Camps and forced labor

Gross says the mikveh, the synagogue and the rabbi's and shoykhet's houses in Vaja were all destroyed. He recounts his yeshiva years, with a study partner in the first terms, then the troubles of 1938, his return home to work as a carpenter until 1941, and military labor service in Kassa (Košice). Kerler also asks about a yeshiva-student song.

Gross lists what his father made as a carpenter (tables, windows, doors) and explains that his father was one of five brothers, with three shoemakers and a tinsmith. He says he learned the trade from his father between 1938 and 1941 and then went into labor service, as did his brother in 1943.

Asked whether he wanted to pray after Auschwitz, Gross says he did. He says twenty members of his family were deported to Auschwitz and only one sister came home.

Herbst speaks about the days of liberation in Mauthausen, when he was too weak to go to the window, and answers Kerler's question about the tunnel built under a river and into the mountain. He says the Germans paid for the work for two years under American occupation. Kerler then steers him back to Berlabash and Rakhiv before the war, and Herbst says his voice is tired, so they take a short break.

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.

Rezmovits talks about forced labor in the early 1950s (?), when he was given only unskilled work smashing material with a large hammer in a factory, and wagonloads were packed each day. He then tells how he and a colleague, caught in a storm, asked a Polish peasant woman for a night's shelter. She turned out to speak Yiddish because she had once been a servant in a Jewish household. She offered them pork and gave a parting gift of a kind of red tea.

Herbst speaks of the Budapest ghetto, whose Jews were not sent to Auschwitz, and of Hungarian Jews who arrived at Mauthausen. He tells how he found a prayer book and tefillin at Mauthausen and kept the tefillin with him, naming their owner as Chaim Meir Weiss (?). The last part is a muddled exchange with Kerler about a seminary and a teacher or acquaintance who wrote an article about Herbst.

Herbst says his father kept a small grocery shop largely on credit, while four sisters did handwork and sewing for the local Ukrainians, paid in food. He grew up with four sisters and several brothers, one of whom studied tailoring. The sisters went to Auschwitz with their children and did not return, the youngest brother was lost before the war, and another brother survived Mauthausen and was liberated in 1945. He also mentions living in a sukkah-like hut in the mountains.

Herbst says he was with Polish Jews in a camp and knows some Polish, and that their Yiddish was different, mainly in its melody. Kerler explains that Podolian and Bessarabian Yiddish are close but not the same, and that articulation, dialect and individual words differ. He compares the case to Punjabi and Hindi. S2 joins in the discussion.

Pearl says he was freed by partisans and spent weeks in the forest. From there he watched the German soldiers retreating from the Balkans and the Russian army waiting beyond them. He returned via Romania, went home to Tállya and found his brother, then went back to Budapest, continued his studies and became an engineer. He says he survived the camp because he was young and healthy.

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

Pearl 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.

Doman and Kerler talk about acquaintances in Israel and Moscow, and Doman sends greetings through Kerler. Kerler asks how Doman used Yiddish after the yeshiva. Doman says he went to gymnasium and was conscripted into a labor camp in 1944. He gives the Hungarian word and its Yiddish and English equivalents.

Blobshteyn talks about his sister's husband, a famous wedding jester (badkhn) from Munkács who worked across America, his sister Feyge (Fayga) in Brooklyn, and her age and return home from the camp. He shows a family photograph with her sons and son-in-law. He tells about his own descendants, including a great-grandson who is seriously ill, and a visit to find a mother's gravestone near Solotvina.

Samadi speaks about his family. His father kept a shop and traded in all kinds of goods. He had one brother and one sister, and only his sister came back from Auschwitz. He gives the names of his siblings and his mother's maiden name, though some of these are unclear.

Samadi describes the postwar years, when he came home half a year before his sister, who later married and had two sons, and both she and her husband have since died. He recalls a year of labor service. Kerler asks about his grandparents, whom he mostly never knew. They also discuss his home language, which was Hungarian, and how his cheder lessons were conducted. He learned German from a teacher whose name is unclear.

Samadi speaks about the war years, when he worked for German soldiers and they did not know he was a Jew. He acted as interpreter for a woman with two children and describes being asked to bake, and how he used his German and avoided showing he did not understand. He did not wear a star, and says he looked non-Jewish. He calls it a hard time.

Samadi talks about working as a baker in Nyírkáta (Gobe) before the war, and about his call-up to labor service. He says the village notary could have exempted him but did not. Much of the passage is in Hungarian and garbled.

Stern talks about her life today, mentioning her children and a visit to Israel about three years ago. The conversation then turns to the war. She was in a camp, where she picked up some German. Her parents were taken away in 1944 (the transcript says 1949 (?)). She reads a Jewish newspaper and passes it on to her daughter. Much of the passage is garbled or in Hungarian.

Boltykh describes his mother's wartime ordeal. She was deported with her parents, her father died in Vertiujeni, and she was driven to Transnistria where she suffered. He gives scenes of shootings, of hunger, and of how she escaped being taken with other young girls. She was held in camp until 1944 and then returned to Briceni.

Boltykh recounts his father's war: he was taken to a camp from Lipcani in 1944, then conscripted to the Red Army front, wounded in the leg at Königsberg (Kaliningrad?) and lost the leg. He describes combat shooting from a tank and lived as a war invalid until his death.

Faiershtein looks for and reads her poem in Russian, which she describes as an answer to those who say there was no Holocaust in Moldova. The poem names Vertiujeni, Cosăuți and Obodovka (?), and speaks of the camps. Kerler and Lemster comment briefly in Yiddish. At the end she says she herself was a camp prisoner.

Faiershtein tells how as a nine-year-old child in the camp she was given a dead woman's coat and beaten by a Romanian guard; she hid in a pit in the sandy ground. She recited the poem about this in Briceni two years ago and met people who had carried her. Her mother got a pot with brown sugar from a Ukrainian woman. Her family of thirteen left Moldova and only three returned. Lemster asks about songs from Soroca; she says she sings Russian songs.

