the war, when he and a comrade now in Israel came upon German soldiers near a village and a shoot-out followed, with three Germans dead. He says that every day brought a different story. After the war he returned to find the town destroyed and helped rebuild. In the 1950s he worked in the Bender shoe factory for long working days.

Klichinskaia recalls that her father died in evacuation and her mother and sister returned, while she stayed in the army hospital. She was trained as a tailor, and served as a nurse in Prague, where patients came from concentration camps, including those with tuberculosis. Much is in Russian. She says she returned to Bender in 1948 (?), and recalls escorting a transport of patients.

Speaking Russian, Klichinskaia says she worked as a nurse in Vienna for two more years. Her mother and sister came back, her father having been buried in evacuation. She returned to Bender, where times were hard and there was no work, and she had her mother admitted to hospital. Her mother lived another forty years.

Klichinskaia talks about her health, including eye operations, and says that she has few people to speak Yiddish with. Her sister lived in Israel for three years and returned, and she mentions her sister's operation. She has a son, who understands Yiddish but does not speak it. Kerler mentions his mother's army service and her work in a sanatorium.

At Kerler's request Klichinskaia sings again the second love song, about falling for a pretty girl. Kerler asks for another song, and she says she also sang in the hospital and sings a Russian song about a girl soldier.

He tells how his parents survived thanks to the prison and how aunts were taken to Auschwitz. He served in forced labour in the army and was held in a fortress. He has grandchildren in Israel and a Hasidic nephew in London. He then discusses Oradea, Satu Mare and its rebbe, and Hasidim near Czernowitz. He speaks of Sighet and Vișeu (Vișeul?) with many Jews, and shows a family-lineage document.

Grunfeld says he served as a Jewish forced laborer (the Romanian term is mentioned) near the Dniester and at Tighina/Bender. They dug trenches and set up munitions. He searches for the Yiddish word for a fortress. The passage ends with chatter about camera light.

Grunfeld describes the work at the Tighina fortress in 1943–44. His group delousing and disinfecting the clothes of soldiers returning from the front, in a sanitary checkpoint at the border. He says there were no problems with the soldiers and that the physical labor was heavy.

Meir mentions his brothers; one served as a tank soldier and went as far as Cairo. Lemster asks whether he spoke Yiddish. The team closes the interview.

Isidor remembers Shaia's father, a lock tailor who was very careful with a child, then addresses the non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. The Yiddish-speaking apprentice from a village learned the trade from Shaia's father, married in 1941 (?), was conscripted, and was sent to a disciplinary unit. Lemster and the speaker discuss a Yiddish word of doubtful meaning in the story.

Resh says he was in Transnistria (near Mohyliv) during the war and then was drafted into the Soviet army; after demobilization in 1946 he returned home to Chernivtsi and the family left for Romania. He worked in the Iași meat industry as director for thirty-nine years (?). He speaks about Jewish Iași, its large prewar Jewish population and the 1941 pogrom, emigration to Israel after 1947, and his oldest sister's attempt to reach Palestine in 1948 when the British stopped her ship and she swam for hours.

Resh speaks about Itsik Shvarts, also known as Andre Kara, a good friend. He remembers him as a Yiddish writer and historian who served in the Russian army. Shvarts broke his leg in a fall in old age, and friends looked after him for over a year before he died. Resh confirms that Shvarts used to pray, and Lemster thanks him at the end.

Leichtner says Jews lived well in prewar Romania, and that Sighet was a large city with many Jews, which he visited by train until he was taken into service at eighteen. He talks about weddings: the wedding jester who announced the dancers and collected gift money from them, and the klezmer band from a nearby village, with fiddle, drum, accordion and clarinet. He recalls storytelling in the evenings and has heard of Hershele Ostropolyer.

Shwartz describes his family and what became of it. A brother went to Canada and died in the 1990s; an older brother was shot in the war, as was a younger brother, a soldier on the Ukrainian front whose frozen foot meant he could not retreat. A sister who lived in Krasznadorda (?) with two children died in Auschwitz, and the mother Perl also perished there. His father, who was Hungarian-born, a grain dealer and ill after the First World War, died in the 1920s.

Weinberger tells of his liberation by the Red Army in April 1945 near Hlohovec in Slovakia. He recalls working in a brick factory, being injured, being assigned to guard apple trees and then to work with oxen. After the Slovak uprising of September 1944 he fled when Germans surrounded the village and spent months hiding in cellars and barns, begging for food. Kerler asks about words such as stodola and a word for wandering. He ends with the first meeting with Soviet soldiers.

Pivnik says she has a cousin in America and others in Israel. She says she was born in Balta on Rosh Hashanah in 1918 (?), and her father was named Zelik, with grandfathers Yosef and Luzer. She tells of her grandmother Reyze, a women's prayer leader who died in the ghetto, and says her mother Gitl died in 1929 leaving six children. She names her siblings: three sisters and three brothers. She was evacuated to Sakhalin, one brother died on the front, others went to Central Asia and the Far East. She mentions relatives abroad, and Kerler asks about prewar life in Balta, which she says was hard for her without a mother.

Gorberg talks about where she was born and her early life, and about her two brothers, one of whom lives abroad. Her family left Balta for a village in the Dnipropetrovsk region during the famine of 1933, then fled in 1941. She tells how the Germans overtook them at the Dnieper and how they escaped a shooting at night, then travelled by train to Kazakhstan. There she worked on a kolkhoz while her father and brothers were taken into the army, and her father died there.

Kerler asks about Kazakevich's family. Her father died before the war and her mother survived, hidden among Ukrainians who took in the mother and the children; the daughter passed as Ukrainian. She had five siblings, including the eldest, Chaim, and a sister Bronya. A brother who was a football player died at the front and a sister who was a nurse also died. An off-camera relative speaks Russian and supplies much of the family information, including half-siblings now in America and Israel.

Vaynman describes the hardships of evacuation to the Urals. Her mother, Rivke Abramovna, had taught at a Yiddish college or institute in Lviv, in Yiddish and Russian, and worked there with children from Poland. They lived in a dugout, and many Polish Jews died of hunger and cold. Her father was a director at a manufacturing base and was killed on the first day of the war. She also recounts the journey in cattle trucks via Kyiv to Kuibyshev, and says her mother was born in Liber (probably Lyubar).

Kerler asks Zhovtis to go through the occupation again and Zhovtis explains the killings in January and the forced labor on the roads and in a town. He describes his work, going to Zhmerynka and Murafa, harsh treatment, the dangers of bridge-building near Mykolaiv, being weak and ill, and being taken to the station and to Mohyliv-Podilskyi. When the Red Army arrived he left on foot for Khmilnyk, found no Jews left, and was then drafted. He served seven years, in the north near Murmansk, as the only Jew among many.

Zhovtis talks about his military service and its end, and about coming back to Litin and Khmelnyk after the war. He tells of marrying in the 1950s and of working in a factory for some thirty years. He also mentions leading a group of families across a border, a bridge over a river and Romanian and German soldiers. He names his children and where they live, including one who is a doctor, and a visitor from America.

