Daily life (general)

Galambos describes prewar Jewish life in his village: some poor people, but most Jews worked, as farmers, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters and an innkeeper. Kerler asks about prayer shawls. Galambos says they were kept in the synagogue, and children carried theirs. Only the shochet wore one in the village, and he mentions boys' sidelocks.

Herbst speaks about his father, who was old, how he prayed and said Psalms, and how he shared his last bit of food with others. He recalls the family's food, with meat at most once a week and false fish on Sabbath, and the geese and chickens they kept. He also describes how little news reached them.

Altman speaks briefly about her two children. She compares life under Romania and under Soviet rule, and finds the Soviet period better. She says she learned from a tailor, then worked at the mechanical plant, as did her husband. She gives prices of bread and sour cream from Soviet times and says she and her husband lived on one wage. She also mentions her neighbours and her dislike of quarrelling.

Katerberg describes Berlinți before the war as a village of about thirty-odd Jewish families, with small shops and a bit of land. There was a primitive prayer house, later a Soviet club, and he recalls a teacher.

Katerberg recalls long winter evenings when neighbors gathered in turns at one house or another, baking bread and drinking tea, and Friday baking of challah. Lemster asks about Sabbath food: meat, gefilte fish, which Tatyana still makes. Her name is given as Tube.

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

Kalussky sings a short Friday-night song and answers Lemster's questions about weddings: a shames announced the wedding, and guests received fruit compote and meat. Old men drank brandy and the young drank wine. He cannot recall wedding songs.

Roif describes the strong sense of community among Jews in prewar Bessarabia, contrasting it with Ukraine. He says that rich and poor met as equals at festivals and in the synagogue, and that a Jew was simply a Jew whatever his clothes or work. Lemster recalls a childless man from the village.

Shpitalnik says Chișinău was a Yiddish-speaking city with street vendors calling out in Yiddish, though she saw no street singers or klezmorim playing for money. She describes prewar Jewish weddings with canopies, glass-breaking, an entertainer and klezmer, and says she married in 1951 without a canopy, considering it old-fashioned, although her husband's parents wanted one.

Roif talks about her husband's twenty years as kolkhoz chairman and the apartment that the authorities gave them, which they renovated and furnished. She says her husband often spoke up for prisoners in the local court, and many were released early or sent to work elsewhere. She stresses that they only ever did good and that their faith in God is about doing good. Katz explains that she is speaking to the archive and not to the others present.

Sherman says Jews in prewar Telenești did not drink; the only drinker was the water carrier. He talks about wine at Passover and memorial days and describes Sabbath food: fish, meat, and cholent kept warm in the oven in a metal box, with a non-Jew called in to light the fire.

Diner sings a few lines of a song about Itsik's wedding. Asked what she wants remembered about her shtetl, she describes the people of Fălești as fine, with many doctors and engineers, and tells of a young man who fell in love with a Jewish girl whose uncle liked a drink. She answers questions about drinking at Purim and Passover, wine, and non-Jews who understood Yiddish. She names a Russian doctor, Putsyata (?), who treated poor patients without payment.

Kerler shows old photographs of Chișinău from around 1900 and Mitlaeva identifies buildings and streets. These include the main Aleksandrovskaya street, now Ștefan cel Mare, the Savoy and Bristol hotels, the fire brigade and the city bank. She also names the town hall, where King Carol II and Prince Mihai appeared, and the Passage, and mentions local theaters such as the Orfeum and a Romanian national theater. She also recalls her self-taught English and a merchant named Katarzhil (?).

Rojtman recalls Purim and Simchat Torah in the town, with masks and the park, and the poor children who went house to house for money. A Russian-language stretch concerns a woman living on Bendery street, and there is talk about whether the town had an upper and a lower part. She also discusses Romanian-speaking Gentiles, the term 'podvalnik' (?), and Christians who spoke Yiddish. She describes it as a pleasant town with respected doctors, educated people and no bad people she can remember.

Rojtman speaks about an acquaintance, apparently a woman now in America, and a few contemporary Jews. At Kerler's request she describes Simchat Torah, with Torah carried round the synagogue, dancing and music, and villagers coming from the surrounding area. She also mentions Purim noisemakers and the lack of electricity or cars, with one rich man's car from America in 1938. She says visitors from America made the town celebrate, and that people took pleasure in each other's good fortune.

Yaruskaya concludes the formal interview. She recalls quiet prewar life in Hâncești without envy between rich and poor, and describes how she and her sister took wrapped meat and bread to poor families at their mother's direction.

Asked about singing in the ghetto, Gordin recalls a Jewish musician who played for the Romanians, and says Bessarabian Jews were driven from Myskivka to Kryzhopil while his father bought them a place. He recalls ghetto life with its killings, singing and dancing, but no camp song. He names the ghetto elder, Anshl, and his two daughters, whom he married off to men from Mărculești. Kerler asks whether people prayed there.