Faiershtein sings a little of a Yiddish love song, then says she knows only Russian songs. She says she was in Obodovka (?) with Abramovich and describes the crowded room, about forty people, and the sister's child's frozen feet. She says she has poems in Russian and one in Moldovan about veterans, printed by Shmuel Kishinevsky, and starts to read.

Faiershtein renders in Yiddish some of her poems about the war: the first calls for remembering the dead and the survivors, and the second concerns hunger in the camp and the taste of brown sugar in a small pot. She reads parts in Russian, saying Yiddish is hard for her. Lemster says it is a pity.

Goldberg tells how the family left Călărași on foot in 1941, crossed the Dniester and worked on a state farm in Ukraine while the Germans pursued them. They reached Stalingrad and worked in a factory. When the bombing began they left on the last ship and were sent east, where she and her mother worked in a hospital. Her sister fell ill and died there.

Roif speaks about a Jew who informed for a Romanian gendarmerie chief in Obodivka and was later sentenced. He adds that every people has its faults.

Zelda speaks about her family: a cousin or sister and her relatives who died in the camp, Feyge and Beyle, and Israel, who lived in Edineț and was in a different camp. Lemster and Zelda sort out Feyge's family, who lived in Beltsy, and how one of them died in an accident. Kerler asks about Purim plays, and Lemster asks whether she knows camp songs; she says she has not retained them.

Abelsky tells of his wartime evacuation to Uzbekistan, living in Tashkent and studying in an underground yeshiva in Samarkand. In 1946 he left Russia with the yeshiva, studied for a year in Germany and was then sent on a mission to Romania, where he stayed three years and had trouble with the authorities. He went on to Israel, married, taught in Chabad schools in Kfar Chabad and Kiryat Gat, and came to Chișinău around the Hanukkah of sixteen years before the interview.

Kishlyansky tells of the war's start in Briceni in June 1941: robbery and killings, then Romanian soldiers marching the Jews on foot toward the Dniester. Shootings and rain on the field are recalled. He was held about half a year in the Sokolon ghetto behind wire, where peasants sold food once a week. In October they were sent on to Ukraine, where many died of illness; he worked herding pigs on a kolkhoz. After the Red Army arrived his father was taken and shot.

Answering questions about Purim and Simchat Torah, Kishlyansky recites the opening lines of a Purim play. He recalls Simchat Torah children's flags with an apple and costumed Purim players going door to door. Kerler asks him to repeat the lines on camera. He says people neither prayed nor sang in the camp, only wept.

Roif and Katz continue about the missing cousin, who was apparently born in Brichevo (?), Moldova. She was taken out of a camp by the Red Cross, probably in 1943, to Romania. Roif says the girl's father in America wrote asking about his wife, and says Russian-sunk ships carried other children away. Katz promises to place an announcement and asks about ghetto songs.

Roif says they went to the Ştefăneşti rebbe, and that her father-in-law and her mother's grandfather were rich and sent wheat to Ştefăneşti for flour for matzo baking. She stresses good relations with the villagers before the war and contrasts them with camp experiences. Katz asks about the rebbe's standing, and she says he was known across Romania and Bessarabia. She then turns to how she keeps Purim and Hanukkah today.

Roif talks about a family tragedy involving two girls, one of them a Raya Bronshteyn (?), whose mother Rivka and brother Shike (?) died in a camp, and a ship on which many children were drowned. They came to Iași (?). Katz then asks what name to use for her: she gives it as Zelda (Zina in daily life), with the family name Roif. She also says she wrote to a Romanian organisation seeking information and got no answer.

Sherman speaks briefly about his grandmother's ironware shop. He then recounts the 1941 flight from Telenești by cart, on foot, across the Dniester with the help of a Christian boatman, and by road to Stalingrad, then by barge on the Caspian to a Kazakh fishing settlement where he worked in a fish plant. Mobilized, he worked on railway-car repair in Almaty, then in a group from Tashkent on bridge-building near Moscow, and later in the Sverdlovsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions before being called back to Telenești.

Diner describes working very hard with her mother in a factory in Siberia and escaping after three years to Novosibirsk without a passport. There she met a Jewish couple by chance. The man was a director of the Minsk Yiddish theater, evacuated to Novosibirsk, and he helped her get papers by making copies of a birth certificate until she obtained a passport. She says he could have been given ten years for it.

Diner says which languages her books are in and names Tolstoy works she loves. She describes how in the Soviet camp she refused to smoke or to speak coarsely, how she found a book by Eminescu in the library and swore not to take part. She says she read Russian poetry to a fellow prisoner, Natalia Sats, for eleven months, and describes the few Jews among the inmates and what each had done.

Diner describes being arrested and held in a prison in Mykolaiv after the war, in cell 39. She says she met a German woman, Marta, who told the story of the operetta Silva, which Diner copied down in the camp. She recounts Marta's story of a Russian officer who fell in love with her in Germany and how she was arrested.

Diner talks about her arrest and imprisonment: three years in a camp, then exile or banishment, with a long sentence given to her and to her mother after her father, described as a Zionist, was shot. She says she escaped, was caught in Mykolayiv (?), and was held in a camp in the Perm region, and that she was released after Stalin's death. She describes camp life, including the shirts and sacks they sewed from, and shows her handwritten booklet of poems and songs from the camp, including an operetta text. She recalls a fellow prisoner, a talented thief from Kyiv, and a Kyiv political prisoner who wrote.

Benderskij tells how the family fled the advancing front, with soldiers and horses killed under bombing, through a burning Chișinău. At the Dniester crossing, with thousands of people at a bridge, an officer shot a man who refused to ferry them. They then travelled to the Caucasus, Makhachkala, Krasnovodsk and a collective farm in Kazakhstan, where they stayed about six months. His father was taken for labor, fell ill and was released. Kerler asks about a Russian term he uses.

Rotner tells of the war years: after Balta the family fled, worked about a year on a kolkhoz near Rostov, and travelled through the Kalmyk steppe to Kazakhstan. There she did odd jobs including loading railway wagons, took courses and earned a diploma, and later worked in a polyclinic as a nurse's aide. She describes hearing of the German retreat after Stalingrad and deciding with her father to go home.