Berman describes two German film studios that came to Bila Tserkva to make films about him, using wartime newsreel footage of his German-language work. He says the films were shown in Germany. He also says he went with the army from Stalingrad to Prague.

Skobilitskii names the Yiddish newspapers and magazines read in Berdychiv in his youth, including papers from Birobidzhan. He says a photo and a story of his war service were printed in one. He mentions a booklet of Berdychiv stories that contains an article of his and refers to him as a battery commander.

Skobilitskii says that good teachers of physics and history helped him become an artilleryman, and is asked the Yiddish word for north, east and so on. There are elicitation items such as 'a good place' for a grave, a Galitsianer and a Litvak, and the word misnaged. He then recalls Jewish weddings with a badkhn.

Furman explains the importance of the Battle of Stalingrad: Hitler wanted the city for the oil of Baku, Moscow and the Urals, and taking it would have lost the war. He ends with a Russian wartime slogan that there is no land beyond the Volga.

Furman speaks about his wartime army service, including Stalingrad and the Volga, where many soldiers drowned. Kerler and Lemster ask how he learned that his parents had been killed, and he explains that the Russians wrote letters while he had no one to write to. He mentions soldiers' slogans for the motherland and for Stalin, and the interviewers ask about them.

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 recalls a Jewish army major and doctor who asked to speak Yiddish with him, and remarks that people forget the language.

Berzon speaks about hardship before the war and the 1933 famine, when her father swelled with hunger and she herself fell from a third floor. She tells about the family's evacuation, hunger on the road, and her brother, a gifted student who had one weak lung and worked in evacuation. He later went to the army and disappeared, and the family learned of his fate only through a letter. She also tells how a book collection was hidden, and where the family lived in Berdychiv.

Berzon talks about her childhood neighbourhood and her friends, mostly Jewish, in Berdychiv. She tells about a non-Jewish relative by marriage who spoke Yiddish and went to cheder with Jewish boys, and who later lost an eye in the war. He suspected that doctors wanted to remove his eye because he was not a Jew. She also describes his Jewish friends.

The speakers discuss the German occupation. Some say wealthy people stayed in Berdychiv and thought gold would protect them, but the Germans took their money and killed them. Vaisman tells of evacuation and army service from 1943 to 1946, and the woman recalls her trip to Kharkiv with her mother at the start of the war and her father's Jewishness.

Kogan speaks a poem about Deborah, the shochet's wife in the Bershad ghetto, and tells how many Jews were killed there. Kerler asks who Deborah was. He tells of his Bershad origins, the poems he wrote, and being taken into the army at seventeen.

Kogan speaks of his brother, his service reaching Berlin, and a manuscript of poems that someone took and may have taken to Israel. Kerler asks about the title and a classmate named Zitser.

Vainshelboim speaks about his schooling, six classes before the war and evening classes after it, and about wanting to study at an institute. He says that before the war the Soviet constitution punished anti-Jewish name-calling, and he tells of a sugar-maker who hid in a cellar. He recalls the hunger of 1933, when the family shared a half loaf of black bread. He says his brother was drafted in 1941 and killed at the front.

Soyfer recounts that he fled in the war and went to the Caucasus, where Germans came and his grandmother was killed. His father was taken into the army. He says he served as a soldier and could not have killed an old person, and mentions that his wife died half a year earlier after twelve years of illness.

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 about his last months with the partisans: going on operations and the commander of his unit, a Jew. A few Jews were in the partisan group. In answer to questions he says there was no friction with Christians, and he names a partisan brigade of about two thousand men; he served some months and was armed with a carbine.

Teitel says there was no chance to speak Yiddish after the war, and that her children understand some words. She then talks in Russian about her daughters' professions (a doctor in St Petersburg and a psychiatrist), her husband's work as a factory director, and her own work as chief accountant of a printing house. She describes the family's five years in Turkmenistan for earnings. She recalls her father's service as a German-speaking intelligence translator, his severe wounds in a vehicle crash in Bulgaria, his return in March 1946, his decorations, and his burial. She begins to say where she was born.

Pustilnik describes the march on foot to the Pechera camp, where those who could not walk were shot. She mentions a small book of Jewish survivors, and Kerler notes that he has recorded people in Tulchyn who were in the camp. She tells how the pregnant mother and small children escaped from a Gentile who had been paid in wheat to take them. The father was in the Red Army, and the passage ends with the mother pregnant in 1942.

She says Yiddish was still spoken in Dzhurin after the war and life was hard; her mother was left alone with three children. Her father died at the front, and the family learned of it later; she describes the circumstances of the grave and annual visits.

Kupershmidt talks about his wartime experiences. He trained as a driver and worked for a Soviet official, and says he was exempted from army service when the war started. He describes his plan to flee with his wife and child, and the false name he took under the Germans. He mentions earlier service in Finland and time in Zhytomyr (?) and Rivne ghetto, though many details are garbled.

Kupershmidt tells how he was denounced as a Jew and how he was taken in a column of prisoners near Zhytomyr. German soldiers stopped them and asked who was a driver, and he was picked for a lorry. A German soldier told him to say nothing, but another man pointed him out. Details of the order of events are unclear in the transcript.

Khavin discusses with Katz the phrase for being born. He says he and his two brothers all served at the front, were wounded and survived, and mentions a brother-in-law who also fought. Kerler redirects the conversation to the holidays.

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.

Khavin tells a story about his father in the army, apparently while the speaker was a soldier, and about cigarettes at the front. The details are unclear in the transcript. The catalogue's 'encounter with soldier' is not clearly confirmed.

Burg answers dialectological questions from Kerler, about words for 'back' and 'ten people at the table' and the use of terms for Hebrew and the holy tongue. He answers that Bund and Zionists in Chernivtsi were not hostile and that much of the Jewish youth was communist; his brother fell in Spain. They look at a photograph of his daughter and discuss his granddaughter, who writes in Russian. Kerler then asks him to read another short story.

Gammer talks about her husband Bore Gammer, a first-group invalid who lost a leg in the war as a tank driver. His parents lived in Vinnytsia, and he studied there before going to a tank school in Kyiv. After the war he came to Khmil'nyk. She returned from evacuation in 1948 without parents and was taken in by her mother's friend.

Shekhter explains that he was drafted before the war and so was separated from his parents; his father was a synagogue shammes. He never saw his parents or siblings again, and he is the only survivor of his family, with no children from either marriage. Kerler asks about Yiddish speakers in Fastiv; a woman present mentions a few people, including a man who speaks a little Yiddish.

Khasidovich says she remembers little about Yiddish theater or Yiddish singers before the war. She talks about her husband, who did not return from the front, and about the war memorial where he is buried, which she visited with her children and grandchildren. She recalls working in a theater buffet and then selling bread in a bakery shop until she retired. She lists her grandchildren in Kyiv, Fastiv and Israel, answers a question about Sholem Aleichem, and says that she hardly leaves her apartment now.

