Cultural life (general)

Herbst says he worked at the sawmill with Russians, Ukrainians and Romanians and heard no Yiddish there, and that after the war he met few Yiddish speakers outside the hospital. He and Kerler talk about his Yiddish, which resembles that of Hungarian-Jewish Debrecen, and about the words 'Litvak' and 'pani' (thief) as Yiddish usage. Kerler asks about photographs, and Herbst describes postwar friends, including musicians, a pianist he met in hospital, and professors. He mentions a painter friend (name unclear, perhaps Anton Revis) who painted his parents.

Herbst explains the paintings on his living-room wall. The portraits of his parents were done by a painter friend and his wife. Another friend, a disabled artist whose name is unclear, gave a gift picture. A woman's first large work from art school, made from his father, and a village landscape and still life by another Jewish painter also hang there. He gives the Hebrew name Yona Binyomin ben Moshe Yisroel for one friend and tells how that friend asked him about the shofar blast. He adds that people in the hospital at first laughed at him.

Shpitalnik speaks about the prewar Yiddish press in Chișinău, including the daily 'Undzer tsayt', read by both Zionists and Communists. She says her father was somewhat left-leaning. She tells of learning Yiddish poems from a woman friend of her father's and of her father's role as a trusted mediator, and how he was broken under the Soviets.

Tkach says her father taught her violin and piano. She describes finishing school and the conservatory after the family returned, her composing and her contacts with composers across the Soviet Union. She began writing Jewish music in 1989, at the time of perestroika, for a singer who now lives in America. She says she has written dozens of Jewish songs, three pieces called Kaddish, a one-act opera and romances to poems by Moshe Lemster. The talk touches on the composers Weinberg and Shostakovich.

Tkach is asked what Jewish music she first heard, naming instrumental pieces and a klezmer musician from Chișinău who later lived in Israel. She discusses how Moldovan and Jewish music are similar but not the same, with the doina and freylekhs as examples. Questions also cover Gypsy and Moldovan musicians, a Chișinău businessman and writer, and the music of Israel, Gershwin and Soviet composers.

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

Bengelsdorf remarks that real music can be shown on any stage, in a large hall or a chamber hall, to an audience that understands music. Singing follows, with repeated sung syllables and verses, and at the end a short exchange about music for a cabaret-type piece (?) and about someone's songs, for which the transcript is unclear.

At Shraybman's home the group discusses the date and her husband Yekhiel Shraybman's study with his books and portraits. She says she hopes the room will become a small museum. She speaks of his love of Soviet Yiddish writers and his dream, while still in Romania, of becoming a Soviet Yiddish writer. The question of where his papers and archive should go is raised, and she mentions letters sent to the Holocaust museum in Washington.

Sherman recalls how his eldest sister read Sholem Aleichem aloud at home to the children. Lemster asks about Bessarabian Yiddish writers: he met Moshe Pinchevski and mentions Eliezer Shteynberg, whose memorial inscription he has noted, and Bialik's poems read in Yiddish.

Dajch says she did not attend a Yiddish school, though her brother went to cheder. She tells of lectures by Jewish students under a cultural league, which promoted emigration to Palestine, and of the books read. She describes her sister and brother-in-law's time with the halutsim. She then recounts how she and her husband returned to the village and opened a small shop.

Rolshut describes prewar Soroca's Jewish occupations: Jewish shops, butchers, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths and food merchants. She mentions three Jewish cafés and a restaurant, where youth gathered, along with the cinema and park concerts by non-Jewish military musicians. She speaks of Zionists, Maccabi, the Yiddish talmud-torah, and the Hebrew Tarbut lyceum, which gave Hebrew and Romanian diplomas. There were Jewish lawyers and doctors, but no Jews in the police, fire brigade or courts.

Answering Lemster, Butorski recalls a Russian baker friend who married a Jewish woman, converted, and spoke Yiddish. He says he knows of no Jewish organizations or parties before the war, only the Maccabi sport club, and he recalls no Jewish theater or libraries.