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

Kerler opens the interview in Lipcani on 13 December 2005. Kleyman gives her name, her maiden name Shnayder, and her Yiddish first name Manye. She was born in 1928 in Starye Karkushany, twelve kilometers from Briceni, and lived in the village before the war. She spent three years in the camp, returned to the village, married in 1953 and came to Lipcani. Her parents later died here and are buried here.

Kleyman talks about her family. Her father Leyb dealt in machinery brought from Romania and her mother Reyze was a seamstress. Her mother was born in Secareni(?) and her father in Karakushan, and she had one sister. Of the original family only a few remain and her three children live apart: a son in Germany and a daughter in Ukraine. She says she and her sister were in the camp and returned in 1945 and recalls her grandmother Feyge and her mother's sisters.

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.

Sharhorodskij tells of the Rîbniţa ghetto under German and Romanian occupation. In 1943 the Germans converted an agricultural school building into a hospital and demanded carpenters from the ghetto. He worked there for eight months and picked up spoken German from the lessons he had had before the war, which led to his being used as a translator.

Sharhorodskij recounts the Rîbniţa ghetto and an evacuation attempt in 1941. He and his sister left with another family and stopped some fifty kilometres from Donetsk, where Romanian soldiers searched for weapons and beat them. He tells of being driven out of Krasne Okne with others to a mill, where the community bribed the gendarmerie commander with valuables and they were turned back. They fled at night, wandered for a month in villages and forests helped by non-Jews, and reached the Ulmu state farm near Rîbniţa, while those who stayed behind were taken to Dubăsari and shot. He also touches on Jews who lived better in the ghetto, a brigadier named Shtrakhman who was a bad man, and holidays kept in secret.

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

Boiarskaia says she worked in Rîbniţa before the war and was driven out with the others. She describes being taken to a camp on the Bug in Ukraine with Bessarabian rabbis, the Romanians arriving after the Germans, and the ghetto formed from the old Jewish houses. Kerler returns to the 1933 famine in her village, and she says she was fifteen when she came to Rîbniţa; Ukrainians came begging for bread.

Magetman tells how the German bombing at the start of the war killed her mother and younger sister on 8 July 1941, and how she and her father were injured. They were held in the ghetto at Chechelnyk, Vinnytsya region, from July 1941 to March 1944. Her father and his mother froze to death on 28 November 1941, and she lost her fingers and hands that same night, when people were driven out into the snow and forty froze.

Plotnik tells of the deportation. She and her mother were driven from their house and held in a courtyard, then marched through Rublenita and the Bălți prison to Vertiujeni. Her sister had been evacuated to Uzbekistan with the school. Her mother, who was sick, was thrown into a ravine on the road, and Plotnik crossed the Dniester near Cosauti. She tells of a child killed by a soldier and of being fed by Jews at Zugovka, then continues to Bershad with a family from Dumbraveni. There she lived with a family and begged for food for a year. She worked near a liquor factory dressed as a Christian and tells of the dying child Dudele.

Roif tells how a holy book was passed on to her uncle in the camp and kept in Bălți. She then sings two songs learned in the camp: one of longing for home, the other about a hungry child who steals bread. She says the songs come from camp life and that she has forgotten others.

Roif describes the deportation. The family was held near Rîşcani for three months, then in Mărculeşti for about two weeks. They were driven to the Cosăuţi woods before crossing the Dniester. Her paralysed mother was carried on a cart. She died in the first kolkhoz in Transnistria. Roif also tells of an aunt and her children who died, and the Red Cross.

She continues about the war years: her siblings Esther, Shlomo and the youngest sister, the cold, her grandmother who died in the camp, and her illness without medicine. Kerler asks whether songs were sung then.

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

Kerler asks David about his childhood before and during the war. He recalls first and second grade, his father's forced labor digging trenches, the closing of schools, and the deportation train from Iași, and tells of hunger and shortages, shopping for food in a market square near the family's home, and non-Jewish neighbors. He also describes heating with wood and the restrictions of the Ceaușescu years.

Brief talks about wartime hunger and going out of a camp with a small sack to look for food in the villages. He describes clothes made from sacks and twisted shoes. Lemster mentions that his own mother was in a camp. Kerler then steers back to Shvartskop's songs and the poet's family and name.

Cohn says Jews sang Yiddish songs in the labor camp, then sings a Yiddish song about walking hungry and cold and sleeping on boulevard benches. He repeats it at Kerler's request.

Hershkovich recalls being taken in 1942 into the army labor service, where he worked in construction without arms until October 1944 (?). His unit was all Jews, working long hours on poor food. His mother and sisters were deported to Auschwitz, where they perished. He shows photographs of his family, of the Dej synagogue and of the head of the yeshiva (Panet), and mentions relatives in America.

Freundlich gives her name as Elizabeta (Elza), née Weiss, with the Yiddish name Rivke after her grandmother. She says she is proud to be a Jewish grandmother and speaks of her father, a learned man, and her cousin in California. She mentions having been in camp, Auschwitz and Geislingen.

Hershkovich names family members and shows photographs: his sister Sheyndl and brother Yisroel were deported and did not return, and his mother's name was Blime. His father Aaron, son of David (?), came from Budapest, worked as a clerk and then as a melamed in various communities, and his grandparents are buried in Jerusalem. He also speaks of his teacher at the Dej yeshiva and of being the middle child of five.

Freundlich says she visited Auschwitz in 1969. At Kerler's request a Yiddish travel song about taking food for a journey is sung, apparently by another woman. Freundlich then speaks, partly in Hungarian, about Satmar, a mass killing and burial in a pit, and a history professor in Jerusalem originally from Satmar whose father was a shochet.

Two speakers discuss Lithuanian Jews and Bessarabian Jews, including Jews working in Bessarabia who met bearded men and asked about a minyan. They discuss a term for these people (Lipovans?). Kerler then asks about a song one of them sang.

Miller tells how Rabbi Halberstam of Cluj, deported to Auschwitz, was freed by the Americans and, in his account, flown to America by Eisenhower. He tells of Halberstam's later life, including his money going to Netanya to build a yeshiva, synagogue and hospital. He then describes how in 1985 or 1986 (as heard) workers in Cluj found boxes of ritual objects and papers from his house on Dezsma street, and the dispute over them between Cluj, Bucharest and Netanya.