Plotnik says that hearing about Dumbraveni makes her weep. She answers Lemster's questions about the colony: its Romanian head, the Jewish leader deported in the 1940s, and the good soil. She also mentions crops and a non-Jewish neighbour who sold pork and was sent away, and says relations with neighbours were good.

She talks about her mother's trade as a seamstress and how the parents lived. Asked about Soroca childhood, she describes the town's Jewish life, the religious observance, her brother's Tarbut school, a Jewish youth organization (Gordonia), and Christians living among Jews, some of whom spoke Yiddish.

Finkelshteyn says that about half of Iași's population was Jewish and that Jews lived in Jewish quarters, though not in a closed ghetto. He recalls childhood games with nuts, rag balls, and shoes his mother made from rags. He built sleighs for all the children of the street. He also describes making ice skates from iron window frames.

Chirilau tells anecdotes about a poor, drunken neighbouring couple, Dudl Heler and Malka, who borrowed everything from her mother. She describes the trio of brothers who were Purim players and how one was matched with a tall bride. She then tells how rich Jews traded in flour and building materials and how life was natural and healthy before.

Freundlich recalls his childhood daily routine from age six: cheder before dawn, prayer, the non-Jewish state school in the morning, back to cheder and school again in the afternoon, with Sundays spent all day in cheder. He describes the long way, the lack of electricity and the children singing under windows.

Freundlich answers Lemster's questions on the terms dybbuk, golem and the words for a cemetery. He mentions having seen Sidi Tal perform in Sighet (?) or Baia Mare (?), his father's love of cantors and operettas, and neighbors gathering around the first radio in the street.

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.

Salamon says her mother sang Hungarian songs, and that her own theater experience was a Hungarian performance, as an uncle took her to the theater. She mentions that there was Yiddish theater before the war, although she never attended it. She names her mother's brothers and her father's brother, and her father's sisters. She also says prewar life was a beautiful dream and she found no one after the war.

Lerner talks about a cousin's wedding: the cousin Roza married Rudolf in Vitebsk and later moved to Beltsy. Lerner visited them as a student, and Roza later went to Israel. She says she remembers Jewish weddings in Balta, Beltsy and Kishinev only poorly. She also says she was a Komsomol member and an athlete. She describes playing chess for Balta at a first-class rank and taking fourth place in a regional competition in Kotovsk.

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

Answering Kerler, Shor describes Orhei as a Jewish town, 90 per cent or so Jewish (?), where people traded and lived well in Moldova's good climate. His mother's brother lived in a village with large wine-making holdings. Shor remembers sowing tobacco and wheat there, and says the estate was later dispossessed under Soviet rule.

The Vaismans discuss the 1930s, including the Great Hunger of 1933, which Isaak was too young to remember well; there was little bread, and many Jews and non-Jews died of hunger. They then describe the arrests of the later 1930s, when people were taken at night. Beyle Vaisman says her father kept a rucksack ready, and others in their courtyard were taken.

Short passage after a stretch of recogniser loop in Russian; Vainshelboim says someone drank only on holidays and, when he did, a little vodka. The rest is unclear.

Snook says there were few rich people in the village; they made money from land and orchards and sold the produce. Lemster asks about the fruits that grew there, and she mentions apples and a hailstorm that damaged the crop. Kerler then brings up singing.

Answering Kerler and Lemster, Feldman describes how water was drawn in Bershad' from a well with a bucket on a chain. She recalls a Jewish water-carrier who brought barrels of water to houses and was paid for it. She says that now water is piped into houses.

Loyf says she speaks Russian or Ukrainian with her husband, and her children do not speak Yiddish. She recalls Yiddish theater coming to Dzegovka twice and lists local trades: a wigmaker, a carpenter, a pharmacist and rich Jews. She tells of the good spring water the townspeople used for washing and cooking.

Kupershmidt talks about Sabbath preparations before the war, including how food was kept warm in the oven (the shunt, and pechor), and the poverty alongside honesty. In answer to Kerler he names the Sabbath fish as chopped fish. The passage ends with a comment on the Soviet Union and an exchange about where the team has come from.

Lifshitz describes Birobidzhan and the Jewish kolkhoz at Bergefeld (Birefeld), where the family was given a house, a cow and chickens. He says life was hard but better than in the surrounding villages. There was a Yiddish school, and he recalls no Yiddish songs. He left after the war and came to look for his parents, his father having died before the war.

Footage from the van while Khavin describes how the town has changed. He says a street here was built up after the war on what had been a field, that there is a big canal and a bridge, and that the district is now an entire new raion (Desnianskyi, name approximate). Kerler comments on the changes; the driver's Russian directions interrupt. The Yiddish is often unclear.