Brief speaks about Chernivtsi, with a famous doctor named Sternberg who operated on him. Lemster and Kerler ask about libraries, newspapers and a culture league, and Brief says there was much culture, theater and none of the others. They then return to the Four Questions and a Yiddish riddle.

At a stop by a memorial, Finkelshteyn and Kerler discuss the Yiddish theater in Iași. He says the building was not closed and describes a small hall with a stage and a garden, the national theater opposite, and an anecdote about rain and a procession from the metropolitan's monastery. Kerler asks what people before the war knew of Goldfaden's theater; Finkelshteyn says many Jews went to the Yiddish theater, which hosted great actors from America and Poland.

Community members discuss the Jewish studies section at the University of Iași and a professor who works on Jewish culture and knows several languages. They also discuss a larger program planned for several days.

Davidovich says his father led the family seder with a fine singing voice and that he recorded it on cassette. Asked about Jewish life after the war, he says he was not in Siret but in Botoșani (as the name is heard), where the organizations included Bnei Akiva, Gordonia and others. Pnina says they sang many songs, held literary evenings and studied Zionism and hakhshara.

Kurtsberg describes theater performances in Siret soon after the war, in the cinema hall, in which Kranenfeld, Herber Grafe and Dina König (?) acted. He gives the plot of a comic play about an emigrating woman who travels to America in a trough and a husband asking for coffee.

Gorberg tells of returning in 1945 to find no home, and moving to her uncle in Odesa, where her brother learned confectionery after being disabled. The family moved on to Rîbnița, where she trained in accounting in Chișinău and worked on a kolkhoz. After marrying she returned to Balta in 1951 and worked as a planner and accountant for decades. She says there was no shoykhet, synagogue or Yiddish cultural life in Balta; Kerler asks about the singer Nekhama Lifshitsaite (?) or similar visiting artists.

Berman talks about the Yiddish amateur theater he was involved in, which performed Sholem Aleichem pieces and took them to Kyiv and elsewhere (a Crimean place is possible but unclear). Kerler explains how the team had just met the widow of a local actor, who lent them a videocassette of Yiddish theater. The group discusses copying the tape, and Berman promises to search out and send his many films and photographs of the theater. Kerler then starts to ask his birth year.

Burg describes a story of his about teaching Yiddish at German universities and mentions a Hamburg scholar who studied with Kerler. He also mentions donations that helped publish a book. He then recalls Eliezer Steinbarg, whose colonies he attended as a child, and recounts writing a poem for him and his advice on being a writer. He says that after the war Chernivtsi still had twelve Yiddish writers.

Asked about early memories of Nadvirna, Shekhter recalls a Jewish town with a river (the Bystritsa), girls and games by the water. He answers Lemster's questions about Yiddish writers (Sholem Aleichem a little, Hersh Polianker not at all) and recalls an amateur Yiddish theater and a club. He briefly says he fears traveling there now because of antisemitism, answers questions on terms (dybbuk, golem) and Purim songs, and recalls a sports club and football. At the end a woman and Lemster discuss in Russian and Yiddish who in town still speaks Yiddish.

Kaviner says Derazhnya had its own Yiddish theater and was visited by Yiddish troupes from Odessa, including Habimah(?) with its Goldfaden-type production and other named companies. He emphasizes that Derazhnya was a Jewish town before the war and compares its size with Proskurov, then Kerler asks what else he read.

Kaviner names Yiddish writers he met before the war, when he was still a child, when they came to Derazhnya, including Itsik Fefer, Oyzer Varshavski (?), Leyb Kvitko and Dovid Bergelson. Answering Kerler, he describes what several of them were like personally: their build, Fefer's constant note-taking and others' manner. The passage ends with Kerler turning to stories about the Bratslav rebbe.