Grimberg describes hardship in Transnistria, such as sleeping in a pit and drinking salted tea. She says she does not remember a particular Yiddish song. Kerler asks about her role as a prayer-reader in the synagogue; she says she reads from the chumash and tkhines, and she is asked to show her tkhine. The segment ends with talk in Romanian and Yiddish about transport.

Hirsch speaks of being held in various camps in Romania from 1941 until the Soviet army liberated the area in 1944. He says his parents and sister left for Israel in 1960. He had a brother who was imprisoned as a political prisoner and died in August 1944, apparently of lung problems. He then begins to give his own name and the family name Hirsch.

Hirsch speaks about the later war years, after Stalingrad, when the Romanian authorities treated Jews somewhat better. In a partly Hungarian-language account, a young man tells of being locked up with about ten other Jewish youths, with a minyan, as punishment, to be sent to Transnistria. They were released when an order sent officers to the front, which he calls great luck. He also says Botoșani Jews were not deported because they paid the authorities.

Hirsch speaks about contemporary Jewish life in Dej, where a few Jews die each year. He worked for about fifteen years as secretary of the Jewish communities of Dej and Bistrița. He also mentions the labor camps and survivors' return. Kerler then asks him to say more about Luduș before they move on to Dej.

Chajim describes Friday-night family observance in his childhood, with kiddush and Sabbath dishes such as kugel, and his father's wishes concerning kaddish. He says he cannot recite kiddush any more. He tells Kerler and Lemster, who are from Edineț, how glad he is to talk to someone from there, recalling work in Galați and in Rujniţa, Briceni and a village near Edineț.

Chajim explains that he was a Communist because they gave him bread, and speaks of escaping from a camp. His father died in Israel, and he mentions sitting shiva for his wife. He names his mother, remembers her cooking (kugel, fish, gefilte fish on Sabbath eve) and her candle-lighting. He had six brothers and two sisters, and all the brothers are dead. His father and grandfather were tailors. He was also a tailor and president of a cooperative. Lemster asks about Yiddish theatre, which he does not remember.

Kerler greets Chajim, who says he is almost a hundred (a few months short). He sets up the interview with talk of his operation and memory, and compares prices and shopping now with long ago. Chajim says he was born in Podu Iloaiei and learns Kerler is from Israel, born in Moscow. He recalls helping a Jewish friend (Shmuel, whose parents were sent to Auschwitz) and mentions a cemetery near Bat Yam; Kerler asks the Yiddish word for cemetery, and Chajim recalls being shut in train wagons.

Karuel recalls the war years in Iași with his parents, when food was scarce. His father was taken for forced labor. He attended Romanian lyceum in Iași and learned Yiddish and prayer-book reading from a private teacher at home. He mentions childhood games and holiday customs.

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

Freundlich recalls that his mother taught him the prayer modeh ani at age five, and tells of her checking whether he said his morning prayers properly. He says that as a Communist he was imprisoned and then sent to labor, which he regards as luck, and that he still prays daily and knows the services by heart.

Macarie names her parents: her father was a businessman, her mother Sheindl Ester sewed at home for Romanian Christian customers. There were twelve children. She recalls her paternal grandfather Hershi and his wife, and her maternal grandmother Khaye, but not the other grandparents' names. After the war only four siblings were left: a brother who lived in Vienna, a sister in Israel and a brother in America. The others, with the parents, were taken to Auschwitz. No visit to a rebbe is heard here.

Freundlich sings the song again, and Kerler asks him about other songs. He says he learned a song from a fellow prisoner, discussing where the man came from, which appears to be Bistriţa and then the Gura Humorului border area. The man's origin is somewhat unclear in the transcript. He begins to sing the verses of "Baranovich".

Freundlich sings the folk song about Baranovich that he learned from his friend while they were in prison. Kerler asks in which year this was and where the friend was from. Freundlich says the friend came from Bistriţa (?) and that they met in Baia Mare.

Salamon recalls her childhood and says she was born in this house, as was her mother. She gives her mother's name Beyle and her father's name Ezra Malik, her names Golda and her husband's name, and her birth in 1926. She had seven siblings (four brothers and three sisters); she alone survived and returned after the ghetto and Birkenau.

Asked about prewar yeshivas in the area, Galambos names places such as Nyírmada and Ópályi. He cannot say which had the best reputation. He then speaks of saying the Kaddish and prayers that bring back Auschwitz and the burning of children, and asks for a prayer book.

Galambos recalls the camps after liberation, where Polish Jews spoke Polish, Russian and Yiddish while Hungarian Jews mostly did not speak Yiddish. He names places in the area where Yiddish was spoken, mentions that American soldiers came with a Torah, and describes devout Polish Jews. Kerler then asks about the happiest time in his life.

Weinberger describes Jewish life in Stropkov, where about half the Jews were pious and the rest less so. During the war he lived on false papers as a coachman for a Slovak employer. When transports resumed and he was due to be taken to a labor camp (Sered'), he fled across the Hungarian border in winter via Snina and Stakčín. He describes a night in a military cemetery, a night hidden among chickens in a poor man's shed, going on foot to Bereznyi and on to Uzhhorod, where he stayed in the Jewish community. He then tells of the train to Budapest and a stranger who shared food and gave him money. Kerler asks about words such as kuchtsher and the Slovak for Yom Kippur.

Chaimovic describes the restrictions and the star under the Germans and Hungarians and the camps at Sered' and Nováky; he says he was caught in September and held at Sered' until March 1945, then was sent on. He recalls shootings there, including a man saved by tallit and tefillin, the shooting of the Prešov rabbi and other cruelty, and nightmares that follow. His three brothers and a sister did not return; he tells of escaping from the police into the forest and of a Yom Kippur hiding in the woods with his mother.

