Birth, coming of age, death

Kerler asks about the expressions "a good Jew" and "a good place" in a cemetery. Gross talks about relatives buried there and about hasidic rebbes, mentioning the Satmar rebbe and Kaliver rebbe. He sings the Kaliver rebbe's Hungarian tune and says a relative was the Kaliver rebbe's attendant.

Smajovics talks about his education. He began cheder at four, following his older brother. He learned to pray early and was taught by the dayan, then celebrated his bar mitzvah in Adar. He then attended the local yeshiva until about 1938. He also says his grandfather was not a Hasidic man.

Herbst talks about the languages and communities of the region, comparing Ruthenian, and Maramureş Jews with those of other places, and says there was little culture in his area. Kerler brings him back to cheder at Rakhiv, followed by yeshiva, bar mitzvah and Friday evenings at a young rebbe's home in Oyber-Vishev (?). He returned home in 1938 when the Hungarians moved in, and recalls his studies of Talmud and Hebrew texts.

Rezmovits talks about his family, six children in all, including his sister Gitl, and the deportation of the mother and children, while his father stayed in Hungary on forced labor and kept kosher. He tells how his father found a wallet with 800 pengő during the economic crisis of the 1930s and returned it despite the family's poverty. His father was respected among Jews and non-Jews alike, as many non-Jews came to his funeral.

Herbst answers questions on what Yiddish speakers called forest workers and peasants, and on how the word 'goy' was used. He then describes childhood games, including sledding and a ball game with homemade equipment. He recalls how one big loaf of bread, baked by his mother, had to last a week, and what he took to work. He mentions wild berries and fruit picked in the woods. Towards the end Herbst turns to his plot in the cemetery and the stone on which he wrote his ancestors' names. Kerler discusses function words such as 'oder' and 'ober' and mentions a scholarship at Bloomington.

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

Pearl describes the mikveh in Tállya: a spring with water from the hillside, heated with an iron vessel and wood. He answers Kerler's terminology questions about it and says the pious men went there daily and that it was fully heated on Fridays. He names Rabbi Mordechai Rosenberg and three young men, Teitelbaum and Markovitsh among them, who went with him to Dachau on the march and were shot. Pearl also speaks of the death march at Bor and says he can show the photographs from the book.

Pearl discusses how matzo was made before the war: shmura matzo baked for weeks before Passover and regular mitzvah matzo baked on the eve of Passover, in a place in the village where each household did its own. Kerler then asks about what is said when mentioning a deceased person, and Pearl recalls that the dead were addressed at the grave with the name of a mother. He recalls this from age six or eight.

Gotlieb recalls childhood years and a song about her little town (rendered as Belz?). She says she visits the grave of the Yismach Moshe every few months to pray for health. She describes keeping Sabbath with kiddush and havdalah as she learned it from her mother, and says her sisters stayed behind.

Gotlieb says her family was Ashkenazi (not Hasidic) with twelve children, and explains the Yismach Moshe as a Hasidic rabbi who she says waited for the Messiah in a tree. She says her town had three yeshivas and a community, a Jewish population of 3,800 (as heard) among around 14,000, and a beautiful river. She says she went with her father to the Yismach Moshe's grave, and her mother consulted a pious man about kosher questions, but sick people went to the doctor.

Gotlieb answers questions about food and kinship-related terms: flodn, kugel, the Sabbath morning cake (koilitsh versus khale), the dough offering taken from challah and the word for midwife. S3 and Kerler help in Hungarian and Yiddish when she cannot find the Yiddish word. Kerler and Gotlieb also compare Slavic words and names such as her husband's and Kerler's.

Smajovics talks about visits to his home area after the war and about the Jewish cemeteries in Sevlush, one in the town and another outside it. A few Jews remain there. Kerler then asks him for Yiddish words for a Jewish cemetery, a church, a synagogue, a golem, a dybbuk and a good Jew, and Smajovics gives the terms and explanations. Kerler also asks about pouring a glass of water.

Reti recalls returning to Debrecen after the war, where his oldest brother took care of him. He worked in business for the government under a good non-Jewish supervisor who let Jewish workers keep the Sabbath. He goes to the cemetery on the anniversary of his father's death, who died suddenly in 1939 while Reti was at the yeshiva, and mentions that he was the youngest of his brothers.

Kerler asks what was said when swinging the kapores and what was done against the evil eye. Reti describes pouring coals into a glass of water, and the singing of Shema Yisrael and giving of treats for the newborn son before the circumcision. He and Kerler also discuss naming a girl in the synagogue and giving a name. Reti then speaks of a doctor who keeps a kosher home, and the closing lines turn to the games asked about in Hungarian.

Galambos answers questions about terms for the synagogue and church, about changing the name of a very sick child, and about where the dead were buried before the war, though he does not follow that question. He also discusses knocking on the shutters to call people to services and says he could read some Yiddish before the war.

Faiershtein speaks about her husband, a school director for twelve years, and the school's high reputation, with visitors coming from other republics to learn from him. He died in Chișinău and was buried in Edineț; she mentions that her mother's gravestone and others were smashed at the cemetery. She says life was better before.

Dzigifker answers Kerler's questions about her family: her father died in the 1930s and her mother in the 1970s. She tells how her mother was buried only after the Sabbath. Kerler asks about folk remedies for the evil eye, and she recalls pouring wax or melting lead as a remedy. She then tells a long story, heard from her grandmother, about a tsadik, a woman who tests his faithfulness and a pomegranate tree. Kerler thanks her for it.

Bukshpun speaks about childhood: three children, schooling with Christians, Yiddish at home with other Jewish children, and his mother reading in Yiddish on Sabbath. They told stories in the long winter evenings. He answers questions on the evil eye and its spells, on the Briceni rebbe, on the cemetery and graves at Briceni, and on saying Kaddish.

Lemster explains the aims of the dialect project and asks what 'pure Yiddish' means to her. She says many non-Jews spoke Yiddish and that many Jews lived among Christians. He then asks about words, among them 'meshumed', Lithuanian and Bessarabian Jew, and a 'good place' for a cemetery, 'Jewish field' being the answer she gives. Other topics are the town's trades, Yiddish papers and books, theatre, concerts and cinema, which she says were expensive, klezmer, a wedding with a rabbi, hasidim and a 'good Jew'. She says she knows few of the terms.

Asked about Yiddish sayings and curses, Reizman says she remembers none, and recalls her father kissing the mezuzah, praying in a tallis and being buried in his tallis. She says her mother did not sing and that she herself remembers no Yiddish songs, jokes or wise sayings. Lemster repeatedly prompts for anything she heard from her parents.

Furman talks about fattened poultry, holiday dishes, Shavuot food, Purim gift-sending and meat cutlets. She says few non-Jews spoke Yiddish. She describes the colony's farmers working the land, and the crops grown. She names the village rabbi Chaim (surname given as Feinzilber, then Zilberman) and the shoykhet Hershl, neither of whom returned from the war. She and her husband are asked about chalutsim and about collecting money for Palestine. She also talks about the cemetery in Capresti, where her father and grandfathers are buried.

Boltykh says that all his grandparents died in the camps. His mother's father had been a letter writer, an advocate of sorts, who foresaw the war; he was thrown into a grave at Vertiujeni. Boltykh describes the yearly visit to Vertiujeni on the memorial day, travelling with a group from Bălți, with a kaddish and a rabbi who leads the prayer there.

Mostly travel and chat in a car; the team drives to the cemetery, with Russian remarks and talk about the way. They walk among gravestones and talk about names and families on them. They mention Jews of Edineț (Yedenitser), a woman from Ariv, and that they travel from Kyiv to Chișinău. Much of the Yiddish is garbled.

Goldberg says her son and daughter were born in Bravicea, where the family lived until 1957, when the district was abolished and the Jews left. Questions follow on the Jewish cemetery, terms for it, and whether there was a grave of a righteous man or a prewar rabbi.

Goldberg describes Sabbath table customs with kiddush and zemirot, and says prewar Jewish trades were mainly tailors and shoemakers. She says that now many people want to be Jews in order to emigrate to Israel or Germany. Questions follow on a tale of Hershele Ostropolier, the phrase "over there crazy" about a nearby town, and annual cemetery visits.

Kerler asks how Roif's Yiddish speakers talk about the dead, and Roif gives several set phrases for the deceased and for blessing. They discuss whether a grandfather is said to intercede with God on behalf of the living. Roif also remarks on troubles in Israel and tensions with Arabs.

Zelda sings two songs. The first is about a cheder pupil, Motl, who is beaten by the rebbe and complains to his father; the second is about a drunkard in a tavern who threatens his wife. She says she learned them from Sroel/Israel of Edineț, a relative of Lemster's, but does not recall how they were taught. Lemster mentions that he held his bar mitzvah in Edineț, where musicians played.

Shpitalnik answers Kerler's questions on cultural terminology: the word dybbuk and its local meaning, a convert to Christianity (meshumed), the golem, formulas said after a dead person is mentioned, and a blessing that the deceased may plead for the living. She also recalls a known convert (Rovinovitsh (?)) from before her time.

Lipovetskiy recalls prewar Jewish life in Chișinău: shops and factories, rich Jews helping the poor, and the institutions of a burial society, a mikveh and the large synagogue. He describes the Joint-supported Jewish hospital and clinic. He then talks about postwar shortages and rationing, and about where he lives now and the young people's lack of work.

Lipovetskiy recalls childhood games with Rabbi Tsirelson, the reading of the Shema at a newborn's bedside, and his bar mitzvah. He discusses how Yiddish differs among Jews of Russia and the local Jews, as well as Bukharan, Georgian and Lithuanian Jews. He talks about the Russian-speaking rabbi's Sabbath sermons and says he understands Yiddish. A Russian-speaking woman briefly takes part and the interviewer hears a Hebrew-Yiddish exchange.

Lipovetskiy explains how his mother salted meat to draw out the blood. He talks about his grandmother, daughter of a rabbi, who studied in Yiddish and died in the 1940s, and about visiting the graves of his relatives. He gives the names of his parents' siblings and grandparents; his parents and grandparents were born in Chișinău.

Kishlyansky recalls Briceni as a Jewish town, his observant mother who kept meat and milk separate, and the several ritual slaughterers and a rabbi. He recalls the circumcision custom of reading the Shema, and a few prayer words. He describes Friday and Sabbath at home, with challah, a blessing by his father, and cholent kept in the oven.

Kishlyansky answers Katz's terminology questions: a cemetery, a fence, the word tsadik, and a Lithuanian Jew. He mentions the Jewish wedding canopy and says he does not recall wedding songs. He describes how a woman charmed away the evil eye, with three women sitting on a stone, and is asked about dybbuk and golem, which he doesn't know well.