Kaviner names Yiddish theater troupes that visited before the war (Federovsky, Segalovsky, Bugova, with the names uncertain). He speaks about Avrom Goldfaden as founder of the Yiddish theater, said to be from Starokostyantyniv. He then turns to Khayim Beyder, who was from Kupel and worked in Moscow, and to other Soviet Yiddish writers such as Itsik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn, Oyzer Varshavsky and Vegelis (?).

Answering Kerler's questions, Braverman remembers the Jewish theater and club in Zhmerynka, which the Jews put together themselves after the war, with singing and dancing. He does not recall a particular play. He mentions that he studied in a Ukrainian school while Jewish children studied in Yiddish, and he mentions a Yiddish school certificate. The speakers then discuss how to film the document.

Kerler thanks Melamed and introduces the project, which is recording audio and video with elderly Yiddish speakers, whom he calls the last speakers in Ukraine. He says the team has only two weeks in the region. He asks Melamed to speak about Jewish and Yiddish cultural life in Zhytomyr and the area, and about how he came to his own work and what his plans are.

Khandros shows a photograph of a gravestone about two hundred years old, taken for his film and book. Kerler asks whether a copy of the film can be bought. Khandros talks about the film's reviews, the English version he hopes to obtain, and his friend Borys Zabarko, a Yiddish-speaking man from Sharhorod. He says he has made more than thirty documentary films and has two feature-film projects that the actor Bohdan Stupka liked. Jerzy Hoffman is mentioned.

Derbaremdiker describes the Berdychiv city library's many Yiddish books and the world literature he first read in Yiddish translation. He recalls seeing Mikhoels in Berdychiv in 1935 and later in Leningrad on tour. S2 asks about the performance, and he talks about a Mendele character and a mixed-up language joke.

Derbaremdiker answers Kerler's questions about cinemas in prewar Berdychiv, naming a summer and a winter cinema and one in the fortress monastery. He recalls a silent film with Yiddish inter-titles in which Mikhoels acted.

Rusakovskaia talks about her childhood friends from the street, whose names she gives. They spoke Russian when small, and in kindergarten there was no Yiddish. In the Yiddish school they spoke Yiddish. She describes the club, where schoolchildren recited, told stories and sang in Yiddish. She cannot recall poems from school.

Krotsh cannot recall the songs his parents sang, and a second man tells a song about a poor tailor in a Ukrainian shtetl, after which Krotsh talks about pogroms in Ukraine. He sings a Hebrew song to a Yiddish melody. He says there were no Yiddish newspapers in the Romanian-ruled town, only Romanian ones, and that Jewish organizations existed.

Grayf struggles to name prewar Jewish organizations; he recalls a sports club, Hapoel, with a football team. He names his mother, Etl, and lists his siblings by age, among them Pinye, Munye, David, Shimshn and Hersh. He says seven children survived of nine. The family lived in a rented apartment near the town hall. He cannot recall a song.

Krotsh describes the prewar Maccabi sports and cultural organization, with its football team, concerts and the girls' costumes. He lists other Zionist organizations such as Gordonia. Lemster asks whether any Jewish member of the Romanian parliament came from the area. Krotsh names a rabbi from Kishinev (?) as a deputy, and Kerler turns the talk to Jews' secret language.

Pensatii explains that he worked shifts at the factory and studied in the evenings at the workers' faculty (rabfak) of the industrial institute. He says there was a Yiddish theater in Odesa and one in L'viv, but he does not remember what he saw. He recalls concerts by Yiddish singers, including a baritone and Clara Young (?), and the circus.

Leibel recalls the two cinema-theaters, Safran and Berent, with Berent staging a play (apparently on Golgotha) that Jews boycotted as antisemitic. He gives the early 1930s as the time and mentions Safran's advertising slogans. The Dybbuk named in the catalogue is hard to make out.

Brandler talks about his reading before the war: he borrowed as many books as possible from the town library in Yiddish and Polish, including Sholem Aleichem, Mendele and Peretz and Polish classics, and Russian authors in Polish translation. He recalls visiting touring theater troupes, perhaps from L'viv or Przemyśl, and an amateur Russian-language production in which his sister and a melamed's son acted, probably in the 1930s.