Burshtein names his grandfather Mendel, who served eight years in the army under Nicholas, partly in the Caucasus. There he met a fellow townsman, later the local priest, and the two stayed friends all their lives although the grandfather refused non-kosher food. Kerler asks about the grandfather's death before the war (in the 1940s (?)), whether the town had a Jewish bathhouse or monastery, and the Yiddish name for the Christian church.

Beigel talks about her father's work after the war and her own studies and work as a medical assistant. She married a man who returned from the front and a former classmate; he was from Voroshylivka (?) and his father was killed. She names her siblings, Esi and Grisha, and her grandfathers.

Geller recalls prewar Jewish life in Pyatka. There were about five hundred Jews until the famine of 1932–33, after which artisans (carpenters, shoemakers, tailors) left for Odesa, Moscow and Kyiv. About 200 Jews remained in the mid-1930s, and 169 were drafted into the army. Relations with non-Jews were peaceful. Some non-Jews spoke Yiddish, and Jews and non-Jews lived on the same streets, with Jews mostly on one side.

Lys tells of the town's synagogues and says Jews prayed secretly in his father's house after the war. The synagogue buildings became an evening school, a music school and a factory. He describes celebrating Victory Day with Jewish veterans, the many Jews in professional and official posts after the war, and later emigration to Israel, America and Germany. He mentions a letter from a former teacher abroad, and Kerler ends with a Yiddish phrase question.

Geller gives his birth year (1923), birthplace Kuzmin in the Krasyliv district, and his parents' and grandparents' names; both parents were from Chisinau. His father was a cobbler and his mother a seamstress who worked in a kolkhoz kindergarten; she was admitted to the Russian school because of her father's carpentry. He recounts at length episodes from his father's tsarist army service, including a conflict over spoiled meat, a fight, imprisonment, and later service with Kotovsky's army.

Geller recounts the outbreak of war in 1941 and the family's evacuation. At the station his mother, a former partisan with Kotovsky, secured a cart by force for the family. His father came back and missed them; he later sent two men with boots. The father then disappeared at the front and was never found, and Geller speaks of how he was missed in Kuzmin.

Geller mentions a childhood friend from Kuzmin with whom he went to school in the same class. He met him again in 1944 at the staff, after his hospital discharge. He tells how the friend's father was killed before the war and buried under a threshold, and was found when a new owner dug there.

Geller recounts his return from the army and his search for work in Kuzmin, where he turned down low-paid jobs, including a mill job, because of his war wounds. A school friend suggested the police, and he passed the medical commission after telling the Jewish woman doctor he could manage. He then describes working his way up from district officer to chief of criminal investigation, and later head of the Izyaslav department, ending as a lieutenant colonel.

Geller talks about his wife Feyge: a Kyiv university student evacuated to Tashkent, she volunteered for the army and served as an artilleryman and then radio operator. Her mother, siblings and grandparents were shot by the Germans, while her father and elder sister hid, the father surviving a pit during the shooting.

Geller says he worked in Slavuta in the police for three years until 1951, with many Jewish clients. He tells how his wounds from the war were missed by X-rays and doctors for years and were only confirmed later, to the surprise of the commission. He also gives his birth year, 1923, and mentions where Kuz'myn lies relative to Krasilov.

Geller answers questions about Kotovsky's brigade. His mother served as a nurse and his father was a soldier. He says Kotovsky was a strong character and may have spoken some Yiddish. After the civil war his parents settled in Kuz'myn where he was born; his father was a shoemaker who met an old comrade in Staro-Konstantinov.

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.

The passage begins with Later's postwar work as director of a large wholesale warehouse and chairman of a cooperative; he mentions a Yiddish journalist. He then tells his life story at Kerler's request: he went into the army in 1940, served at the front, and was twice wounded. He lists his many orders and medals, and mentions the extra pension he receives from the Ukrainian state. He names the places he passed through at the war's end, among them Warsaw, Germany, Vienna and Prague, and says he came on a camp soon after its liberation. He also says he came back to his home town on a short leave and found his mother, brother and other relatives had been killed. A Ukrainian friend of his had told him how this happened. He moved to Kam'yanets'-Podil's'kyy in 1955 and worked there until his eighties. From about 14:00 Kerler turns to a questionnaire on foods and words, and on how Yiddish was spoken in Later's home area. Items asked include gefilte fish and sweet or sour dishes, potato pancakes, words for devil, golem, thanks, please, mouse, house, wife and husband, and numbers. They also cover bodily words, colours and emotions, plurals, 'flowers', 'store', 'attic', 'beam', 'rich man', 'enemy', and the phrase 'to come back'. Later gives local forms and says which ones his own family used.

Gelman gives his Yiddish name and birth date in 1921 and says he lived in Kam''yanets' until the war. He describes his parents and grandparents, including a maternal grandfather who traded in Kitaygorod (Ketaret), and names his three siblings. He then recalls his childhood: leaving a Jewish school after four grades during the 1933 hunger, selling coal he gathered at the station, and his father's hospitalisation. He tells at length of his Red Army service, from the first bombing in 1941 through hospitals, a long march and tank-unit service, to the advance on Berlin in 1945, and mentions a decoration, work in Germany afterwards, and his later work buying cattle. Kerler's questions then turn to prewar Sabbath and holiday life in a poor household: meat versus challah, the mother's blessings, driving for others on Sabbath, the town's trades, the Jewish street, ritual slaughter, Passover preparation, Jewish and non-Jewish friends and neighbours, Hanukkah foods and the bathhouse and mikveh. These parts include terminology for shops, trades and foods.

Outside Gelman's house and on the drive to the old town, a speaker (probably Gelman) with Kerler discusses a small prayer house and the old buildings of the Jewish district of Kamianets-Podilskyi, when they were demolished and when the synagogue was closed by the Bolsheviks. At the former Great Synagogue, now a restaurant, they talk about its origin under Turkish rule and its later history, and local Russian speakers describe its fires and restoration, the old town, the prison, the burnt archive and the church. The speaker (apparently Gelman) tells how his family fled in the war, the sister died on the way and the father died in 1943 (?), and he found his mother and a brother on returning in 1946. From about 26 minutes Kaplan, in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, tells Kerler about the Jewish museum, the community room, the old cemetery with its tzadikim and the synagogue's weekly and Passover events, and about Polish volunteers, the monuments to victims of the camps and ghetto (Pechora, Skazyntsi), his army service and communism, and how prayer continued in homes until a synagogue opened in 1948. He discusses prewar Jewish numbers, synagogues, hasidim and shoykhets, relations with the Baptists who took over a synagogue building, the community leadership, and a critical view of Joint, Hesed and Sochnut aid and of emigration.

In 1930 (?) Gaiviker, as a bold young man, took a train to Moscow wanting to live in a big city. He was frightened on arrival, had no ticket home and stayed, working in barbershops; he was later sent to Berdychiv and drafted in 1934.