Sherman tells an anecdote about a Moldovan who asked for the "good Jew" in a town, meaning the rebbe, and was told that all the Jews were good. Kerler and Lemster ask about the phrase "a good place" (meaning the cemetery), words for Lithuanian Jews and Galicians, Hasidim and misnagdim, Polish Yiddish and proverbs; Sherman answers only partly.

Diner speaks about the shtetl's madman, a character called Khantse (?), who shouted in the streets. She names well-off local Jews, among them Sara Fuks's family with a mill, and a dealer in karakul and furs, and says Fălești had three Jewish pharmacies and many doctors. She says Jewish boys went to the cheder and had bar mitzvahs, and discusses circumcision at home. The interviewers ask about girls' observances and other customs.

Mitlaeva answers terminology questions, including the old and new cemetery fields in Chișinău and the meaning of tsadik. Kerler then asks about traditional Jewish weddings, who spoke to the bride and groom, the covering of the bride and women's crying. She recalls little of the details.

Mitlaeva speaks about the women's section of the synagogue, her mother's mikveh visits and her Sabbath headscarf, and her mother's Sabbath reading of the prayer book and Yiddish books. She recalls a Jewish family, Mordechai and Leike and their children, and another very religious family named Stapudis who lived on Nikolaevskaya Street. She also talks about Rabbi Zirlson, who she says was educated and known to the Romanian authorities, and Kerler quotes a 'When in Rome' saying.

Goldman says he still prays and goes to synagogue on Sabbath, but has been ill and not gone for a month. He recalls little of his bar mitzvah or prayers. He says some non-Jews near him spoke Yiddish, as traders buying goods. He recalls Gordonia in Ialoveni, with dancing, and says it had about twenty-five members, boys and girls together. Few made aliyah, perhaps two or three, one named Shaykele Bikhman (?). He cannot recall its leaders.

Rotner answers Kerler's questions about her father's bank in the village and the Jewish cemetery, which was in Orhei. She describes Orhei as a large, beautiful town with a Jewish gymnasium and Jewish doctors and lawyers, where she and her sister studied and boarded during the week while their father drove them there by horse.

Manevich says her mother died in Chișinău and is buried in the Jewish cemetery. Her father was taken in the war and listed as missing, so his grave is unknown. She and her family visit the graves to tidy them and place flowers. Kerler and Lemster ask what she says there, and she answers that she speaks to God daily and asks for what she needs. She says she knows God by the name Hashem, the interviewers mention other names, and she discusses whether the dead can help or hear and her belief that only words remain.

Kerler asks about the meaning of words in local Yiddish, including a stubborn or obstinate person, 'mamzer', and 'goylem'. Rojtman answers using Russian equivalents. She then answers questions on drinking, saying she remembers no vodka but brandy at kiddush and on yahrzeit, and that there was a Jewish tavern. Kerler asks for the Yiddish word for cemetery and for a 'good place', and she gives words for cemetery and explains the customs of visiting graves.

Yaruskaya answers questions about cultural terminology: the meanings of terms for a bad or foolish person, and what a dibbuk is. She explains pouring lead to cure fright, which old women did in Hâncești, and her mother's charms. She says matchmakers were not used in the town. She also describes prewar weddings with fish, bread and brandy, and says her sons had bar mitzvahs in Chișinău.

Yaruskaya says she trained as a motor mechanic and, after the children were small, worked for thirty-six years as a bus conductor. She talks about visiting the cemetery where her mother, husband, sister and father are buried and what she says there. She speaks of her sons and grandchildren, and the son from America who phones and visits.

Gordin says his father prayed only on holidays, with tallit and tefillin, in the synagogue where the women sat upstairs, and that Florești had a shoykhet before and after the war. After the war the family returned to Florești and found their house wrecked. He was married in 1965 and has a son in Ashdod, who knows Hebrew and English and some Yiddish. He travelled to his grandson's bar mitzvah.

Kleyman talks about her husband and his war years in the camp, then gives the names of his father, grandfather and mother. She tells that her husband was buried as a Jew, with his daughter bringing him home in ten days. The passage ends with Kerler asking about her childhood.

Shvartzman answers questions about cultural terms: dybbuk, golem, and a Jew who converted. She says she goes to the cemetery to ask for blessings and to light candles. She also mentions her mother's written blessings in Russian script.

Mundrian talks about prewar Jewish occupations in Susleny, naming shoemakers, tailors and craftsmen. She says it was a large, rich village before the war, and tells how her mother rose early to work for non-Jews. She also speaks of her aunt's life in Zhukovsky and the postwar synagogue, which was still open with few members. She tells of attending funerals and says she herself will find no one to accompany her.

Grinshpun remembers her father praying and singing and making the seder. She recalls her mother's tkhines, and the shroud he left for burial. She says she has lived in Peresecina since 1962, where her son was born. She tells of a relative returning from Argentina and her mother-in-law's family.

Plotnik recalls the village before the war, with about four hundred houses and five prayer houses. She names the tailors' synagogue, the German synagogue, the rabbi's, a klayzl and the one where her father prayed. As the girl, she said kaddish for her father at age seven, since there were no sons. She remembers little of cheder or of religious learning, and her sister studied at the Jewish gymnasium in Soroca.

Plotnik talks about the town's rabbi, Shternberg, whose children went to Israel, and says he asked her to say Kaddish. She recalls that her father often quarreled with the rabbi over money collected for the community. She tells how her father foresaw his own death, with his late father appearing to him in a dream, and describes his last illness. Katz and Lemster then ask whether she remembers more songs, and she says she does not.

Mirenburg describes her family. Her father, from Sguritzy as were his father and grandfather, traded in grain and the family owned about six hectares of field. Her mother had two names and kept a small shop. She says three cousins live in Israel, and that people in the family speak a mixture of languages rather than Yiddish. She recalls her two grandmothers, Rokhl and Etl, and how Rokhl's will left her a pair of gold earrings. She later bought similar earrings and gave them to a grandchild as a keepsake.

Mirenburg describes religious life in Sguritzy: sending questions to the rabbi about whether meat was kosher, and trips to the Ştefăneşti rebbe (Shtefaneshter rebbe), about which she knows little. She answers questions about terms for a holy man and a holy place and about prayer at graves. She also answers questions about drinking, the blessing 'azgile'(?) and folk remedies for the evil eye.

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

Plotnik recalls coming back home after the camp to find the cellar dug up by people looking for gold, and a later visit to Dumbraveni with her boss. She describes yearly visits by her son to the family graves and walking the cemetery with her sister. Lemster asks about other people from Dumbraveni who might be interviewed, and the talk turns to one now in Israel.

Lemster asks Nusbrokh about folk terms: dybbuk, golem, what was said at a grave, the Yiddish word for cemetery, and the idea of praying for the living at a grave. He knows the dybbuk but not golem, and speaks of kaddish and visiting the cemetery.

Grinberg says she goes to synagogue now. She has bought a plot in the cemetery because she wants to be buried as a Jewish woman, in a shroud and with a Jewish burial. She mentions her parents and asks whether the interviewer understood her Yiddish. Lemster then turns to the Jewish holidays she remembers.

Butorski remembers his brother's bar mitzvah, when he first put on tefillin, as a holiday in the house. He describes the ceremony in the synagogue, the small treat of brandy and a bit of food afterwards, and the family gathering. He also recalls children playing with nuts on holidays.

Meir describes folk remedies, such as cooked onions and a leaf, and the practice of pouring coals into water against the evil eye. Lemster asks about the meaning of the terms dybbuk and golem and about the angel of death, and Meir gives his explanations, including the Gomel blessing. At a death, he says, the Mishnah was studied.

David talks about his father's observance and his own lapse and later return to synagogue attendance as community president. He describes the weekly Sabbath kiddush and what Friday-night and Sabbath customs and food looked like in his mother's home, including fish, soup, challah and the koshering of meat. In answer to Kerler's questions he names his grandparents and gives their death years and ages.

Finkel says the Jews of Sulita went to Israel and no one lives there now. She describes visiting the Jewish cemetery about two years earlier with the president of the community and her son. It is fenced with many stones and neglected. She asks who would work there. Lemster asks for the Yiddish word for the fence, and she says her father is in Israel.

Kerler asks about the expulsion of Jews from Sulita to Botoșani in 1941 and about the fire. Finkel says about eighty houses burned, and Kerler corrects the date of the fire to 1935. Her father rebuilt the house and later sold it and left for Israel to join her sister after her mother died in Botoșani. Lemster asks what she says at the grave of her ancestors.

The speaker gives the history of the Botoșani large synagogue. It was built in the 1830s or 1840s (the date is not entirely clear in the transcript) by Jewish families who had come from Ukraine and Russia, and it was the biggest synagogue in the town. He says there were many small synagogues in Botoșani before and after the war. He describes how services are now held on Friday evening, Sabbath and holidays, with about fifteen to twenty men at a minyan, and how the women's gallery was used earlier. He answers questions about the unknown architect and about the old and new cemetery fields, and speaks of Torah reading and Simchat Torah. He also mentions the few remaining Jewish families in nearby villages and the lack of a congregation there.

Cohn answers questions about the meaning of Yiddish and Romanian words. These include dybbuk, golem (including the phrase about sitting like a golem) and terms for a Jewish cemetery versus a non-Jewish burial ground or field. Kerler also asks how a field or cemetery is called in Romanian.

Hershkovich explains the different prayer rites in Cluj, Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Neolog, and why he attended particular synagogues; he mentions that he wears Sephardi tefillin today. He then answers Kerler's questions about expressions such as 'a good Jew' and about words for a cemetery.

Hershkovich answers questions about cultural terminology: words for the cemetery, the euphemism for the evil eye, the difference between rav and rebbe, and the plural forms of these words. He says his father travelled to the Satmar rebbe (Teitelbaum family). His sister brought him a blessed coin from the rebbe, which he still keeps. They also discuss the verb for holding the Passover seder.

Kraus compares prewar Jewish life in Zorein and Cîmpia Turzii, the latter with a yeshiva, a rabbi and many Jewish families. He says his maternal grandfather is buried in Zorein, where the grave is now only marked off. He describes cheder in Zorein with a melamed and a shoykhet, and the education of girls. From age 14 to 18 he learned a trade as an apprentice in Cîmpia Turzii.

Answering Lemster's and Kerler's questions about terminology, Kraus says he knows the word golem, and describes the Yom Kippur custom of shlogn kapores, with a rooster for men and a hen for women. He speaks about Yiddish texts and letters, the term "a gut ort" for a cemetery, and the word for the cemetery used by the community. He says that Romanian and Hungarian are spoken in the community today.

Freundlich says her childhood neighbours were Jewish, with one Christian family on the street, near the Bixad rebbe. She says her father respected but did not follow the Satmar rebbe and refused to kiss the rebbe's hand, and describes the kapores slaughter at home. She also tells of her grandfather's modest death on Sabbath eve in a snowy winter and his instruction to his son-in-law to say Kaddish.