Zhovtis tells in a long and hard-to-follow account of the German occupation. He describes the first killings of Jews and communists near Khmilnyk, and the roundup of Jews from the town and surrounding villages, including his mother, siblings and himself. He escaped while his mother was being beaten and was taken in by a non-Jewish villager, who gave him milk, but a local officer turned him in. He also describes forced labor for German and Romanian commanders, repeated escapes, and falling ill. He was taken to Mohyliv-Podilskyi. He names several places, but their spelling is not clear in the transcript.

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

Chukh tells about her late second husband Itzik. He was at the front, was captured by the Germans and escaped from camps, and worked as an electrician at a factory in Berdychiv. He had a traditional Jewish education and knew prayer. He had been married earlier, and she and he had a daughter together. He died at about ninety, and she describes how she spoke to him at the end.

Vainshelboim speaks about Ukrainian and German attitudes toward the Jews, and about neighbors taking Jewish property. He explains that in 1942 he feared his employer would betray him. On neighbors' advice he went to the Rozhysk district, where he worked on a state farm among prisoners for about a year until the Red Army arrived. He recounts the arrival of the Soviet forces at the end of 1943.

Shveibish talks in Yiddish about the Pechera camp and the transports of Jews, especially from Tulchyn, with others from Shpykiv and Mohyliv. She mentions a local policeman and the liberation, when soldiers on horseback came. Kerler learns that about 330 survived. She recalls the forced march and the freezing, overcrowded night, the lack of water and toilets, and the deaths. Her father was killed and her mother died within a month. Near the end the talk turns to Russian as they approach the camp and a memorial plaque.

The group reaches the forest where the mass graves lie and looks at the memorials, including a monument of a grieving Jewish mother, erected soon after the war (about 1949 or 1950, as the speaker estimates it). Kerler and the guides identify graves, partly of children and of people from Tulchyn and Mohyliv, and read the Hebrew and Russian inscriptions. They ask why the graves lie so far from the camp and discuss whether candles and mowing are kept up at the site.

Mikhail tells of his wartime escapes from the police and from a shooting at a pit. His mother hid him in an oven behind baked bread when police came, and his father, a painter, was released. He tells of being held with thousands in a cellar and driven towards the airfield park. He crawled away naked under fire in October and walked to villages. A Ukrainian family hid him for about a year while he begged bread, despite a German reward for turning in Jews, and he escaped pursuers by swimming. He also gives the ages of his parents and siblings and says the elder brother was at the front.

Hodinger describes his service in a labor battalion after the war, with about three thousand men from Transcarpathia sent to Belarus. He then went to the Soviet Far East. He mentions a few Jews serving alongside him.

Snook describes arriving at Auschwitz. A German snatched the child from her and sent it to one side while she was sent to the other. She says Jews were killed in the camps, and Lemster says he was born after the war. He then steers her back to prewar life.

Snook says her belongings were stolen, though the wartime losses are only briefly described. Her husband's parents were taken to a camp in the 1940s and did not return. She has lived in Khust for twenty years and says young people there no longer speak Yiddish but understand it. Lemster asks about Christians who spoke Yiddish.

Hodinger says he is from Vynohradiv (Seliš) and lived there until 1944, when the Germans and Hungarians came. He was in the ghetto for two months, from Passover to Shavuot, at age sixteen, and then taken to Auschwitz. He recalls Mengele at the selection and how he narrowly escaped death twice, and describes his fear and his heart pounding at night.

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

Pustilnik names her siblings and says there were eight children before the war and six after. She gives their approximate birth years, and a few siblings live in Israel (Haifa among the places mentioned). One sister, Yeyde (?), was caught after hiding and killed, and Pustilnik describes the mother's cooking in the camp, with the boy who cried from hunger now living in Israel. Kerler asks about the river and the camp near Pechera.

Kupershmidt describes seeing thousands of naked Jewish prisoners kept under German guard, and says memory of this must be passed on. He says his father was killed by the Germans in Bratslav, while his mother was evacuated and sent to the Pechera camp, where he says Romanians rather than Germans were in charge. He describes Germans taking young people to be shot and sons forced to load their parents onto trucks. Kerler then asks how he saved himself in Zhytomyr.

Rakhil, born 1919, speaks of her family's fate in the war. Her mother and two sisters were in a camp and her mother brought them back, her father was shot, and she herself was evacuated to Kyrgyzstan. She remembers prewar Bratslav, its streets, her Ukrainian school, and her father, a learned man who taught her Hebrew words.

Geller tells how an aunt took the infant brother, and he trained as a turner at a factory school in Chimkent and worked at a plant, receiving bread rations. His father, a worker in a labor army and later at a port, took him to Krasnovodsk, where he worked in a cafeteria.

Kupershmidt recalls local families who perished and continues with his driving work for Germans and Romanians. He tells how he wore a Star of David, of a German officer living with a Jewish woman, and of a letter about him that he offers to show. He also recounts a trip to Mohyliv-Podilskyy, where he made a delivery, and the car trouble on the road.

Kupershmidt continues the war narrative with his brother in Mohyliv-Podilskyy, where the family lived in the ghetto, and a labor levy of three hundred people for building a bridge. Kerler asks how the brother was called, and about seeing Jews drowned in the Bug.

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

Kupershmidt describes being held in a column near Zhytomyr, being stripped, a night alarm and how he hid in an attic. He says Jews were shot and carried off on carts. He then recounts signing up for a work gang, a former acquaintance who knew him, getting passes, and walking to Nemyriv and home. A woman he met there gave a harrowing account of the ghetto, and he mentions a Volksdeutsche family and a policeman.

Gimelbrandt recalls that her mother returned to Chernivtsi in 1944 and hid in a cellar for fear of roundups. She describes the war: in autumn 1941 the Jews were forced into the small synagogue for six weeks, then packed into freight cars to the Dniester and over a bridge to Mohyliv, where the Romanians searched them. After a school for disinfection they marched in the snow to Slidy. Exhausted, she was left in the fields and rescued by a non-Jew, who took her to Slidy and then to the ghetto camp on a former pig farm, where she rejoined her family.

Shternberg talks about the war years, when she was held in a camp from July until March at Kopaihorod (the name is garbled). She sings two songs in Russian that she composed there, and describes hunger, her mother bartering for bread and potatoes, and local non-Jews warning of gendarmes. She also sings a Yiddish song she heard in the camp, and speaks about praying in the camp and Yiddish among younger people today.