Gaiviker recalls cheder: the teachers Motl and Khayim of Medzhibozh, a teacher's wife, the whip, and a prank of tying a sleeping teacher's beard to the table. He says he studied the siddur and Humash but remembers little. He remembers visiting cantors, among them Shulman and Borskii (?), and singing next to the cantor as a boy. He adds his fear of horses in the cavalry.

Gaiviker says his father and aunt died in evacuation in Uzbekistan, and tells how he met his future wife after the war through a soldier in Poland. He is thankful to her and says they have lived together since 1945, calling her a good Jewish soul.

Lemster asks whether they heard the first Ostrapol performance; Gaiviker says he has forgotten many stories and that he is the only person of his generation left. He recalls the war in aviation, the route through Stalingrad and Kaunas, and thanks his wife. Sonya notes his father died of hunger under occupation and comments on unrest in Ukraine today.

Gaiviker says he served in Berdychiv for two years and describes it as a lively, very Jewish town, smaller than Khmel'nyts'kyy. He then talks about his health: he is nearly blind after an eye operation and hard of hearing, and walks with a stick. Kerler asks about rabbis.

Asked about the word dybbuk, Gaiviker says it means a bad person. He recalls being born into a poor home, his stepmother, the war and bombing, Hanukkah gifts and games, and latkes made from potatoes. The questions about shalakhmones and tatshikelekh are interleaved.

Yarmolnik says that in evacuation in Uzbekistan she spoke Yiddish with her mother, while her father and brother were in the army. She gives her brother's name as Misha and her father's name, and Lemster mentions acquaintances named Gravits in Bessarabia.

Kaviner and Kerler discuss Yiddish writers and critics, chiefly Nakhmen Mayzl, whose son Khayim, a doctor, Kaviner knew from the army, and Marek Varshavski, author of a famous song. They also talk about which Yiddish poems were not printed in Soviet times. Kerler asks him to sing something, and they talk about sending him materials and about writers buried in America.

Vaisblai sings a Yiddish song about ten kopeks, and Kerler has him repeat it line by line so the words can be understood. He then explains in Russian and Yiddish that he learned such songs from Jewish officers who came back from the front. He says he did not understand them at the time but learned them anyway. He adds that no one in Khmel'nyts'kyy is left who could tell these things.

Smelanskii tells of four years at the front, being wounded twice, and service that began in the infantry and continued as a machine-gunner and then in the artillery. He mentions the Donbas and the Caucasus, hospital after his second wound, and staying in the army until 1948. He says he has lived in Kyiv since 1984, and that his first wife died in 1983 and a second wife died after five years.

Shapiro describes a questionnaire from a Jewish institute in Kyiv about his family, and the booklet he made with family information and photographs of old Kyivans. Kerler says the team is going to Vinnytsya the next day. Shapiro recalls that no pogrom occurred in his town. He shows photographs of his parents, siblings and sisters to the camera, with Katz and Kerler naming them. He says one brother is in Israel and another fell at Stalingrad.

Informal talk over photographs. Shapiro identifies himself and his wife, who died not long ago, in a picture. There are exchanges about where people lived, one of them in English and Russian. Shapiro touches on his army service. Kerler then asks Shapiro to tell more about his childhood and earliest years and his kheyder teacher.

Shapiro describes the Krochyk synagogue before the revolution, with a choir of twenty and Yiddish singing, and funerals with a children's choir; Kerler and Katz question him about klezmer and music at weddings and burials. He says it was the finest synagogue, held services in Yiddish and was supported by wealthy members. Kerler and Katz ask him to sing a children's song, and he says he must prepare. He recalls being given a piano during the war by the wealthy Rabinovich, and being sent to Moscow to fetch an aeroplane and speaking with generals there. The passage ends as Kerler proposes a pause.

Shapiro describes the synagogues of Vinnytsya, among them a workers' synagogue and one connected with a hasidic rebbe, and Katz asks which kind of hasidim the rabbis were. He remembers carrying a tallis as a child, the women's section, a choir and music at one prayer house. He also says his father knew little Hebrew, and that he himself later became an officer.

Kerler explains the video-archive project and the team's plan to travel to Shatmar(?) the next day. Braverman and Semyon introduce themselves. She comes from Solkhov, about 25 km from Berdychiv, was named Faigele, and was born in 1923 (Kerler makes a special exception to the post-1920 birth rule). Semyon is from Zhmerynka, his father from Hryntsiv (?) and his mother from Derazhnia; he finished Ukrainian school as the war began, was taken into the army, and did not hear Yiddish for fifty years.

Torchinsky tells how his mother, after her trade was liquidated, joined a Jewish collective farm and worked as a cook and later in the fields. She suffered from Parkinson's disease. He describes the move to Kyiv in 1934, helped by friends, and working at a repair factory. His sister Freyde came too and worked as a planner at the factory after a technical course in Kharkiv. He then moves to his army service from 1938.

Torchinsky reads his own poem to his wife, written in the 1980s for her jubilee, about their meeting in Pereiaslav, three months of marriage and separation in the war. Another poem reads as a letter from the front in Bessarabia, mentioning being wounded in 1942. Kerler and Torchinsky then discuss her name, Mariam, Maria and Manye. Kerler asks to hear about how he became a teacher.

Khandros relates how his grandfather, from a family of melamdim in Chernobyl, was orphaned in an epidemic, was taken as a child by cantonist recruiters and served in the army for many years. Afterwards he studied in Zhytomyr, and Khandros tells why he came to Ozarinets: as a boy he had been a friend of a tsadik's grandson of the Twersky dynasty, who later became the tsadik of Ozarinets. Khandros discusses the tsadik's grand wedding and says he will tell more in the third part of his book. Kerler also asks whether the Russian term for the Pale of Settlement existed in Yiddish.

Khandros talks about the poet Shloyme Roytman, secretary of the Yiddish section of the Soviet Writers' Union. Kerler asks about his role. Khandros says Roytman's brothers were shoemakers in Mohyliv, where Roytman survived hard months, and that Khandros organised an evening about him there. He then turns to his own army posting after the war, which brought him to Grabovets and Bialy Wody.

Khandros describes how he experienced the end of the war: 1 May 1945, with the cavalry advancing toward the Elbe, German equipment and scattered newspapers, and his first hearing grass grow. He heard the Berlin radio announce Hitler's death. A friend who rode ahead to announce the German surrender was shot by a German. Khandros explains a term from the interrogation of prisoners, with Kerler asking about a word, and says he served as German interpreter.

Khandros tells how he and other Jewish war veterans were bused to Babi Yar when the American president and his wife visited Kyiv in 1991. Afterwards he met in the Jewish library a man who had survived five camps and learned Yiddish in them. He wrote an article about him, and in the mid-1990s took it and his film about his town to Israel, where a Sokhnut official recorded him. Kerler then says it is late and proposes another meeting. Khandros ends with a story of a New York foundation director who did not answer about the film.

Krotsh sings a Hebrew song and says the tune came from the tailor he worked for. He tells a story about a bearded Jewish tailor who was called up in the First World War and was released after the rebbe's prediction when two generals quarrelled. Kerler asks about the Romanian phrases in the story and then about the Stefanester rebbe's miracles.