Leibel talks about Purim and holiday celebrations at the Jewish gymnasium, which taught in Polish, with choir, young people and outings to the woods. He describes a library, apparently the "Matsha Shkolna" (?), where he borrowed books daily. He says his father examined him on Sabbath on what he had to recite. Kerler then asks how people spoke Yiddish in Kremenets as against Rivne.

The group looks at family photographs, then walks through the former Jewish quarter. They reach the building of the former Hebrew gymnasium and look inside; Vider recalls playing football there and the Jewish team Makabi, and the other local and Jewish teams from nearby towns. A tune of Hatikvah is mentioned. The passage ends with a remark that the Hasidim, and the Munkács rebbe in his sermons, opposed the Zionists.

The host, speaking Russian, presents the weekly Sabbath programme and the recent concert for the sixtieth anniversary of Israel. She introduces the visiting group from Indiana University, including Veidlinger, Kerler, Lemster and Katz's earlier expeditions, and describes the Yiddish circle and its Forward subscription. A volunteer reads a humorous Odesa story about a water meter, and a singer is introduced. The Yiddish songs follow, ending with a livelier humorous song.

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.

Shteingart answers questions about Jewish sports in Kovel': swimming, chess, football and volleyball, with Jewish teams such as Maccabi and others, and play against Ukrainian and other Jewish teams. Kerler asks about the swimmer Zishe Breitbart.

Fish says Rivne had two Jewish theaters and a cinema, and that he attended performances in Yiddish. He recalls seeing the film Yidl mitn fidl, owned by a German proprietor. He also says he knew Polish after gymnasium but had no Russian when the Soviets arrived.

Fish speaks of prewar Jewish film and sport: he saw the Yiddish film Der dibek, and describes the Jewish sports club Hasmoneans, stadiums, spectators and football matches. He recalls the 1938 Maccabiah, and answers Kerler's questions on football words such as goalkeeper and ball (Yiddish or Polish).

Bivson answers questions about Yiddish reading, a library in her school and in town, and the writer Peretz, who she says was from Polonne. She recalls Yiddish theater visits and applauding until her hands hurt, but remembers no actors' names.

Asked about Yiddish songs, Klein names a few that she half remembers and mentions gramophone records. She recalls a song about Itsik's marriage and a death, then speaks of Yiddish life as lost. Kerler asks whether she had children.

Asked about her work, Yatskova says she was an accountant for some years and then worked in culture at the House of Culture. She says she was artistic director of the club and worked there some forty years. Kerler and Lemster help with the Russian word for her post.

Yatskova talks about her grandfather the pharmacist in Murafa, later a dock porter in Odessa, whom local non-Jews remembered, and about a non-Jewish woman who spoke Yiddish better than she did. She explains that she read Sholem Aleichem in Russian and that her family spoke Russian with the children. Asked about Kopayhorod, she says she knows nothing of its history or of Malkele at the cemetery, and she complains that visitors from Israel throw away her flowers. She says neighbours treat her well, that her father was respected and taught many locals, and that she regrets not leaving after the war. She recalls friends the Grinmans, Misha playing the accordion while she directed stage shows, and her visits to the Odessa Jewish theater and its actors. She finishes by thanking the visitors, and Lemster offers her Yiddish books. The transcript ends before the catalogued passage ends.

Lebvol answers questions about prewar cinema and the Polish films in Zhovkva, and recalls an evening at a theatre where Yiddish songs were sung. She says the show turned out to be a Christian missionary group that brought in an image of Jesus, and that the audience walked out. She adds that such groups perform in Yiddish and Hebrew today.

Kerler asks Antsis to describe the town of Lyubar. She names trades such as shoemakers, cobblers, tailors and smiths, and the Yiddish and Ukrainian words for them. She also talks about two wealthy men, one named Katz, who left when the war began, and about the local doctor Refild (?). She remembers the cinema in town and a film about going to Birobidzhan, and the conversation turns to the Yiddish words involved.