Hershkovich answers questions about cultural terminology. He and Kerler discuss derogatory words for a non-Jewish child and for a non-Jew, and a Jew who behaves like a non-Jew. Kerler asks about the night before a circumcision and how a baby girl was named, which Hershkovich says happened in the synagogue with the father. Kerler then asks what Hershkovich would like remembered about the region.

Opens with a short exchange on Hebrew versus the holy tongue and the Judaic studies department. Freundlich gives her Yiddish name and talks about her father's family: her father was a merchant with a shop in Satu Mare and had studied in Pressburg (Bratislava) with his brothers. She recalls in detail her grandfather's death on a Friday in Hanukkah (a year in the 1920s is heard) and his funeral. She mentions the rabbinic Weisz/Welz family connections and her grandfathers donating a Torah scroll.

Footage of the Bistrița cemetery with a memorial service for Moyshe Grin, with prayers in Hebrew and Romanian by two men, apparently including Miller, and El Male Rachamim and Kaddish. Interspersed are introductions, remarks in Russian and Hungarian and brief comments on tradition.

The informants continue to speak of Grin as the last Yiddish speaker in town and his attendance at High Holiday services. They comment on his well-made tombstone. A proverb is mentioned and the memorial service is touched on, but the passage is fragmentary and hard to follow.

Town footage leaving Mihăileni, then the team at a Jewish cemetery. Kerler and Lemster read gravestone inscriptions and Hebrew dates in Yiddish and Russian, including one mentioning deportation to Transnistria and one for a woman who gave money. They talk about the cemetery's condition and who might know its history.

Grimberg answers Kerler's questions about holiday customs, saying she does not recall Hanukkah food but mentions latkes and other Passover dishes of matzo meal and potatoes. She describes her Purim baking today and her mother's custom, and recalls children with masks going from house to house singing greetings. She talks about the Tishah b'Av customs and about visiting graves, and she is asked about postwar Purim celebrations in the 1950s.

Lipovici's interview begins with a remark about his pension. He gives his name in Romanian form, Lipovici, and his father's name, Shalom. His father worked at a big mill in Dorohoi and died when he was nine. He names his seven brothers and three sisters in part. He says his grandfathers lie in the old cemetery in Dorohoi and mentions Rădăuți and Siret. He also says he studied four classes of primary school and then three of commercial school.

Kerler and Hirsch discuss Jewish cemeteries and what they were called in Luduș (beys-oylem, beys-khayim, or euphemisms such as a 'good place'). They also discuss the sharp decline in the town's Jewish population and the Jewish graves left behind. Kerler then asks whether Hirsch remembers any Yiddish songs from Luduș.

Chajim chants kaddish and prayers for the dead while others in the room prompt him and call out names of the deceased. The speech is largely unintelligible and mixes with Romanian remarks from other speakers.

Answers Lemster's questions on cemetery terms (holy place, field, beis-oylem). Abramovich says he spoke only Yiddish at home and learned Yiddish and Hebrew in a Jewish school, though he could not fully follow Yiddish books. He mentions Jewish libraries with works by Sholem Aleichem and Sholem Asch that were destroyed in the war, and prewar organizations such as Hashomer Hatzair and Gordonia.

Finkelshteyn describes the Jewish bath, the mikveh and Friday bathing, and then synagogues in Iași: the street of the synagogues, with over a hundred prayer houses before the war. He talks about the town rebbe and how people brought disputes to him. Kerler asks whether he was Hasidic, and Finkelshteyn does not distinguish. He also recalls Sabbath evenings with the rebbe and his father's role in resolving disputes.

Finkelshteyn answers questions about prewar Purim. Children, boys and girls, dressed up in each other's clothes. He says he remembers no songs. Asked about a chimney-sweep costume, he turns to the cabs and horse-drawn carriages used in town, since there were no taxis. He then describes the special carriages used for weddings and the hearse, and how mourners followed a funeral on foot to the cemetery.

Hoyshe recalls his father's trade as a baker and speaks about the lyceum, which he began at eleven. He answers questions about his bar mitzvah but does not remember the portion. A recogniser loop and chatter end the chat before the formal interview begins.

Karuel answers questions on drinking customs and on terms such as dybbuk and golem. He speaks about cemetery customs, including kaddish and prayers for health and livelihood. He describes the folk remedy of pouring molten lead or coals into water against fright and the evil eye.

Resh addresses the occupational structure of Chernivtsi Jews: many were officials, merchants and craftsmen (tailors, watchmakers, carpenters), but fewer intellectuals than in Iași. He then answers questions on terms such as gvir, dybbuk, mamzer, golem, and the words used at a cemetery, which he mostly does not know.

Shtaigman says Russian soldiers told them they could go home, and they travelled by train and truck to Chernivtsi, since the front was still at Rădăuți. They stayed about six months before moving to a place whose name is unclear (Mykhalcha?), where his father died in August 1944, at the age of thirty-two. He and his mother then returned to Rădăuți.

Kaizerman talks about kosher butchers, Sabbath morning breakfast with a little wine or brandy, and his mother's healing of the evil eye with water and coals and spoken words. He answers questions about the word for a cemetery and describes going to graves today, asking the dead to pray for the living and for Jewish soldiers. The passage ends with an invitation to eat.

Leichtner describes a remedy against the evil eye: coals dropped into water, with bread crumbs added, and the patient drinking. He explains the sense of terms for the evil eye and for "a good place" (a cemetery or sacred place). He recalls that a rebbe visited villages and people travelled to him for Sabbath, and that as a boy he went with his father to the rebbe, who wrote a kvitl and gave blessings.

Shwartz talks about his work in Oradea after 1966, saying he was the first workman there and received permission to travel to Canada, America and Israel in the 1970s (?). He worked for a priest and later a bishop, and says Jewish customers from America, Israel and elsewhere ordered tombstones. He says he made old stones new and worked in many kinds of stone, including marble and granite, with lettering and decoration, and says he lost count of how many he made, for Jews and Christians alike.

Freundlich sings a Yiddish song about green beans eaten every day of the week and the grave on which a page of Mishnah will be studied. He explains the custom of learning Mishnah during the week of mourning and speaks about a tailor friend and a barber's son. He and Kerler discuss boiled milk and the bread and milk the friend brought.

Grinberg speaks about her mother's recovery after paralysis and the difficulty of finding a caregiver. The conversation covers local Jews who still speak Yiddish, a recently deceased community doctor, and her use of French. The group then discusses a gravestone made during a man's lifetime, other people of the community, and the many synagogues of prewar Rădăuți. The catalogue's recording of her father praying is not evident in the transcript.

Grinberg talks about prewar religious life and charity in Fălticeni: collecting donations for the needy, and the two rabbinical families, including the Rozen family. She says a Rozen rabbi gave her father the name at her naming and names the role of the marriage helpers, with Kerler and Lemster asking about naming customs for girls and the term for the person who gives the name.

Lemster asks Grinberg about the cemetery, what Yiddish word is used for it, and what was said at graves. She describes saying Kaddish and praying in one's own language, and the idea that the dead should not be made to run. They discuss the evil eye and remedies such as coals in water. She then speaks about what young people did at night, the absence of drinking among Jews, and how few Jews remain in Fălticeni today.

Cojocaru says she had a Jewish mother who kept the Sabbath and ran the home. After the mother died, the father remarried, and the stepmother treated the children well. She names the stepmother and says her father attended synagogue morning and evening. She recalls the call to the synagogue in Romanian and tells of a local Jew who married a non-Jew and wished for a Jewish burial. She also mentions the large Jewish cemetery.

Cojocaru says she has not been to a Jewish wedding or circumcision since her daughter's wedding and son's brit. She speaks about a relative in Bucharest who died without papers and was buried with vagrants. She says songs and stories are forgotten when no one sings or hears them.

Mehler speaks about her family: a grandfather, named Mendel Weinstock, and a grandmother who lit Sabbath candles and said blessings. She remembers the grandfather as a rich cattle dealer with a big farmyard and exporting animals, and recalls his funeral. She also says she does not speak Hebrew.

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 answers Kerler's questions about his cheder years. He had three teachers in turn, and for his bar mitzvah preparation he went to a German-speaking teacher named Landesmann (?). He says his father also came to Stropkov, around the 1940s, after the family could no longer live in the village, and the brother went to cheder as well. He recalls that Yiddish and Hebrew were learned there, and the passage ends with a half-remembered reference to Rachel's grave.

Weinberger describes visiting Yiddish performers in Stropkov, among them singers with a harmonica and a Russian-Yiddish singer whose photograph he holds. He names the happiest time as Sabbath and holidays with his family, and describes walking to a mikveh and minyan from his uncle's village. He describes Sabbath and festival food, including fish, cholent and kishke, and says that a drink of schnapps and honey cake was a delight. He also mentions drinking and the preparation of schnapps.

Steiner describes the present Košice community: its members and those outside it, Communist-era informers in the community, a plan to liquidate it, and how he met the community on arriving. He describes the prayer house, the club and his teaching, funerals and the burial society, and the economic situation of Slovakia. He lists Jewish communities in the region (Bratislava, Banská Bystrica, Nitra, Komárno and others), tells of small towns and cemeteries, and discusses whether anyone still speaks Yiddish, including a Slovak folk story about Finland.

Kerler thanks Kazakevich and wishes good health to her, her daughter and grandchildren. She mentions the yortsayt of her father, killed by the Germans.

Bublitskaia describes how her mother prepared for the Sabbath on Friday. She cooked chicken, beans, noodles, sweet carrot dishes, kugel and gefilte fish, not too sweet. Her mother blessed two candles and the children were not taught the blessing. She mentions her brother's bar mitzvah at thirteen with tefillin, and says she was not taught morning prayers.

Skobilitskii explains what Hasidim were and how they differed from ordinary people. He says that Hasidim travelled to a rebbe and that a Hasidic rebbe was called 'a good Jew'. He talks about the grave of Levi Yitskhak, which before was only a mound of earth with a brick border and no monument, and about money for its rebuilding.

Soyfer says his mother died in a Zhytomyr hospital when he was eight and the family grew very poor. He is asked about the Yiddish word for hospital and talks about the grave, his brother, and family members who do not look after the graves.

Kogan tells of the Jewish field in Bershad created with help from America, with a caretaker and a monument, and his last visit in 2003. He talks about his health and thanks the visitors, and Lemster asks him to say more.

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.

Snook talks about her son, who is in hospital after an operation, and about her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, who live in Israel. She says she has two daughters and eight grandchildren and that her son keeps Jewish tradition. Lemster asks whether a mohel was available when he was circumcised. Snook mentions that her husband died fifteen years ago, that her parents lived in the village, and that she was in Auschwitz.