Krotsh describes how he came as an apprentice to a tailor in Ştefăneşti. His master was a respected man who went to the rebbe's prayer house and spoke only Yiddish. He tells the master's story of a man who asked the rebbe not to be drafted in the war. He also tells of a military tailor who botched a general's coat and was saved by the rebbe's advice. Lemster asks about other rebbes and about people travelling there from Iaşi and Bălţi.

Vider briefly tells of the war in Russia, where Jews were at first not taken into the army, and says he fell ill and the doctors would not let him go. Lemster asks about Itsik Manger and drinking songs. Vider says he was born in Sighet, moved to Hîrlău at age three and stayed about ten years. He mentions a younger brother who was killed, then went to Iași to study at a yeshiva. He wanted to learn carpentry, but his mother, helped by relatives in America, persuaded him to learn tailoring as an easier trade.

Katsman says he lived in Korosten' until 18, then studied medicine in Kyiv and finished in 1937. He became a military doctor from 1937.

Katsman names his parents, his father a worker, his mother a pious housewife, and his two brothers Dovid and Leybl. Leybl was a pilot killed in the war; Dovid died after it. Kerler and Katz ask what the town was called in Yiddish. He then describes his grandfather, a melamed who taught four future rabbis, and his grandfather Elye in Chopovychi, who died over a Sabbath reading, aged about eighty.

Prompted by Kerler to speak Yiddish, Katsman tells of his war: he was in the Minsk underground for several months, then chief doctor of a partisan brigade in Belarus, treating partisans and villagers. He later served in the army as a doctor and was wounded. He says the partisans blew up railway tracks and took people out of the Minsk ghetto, about twenty-seven of them, young people, some of whom may still be alive. Kerler promises another interview within a year.

Skop talks about being taken in 1940 with other Jewish children to a vocational school to learn a trade, and then, aged seventeen, being sent to Siberia. He was drafted into the army at eighteen. He fought at Stalingrad, in the Donbas, at Kursk and Dnipro, then in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Continuation of the museum visit. The guides show books, newspapers and a songbook from a festival at which songs were sung in Yiddish, and mention a play about Janusz Korczak. They describe the activities of the regional association of Jewish shtetls: outreach to small towns and villages, finding people of Jewish descent, Holocaust lessons in schools, Jewish participation in the Red Army, a regional Sunday school, a family camp, festivals, community programs and charity. They add that the Jewish population is aging and shrinking, with some emigrating to Germany, and that the programs depend on volunteers and have funding problems.

Belobrov describes the wartime evacuations, three in all: near Rostov, then near Stalingrad, then to Kemerovo. At fourteen he worked in a factory casting aerial bombs there until 1945. The family was kept mobilized afterwards. His father was drafted into the army in 1941.

Kislinskaia speaks of religious life after the war: she fasted on Yom Kippur and fetched her mother from private services. Her brother served in Kyiv, married there and left for Israel, where his wife died. She describes his children and her own non-Jewish son-in-law. She tells Kerler she was never taught to pray under the Soviet regime.

Groysman talks about his family today, with grandchildren in Kyiv who sing Yiddish songs, and shows photographs of them. Asked about a school day in Tarashcha, he describes the school and his schoolmates. He talks about young people leaving the town and about dances and social life. He then shows a photograph of Stalingrad veterans with himself in it.

Gershtein gives personal and family details. His Yiddish name is Avrom, and he was eighteen during the war years. His father Motke(?) was born in Holoby in the 1870s (?) and worked at a slaughterhouse. His mother Gitl sewed at home on a machine together with another woman. There were six children. Gershtein names several siblings, among them Shmuel, Khave and Yankl, and says some family members went to America and Israel after the war while he was in the army. His grandfather Moyshe Itskhok died in America (Detroit?). Gershtein also recalls his uncle, aunt and three children killed in the woods, and says the town was called Kovel in Yiddish.

Town footage and talk about the team's route (Lviv, Drohobych, Chernivtsi, Stanislav, Podolia), then talk in Russian and Yiddish about a nearby former Jewish shtetl whose name is unclear in the transcript, with a tsadik's grave. Oykhovitch points out a building that once had Stars of David on its rings and balconies. The tape ends with the Victory Day memorial service, with Russian and Ukrainian speeches, a discussion of five honoured soldiers (one with a Jewish father), and the parade.

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.

Nisman says the Chernivtsi ghetto was run by the Romanians, who deported people to camps near the Bug. She saved her parents and a sister there, and the parents died in bed later. She then goes through her siblings: Leah, Shikele (Yeshaya), who served in the army and worked in Odessa and Kyiv, Esther, and Khayim, who died young in Samarkand. Nakhmen died in evacuation and Avrom of an illness. A second voice, probably Veidlinger, mentions his age and that he is from Toronto.

Leibel gives personal information, including the Yiddish forms of his first and family names, with Kerler discussing diminutives. He mentions cousins who went to Palestine as pioneers in the 1930s. His family was poor: his father was a petty trader and his mother helped him. Two sisters, Gitl and Faygele, are named. His parents and sisters all died in the Rivne ghetto while he was in the army.

Brandler recalls September 1939, when the Red Army crossed the border into western Ukraine, which he does not call Poland. He describes tanks crossing a river where the bridge broke under the first tank, and says the Polish army surrendered and was taken to a camp. He then returned toward Mostiska.

Leibel begins mid-thought about being taken into the army and leaving his elderly parents alone, and about how much they suffered. He gives the names of his parents and two sisters and says he was the only son. He states that his father was born in Rivne, without a year, and names grandparents and a grandfather, some of the names unclear in the transcript. He also mentions a rebbe from a village visiting the synagogue on a Sabbath.

Briefly recounts what happened after the war. After the partisans she went with her unit to the Carpathians and worked in a hospital for wounded soldiers, and the military commissariat then assigned her to a military hospital. Kerler remarks that his mother also became a nurse. She reflects on how the survivors felt, wild and unlike normal people, and on her age.

Shvardovskaia discusses who among her acquaintances spoke Yiddish, including a friend in Lviv, and says the family did not always speak Yiddish with visitors. She says she married in 1944 (?) after the war, with a matchmaker mentioned, and answers Kerler's question about the best time of her life. She names her army service as that time and recalls the end of the fighting and the question of where to go afterwards. A woman invited her to travel home to Kharkiv, and she mentions her husband.

Shoikhetman tells of a well-off local owner with a large building in the town centre and of a young person connected with him who hid gold, escaped to the forest and was later taken into the army. Who the person is and how he relates to the speaker is unclear in the transcript. Kerler asks what languages he spoke, and Shoikhetman then estimates how many Jews were in the town after the war, perhaps about a thousand.

Kaplan complains about the separation of women and men in the synagogue, which Kerler says is a debated issue among religious groups. He remembers a prewar Jewish wedding of his mother's sister with a rabbi, chuppah and badkhn, and mentions the breaking of plates at weddings. He answers questions about Purim (Purim players, going to neighbours, sending festive plates, shalekh-mones). He describes the isolation from Jewish life during thirty years of army service, Passover matzo baking at home with the utensils kept in the attic, the pre-Yom-Kippur meal and Sabbath cholent baked in the oven.