Ziselis gives his name and patronymic and says he is from Khotyn. He recounts the war years: Tulchyn, hangings, forced labor, and escaping from the work column to hide in the barracks with the help of an acquaintance. He describes shootings, the death of acquaintances, and his father the shoykhet who was shot. The transcript is garbled and details are uncertain.

Shternberg talks about a video interview made for a Ukrainian project, in which she sang two camp songs, and mentions Spielberg. She and Kerler look at a newspaper clipping about her late husband, a cantor at the synagogue, and about the Hesed. She then sings a song about childhood years and the house where she was born, and Lemster asks about the camp songs again.

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

Vaisblai is taken to Smotrich, where Jews with beards are tortured for gold, and then marched to the Kam''yanets'-Podil's'kyy ghetto. He describes a cell where Jews were thrown in and his escape. He then flees on, mentions Poltava, and reaches a kolkhoz village where he is suspected of theft; two people from Chemerivtsi, who knew him, vouch for him. He stays in hiding until 1945.

Vaisblai describes his wartime experiences as a boy of eleven. His family was taken to Kam"yanets'-Podil's'kyy, where his father, mother and grandparents are buried; he escaped on his father's urging and was held for a time by a German. He describes the old and new ghettos, bringing food to his father, the killing of children, and an uncle Zelik, a wealthy man. He then wandered among Dunaivtsi, Kupyn and other villages, hiding that he was a Jew and being helped by various non-Jews. Much of the passage is Russian or garbled.

Asked to recite Yiddish poems, Kaviner says he remembers a few lines of Fefer and others. He talks about the poets Shmuel Halkin, Markish, Hershl Polyanker, Fefer and others. He discusses their arrests and sentences, their camp poetry and postwar release, and Polyanker's speech about the murder of six million Jews. He also discusses faith and God after the Holocaust, and ends with a story on Jews' residence rights, mentioning Berdychiv.

Snook speaks of 1941, when her parents were taken away; she was staying with a relative and a neighbour, and the family went to Poland (?), where they were killed. Later she was taken to the camp, rescued by a German from the child, and freed in 1945. She returned home and lived hard years after the war; her family relations and her own illness are mentioned. Kerler tells of his birth in Moscow and move to Israel, and Snook talks about children and relatives in Israel and America.

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

Kipnis talks about her father Itsik Kipnis after his return from imprisonment: his weak health, his arrest and interrogation, and the newspapers people came to read at his home. She describes his three libraries, his love of art albums and of Chagall, his friendships with Ukrainian, Russian and Yiddish writers, and his years in the camps, including a fellow prisoner and a small Jewish group marking holidays. She also mentions his diaries, now mostly archived in Israel, and his heart attacks.

Asked about the ghetto, Khandros says he was in the ghetto and in the Pechera camp and escaped from it, and that he was shot at and wounded. He refers to his published book for the full story. He speaks of five people who saved him at different times and are honoured at Yad Vashem, whom he regards as his own family, and offers to show photographs.

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

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

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

Krotsh recounts the war years, when he was taken into the army and sent with others to military construction work in Baku, Azerbaijan. The labour was hard and the bread ration small. A Jewish friend told him that he would be put to work as a tailor, and a brigade leader said it had been ordered. He met a Jewish woman who spoke Yiddish with him, and her husband promised him a sewing machine. He ends with a Yiddish saying that Kerler asks him to explain.

Krotsh describes the war years, when he was drafted into the Red Army at Kirovabad. He did heavy military construction work there, with hunger and thin soup, and was then put to work as a tailor. He tells of meeting a Jewish workshop head, getting a sewing machine, and being helped by a senior party woman, so that tailoring saved him. Kerler asks whether he went to a rebbe, and Krotsh answers that perhaps his father's blessing helped.

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

Dorfman says his father died in a prison in Kazakhstan and his mother served fifteen years. He then leads the group on past graves of a colonel and others and of a charity collector.

Shvartzbroit gives a detailed account of the Pechera camp. She tells of being sent out with Ukrainian Jews while Bessarabian Jews bought their way out with money, of the transport in wagons, of the dead and living in the camp and of how she was helped to leave. She then tells of her flight via Sharhorod, Murakhtu (?) and Ozarintsy to Mohyliv, where relatives took her in. Kerler's questions clarify the details.

Vaisburd tells how she escaped from Pechera at night with her mother and about twenty other people, running for two hours and bribing two policemen who threatened to return them to the camp. She lost her parents in the woods, was found by a local woman, and then by a cousin who had led them out. The family then stayed two or three weeks in Sharhorod with a woman named Khane, where her mother baked bread and pea pastries; Vaisburd explains how the pastries are made and baked. She then recalls the return to Mohyliv, where her father was drafted at Chernivtsi (Kleyn Tshernovits), and the Romanian police stopped them, where her mother passed as a Christian by crossing herself and praying, and the earlier roundup, ransom and deportation by train. Kerler and Lemster ask about local place names, the shoykhet and local Jewish figures, and her Russian studies. From about 13:00 the passage becomes mainly the dialectological questionnaire, partly in Russian, covering words for dawn, apostate, Christian and peasant, greetings and thanks, household and food terms, adverbs, body words, verbs, adjectives, and sentences to translate.

At the restaurant, Vider and Kerler exchange Yiddish farewell sayings. Vider says he returned in December 1946, after his brother's return in 1945, to a few remaining Jews; there was still a shoykhet. He describes meeting for prayer in a Romanian Jew's house (Leybovitsh), baking matzo there until about 1953, and the Leybovitsh grandsons today. He then answers a question about the men who came back from labor in Siberia.

Nayman recalls hiding in a pit and sleeping on the ground in the camp. He describes the Americans arriving and the first food, sugar. He fell ill with typhus and was in a hospital, and later tracked down the German support he now receives. Kerler and Nayman compare this with his Israeli and Ukrainian incomes.