Kerler opens with the date and Kozak's address, then she gives personal details: her Yiddish name Sheyndl (Zhenya in her passport), her birth in Bershad and her maiden and married names. She names her parents, Avrom Hershkovich and Blume Shlomovna, and their birth years; her father was a furrier who worked in the villages, and her mother was a homemaker and, after the war, a baker selling bread at the market. She recalls her siblings, a Ukrainian eight-year school, evacuation to the Caucasus and Central Asia, and her return in 1944 to find strangers in their home. She then describes prewar Bershad as a Jewish town, her grandmother the midwife and her grandfather's death after a rescue in the snow, and the town's water-carrier, shoykhet and mohel. Kerler asks about weddings and klezmer musicians, a relative's wedding in Khust (?), Sabbath cholent and challah, fish dishes, latkes, Passover and Sukkot, and the old synagogue. She ends by singing two Yiddish songs, one of passionate love and elopement and one about a poor orphan boy.

Kerler asks for the Yiddish word for a section or line of the prayer book (ray) and its meaning. Shor reads aloud from the book in Hebrew and Yiddish, a passage about visiting graves of the righteous before Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Gvinter says she had a large wedding of about three hundred guests and a second one a few years later, and mentions a grandchild's name. She explains why she did not emigrate to Israel: her husband's parents, her own parents and a brother are buried in Bershad'. She also describes her daughters' lives and work in Israel, and a grandson working in a restaurant there.

Kerler asks whether her mother taught her folk remedies; Gvinter says her mother was a housewife who did not know such things. She mentions a child of her parents who died of smallpox before she was born. Kerler then asks the meanings of a series of words and phrases (such as a dybbuk, a golem and the Yiddish for a cemetery) and sayings used when speaking of the dead.

Sklyarskiy speaks of the better years after the war, his marriage and the birth of his children. He tells of his daughter, who lived in the Donbas, and her sudden death after a visit to a doctor, and of how he and his sons learned of it by phone. He also mentions her husband, a worker, and his father-in-law, who died at about fifty-four.

Teitel talks about a distant relative of her mother-in-law and about her own family, her husband's death and her grief, and holidays kept only while the older generation lived. She tells of antisemitism in Sarata and why the family did not speak Yiddish, and says her husband praised Soviet power and asked for a Russian burial. She talks about Israel and the Jewish wife's role, and about her own long work life. Near the end Kerler and Milevskaya discuss matzo, the unwillingness of older people to pass Yiddish on, and the postwar atmosphere.

Loyf says she has a daughter in Israel and a son in Berehove, Transcarpathia, who has two daughters. She sorts out when she married and when the son was born, and that he was circumcised in Dzegovka by someone she cannot name. Her grandchildren are not Jewish. Lemster asks whether her mother told Jewish stories, but she says there was no time.

Loyf says there is little to tell and that no Jews live any more in a place whose name is unclear in the transcript. She says she does not travel to the graves of ancestors. She mentions that her grandmother Blime and a sister are buried here, and that she prays to God in Yiddish for health and peace in the world and for Israel. She says few Jews remain here or in the villages. Lemster thanks her at the close.

Berkovich answers questions about terms, including his mother tongue (Hungarian) and the Yiddish for 'cemetery', which he has forgotten. Asked about the town's trades, he lists carpenters, tailors, shoemakers, barbers and wigmakers, and says some Hasidim sold lemonade and ice cream.

Pustilnik talks about life today, saying there are no Jews left and no one to speak to. Her brother and sisters call from Israel and speak Yiddish, and she says she supports her son's children there. She says people were afraid to circumcise under the Soviets, and that she recites the groom song again without completing it. Kerler talks about the archive and about Yiddish speakers in Drohobych (?).

Answers Kerler's questions about Jewish observance after the war. She mentions the memorial-day custom, a lamp burning day and night, and not knowing where her father lies. Of Purim there is little; for Passover she bakes her own matzo at home. She describes Jewish weddings after the war, with Yiddish music and songs, a wedding entertainer (?), and her grandson's groom's cap.

Answers Kerler's questions about cultural terminology. She is asked about a dybbuk and a golem, and says she did not know the first. She gives words for funeral, cemetery and holy place. Kerler checks whether the words are Jewish or non-Jewish usage.

Asked for a Yiddish word for a gravestone, she gives it and says her grandfather's stone in Dzhurin has Yiddish writing. After the war the family brought a rabbi to read it, but no one in Dzhurin now can.

Geller describes the kolkhoz housing, a cotton storehouse where families slept on the ground, and his father's army call-up in 1942. His mother, pregnant, gave birth in Dzhambul; she died in Samarkand and was buried in a mass pit, leaving three orphan sons.

Footage of the old Bratslav Jewish cemetery. Kerler reads Hebrew gravestone inscriptions aloud, works out dates from the letters, and speculates about a woman's grave and about a rabbi's daughter or saintly woman. He mentions names including Yisroel Meir, Menachem Mendel and a Rabbi Mordechai. Other voices comment briefly.

The team visits the graves of Hasidic tzadikim. Kerler and the other interviewer talk about notes (kvitlekh) left at graves and about lighting candles, and Russian remarks mention that candles and notes are not allowed but a toast is. The camera then records the cemetery.

The cemetery caretaker, speaking Russian, shows the team around and gives information about local graves. He mentions a mill owner named Soliterman (?) who was shot, the graves of Nathan and Nachman's Bratslav disciples, and the tourists and Hasidim who come, including large crowds at Rosh Hashanah on the way to Uman and Mezhybizh. He also points out the grave of Kupershmid (?) and his family, a man who saved Jews in the war, vandals taking bricks from graves, and the few Jews still in Bratslav, including an old man David Geller (?) and a woman Kelmenson, whom he suggests the team visit.

Khavin recites a prayer for the dead at the graves, ending with an Amen. Katz asks about Kaddish, and Khavin explains that in Chernihiv Kaddish is said only when there is a minyan. He then begins to speak of his parents, saying his mother died in 1957 (?) and his father earlier, in 1947 (?), and mentions a severe frost in December.

Khavin tells how a fire broke out at his family's house in severe winter frost, and his mother was affected, fell ill and died. He then talks about a grandson's birth date, the yahrzeit and years that have passed. Finally he complains that community money is being spent without results; the details are not clear.

Burg names the Russian prose writers (Bunin, Paustovsky) and Yiddish writers (Peretz) who influenced him and recalls his father calling Yiddish a golden language. He describes greeting the ambassadors at his jubilee, his meetings with Dr Yosef Burg of Jerusalem in Vienna and Zurich, and the confusion between the two Yosef Burgs. He discusses growing up with four languages. Then he talks about his parents: his father, who read German and Yiddish and died in 1938, and his mother, from a Carpathian village, who could not read. Burg adds an account of saying Kaddish and praying before the amud in Chelyabinsk during the war.

Shternberg describes how her mother salted and koshered meat, soaking it in water, and baking challah and bread for Sabbath. She recalls going with her mother to the mikveh, and her mother's blessings over the candles and her Sabbath prayers. She and Kerler discuss taking challah, and she talks about folk remedies, including one for a ailment she calls hiccups or a fit (the term is unclear), and the pouring of coals, which her mother did not believe in.

Kerler asks about vodka and the word 'dybbuk', which she does not know. She recalls a holy site visited on yortsayt, with a rebbe before Soviet rule. Back in Khmil'nyk after the war she worked at a factory making boilers, in the laboratory and as accountant, before Kerler proposes a short Russian-to-Yiddish word test.

Srulova answers dialectological and sociolinguistic questions. Items include the words dibek, golem, graveyard, funeral, greetings and thanks, expressions for a cat chasing a mouse, bird names (pigeon), skin, and the cross. She often says she has forgotten Yiddish words and notes that nobody of her generation in Chortkiv speaks Yiddish.

Weiss speaks mostly Russian, partly garbled in the transcript, about the history and sites of Jewish Drohobych: the old Jewish district, the destroyed Jewish cemetery whose tombstones were reused, the synagogue, a Jewish orphanage and a hospital. He also mentions the oil-field history of nearby Boryslav and the Pushkin monument. Kerler thanks him at the end.

Kopyt describes how, after the war, Jews gathered in private homes for Sabbath and prayer while the synagogue was taken over by the militia, and she names families who hosted a minyan. Kerler asks what language was spoken at home. She then complains about housing and heating repairs and officials. She explains that she cannot go to Israel because of the graves of her relatives in Fastiv, and begins to say what songs she knows.

Beigel remembers Passover seders and the prayer book she kept. She also recalls a wedding canopy at her own wedding in the 1940s, with scant food. She talks about her grandsons and what her son understands of Yiddish and Jewish holidays. She confirms that her parents were from Tyvriv, not far from a town whose name is unclear.

Beigel talks about Romanian words and the Romanian presence in her war memory. Kerler asks the Yiddish word for cemetery, which she calls a field. She says her parents went to a cemetery in Vinnytsya on anniversaries, and that she prays there in her own words. She says her father and mother prayed but she attended a Ukrainian school, and she describes herself as half Jewish. The passage ends with a question about the importance of Yiddish.

Beigel recalls Jewish weddings, at which people danced the freylekhs, and one after the war, perhaps her sister's daughter's. She and Kerler discuss the customs for the birth of a boy: the grandmother going out to distribute sweets to the children, and the naming ceremony. Kerler asks when a girl was named, and she says after a week.

Bukshtein recalls organising a minyan for a rebbe's descendant at the grave of an ancestor near the Lviv border, then contrasts a rabbi (rov) with a hasidic rebbe, and describes the town rabbi inspecting the kashrut of a slaughtered hen. Kerler asks about terms such as good Jew, honest, a good place in the cemetery, misnaged, Litvak and badkhn. Bukshtein recalls Jewish weddings, klezmer music and tunes shared with Ukrainian and Romanian songs, whether Jews drank vodka, and the town's one Jewish drunkard. He explains the pastry fladn, gefilte versus chopped fish, a dybbuk and a golem, and begins to recall a funeral from sixty years earlier.

Katz says his wedding canopy was set up at the rebbe's in Stanislav in 1940, because Soviet rule had arrived. He recalls cheder, where he learned to pray, and says some of his teachers used a whip. He then recites a prayer (Kaddish) and speaks of the four-class Polish school of Baron Hirsch, which had a Hebrew teacher. After that he describes his vocational training in Lviv and work for a private employer in Tlumach. He recalls a pond where children swam, the ritual bath and bathhouse, and its use before festivals and on Fridays; he also mentions his grandfather's death.

Answers Kerler's questions on cultural terminology. Topics: the difference between rov, rebbe and rabbiner, and their plurals; a good place as a name for a cemetery; a good Jew as a rebbe; Litvak; tsadik; Galitsianer; and Yiddish words for various types of person. He recalls a Jewish wedding. He also discusses the Dybbuk and the Vilna Troupe's performance with the Turkow brothers in Stanislav, which he attended in 1924.