Nayman describes coming home after the war to find his parents gone, not knowing where they were killed; he says Kaddish for them yearly. He gives approximate birth years for his parents and says he was taken into the military in October 1942. Kerler asks what he knew then of the killing of Jews; Nayman says he knew little and heard only of deportations to Germany.

After demobilization Tzentziper was offered the chance to stay in the army, but he returned home because his father had come back from the front without a leg. He worked at several places and finally in a tobacco factory (?). There he was a senior foreman in the metal-stamping shop, sometimes standing in for the chief, with S2 helping with Russian terms. He learned the work on his own.

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.

Kipervaser describes prewar Berezdiv: everyone had a trade (shoemakers, tailors), people got along and knew each other, and the synagogue was near their home. She remembers a chuppah. Her parents kept a kosher home, and her grandmother lit Sabbath candles. Her husband, also from Berezdiv, went to cheder; they studied together at school. He was called up in 1940, served at the front and ended up in Germany, and learned German. They keep Yiddish books, observe holidays and light memorial candles. Their son speaks Yiddish and knows the holidays.

Feldman tells about his younger brother who served in the army in the Far East, and came home with medals and crosses. His father threw the uniform into the river and the brother swam after it. He emigrated to America before a war, was drafted in World War I, wounded, and later as a veteran sent money so that their mother received 38 dollars a month. Feldman names the brother in America (Harry) and says their house was bought with that money.

Stotland tells of his wartime experience: after the bombing he wandered, arrived at the railway station in Kharkiv, and helped at a field kitchen beside a military train. He then volunteered for the front and served until the end of the war. He was wounded twice and became an invalid. On returning to Ovruch he found no one, worked at a hotel, and met his future wife.

Turovskaia recounts in detail the evacuation of her family. Her grandmother was dying but urged the family to leave, and a teacher neighbor took Turovskaia to Kharkiv. The grandmother was carried to a wagon among pillows and taken to the station and by train toward Chernihiv. Turovskaia dug trenches, then received a telegram saying the family was at a kolkhoz in the Tambov region and traveled with Polish Jewish refugees. At the kolkhoz she found no one, and a woman from Ovruch helped her find her mother. The family later went on to Buryat Mongolia in Siberia. Her father fought at the front and returned in 1946. She describes the destruction of Veledniki when they returned, including the roofs taken by Hungarians.

Turovskaia describes her family. She lived with parents and siblings, and the family dwelling is described. She names her paternal and maternal grandparents and uncles. Several relatives were killed, among them her brother, shot by Germans, and her uncle Yitskhok, taken into the army. A man from Old Veledniki reported him, as she says. Kerler records the names.

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.

Turovskaia describes her father's release from the front in 1942, his swollen state and his time in a hospital with a Jewish surgeon, where he prayed on Yom Kippur. He then went back to the front in Karelia and she recounts an incident about a mine. Lemster and Kerler then ask about the age of the dress.

In the Berdychiv synagogue Kerler and Lemster speak with several congregants about praying and about a minyan. They recall that the team had visited before, in winter and summer, for interviews, and mention a late rabbi (called a tsadik(?)) who was ill in 2005. A congregant relates that a Jew ran out of a mass-killing pit during the German occupation. A man introduces himself as Berzon, born in Berdychiv, says he lost an older brother, fought at the front and was invalided, and the interviewers ask to speak with him and his wife. Much of the stretch is garbled.

Zak tells how the family left in evacuation: her brother and brother-in-law were sent to the front, and her father did not return. Two sisters died in Polonne, and others are in America and Israel. She mentions her postwar work as an official in an organisation and as a librarian, and that she and her husband now live alone with no family nearby, apart from a relative in Moscow.

Fish, in Russian and Yiddish, names and explains his medals and orders. They include the Order of Glory, a Ukrainian order, the Zhukov medal, a medal for the defence of Stalingrad and a victory medal. Kerler comments on a long-service award.

After the war Kurliandchik returned to Novohrad-Volyns'kyy and found his eldest brother's family back from evacuation. His second brother was killed in Crimea in 1942, after being in Azerbaijan and Iran. Kerler then says he will return to Kurliandchik's childhood and ask whether his parents arranged Jewish teaching for him.

Describes a happy childhood home in Berezdov with her mother, two uncles and a sister (?). Her mother was Khane (name heard as Khaye), and her father Leybke died of typhus around 1919; he worked in forestry, hauling timber for wealthy owners, and her mother worked at home and later as a cook. She names her two brothers, Shaye and Shleyme, who did not return from the war; they served as a pilot and in rocket forces.

Frayerman worked in the bank and transport office in Novohrad-Volynskyi until the war. Her husband Gershon died in February 1943 (?), four months before the younger son was born, and she raised their two sons alone. Both sons became military officers, the elder a lieutenant colonel (?), and her son talks in Russian. She shows photographs of grandchildren and the family.

Asked about his friends, Kleiner says they were both Jewish and non-Jewish. He recalls growing up poor in a family of nine children, and his eldest brother who worked in the fields. He was the only one of the family to survive and served in the army. He kept the Sabbath, worked with horses, and says he was a Jew. A second voice adds that he worked in the post office and was drafted in 1939.

The second voice says Kleiner served in the Far East, returned and was called up again when war began. He is now a retired major. After the war he worked in the post office, as did his wife and daughter. He says he never joined the Party, the Komsomol or the Pioneers.

Kleiner describes his cheder teacher, Pinkhes, and the books studied, from age seven to nine. He says he finished ten classes and speaks Ukrainian well. He recites Ukrainian verse by Shevchenko. In the army he did not eat non-kosher food. He also says there were three ritual slaughterers in Yampil'. The Pioneer question comes up again.

Vainshelboim recalls that the Soviets arrived in 1939 and he was taken into the army. He describes Ostroh before the war as an entirely Jewish town with many synagogues. The great synagogue still stands, and he tries to recall the Hebrew inscription in gold letters over its entrance, without success.

S2 asks about Birobidzhan during the war and Bivson describes hunger, eating groats and leaves, her mother working in a canteen and her father's odd jobs. She says her sister later worked in a kindergarten and died five years ago in Pervomaisk, and that her sister's husband was a Russian colonel who liked Yiddish.

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.

Miaskovskij is interviewed after a move to another room. He gives his name and his father's name, and gives dates of death for both parents and for a sister. He tells an anecdote about a Soviet delegation and a KGB minder who understood no Yiddish. He says he finished ten classes in Tomashpol' in 1941 and then served at the front, with orders and medals. His father was a factory worker and his mother a seamstress; the family was once rich but lost everything after the revolution. He names childhood friends and other townspeople. He mentions that he wrote a poem and sets it to music, sings Tum balalaika and other Yiddish songs, and says his father's books are still in the attic. He studied at the Moscow institute and says he cannot read Yiddish.