Footage in the van while Khavin shows his technical school, which he attended in the early 1950s, and answers Katz's questions about it, partly in Russian. He points out districts where there were barracks before the war and large buildings and a factory built after it. The explanations are partly garbled.

Burg describes prewar Chernivtsi. Its Jews were largely assimilated, with the German of Berlin and Vienna as their language, alongside a Jewish quarter where only Yiddish was spoken. He characterizes the Czernowitz Yiddish as close to Western European Yiddish, unlike Galician or Bessarabian Yiddish, and says almost no native speaker of it can be found today. He mentions a Bessarabian Yiddish speaker living in Chernivtsi, and Kerler talks about the varieties of Yiddish he has had to speak. The passage opens with a bit of chat about drinking.

Lemster asks where she was during the war, and Shternberg says Kopaihorod, where people were housed in a ruined building. She recalls singing songs there and sings a Tumbalalaika-type song with a text she knew from childhood. She then talks about Sabbath dances.

Srulova describes the family's poverty in a one-room house, evacuation to Tataria, and the older brothers going to the front. She says that many non-Jews in Zvil spoke Yiddish, including her father's colleagues. She came to Chortkiv in 1953 and describes Jewish sites there: the former synagogue, the old cemetery, a tsadik's grave and the mass graves in the forest.

Shekhovich describes prewar Sambor, a smaller town than Drohobych with a Jewish majority, its centre with the town hall and many shops, and the large synagogue of which only the walls remain. She cannot say much about prayer houses or the bathhouse and river, and mentions older children going bathing. In the second half Kerler urges her to speak Yiddish rather than Polish, and the talk turns to who still speaks Yiddish and to a local man who answered Kerler in German.

Shekhovich talks about prewar Sambor, which she describes as a Jewish town with one large synagogue and small prayer houses. She recalls her mother's Sabbath fish and her own knowledge of how to prepare it, the Passover seder led by her father, and food made from matzo. She says she cannot remember Purim plays or a prewar wedding. Polish was the language of the town and Yiddish that of the home. She says she remembers few Yiddish songs.

Shekhter says he lived in Zolotonosha from 1971 to 1998. About ten Jews gathered there on Sabbath, some of them knew Yiddish, and they prayed in Yiddish. Before that he lived in a place that sounds like Artyomovsk; Kerler asks about his earlier residences.

Khasidovich says she barely remembers her childhood and describes how young people used to walk and gather, in contrast to today. She talks about the synagogue and prayer house near the militia building, about the cinema and theater, and about the languages she spoke with Jewish and non-Jewish friends and at home. She then talks about her three daughters, two in Fastiv and one in Kyiv, and a daughter's family in Israel; Lemster closes by asking about Jewish holidays at home.

Dialect questions covering words such as the one for a convert (meshumed), a Christian, the name for Stalin and a place name; also the local convent. Khasidovich says she has always lived in Fastiv except for one year in Israel with her daughter, where she says life was better than here. Kerler asks about life before the war and about the famine of 1932–33, and she says that she and her children did not suffer hunger. The passage ends with Kerler asking when her eldest daughter was born.

Burshtein explains that after the war Jews were embarrassed to speak Yiddish in public, though they spoke it privately and with a colleague at work. Asked why, he compares it to hearing a foreign language spoken in public. He contrasts this with prewar Sobolivka, where Jews and non-Jews spoke Yiddish openly, and recalls a non-Jewish neighbour of his grandfather who spoke it and whom he remembers. He also mentions the porch at each Jewish home where people sat and talked in the evening.

Lemster asks whether Gaiviker knows the word golem; he and Sonya say they never heard it. Gaiviker then describes games he played in his youth, with card games 21 and 52, a pot fire in the park, checkers and hide-and-seek, and how he got money from his stepmother. Lemster asks about songs about hairdressers and tailors.

Smelanskii answers questions about childhood games, saying there were none beyond street gangs and fights. He explains the difference between a lane and a street in Smila and describes the town's rivers, the old mill destroyed by the Germans, and the two sugar factories, one of which was wrecked in the war. He also tells how the town changed after the war, and Kerler starts asking about Yiddish newspapers.

Braverman recalls poor wandering artists who came to Solkhov in winter, hungry and frozen. Her family took them in for Sabbath meals. She places this in the early 1930s, when her older siblings studied away at technical schools.

Braverman describes the town's only doctor, a Russian field-surgeon, his non-Jewish mistress, and the scandal with his wife; Kerler asks about a dialect word. She recalls the fear of school and a rhyme spoken by an old woman when she was falling asleep.

Braverman recalls relations with Ukrainian neighbours and a bandit, a maid, her friends and playing in the village, a local shopkeeper, and the river. Kerler asks the Yiddish and Ukrainian names for the river and the figures for Solkhov: about a thousand Jews among four thousand or more inhabitants. She also mentions the secondary school.