Lys recalls studying about two months with yeshiva students from Poland in Samarkand, after which he could not read or write Yiddish. He tells how, at eight or nine, he held a neighbor's boy at his circumcision. He then speaks of Lubavitch Hasidim and a phone call from Zhytomyr about the rebbe's anniversary. He describes the minyan he organizes in the office, saying kaddish from Russian transcription, and a visiting rabbi from New York who gave him tefillin to pass on to his grandson.

Geller answers Kerler's questions about prewar Jewish cultural life in Kuz'myn. There were only Russian clubs and no Yiddish activities. He remembers no visiting actors, and mentions a Russian-language circle or sewing workshop. He does not remember a bar mitzvah of his own. He says that a nephew in Israel was recently given one, according to a letter, and that his sister's children and others in Israel are relatives.

Geller says each person observes as he wishes, and recounts the visit the day before with his wife to the village of Klymbovka, where her parents and a sister are buried. He tells, mostly in Russian, of a church caretaker and a priest, and of his own challenge to belief in God. He recalls a local female healer. Kerler asks about spells against the evil eye, wishes for the dead, the custom of visiting graves and leaving food, and the words for 'field' and a holy place. They discuss visiting graves before the New Year and saying Kaddish.

Geller says the family returned after evacuation. His mother later died in Moscow while visiting his sister, and he put up a monument at the Russian cemetery. He names his mother as Leike (?) Markevich. He has lived in Izyaslav since 1951, and he says he worked three years in the economic crimes unit in Slavuta.

Kerler asks about non-Jews who converted to Judaism. Gelman recalls two brothers, shoemakers from the Pozamke (?) area, one of whom became a Jew and kept Jewish observance more strictly than born Jews. He then mentions villages in Russia of converts. Kerler asks about prewar Jewish sports clubs, the Kamianets yeshiva, Zionists and Hasidim, and Gelman remembers little beyond what his mother told him about Zionist meetings. He speaks about keeping yortsayt for his parents at home or in synagogue after the war, his one year in cheder, and his inability to read Yiddish letters. From about 12 minutes Kerler turns to dialectological questions. These cover the meaning of idioms, the Litvak (Lithuanian) Yiddish versus local speech, regional names for Jews, greetings and farewells, and many individual words (body, household, food, colors, adverbs, kinship, time words). The questionnaire also has sentences to translate. At the end a second person speaks Russian about a certificate, a prize and a son who is a sugar-factory director.

Kaviner tells legends about the Baal Shem Tov: his delay of Kol Nidre on the eve of Yom Kippur, and a note that he gave to an innkeeper for the later gabbai Yankl, which showed he could foresee the future. He also tells how the Besht forbade a gravestone, how the grave was marked and the state of the monument before and during the German occupation, when a cemetery guard was killed. Kaviner says he first came to Medzhibozh in 1946, after demobilization, while visiting the graves of holy men.

Zinger is asked what he remembers of prayer; he gives a few opening words of the Sabbath service and recites part of kaddish, which he said for a year for his wife. He then answers Kerler's questions about Purim, saying everyone including the rabbi is drunk nowadays. He recalls children going from house to house with a Purim play and gives a fragment of its rhyme. The passage ends with a short exchange on how "a bissl" was said and a question about Hasidim.

Zinger recalls the local shoykhet's prayer and recites the Shema and blessings. He tells how he was called to the haftarah and gives details of his bar mitzvah. He remembers a tailor and his parents, who perished. He speaks of Velykyi Bereznyi's trades and professions, naming a tailor, shoemaker, tinsmith and the Jewish doctor Munk. Kerler asks about a folk remedy, "quenching coals", and Zinger explains it. He mentions Hungarian interviewers and the cassettes he received from America. He tells of visiting his wife's grave and the Yiddish headstone designed by a rabbi.

Zinger describes his father's work as a stonecutter of simple tombstones at the cemetery of his hometown. He says some of the stones still stand, as he saw three years ago, and speaks of black marble stones made in Uzhhorod, including his wife's. Katz and Kerler close the interview with good wishes and thanks. Zinger says his daughter tells him not to tire himself and that the questions reminded him of Yiddishkayt and Yiddish words.

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.

Kerler asks about synagogues in Skvire, and Torchinsky names a prayer house kept by a yeast maker and cantor. He describes a recent visit with American rabbis and Hasidim to Skvire, where he said Kaddish at the site of his father's grave and found nothing left of the cemetery. Kerler asks for Yiddish terms for the cemetery, such as holy place and good place, and explains their meaning. He answers whether the tutor taught him the morning prayer Modeh ani, and comments in Russian.

Answering Kerler's questions, Torchinsky recalls the prewar synagogue and bes-medresh in Skvyra, where only men went to pray and women sat apart, and describes praying there with his grandfather. Kerler asks about klezmorim, wedding customs and a place name (apparently 'tsvinter'). He continues with expressions used when mentioning the dead and then with greetings, thanks and congratulation, the word for stomach and for book, and the difference between 'sick' and 'sleepy' (the transcript is unclear on some of these). Torchinsky mentions his own Yiddish-Ukrainian dictionary of six thousand words and begins to read another poem, about Passover and the Exodus.

Answering Kerler's questions, Khandros says Hasidim lived in Ozarintsy in the early 1900s, but the tzaddik died when he was a child and the community declined. He remembers praying with the tanner Hershl Koyfman and Koyfman's old mother Rachel, who told him and his cousin Lusia Bible stories. He wrote these down in his booklet. He recalls the mikveh near the mill, where his father's elder brother Itsik Khandros, who lived in Mohyliv, took him as a boy. He also describes the town's three prayer houses, among them the beys-medresh, whose walls still stand.

Derbaremdiker names his brothers: an elder brother born in 1913, now in New York and about to turn ninety, and a younger one, Yontl (Yontev). Yontev was named after the grandmother Yente, his mother's mother. The elder brother, Avrom, went to a Ukrainian school because no Yiddish schools existed in 1921, then studied in Berdychiv's Yiddish technical school and later at the Progress machine factory and in Kyiv. Derbaremdiker says he had a bar mitzvah in a secret prayer house in 1933, because officially it was impossible.

Derbaremdiker describes his secret bar mitzvah, for which he was taught by a melamed, and explains why it had to be hidden: parents risked losing the bread ration and work. He then speaks of the famine of the early 1930s, which struck the Ukrainian population and the Jews of the small towns. Jews survived by relatives sending parcels from Moscow and Leningrad. He recalls his father working as a soap boiler, a friend's tailor father who had no work, and his school friend Avrom Goldenberg, killed in the war. Kerler asks the melamed's name and which Torah portion he learned.

Derbaremdiker describes the Club of the Heretics in Kyiv, a former synagogue building, and its Yiddish library and drama circles, and recalls the Berdychiv theatre built before the revolution. He mentions klezmer musicians at weddings and prewar prayer in secret. He says that in 1933 a rabbi secretly prepared him and his brother for bar mitzvah.

Rusakovskaia answers questions about what makes a 'good Jew'. She recalls her mother helping people in need and collecting money for them at the synagogue. She describes the separate Jewish and non-Jewish cemetery fields in Chornobyl', where her parents are buried. Only gravestones with Hebrew inscriptions remained after the war. Visitors from Kyiv came to the graves of their parents, and Jews gave money for memorial prayers. She describes women reading in the upstairs part of the synagogue and shows her father's handwritten copy of the prayer book.

Kerler asks about customs for remembering the dead: yahrzeit, charity given in memory of a parent, and set wishes such as that the deceased be a good advocate (beter) in heaven. Rusakovskaia answers which of these she knows and says she gives money at the synagogue. He then asks where she was during the war.

Vider answers Kerler's questionnaire on plural forms of rov/rebbe (rabonim, rebbes) and on the Yiddish term for a good place as a euphemism for a cemetery. He says a cemetery was called a holy place or house of life. They then discuss the word Litvak, Lithuanian Jews and their Yiddish pronunciation, an anecdote about a Lithuanian youth praying in a local synagogue, the word misnaged, and whether he had heard of the Vilna Gaon and the Baal Shem Tov.

Vider tells how he left the yeshiva in Iași to learn tailoring with a neighbour, against his father's wishes (his father was a shoykhet, his mother Nekhama), and went to the USSR at seventeen as a communist. He recalls the Botoshaner Rebbe, who lived in the neighbouring courtyard, selikhes, the rebbe's table, notes and wedding of his sister. He ends with a joke about a man tricked into paying yortsayt money three times.

Krotsh begins answering questions about terminology: the words for a cemetery (including a non-Jewish cemetery), and what 'a good Jew' (a gutn yid) means. He explains that a tsadik is not necessarily a good Jew and that people were sent to a good Jew, the rebbe, for advice with problems such as a daughter's marriage.

Back in the formal interview, Krotsh sings more liturgy and describes the Sukkot custom of eating and sleeping in the sukkah. He tells how he sold shmoes for money and how the sexton knocked on shutters to wake people for selikhes. Kerler asks about the bathhouse and mikveh, and Krotsh describes the bath and ritual bath of his shtetl. He tells how he spoke Yiddish at a government office in Israel when the clerk spoke Hebrew.

Krotsh describes a prewar wedding canopy set up in the middle of town near the synagogue. He talks about the town's synagogues, including a two-storey high synagogue, and the nearby mikveh. His father taught him to put on tefillin, and his bar mitzvah took place in a synagogue with cake and brandy.

Krotsh speaks about fate and about his standing in the community, and recalls secret prayer groups in private homes in Kolomyya for yortsayt and other occasions. He remembers a cantor named Pinsky and a Purim megillah reading. He then describes Kolomyya's former synagogues, the buildings that remain, and how to reach them by street, with Kerler asking about their location.

Kerler asks about Katsman's earliest memories. He tells how his grandfather took him to synagogue in a tallis at thirteen, put on tefillin and taught him Hebrew. Asked to recite his bar mitzvah portion and prayers, he says a little, mentions Kaddish, and that he prays daily with tallis and tefillin.

Skop speaks about Nune, the madman of Korosten', killed when the Germans entered the town, and about Meir the blind man, a beggar who recognised people by voice. He then mentions Meyshe the gravedigger at the cemetery, and a search for a grave by visitors from abroad. The talk of the cemetery is partly garbled.

Kislinskaia remembers her father working at home as a shoemaker before the factories came. His family was from Korsun, and his father was a ritual body-washer (?). Her maternal grandmother Reyzl was shammes at a synagogue and took her to services. There were four synagogues, with the shoemakers and tailors attending one. She describes the grandmother's second marriage and her mother's brothers in America.

Kerler asks about a typical day at the Yiddish school. Kislinskaia says the Yiddish school building is now a Russian school, and that the youngest pupils received a warm meal. They discuss the word for synagogue, and she speaks of an observant postwar man and his family who kept the Sabbath. Kerler asks about the word for cemetery (the Jewish one) and the building by it where her grandfather washed the dead, and then asks about dybbuk and golem, which she did not know.