Futiran gives his Yiddish name and age, and says he was born in Tomashpol' and comes from a long line of local people. He names his father, a coachman (balegole), and his mother, an orphan from Tomashpol', and says there were six children. Two brothers were killed at the front in 1944, and other brothers are named. Futiran says he later learned the hatmaker's trade from Jewish masters, and he worked for decades as a hatmaker. He mentions two marriages, the second to a non-Jewish woman, and two sons in Moscow and Israel. He recalls a poor childhood, four years in a Yiddish school before a Ukrainian one opened, and a Jewish library. He also recalls Yiddish songs, klezmer music, Jewish weddings with a huppah, and visiting Yiddish artists. He speaks of hunger in 1933, evacuation and work during the war, and eight synagogues in the town. Kerler and Lemster ask about coachmen's stories and songs, and the father's song is mentioned. The passage ends in his workshop with a Singer sewing machine and hats the visitors try on.

In answer to Kerler's request for childhood memories, Shveibish says she grew up in Tul'chyn on a street whose name is unclear and was the third of three children. She names her brothers, Velvl and Borukh. The elder studied in Odessa, was invalided in the war and died; the younger was with her in the camp and was killed in the army in April of the war's final year. She was left alone and was helped by townspeople with tea, soup and bread.

Kogan recounts escaping from Pishchanka and returning to Bershad', where his mother was still alive. He hid in a chimney and then in a non-Jew's attic for about a week. He mentions being drafted at seventeen and spending two months at the front, reaching Berlin. The year is given as 1944, with Kerler adding the month.

Kerler asks whether Kogan wrote songs after the war. Kogan says he spent seven years in the army and stopped writing. He then discusses his Yiddish schooling in Bershad, six years of Yiddish before Ukrainian, Russian and German in the seventh. He names two teachers, one of them Soprun (?), recalls Soviet-era Yiddish literature and grammar, and lists Mendele, Sholem Aleichem and others, with translations from Ukrainian authors.

Answering Lemster and Kerler, Kogan says the best time of his life came after he returned from the army. He then declines a drink, saying that his hands shake.

Lev and Yenta speak about Jewish war heroes and honours, and about Jews' part in the war. Kerler then asks Lev to talk about his medals. The passage is badly garbled.

Yurkovetskij answers questions about his life, mostly in a loosely ordered conversation. He says he trained as a driver in Bratslav in 1937 and drove for decades. During the war he drove in Poland and Finland and served in Odessa; he was wounded in the leg, sent home, and later spent a year in the Pechera camp. He drove a general through Budapest, Prague, Vienna and Berlin, and describes the hunger in Budapest and a general's profiteering. He describes the 1919 pogrom in Tul'chyn, in which his father (a hatmaker), mother and grandfather were killed by a bandit band, and how his grandmother raised him and his brothers in poverty, with a Polish priest involved in his rescue. A brother died in the war, and his sons now live in America. He also names the Jewish streets of Tul'chyn and gives the Jewish population as over ten thousand. He talks about Stalin, Trotsky and Lenin, his school, an old synagogue, Poland and Finland in 1939–40, being wounded in Odessa when the war began, the ghetto in Bershad', and the visitors' own homes.

Kerler takes down contact details and names: Matvei Vladimirovich and Efim Isaakovich. Both were born in Uman' and moved with their parents to the town of Buki, fifty kilometres away. Matvei was born in 1928 and Efim a little earlier. He says many Jews were killed in the area and the family fled to a smaller town; in 1940 he was at a military school in Odessa.

Rubin says he and the other go to services on Sabbath. Kerler asks about the year of his marriage, and when he went to Odessa and when he was drafted: he says he was in the army before the war, in 1940.

Efim recalls boyhood in Buki, when he studied four years in a Yiddish school before the communists closed it. He then moved to a Ukrainian school and finished ten classes, and was drafted into the army in the year he finished. He says he can still read and write Yiddish and mentions a small book printed in Hebrew and Yiddish.

Katz and Kerler try to draw Krasheny out about his childhood before the war, and Zoya answers for him. She says his father was killed (apparently shot in the Petliura period), that his mother raised many children, and that he was born in 1912 (apparently). She says his mother and sisters were shot and that he was at Babi Yar and got out of it, and that he served in the army and was taken prisoner. She also gives his name and surname, a telephone number, and says she is named after his mother Zisel.

Waldman talks about the start of the war, when her mother left and her father stayed. He was called up and taken for work or service in the first days of the war. She also describes Uman' before the war, with Jews living in the center and non-Jews in the outer districts.

Zinger describes forced labour under the Hungarians and the Germans, where one could not speak freely. He cannot give the exact year of his father's birth, as he lost his wife in recent years. He met his wife, who was from Voronezh, in 1945. His father served in the First World War and Zinger recalls him laying down his rifle at home. He retells his father's stories of illness and lice at the front.

Zinger recalls the hardships of the war: marching day and night away from the front, bartering for food, and a severe winter at labour service. He fell into Soviet captivity in 1943 and worked as a tailor, organising a workshop with Romanian tailors and shoemakers in a POW camp. Katz asks about the dates and the camp, which Zinger names as Otman (?). He describes searches of prisoners and the American canned food that improved conditions. He returned home in 1946.

Shor says he was born in Kopayhorod in 1925, and the couple recall that Jews outnumbered non-Jews there before the war. The Yiddish name of the town is discussed and the later district reorganisation. He studied in the Jewish school for seven grades, then in a Ukrainian school until the ninth grade. The war and occupation by the Romanians, life in the ghetto and camp, liberation in 1944 and his call-up to the army follow.

Chirkova explains photographs on the wall, including one sent from America. She says her brother fought at the front and was captured. She also mentions a sister who has died. Another voice asks what Yiddish books she has, and she offers a book.

Chirkova speaks about her awards and medals and her service at the front, and about her poor hearing. She complains of her health and difficulty moving around, and Kerler suggests she get a new hearing device.

After some talk about a chair, Kerler begins the next interview. The interviewee gives his Jewish name Avrom Shmiels, his family name Furer and his Soviet name Arkadii Samoilevich. He gives his birth in Kryzhopil', his parents Shmuel and Beyle and his grandfather who lived to 101. He begins to mention being drafted in 1940.

Furer describes the crowded living conditions of Jews in Kryzhopil' during the occupation. He tells of his younger brother, drafted at 17 and sent to work in a kolkhoz, who was killed in 1943 at 19. He then says he himself was wounded and concussed, and begins on the Caucasus.

Kerler closes the interview and thanks Furer, who says in reply that he cannot walk and has heart trouble and bronchitis. He adds that he suffered from the frost, mentioning Stalingrad.

Vaisman recalls being drafted into the army in 1943 and serving until 1946, then returning to Berdychiv. Asked about life before the war, he says it was very hard, with hardly any bread. His mother worked at a factory washing, and Lemster presses him on her job. He names his sister Sonya (Yiddish Sara), who is still alive.