Vider tells of his return from Vorkuta. He was at first refused entry to Mukacheve and sent to Nadvirna, where he had earlier been in prison. On reaching home he found no parents or relatives and stayed with an acquaintance who had fought in Spain. He took various jobs and worked for twenty-three years at the mineral water factory, but could not become director without a party card. He mentions marrying in 1949 and his late wife. Kerler then asks about words for Romanians and Gypsies.

Tzentziper says he served on the Third (?) and a second Ukrainian front and in 1946 was sent to fight Japan in China. He says the mixed unit had good relations and that he felt no antisemitism in the army or at work. He mentions the medals he received, saying they equalled those of others.

Informal opening as the team talks about a visitor from America and heads toward Trachtenberg's home. Trachtenberg says he was held in a camp and ghetto in Mykolayiv, that Mykolayiv had a large Jewish population, and that he lives alone with a son in Israel. He gives his birth year as 1926 and says the Germans took him in 1941.

Turovskaia explains that she knows from her parents' stories about her father's encounters before the revolution and her uncle Yakov Leyzer's actions at a funeral. She narrates her father's time in the Gulag, working at a brickyard, and being sent into the cold river, with a Russian stretch about sentence and bonus. Her mother then sent him parcels, and the family sent the girls away.

Shvartzbroit speaks about her grandfather the rabbi, kosher Passover dishes kept in the attic, and her giving money to the poor for Passover. She mentions her husband's trade and travel to Romania and Moldova. She says her father arranged weddings for poor orphans in their home. She gives her birth year as 1928, though her papers say 1930, and says she came from Pechora aged about fourteen. Much of the passage is garbled and the sequence is unclear.

Shvartzbroit says her mother worked with her father in the sewing workshop, which sent goods to Moscow and Leningrad until the late 1920s and 1930s. Her mother did not teach her to bless, lit Friday candles and worked on non-Jewish holidays. She lists the Jewish holidays and retells the story of Esther and Mordecai, offering Kerler a booklet. She says she had one sister and that both parents' fates and her sister's killing in Pechora are told here. She describes her father's death from an illness.

Krasner shows family photographs: her mother Khaike, an aunt Mindl who lived with the family, and cousins. She points out a picture at Pechera, saying the window there was theirs, and tells in Yiddish and Russian of Germans loading people onto a truck, with prayers and cries in the camp. Kerler asks whether her written memoirs are in Yiddish (they are in Russian), and she comments on Romanians who were good to people. She ends with a story of a girl needing a match, a childhood photograph, and a brief exchange about Rosh Hashanah.

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

Krasner tells of a hungry Romanian-Jewish youth, Maksik, who begged for bread at Pechera, and of a missing toilet in the corridor. Kerler asks how a word is said in Yiddish; the matter of a Yiddish word for a board or worker is asked, though the transcript is garbled. In Russian a woman is told to put money away safely and to prepare food for the guests.

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.

Tartinets speaks mostly in Russian/Ukrainian, with Yiddish fragments, about her life and about the war. She remembers neighbouring Jewish children, their prayers and the fact that she forgot songs and prayers. She recalls Jews being taken away on carts, and her being taken as a young girl to work on beets in Hungary, where food was rationed for those who would not work. She mentions that there were six children in her family.

Kerler puts questionnaire items to Tartinets, such as the Yiddish for body parts, Passover matzo and hametz, and beets cooked in the war; she answers partly in Yiddish and partly in Russian. She is asked about Sabbath food such as cholent, kugel and challah. She then returns to the wartime work on beets and maize, being sent from her village, and says she raised two children alone. Kerler asks whether she knows a Yiddish song.

Kerler asks the interviewee about Tisha b'Av and the children's custom of throwing burs at the beards of adults, which she does not recall. He then asks a few vocabulary items, such as words for face and for "a lot". She describes her life today: illness, a heart operation in Vinnytsia that she could hardly pay for, her pension compared with German payments, and her great-grandson and grandson. She also mentions having been in a camp as a child and sharing a camp background with another woman. Short exchanges with other visitors follow, with Russian speech and some Hebrew.

The interview with Guzman begins with her name, birth in Tomashpol' and her family: her father Bentsion, a shop worker beaten by the gendarmerie, her mother, and her brother. She recalls Yiddish and Ukrainian schooling, prewar holidays (Purim, Passover, Sukkot), food, the synagogues and the shoykhet, weddings and the library. She describes the ghetto, where non-Jewish villagers brought food, and forced labour in the fields. She mentions the famine and her stay with an aunt and uncle, as well as work after the war, photographs, relatives in Odessa, America and Israel, and Tul'chyn. Roughly the last quarter is word elicitation: greetings, colours, adverbs, 'pigeon', 'ear' and other items, which Guzman answers with difficulty.

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

Kogan recalls being driven from Bershad' to Pishchanka on foot during the war and a night's walk there. He describes the hunger in the Pishchanka ghetto and sleeping on cement floors. Kerler's questions appear briefly, and the transcript is partly unclear.

Kogan explains that he composed his song about the camp to a tune known from Bershad' after the Pechora camp. He sings it, with its refrain and its verses about the town and the Bershad' cemetery.

Kogan sings "Aheym, briderlekh, aheym," a song about the Jewish people's return and eventual liberation. He then says that he wrote the songs during the occupation, fearing he would be arrested or killed. He mentions being sent to a place whose name is unclear in the transcript (Pishtyanka?) and then begins to read another song.

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

Answering Kerler, Golfeld recalls the rebbe Yosef Pinkevich (?) of Chechelnyk, who gave him money and shoes and collected charity for him. He then tells of walking long distances while fleeing from Pechora, falling into a pit, and being pulled out. A man whose words he reports gave him food, with talk of dumplings and a holiday, and he mentions a camp acquaintance.

Golfeld talks about his limited Hebrew schooling and childhood in Tul'chyn, which was happy before the war. He mentions the bandits and killings of Jews, and says Tul'chyn was somewhat better than elsewhere. Asked about the ghetto and Pechora camp, he says that rich people could buy their way out and that non-Jews saved many, expressing gratitude.