Angelova says she stopped speaking Yiddish after the war. Lemster asks about Jewish weddings, and she describes an open-air huppah and a custom of gifts called makes. Kerler and Lemster then ask for dialect words, such as the word for a holy place, a cemetery, and a Jewish field. She asks about the ages of the others present and mentions her operations.

Gershtein describes Holoby's big synagogue and the ritual bath he visited with his father each Friday, and names two ritual slaughterers, Chaim Wolf Goldberg and Abba Sima. He says the nearby villages had only small prayer houses, and that the dead of Holoby were taken to Mel'nytsia for burial. He mentions a rebbe in Lutsk, childhood games, bathing in the river and a Polish ball game. His siblings were pioneers (khalutsim). He also recalls the Zionist youth club, where children danced and sang Yiddish songs.

Kerler asks about the terms rov, rebbe, melamed, Hasidic rebbe and their plurals, then expressions such as 'a good place' for a cemetery, beys-oylem, a good Jew, a tsadik, Galitsianer and misnaged. They then compare Lithuanian and local Yiddish pronunciation (sibilants and the r). Some Russian talk about the history of Yiddish is mixed in.

The group visits the Hasidic cemetery in Zhovkva. They discuss who built it and when, how Belz Hasidim stop there on the way to Belz, and the tombstones reused under the Communists in a wall. Kerler also asks about a Yiddish word for a Shavuot item and the terms for cemetery (beys-oylem, beys-khayim), and explains the title of a book written by the tsadik buried there.

At the grave of the tsadik Efraim Zalman Shor, Kerler and a companion read and explain the inscriptions and the titles of his book. The informant adds that even among the wealthy there was no separate synagogue, only a study group. Russian comments about the concrete structure date it to the 1920s.

Leibel answers Kerler's terminology questions on the difference between rav, rebbe and rabbi, tsadik, 'a good Jew', Hasid, plurals of such words, and the words for a cemetery. He then discusses the term Litvak, Galitsianer, misnagid and dybbuk. He also recalls Hasidic visitors to the Polish school and a synagogue discussion with the rabbi about Sarah's childlessness in Genesis.

Dorfman tells how a monument was built over bones found during factory construction, and how the inscription was in Yiddish and Russian. He recalls the first Jewish demonstration at the time of perestroika, when a thousand people came, and the founding of the Jewish society with ten or twelve people, including the writer Alexander Lizen. He talks about the cemetery's age and lack of space, and shows two old gravestones from Polish times to Kerler.

Dorfman points out graves and talks about people, including a teacher and school director from the Odessa region who was imprisoned in 1941 and whose brother edited a Kishinev Yiddish paper. He shows the grave of the cantor Baruch Shulman, father of the singer Zinovy Shulman, who was jailed for fifteen years. Kerler and Katz ask about dates and inscriptions, and the camera records the cemetery.

Brandler recalls cheder from age three, his father Shimshon's piety and a cabinet of holy books at home, and his three melamdim: Reb Godl, Reb Mendl and a Lithuanian who taught Gemara and beat the pupils. His father died in 1934 when Brandler was thirteen, aged sixty-eight; he said kaddish for a year and then stopped going to cheder after a beating, supported by his sister. He also mentions his grandfather Itsik Meir, a melamed who never hit pupils, and that he did not pray for seventy years (?).

Answers Kerler's questions about prewar religious life: whether there were Hasidim, and yeshivas (young men studied in Rivne rather than locally). She is asked what rov, rebbe, rabiner and a 'good Jew' mean, and the term 'gut ort' for a cemetery. Her answers are brief and in places uncertain.

Asked about customs in Derazhnya, Shoikhetman speaks of circumcision and of laying tefillin at thirteen. The tefillin and a tallis came as a parcel from his father's brothers in Palestine. He recalls his family burying belongings in a tin from American canned food to hide them. He then shows an old prayer book with Hebrew and Russian text, with a date in the 1870s mentioned, and Kerler discusses who translated it.

Kaplan talks about his army service, including a Party document shown to the interviewers and a visit by an Israeli guest (Buchbinder) whom he guided around the area, followed by an Israeli television programme whose commentary angered him. He says he never met antisemitism in the army, attributes this to his dutifulness, and mentions Jewish commanders. He says antisemitism has existed and will exist everywhere, including Germany and Israel, and distinguishes good, bad and neutral people. Kerler then asks about expressions and terms (a good place for a cemetery, a good Jew, a good eye and envy, Lithuanian Jews and their speech). Kaplan describes his mother's gefilte fish, home-made horseradish, Passover and Hanukkah foods, mamaliga and malay, and home-made liquor, and says his father was a soap-maker and his mother a teacher. He recalls the ghetto in Mohyliv, the camp at Pechera and flight to Zhurin and Chernivtsi, and reports the recent murder of two Jews there by neighbours who robbed them. Kerler ends with further questions on words such as dybbuk, golem, a blessing for the dead, luck, house, group, skin, mouse and window glass.

Driving back to town, Kaplan points out sites: cleaned and tended cemeteries, a street whose pavement slabs were made from gravestones, the meyloyl building (Kerler asks again for its name), the part of town with vineyards where officials live, and the military commissariat. The Yiddish is largely garbled and the passage rests on Russian lines.

Kaplan answers Katz's questions about the meaning of words (dibbuk, golem). He speaks briefly about postwar hardship and the poor food of the 1940s, including cornmeal dishes. He explains the difference between a rav and a rebbe, and the Jewish burial place and mass grave. He mentions a man who died the same day, and recalls the prewar amateur Yiddish theater and Chabad Hasidim. He gives the town's Jewish population today as 360 (formerly fourteen thousand), with sixty-six children, and says emigration has stopped and a few people returned from America and Israel. From about 12:00 he is asked, with Russian prompts from a second speaker and questions from Katz and Lemster, for Yiddish equivalents. These cover greetings, thanks, luck, household and food words, body parts, adjectives, converts and Christians, peasants, directions and everyday sentences, with discussion of what is said in Mohyliv.

Pasik answers Kerler's questions on terminology, mainly foods and bread: a Yiddish word he asks about that she does not know, festival pancakes, small dough pieces, and bread and baked goods. Kerler also asks about burial and the cemetery, and a blessing wish.

Endelshtein recites the morning prayer Modeh Ani and the bedtime Shema as his grandmother taught him. He describes his grandfather's tefillin and his own bar mitzvah preparation. He says he kept up the prayer during army service in the war.

Endelshtein speaks about Romanians sending Jews from Odessa, Bessarabia and Moldova, and about relatives left in Bolgrad. He returned in 1945 and tells of memorials to people shot in Mykolayiv and at another place. He says Kaddish is recited there. Kerler asks how the word Kaddish was pronounced at home; there is a brief exchange about a book on Bolgrad, and the question moves to Purim.

Kenin estimates that about six thousand Jews lived in Nizhyn before the war, working as tailors, shoemakers, furriers and other craftsmen. He recalls amateur Yiddish theater at the club, including a Sholem Aleichem play, and puts the closing of synagogues around 1937–38, though not all were shut. He says Jews went to a Jewish bathhouse with a mikveh, which he knows of through his mother.

Cherner answers questions about family, memorial days and holidays; he says there was little Jewish observance in his home. Memorial customs, the cemetery and food are touched upon. He says Soviet policy removed Jewish culture, magazines and theaters, and that one had to join the Party to live. He recalls a Soviet Yiddish editorial office and writing in Yiddish.

Cherner answers questions about the Yiddish dialect in Balta, which he says is like Chişinău, with many Ukrainian and Russian words. He says his mother was born in Balta and his father in Odesa in 1912 (?). He says he goes to his mother's grave in Odesa and does not say a prayer; instead he sings a song he wrote himself in Russian and Yiddish about longing for his mother.

Cherner talks about the song he sings at his mother's grave, saying he reads the words from a paper. He then tells about the song "Yerushalayim" he wrote, to words by Sara Zinger, whom he knows through Zhenya Fayerman. She is from Odesa and lives in Israel, and he recites a few lines of it.

Medved says her father did not go to synagogue but went to the cemetery twice a year for the yortsayt, and she gives his ethical summary of religion in Russian. Asked about her family, she names two brothers, Yitskhok, who died in Israel, and Khayim, and says her mother did not work. She describes her work as a port dispatcher in Kazakhstan, sending materials by rail and ship.

Vainbrand speaks about visiting the rebbe's grave in Valedniki and about his wife's burial, which the transcript places in a town whose name is unclear. After the war he came to live where she lived. He feels he has lived too long and mentions his age. He gives his father's trade as shoemaker and his wife's father's as a rope-maker (?), and answers questions about the Chernobyl rebbe and the Khabne preacher with no recollection.

Vainbrand describes how, in the month of Elul, pilgrims with children stayed at his family's house near the rebbe's grave in Valedniki, and how a man wrote notes (kvitlekh) that were taken to the grave. He then says how old he is and why he did not remarry, that his wife died after the war, and that he says Kaddish and lights yahrzeit candles. Kerler and Lemster then ask about the non-Jewish boy who learned Yiddish and became a policeman or translator for the Germans, who he says needed someone to tell them about the Jews.

Brodsky says his wedding after the war had no huppah; they only registered. The conversation covers a grandson's circumcision and the question of what a real Jew is. His mother cooked gefilte fish and other holiday dishes, and his wife cooked as well. They talk about the sukkah put up in Odesa before the war and in a Yiddish school, and ask what Odesa was famous for, which they answer with Jews, thieves and good people.

Lerner and the team drive toward the Ostroh synagogue, with Russian directions and a mention of a village in Ostroh district. Lerner begins to explain, in Russian, the circumcision ritual once held at a table in the synagogue.

Dialectological questionnaire with Dorfman, mostly led by Kerler. Items include a good place, a good Jew, litvak and misnaged, vodka, charms against the evil eye, mourning customs and graveside signs, dybbuk, a clay golem and greetings at different times of day. Other items are Russian phrases for translation (please, thank you, mouse, book, the cold entryway, skin, window panes), and Dorfman often says he does not know the Yiddish.

Turovskaia says she keeps the yortsayts (memorial days) for her parents and grandparents, as her father told her, and recalls them. She names her maternal grandparents (Reyzl, daughter of Yitskhok, and Binem Shloyme, family name Vaynbrand) and her paternal grandparents (Shloyme and Fayge). Her grandfather had a matzo machine and a wool-carding machine and her father baked matzo. She distinguishes Novyye Veledniki from Staryye Veledniki, her grandparents' village, and says her father knew many tales of the rebbe.

Asked about songs from her girlhood, Turovskaia instead describes her childhood: an uncle on her mother's side who died young just before his wedding, her mother's grief, and her own work as the eldest child. She played the fiddle and could play melodies she knew. She says her mother, father, brother and husband have since died.

Turovskaia recites blessings, including the candle-lighting blessing for Sabbath and the festivals. She says her father had her write down how many blessings are said on each holiday. She says the mourner's kaddish for relatives, lights memorial candles and sends memorial notes to Opshtshina (?). Katz tests her on Hebrew month names. She asks about the eleven months of kaddish and the leap year, since her husband died on 14 July.