Asked about the 1932–33 famine, Vaisman says only that they were always hungry and ate cornmeal porridge (?). He did not know his grandfather, who died in 1927. His mother spoke Yiddish at home but could not pay a melamed, so he had no cheder. He recalls evacuation with his mother until 1943, after which she stayed with his sister in Central Asia while he was taken into the army and was in Romania. The passage ends with Katz asking about songs.

Katz describes her nursing training and being taken into the army. She recites the Soviet military oath, in Russian, and describes her training. She was sent to Poland, and after the Polish campaign she brought wounded back to the hospital in Vinnytsya. She also tells of working in a factory and singing in a choir, and of the outbreak of war on 22 June 1941, the call-up and soldiers coming to her window.

Katz recalls the first night of the war in Vinnytsya: a plane overhead, the first bomb falling on the old town, and paratroopers. She describes her work in the sanitary service with the wounded, and tells of the Banderites and her marriage while her husband was at the front.

Katz says she has a son and a daughter, who has two children. Her son is a doctor. She was herself wounded near Stalingrad, next to a factory.

Katz says she was wounded twice and is now a disabled person of the second group. She mentions receiving a decoration or certificate.

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.

Katz says she never knew her grandparents. Asked about the happiest time of her life, she names her wedding after the war, and tells how she met her husband, a film mechanic, through his first wife, who was killed in the ghetto with their children. She also recalls meeting him in Kyiv, and tending the wounded General Vatutin, who died there.

Fishman says he was an only child. During the war the family lived at a station near Tashkent, where his mother worked in a kindergarten and he finished several grades of a Russian school. His father served at the front as a junior lieutenant and came back. Lemster asks how people said 'came back' in Yiddish.

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.

Khazin shows and explains his medals: Prague, Berlin, the Great Patriotic War, the Zhukov medal, labor and the Lenin jubilee medal, and the guards badge. Kerler asks about his father, who was imprisoned in 1937 for seven and a half years on a slander charge, then rehabilitated; a maternal uncle, an old Communist, was jailed too. Khazin says his wife Sonia died two years ago after a stroke, a diabetic like her mother, and that he lives with his youngest son.

Khazin talks about his mother's mother, who traded in pots and fed a pig before the war and was buried alive by the Germans. He answers Lemster's question about antisemitism in the army and later, recalling being asked to join the Party in Budapest and a fight at a technical school in Chelyabinsk, after which he left. He mentions his job in industrial supply, a telephone he believes was tapped, and a daughter and a son Boris in Israel (the daughter's married name is unclear in the transcript).

Kerler interviews Goikhman, who gives his name and birth in Pervomaysk on 1 January 1927. He tells of the 1933 hunger, his father's move to Birobidzhan, Russian schooling, factory work and mobilisation to Blagoveshchensk, and his mother's death in 1947. He came to Zhmerynka in October 1947 to his father's brother. He then recalls Pervomaysk as a large town with many Jews, synagogues drawing visiting cantors, and Yiddish-speaking Jewish and non-Jewish friends. He also recalls Sabbath, his mother's gefilte fish with sugar and pepper, Hanukkah gifts, latkes and Purim foods, and the Zhmerynka shul on Sovetskaya Street, later a children's library.

Shpitz recalls how, in Soviet times, he had to hide letters to America from the neighbours because his wife's sister lived there. He says he is 87 and bears the effects of the war in his legs. Kerler asks about his front: he served on the Belorussian front and in Poland, and in a tank battalion, but cannot recall the name of a city.

A long run of questionnaire items: flowers, potato and the Belarusian word for it, 'everyone', at/by the table, 'on the street' versus other forms, a rich man, a fence, the face and its descriptive words, 'back', 'suddenly' and others. Kerler and Katz also probe prepositions and phrases such as 'on the road', and the informant remarks on which words are not pure Yiddish. From about 38:16 the informant says that he was born in a small town near Warsaw and that he was evacuated to the Urals, working on a kolkhoz in the Yelansky district. His brother was killed at the front, and he came to Zhytomyr in June 1944.

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.

Geller speaks about family names, including how a relative received the nickname Tatele. He remembers writing home from the front and hospital in Russian with Yiddish letters to get past the military censor. Today he and Leyzer speak Yiddish every morning, which he says keeps Yiddishkayt alive as it dies out.

Brief discussion of the successive names of his hometown. Kerler states the date and place of the recording. Shraibman explains that his patronymic was changed in his army-college documents in 1949 and how a general reacted to it.

Shraibman describes working after the army, first in a power-supply job and then repairing household appliances. Kerler remarks that this is a handyman and then turns to the atomic-bomb experiments in the army.

Shraibman describes the secret atomic-bomb test of 1954, including the Totskoye exercise. He was a lieutenant who escorted generals to the site, and he reports that about twenty-five of his colleagues died of radiation. He describes the dosimeter rings used and how little was known at the time. Kerler then asks about childhood.

Burshtein, interviewed by Kerler, says he was born in Goworowo, a small town near Warsaw (Polish Goworowo, Yiddish Govrove). The recording date is given as 23 May 2003. He came to Zhytomyr in June 1944 after evacuation in the Urals (a kolkhoz in the Elansk district), having first gone with Zhytomyr Jews, who then left. He recalls that his brother was taken into the army and was reported killed at the front.

Shpitz says he left school to work in a felt-boot factory, whose director, Bukhshteyn, was Jewish. He had no chance to study because his father could not support it. He was drafted for the war in Poland in 1939. He recalls his mother coming with a letter, in a passage that is garbled and includes a Russian phrase.

Nibulskaia describes the synagogue in Zhytomyr with its shames and gabbai, then talks about her brother David, who went to the front and had a wife and child, probably in Moldova. She gives her husband's biography: evacuated with his parents, he studied at a pedagogical technical school and an institute, and later taught drawing. They lived poorly with three children, moved to Zhytomyr in 1977, and she taught math for 39 years.

Informal greetings and banter with the community members, including talk about the cassettes and when copies will be sent. Kerler asks one man where he is from: a native Zhytomyr man born in Polikovka (?), he was at the Stalingrad front and returned in 1945. He recalls his father hiding his observance when he was about twelve, says he worked as a house painter, and explains that the name Motl comes from Mordekhai. The passage ends as Kerler asks about news from Pyotke.

Kerler notes that the speaker was at the front for four years. He talks about the medals he received, including a later Israeli medal for Soviet veterans, which he says his children keep as a memento.

He tells how he searched house to house in the Volga region and found his grandfather in a village on the Volga bank, recognising him by his fine beard; they were reunited there. Three months later, in 1942, he was drafted into the army.

Kerler asks whether Shraibman met antisemitism in the army or the Soviet period. He says he never hid being a Jew and refused to tolerate antisemitic jokes. He tells of a confrontation with drunken antisemites at the Kyiv station and with a major ranting about Jews in a taxi queue. A passing exchange partly in Russian shows the man knew a relative of his, and Shraibman insists he will not allow such things while alive.

Margolis mentions the evacuation. Parts of the account are garbled, but a region (Orenburg (?)) is named and his father was in the army.