Presler gives her parents' and grandparents' families: both parents were born in Tul'chyn, and her mother had six sisters and two brothers. Her maternal grandfather was a glazier, and her father's family were musicians who played in a klezmer band for weddings, Purim and holidays. She describes growing up in the Kapsynivka quarter by the little river with crowded houses, and the family gatherings there with food, dancing and Yiddish songs. She recalls the 1933 famine, in which a relative died, and the dollars her sisters sent from America. She describes prewar hunger and poverty, and discusses her sisters' wartime and postwar lives, one of them marrying a non-Jewish officer. She answers Kerler's questions about plural forms, Yiddish words and dance names, and recalls Purim and weddings. She also talks about her grandson's singing and her prewar religious life, a synagogue building taken over, and her father's prayer. The passage ends with photographs of Pechera camp survivors, including one from 1990, the year her husband died.

Kogan describes the escape from Pishchanka through the woods, with injured feet, back to Bershad'. He hid in his mother's chimney, then in a loft at a neighbor's house in straw. His brother brought him food. He recalls the deportation of Jews to Mykolayiv, including a neighbor taken away. Kerler thanks him and the interview ends.

Yurkovetskij says that about forty Jews live in Tul'chyn today, and that they speak Yiddish or Russian among themselves. He says only a few came back from Pechera (a few hundred of thousands, with the guide giving other figures). Lemster asks whether camp songs existed, and he answers about the ghetto, where he was also held in Bershad, and the lice-ridden conditions.

Shveibish gives biographical details about local Yiddish speakers, including a woman who was in the camp at Bratslav and then at Pechera and lost her family there. Kerler asks about researchers who wrote about Pechera and about the Petersburg group's Yiddish programme. She notes how few Jews remain compared with the thousands before.

Kerler asks about the wealthy man 'Roytshulem' (Royt Shulem). The women tell the story of a rich man who died of hunger locked in with chests of gold, as heard from their parents, and mention large houses of wealthy people in the town. They then turn to the camp, where thousands were driven and few survived.

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

Katsman gives personal information: her name in Yiddish and Russian, her maiden name Chechelniker, her birth date and the fact that she has always lived in Tul'chyn. She talks about her family, which includes her father, a brush maker, her mother Perl, and a brother who froze to death in the camp. Her father was taken into the army and died after the war, and the family spoke Yiddish at home. She says the family's house was lost when they were driven into the ghetto. She recounts being driven to the Pechera camp, with disinfection in a bath, a night on the floor among about fifty people, beatings by police and help from some local non-Jews. She also mentions the return home after the war and attempts to claim compensation. Her half-brother in New York, her son in Israel and her second husband come up, along with her work as a tailor for 39 years. She answers Kerler's questions on relations with non-Jews before and after the war, on non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, on the shoykhet Moshe, on Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah food and recipes (gefilte fish, cholent, latkes, varenikes, cakes), on children's games at school and by the river, and on hardship in the postwar years. She also describes annual trips to the Pechera memorial, some arranged by an organizing group; the discussion then shifts to a neighbor Pesia, Kerler's explanation of the archive, and a closing exchange about the mezuzah.

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

Pecherskaia and the team try the dishes she has prepared. She speaks about her son, who lives in a new district of Tul'chyn, and about relatives in Israel and America, including half-sisters whose city she does not know. She describes going to Pechera every year at Rosh Hashanah, where her family lies, and being photographed and interviewed there. She names her family and gives her name, maiden name and birth year; her father Yosif worked as a coachman or carter. She had four siblings, including her brother Hershl, killed in the army at seventeen, and her sisters Shele and Rivele, who died in Pechera. She gives a long account of Pechera: her mother killed with shovels, her sisters' deaths, her escape and recapture, the German camp in Bratslav with its killings in the forest, and hiding in a pit and with a Polish woman until the partisans came. After the war she worked at a brewery in Bratslav and married in 1945. She talks about her husband Shune, her stepfather, her children and grandchildren, and a daughter in Israel. She recalls prewar Bratslav, a field wedding, her grandfather and prayer, Passover, the Bratslav tsadik's grave, and the hunger of 1933. She also talks about Tul'chyn after the war, her fasting, Passover matzo and gefilte fish.

Katz reads aloud from the tsene rene a passage on the red heifer (parah adumah) and its meaning, and the interviewer reacts to it. Katz then says he learned to read Yiddish in cheder but had no chance to read as a boy because he had to work, including in a labor camp. He mentions that he wears tallit and tefillin daily.

The group meets two local men on the street; one is a former yeshiva student. They talk in Yiddish about Hungarian versus Yiddish at home and the yeshiva. Naybauer then talks about his working life: he learned tailoring with his uncle, later made suits for the intelligentsia including professors from Moscow and Budapest, and worked forty-five years. He also talks about his late wife, his children and grandchildren, a kidney operation by Professor Polansky (?) in Kyiv, and the economic hardship of pensions and rent today. He says he was in a concentration camp at the age of twenty. He ends by pointing out the site of a former Jewish mill.

Sobol gives her Yiddish name, which differs from the name in her documents, and her birth year, 1915, in Mohyliv-Podil's'kyy. She names her mother Ester, who was a housewife, and says seven children were born but only she and one brother survived. Her father worked as a factory labourer, and she names her grandparents. She briefly mentions her husband, a Bukovinian, and says they met in the camp at Kozenits (?).

Sobol says that Yiddish theatre troupes used to visit before the war. Her husband told stories about the good Jew of Shishkivtsi (?), whom people travelled to, and about Jewish soldiers asking for Passover leave. She explains the word for a shepherd, and speaks about postal telegrams from relatives in America. Kerler asks about the Kozenits camp; she describes work under the Romanians, the rich buying their way out, and Ukrainians helping Jews with food.

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.

Nibulskaia recalls the war years in the Chelyabinsk region, where she and the schoolchildren worked in the coal mines on their days off, enduring hunger and hard labor. Children had few books and wrote between the lines of old ones. Her father worked at a smithy and her mother did not work.

Bluvshtein tells how the family left on the third day of the war, was picked up by a military train and travelled via Kharkiv to Stalingrad. They stayed there about two years, and he worked in a factory making cartridges and similar items. They returned in 1945. Meanwhile someone shows a newspaper to the team.