Turovskaia describes her memorial practices, including saying the 'El maley rakhamim' prayer, and that people from Kyiv and St Petersburg ask her to say kaddish for their dead. Katz and Kerler ask her to recite the traditional prayer as her father said it, and she hesitates. They ask about other blessings for women, such as the 'modeh ani'. She says her father had her write down the blessings. She recalls her mother's geese, schmaltz and matzo for Passover.

Kerler and Katz ask about the term for a holy place. Turovskaia speaks of the graves of her grandparents and relatives in Velednik, and of the tzaddik buried there, with Katz and Kerler asking about Hasidic groups (Breslov, Chernobyl, Chabad) behind the restoration of the tomb at Uman(?). She names a rebbe from Kotelnitsh(?). Kerler then asks about visitors who spoke a different kind of Yiddish.

Turovskaia explains how she keeps religious customs today. She says Yizkor for her dead relatives and gathers a minyan, with a Torah laid out when ten are not present. On a yahrzeit she lights a lamp and gives money so that Kaddish is said. She mentions saying Yizkor on the second day of Shavuot and dreams of deceased relatives.

On the drive, Bentsianov points out old houses and Markish Street, formerly Naberezhna, near where Markish was born, with a plaque. Shevchenko Street could not be renamed. He mentions the river Khomora and that Germans forced Jews to destroy part of the cemetery. At the Jewish cemetery, which was locked, Bentsianov says he organised its upkeep. Kerler reads and explains tombstone inscriptions and abbreviations, including a rabbi's daughter and a woman's gravestone.

Fish gives Kerler a small prayer booklet so that he can say the Kaddish at the mass grave of his mother's family. Kerler thanks him and names the relatives lying there.

Kurliandchik says he had no melamed and went to a Soviet school. His mother wanted him to begin putting on tefillin, and a teacher taught him a little before his bar mitzvah at thirteen. He did not learn the Shema or much else. The school then taught Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Mendele and Bialik.

Shteingart describes the great synagogue of Kovel': women prayed in the gallery, the cantor stood at the lectern and cantors such as Kusevitzky visited. Kerler asks about his bar mitzvah, and the talk then turns to children's games and to cholent as a Sabbath dish.

Fish describes the mikve and bathhouse next to the great synagogue, where he went weekly with his father. He adds that the Jewish theater stood near Shkolna street.

Vaisman says there was a ghetto in Sharhorod and recounts his sister's belief that Ukrainians helped the Jews. He names a Ukrainian woman, Ksenia Vasilovna Loyanich (spelling uncertain), who brought his family food and whom he wants recognised. He says he does not remember the war, and that the Romanians did not kill Jews in Sharhorod but brought their own Jews, thousands of whom starved and were buried in the local cemetery. He tells a Hershele Ostropolyer story about a poor guest at a Sabbath meal. He recalls the Passover seder, with his mother's matzo bagels and kugels and the bakery that needed official permission to bake matzo, and also Hanukkah, Purim and the Ninth of Av. Katz and Kerler ask many dialect questions on bird names (a dove, a small bird), the colour of the sky, words for ugly face, back, house, 'almost', Lithuanian Jews and converts to Christianity, the town as shtetl, and the word for life. Vaisman also recounts the case of a local Jewish man who converted. In the last part the daughter shows an album of Jewish childhood friends who spoke Yiddish and have mostly emigrated to Israel, America and Moscow. The talk turns to Yiddish and Jewish life in America and Israel, Vaisman's brother in Israel, and his father's relatives, who were killed during the war.

Kleiner answers questions on Sabbath, going to synagogue with his father, and the Sabbath and Sunday school days. He speaks about bar mitzvah, and Passover customs: removing and burning leaven and kashering. Kerler asks about holiday songs, and about Purim and Hanukkah. The terms for the river and for 'tehom' are asked. He says the Torah scrolls of Shepetivka were hidden and returned after liberation.

Kerler asks the meaning of several words (a non-Jewish holiday, the cemetery, 'good place'), and about the sukkah in Yampil', and the house where the family lived. Kleiner recalls his older brother Nute, a learned young man who died. He remembers Sabbath songs and kiddush. Kleiner then sings the memorial prayer for those killed, with a few words about Yampil', Lyakhovtsy and Karnitsa. Kerler praises it.

At the cemetery Krasner speaks about graves and burials: a tombstone, her brother who made it, relatives who died in camps, and a neighbor. Katz and Kerler read gravestone inscriptions, including a rebbe's tomb, with a death date in the early 1920s (?), and ask about word forms, such as the plural of tsadik.

Murovanaia talks about the Soviet Yiddish school in Haysyn and some of its teachers, though she herself attended a Russian school. She recalls that there were three synagogues, which stood until the Germans came. After the war a shoykhet and a minyan existed, and the family held memorials for grandparents.

Shvartsburg speaks about religious life in Skvyra under the Soviets, when circumcisions and weddings were held quietly. He says most Jews do not speak Yiddish today, and that his own children and wife do not. Asked by a member of the team, he also discusses the town's shoykhet before the war.

Liberzon describes how after the war her father had a small wood or square planted over the old cemetery, whose stones were used for pavements. Kerler asks whether the shtibl of Reb Pinkhas Koretz was a shtibl or an oyel. She lists the many synagogues of prewar Slavuta, such as the Pritsker and Rabinovitsh kloyzn, and the family's wealth, naming her grandfather Reb Khayim Shapira.

Liberzon returns to the Shapiro brothers: Reb Pinkhas Koretz, his son Moshe, and brothers Shmuel and Pinkhas, who quarreled over who should go first. Their descendants moved the printing house to Zhytomyr. She tells how relatives from London visited Slavuta to find their roots, and how her father made wooden fences for graves after the war. The wooden fences were burned in wartime for heating.

Liberzon recalls her mother in Krasnoyarsk during the war, and visitors from Slavuta who came to her father about relatives in America. Kerler asks about gravestones and fences, and she explains the Jewish custom of fencing a grave and of wooden fences, with stone monuments added a year later. Kerler then asks her to tell about the Yiddish school.

Mostly chat about practical matters, the equipment and travel to Rivne, with Russian speech. Liberzon tells about her father, who used to travel to a tsadik's grave, and a neighbour who advised him. A tale of two strangers buried near the grave of a holy man is told, and a Hasidic site was fenced in. A recorder is brought in, and the transcript shows no clear chanting.

Kerler asks about Yiddish words for a good place, a holy place and the cemetery, and Liberzon says she knows beis-oylem and beis-khaim. Talk about the Polish cemetery and church in Slavuta follows, with some Russian.

Kerler asks about misnagdim versus Hasidim, the Vilna Gaon and the Annopol rabbi. Liberzon looks for and shows a note about the grave of a rebbe, and a family lineage of rebbes is read out. They also discuss Lubavitch, Breslov, and the debate about the messiah, and she mentions a Jewish school where children learn only to pray.

Kerler asks about pride in the great synagogue of Ostroh; Vainshelboim speaks of an old cannonball that still hangs in the wall. They discuss how a circumcision was held, with prayers, the rabbi and the mohel. He says Ostroh had one yeshiva and at least fifteen small synagogues, including a butchers' prayer room inside the great synagogue.

Vainshelboim describes the recently discovered mass grave of about sixty Jewish victims near Ostroh. A man buying a plot on the road out of town to build a house began digging and found a pit 26 metres long and 6 metres wide. The dead had Polish documents and are to be reburied in the Jewish cemetery. Kerler and Vainshelboim discuss informing the rabbi and a memorial along the road.

Kerler asks the meaning of Yiddish terms and sayings (such as dybbuk, golem and expressions about the dead). Bivson explains and says she speaks to her late father in Yiddish at the grave. She says the best time of her life was when her son was healthy, and speaks of his death at about fifty, shortly before his jubilee.

Klein says a man she knew was very religious, but people did not take interest in such things then. Kerler asks the Yiddish words for a cemetery, a holy place and a Christian cemetery, and she gives the terms she knows, as well as a Polish Catholic cemetery in town.

Kerler asks about folk customs, including pouring wax, an egg for fright and prayers for the dead, which Tartinets mostly does not recall. She says the Jews in the village were poor and worked with horses and carts, and that after the war she returned at about fifteen and worked. She mentions a Jewish wedding that was beautiful, burial customs, the word for the Jewish prayer house versus the church, and an American visitor. The conversation also touches on Kerler's speaking a different kind of Yiddish.

Yakuta says religious practice was done secretly before the war, and that the change came with collectivization. She recalls the great hunger of 1933, when starving non-Jews ate the mash from the alcohol plant's pit and died, and the road was full of corpses. She mentions the common pit at the non-Jewish cemetery and says she does not remember Jews dying of hunger there, though they suffered. The Jewish cemetery is also named.

Gliazer recalls kheyder learning: Khumesh, siddur and Gemara, and being taught about tefillin by his father before his bar mitzvah at thirteen. Kerler and Katz ask whether he remembers Bible stories, the binding of Isaac, or passages of Gemara and Mishnah, and he remembers very little. A Russian-speaking visitor interrupts.

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 says that visitors come to Tul'chyn from America, Germany, Israel and Australia, drawn to the graves of relatives. She mentions a visiting Swiss delegation (and a man from Switzerland who comes twice a year), whom she took to Pechera, and says few people remain who can lead the prayers at the cemetery. She speaks about a visit to Germany, saying she could not bear to hear the language and would travel only to Israel. Kerler asks about Zionism, and she answers that prewar Tul'chyn was a Jewish town of many specialists, a cheerful and good place, and begins on earlier persecution.

A woman speaks of a man's seven years of service with many medals. After his death he was buried next to his mother, in a place that was kept for him. She then tells of Tomashpil, where his mother was killed and he found her among the dead by her bag. Kerler asks whether this is her husband. Who is meant at each point is not fully clear in the transcript.

A woman speaks about her time in Israel: she liked living among Jews and hearing Yiddish, and had three rooms, television and a washing machine, but found it too hot. She returned to Tul'chyn because her husband wanted to be buried beside his mother, and he died at 85. Her son and grandson visit, and Kerler asks about other places.

A woman recalls a boy who was still nursing at the age of three and was embarrassed by it. Kerler then asks about naming customs. The interviewee explains that a child could be given two names, one after a deceased relative, and tells how her own mother arranged her name, Pesele (?).

Pesia and Katsman answer Kerler's questions on holiday food before the war. They mention Hanukkah gelt, baked goods for Purim, dairy dishes for Shavuot, and special breads such as a bread given to a woman after childbirth. They then talk about the Sabbath bread and the baking of potatoes in each Jew's oven, and about fish and water supply.

The women discuss Sukkot and describe how before the war a wedding canopy of four poles was set up, a custom not kept after the war. A woman recalls the postwar shoykhet Moyshe, who also performed circumcisions. Kerler asks again about the filled bread kneysh-broyt.

Kogan speaks about Zhabokrych and Bershad' during the war, including killings in Zhabokrych and the Romanian occupation. He names local Jews such as the shoykhet Gedalye Shulman (?) and the hearse-driver Avrom'tse (?) and his wife, with Kerler asking who they were. He then recites parts of his songs 'Dos lagerl' and 'Aheym, briderlekh, aheym'.

Yenta Kolodenker's father's names (Usher, Khayim and Pinkhes) are discussed, followed by Pesia on naming a child after a deceased relative and for protection. The talk turns to Israel and America: the Yiddish spoken in Israel, Pesia's years there, prices and the families' children abroad.

Pecherskaia shows Kerler photographs, apparently from Israel and America, including a photograph album her son-in-law made for her and a picture of her husband. She mentions her husband's death and gravestone, and says she married in 1945 when she was very poor. She names three half-sisters who share a father but not a mother and are in America, one of whom phoned her. She also mentions a visit to Vinnytsia where she had six operations, and says life is a dream.

Efim says a memorial was erected after the war at the killing site of the town's Jews and offers to drive there. Kerler asks about words for tombstone and Jewish and non-Jewish cemeteries. Motl says his mother took him to synagogue as a child. The closing of the Yiddish school in Buki is discussed, along with the father's work as shochet until the war and kosher meat.

Teplitskaia describes the mass grave in the forest near Ternovka, where her father's relatives lie. She says the site is neglected and that this year she brought flowers. She says she bought a burial plot beside her mother in the Jewish cemetery and stresses honouring the dead. She says she visits the grave of Nahman of Bratslav and pleads for her children's health there, and that she went in the 1950s and 1960s, bringing her son.

Rubin tells of a friend's funeral in Buki, apparently before the war (the transcript gives 1938 or 1939), at which the man woke up and walked home. He asks Kerler to greet Matl, a relative from Buki whose wife has died and whose son lives in Ashkelon, and says that a few Jews still pray in Uman' and that their rabbi is Rabbi Fish from America. He and Kerler recall an earlier visit about three years before and discuss an illness that doctors could not cure.

Naybauer describes being drafted in 1944 into the Hungarian labor battalion and being kept in the ghetto instead. At the Great Synagogue, which he says served the Jewish community until the Soviets closed it, he tells how its head, whose surname is given as Bergida (the transcript is unclear), went to Moscow to see Golda Meir to stop the closure and was arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years. He mentions the removal of the Star of David, the many small prayer houses, Hasidic life, the cemeteries, and that in 1944 Jews hid belongings in the synagogues and used a trade school as a hospital. He then talks about his family: he was the oldest of six, his father Avrom was sickly, and he carried goods for a kosher sausage maker. He also notes the family name Neubauer and an uncle named Bookbinder.

The tour continues past a former Jewish theater and along the former Jewish street, where Naybauer points out Jewish shops, the rabbi's house and a bridge destroyed in the war. He says his father was a very pious man and that his parents and siblings died in Auschwitz. He describes the Sabbath afternoon promenade, going to cheder until thirteen, and the former mikveh and shoykhet's house. He recalls that Jews hid their belongings in a former synagogue before the ghetto and tells how a policeman or soldier threatened his uncle. He also mentions his grandmother's death in 1935 and the word the Jews used for non-Jews. The garbled stretches make the details uncertain.

Kerler and Naybauer discuss a Yiddish handwritten book about the Uzhhorod Jewish cemetery. Naybauer mentions the chevra kadisha gabbai who made gravestones and his son in Israel. He then returns to his time in Budapest, where a cousin told him his mother was alive and searching for him; he gave up Palestine and took a ticket home. At the train station he met his uncle Mendl, who led him to his mother.

Naybauer answers dialectological questionnaire items from Kerler and Katz. They cover number and plural forms (counting family members, 'wagon(s)'), words for attic, beam, bridge and floor, names such as Nisn, and expressions such as 'wealthy man' and 'various things'. Near the end he talks about helping visitors find graves in the Uzhhorod cemetery, a book of graves kept by a Reizman, and the age of the oldest gravestones. Kerler then thanks him and closes the interview.

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.

Chirkova speaks of her work after the war, apparently with invalids, and of her friends and relatives buried in a cemetery in Vinnytsya. She describes arranging the burial of a man in a prayer shawl and tefillin and her sense of having done what was needed.

Kerler asks about spells against the evil eye, the dybbuk, the golem and terms for a cemetery. Vainer-Shpak answers, though the transcript is garbled in places. She says Jewish fields no longer exist, and a name for a large field is discussed. Kerler asks about how her father invoked a dead person, and she says she once prayed for her ill relatives at the cemetery.

Barshteyn continues about the tsadikim's graves and visits to them, including Jews who went to Israel and came back. She says she travels once a year to her parents' graves, and gives the dates of her father's and mother's deaths.

Barshteyn recounts working twenty years as a telephone operator at the post office, then retiring and moving to Vinnytsya with her widowed father, after her mother's death, to be near her son. She speaks of visiting her parents' graves at Sharhorod, where there is no one to say Kaddish, since her son knows Yiddish but does not speak it. She describes the gravestones she had put up for her mother and father.

Kerler and Barshteyn discuss a possible return trip to Sharhorod the following year, with the team and with her son driving, to say Kaddish at the graves. Barshteyn thanks the team, and Kerler mentions that they are going next to Moldova and Romania.

Sobol answers questions about the river and the bathhouse, and recalls the big synagogue on Stavyshche (?) Street that her parents attended. She says that today there is no minyan and the Kaddish is paid for or read in Russian letters. Asked whether Christians spoke Yiddish, she says yes. She says her husband knew Yiddish, Romanian, German and some Hebrew but no Russian when they married. She also tells how her husband had lost his parents and how they lived in her father's house with her stepmother.

Lemster asks for curses; Sobol says they were not used at home and recalls only the phrase "black wedding". She then describes her wedding in 1944 (?), held with a rabbi and a chuppah at home, with the marriage contract hidden during the war. She tells many stories about her husband: he was a hard worker and the neighbours doubted he was Jewish, and he once bought a goat for their baby. She goes on to his last illness, hospital and death, and his work in the camp under the Romanians. The speakers are hard to tell apart in this stretch, and the passage ends with the request to see the book.

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.

Yatskova tries to recall the Israeli city where her brother Hershl (Tsvi) Kremer lives, perhaps Netanya (?), and when he left, and says he has not written for a long time. Lemster tells her about a 103-year-old woman he met in Vinnytsia. Yatskova mentions Arkadii Isaakovich, a local man who speaks good Yiddish. She describes the Jewish cemetery, where people from Bar and Vinnytsia were also brought for burial.

At the old Jewish cemetery, Kerler and Katz read and discuss gravestone inscriptions, deciphering names, dates and Hebrew abbreviations. The words are largely garbled.

Word questions on Yiddish forms such as breathing, a roadside inn and a courtyard. Geller says his Yiddish is plain and differs from that of Vilna and Poltava. They discuss streets of only Jews or only gentiles, and burial and funerals as a mitzvah. The passage also covers the minyan, kaddish, and ages, and ends with a courtroom anecdote.

Geller recalls going to the bathhouse with his grandfather on Friday before the Sabbath, the Uman bathhouse, and going afterward to the synagogue and making kiddush. He also mentions the women's mikveh. Kerler asks where the word for the bathhouse comes from and how people say "thank you".

Skobilitskii shows the house on Kachenivka street where he lived and his younger brothers were born. It belonged to a rich man whose family name sounds like Krupnik (?), and tenants paid him rent. He remembers sledding in winter, and describes the large synagogue that stood nearby, with a mikveh and bath fed by the river. He mentions friends from Berdychiv now in Haifa and Netanya, the mostly Jewish surroundings, and walking to synagogue on Shabbat.

Geller, in the Zhytomyr synagogue, says he comes from Pyatka, a small town between Berdychiv and Chudniv. He talks about the Zhytomyr rabbi and his Russian, about Jews living in Zhytomyr as if in exile, and about the lack of proper Jewish burial for a 93-year-old man. He also describes young visitors who know no Yiddish, a dictionary he gave one, and who in Zhytomyr still speaks Yiddish. The rabbi's trip to Polonne, where a wall for a tsadik was built from gravestones, leads to a note on a Pyatka word for a small wall.

Geller gives his Yiddish name as Binyomin, nicknamed Mime, and says he is nearing eighty. His father Yankl was a glazier until 1932, and his mother and her family's names are discussed, including a grandmother Etshi and another named Mintsi. His parents had no child for ten years until the rebbe promised one, and his mother lived to 93. A relative of his grandmother had 23 children. His mother was taught by a tutor, studied two gymnasium classes, and loved Pushkin and Tolstoy.

Rabbi Wilgelm joins. Conversation about a large Jewish cemetery in a town (possibly Polonne, unclear), where old gravestones were removed by the Communists and the original ones remain inside. There is also talk of a planned trip to Pyatka after Shavuot and of a learned rabbi; much of the speech is garbled.

Groisburg says that pews at the large synagogue were costly and her religious family could not afford them. She recalls that her grandmother was at home on Sabbath, which was observed. The children worked on Sabbath, while the father went to synagogue with his tallit, in which he was later buried.

Geller talks about his family today. He has a daughter and a son and grandchildren who are teachers, and he mentions a grandson in Kazan. He married in 1949 a woman from Zhytomyr, whose father was a tailor and mother a housewife. He speaks of an old-fashioned Jewish wife's duties and, in garbled lines, of a son's circumcision; Lemster then asks about cooking at home.

Burshtein tells stories from before the war: a naked man in the woods who predicted the war, his father the tailor traveling to fairs, and a sack of salt on the road. He tells how his father was followed by silent figures, and a madman dug up his father's body before a holiday. He recalls fear of demons as a child and how he wore tzitzit to go out. He explains how people were buried in Poland.

Nibulskiy says the Germans murdered Pulen's Jews. After the war the bones were dug up and moved to the Jewish cemetery, where a large monument stands. Kerler asks the year, which he gives as 1956. He and his father helped restore the memorials.

Nibulskiy tells how the Makarover rebbe, a guest in his grandfather's house, taught a stingy local man a lesson through a circumcision-related incident, after which the man became generous with charity. He also tells how his grandmother Gitl took his sickly father Yankl to the rebbe, who rubbed the boy's cheeks with his beard. The father lived to a great age and put on tallis and tefillin on weekdays.

The speaker says no Jews are left in Pyotke, only the cemetery, which he visits with his daughter and grandchildren; the mass graves of the murdered are there. He tells of the postwar trial of local policemen who took part in the killings, with long prison sentences and releases in the 1950s (the numbers of victims are unclear). He also mentions a list of Jewish families drawn up after the war, which he passed on to his children.