Deportation

Rezmovits speaks about the talmud torah and mentions a story he wrote in his book about a boy in his class and a teacher who beat pupils with a stick. He then turns to the Hungarian occupation of March 1944 and the family's being put into wagons.

Rezmovit tells stories his mother told about Froim the merciful, a trickster figure. In one he eats at a Jewish inn and escapes without paying by tying the landlady's eyes. In another he steals from a Catholic priest by getting the dogs drunk. Kerler asks about the word for the rising agent used in baking. Rezmovit then recalls his mother's patience and wisdom, and how in the deportation wagon she and other Jewish women dealt with pork fat packed in a bundle.

Rezmovit answers Kerler's question about songs in the camp. He recalls fear of the Germans, German songs, and the Hitler Youth throwing snow and stones. He describes work for the elderly and an encounter with a Hungarian policeman who asked whether they were still alive, showing that others knew where the Jews were being taken. He says he felt hatred everywhere, though a few non-Jews were decent.

Gross talks about his wartime service as a carpenter and says he returned to Vaja in April 1945 (the year is partly unclear) and opened a shop, then moved to Debrecen and arrived in Budapest in 1974 (?). He says his mother spoke Yiddish, as did only the older sisters, and that he, his wife and a sister survived Auschwitz. He mentions relatives in America and Canada and a grandnephew's bar mitzvah.

Smajovics answers questions about his parents. His father was a field worker and his mother was Golde, and both were from Velyka Kopanya. He names his father's birth year as 1897, his sister Beyle in Brooklyn, and his paternal grandparents Moshe and Motl. His grandmother Motl was deported to Auschwitz and came from Oylak (?), 25 km away.

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 speaks about Jewish collaboration during the Holocaust, mentioning Polish Jewish informers and the Hungarian Rezső Kasztner. He criticizes Kasztner's dealings with the SS (Eichmann, Kurt Becher) and the rescue train to Switzerland. He also recalls the controversy over Kasztner in Israel, and promises Kerler a book.

Rezmovits speaks of non-Jewish rescuers, a reference to Raoul Wallenberg's rescue and arrest, in contrast to Kasztner, and describes a phone call with a Hungarian historian about Kasztner. He then turns to differences between Hungarian Jews and Transcarpathian ones: the latter mocked the Hungarians. He ends on the ignorance of what awaited deported Jews, recalling the Debrecen wagon at age fourteen.

Deutsch speaks of his parents in the war. His father worked at a brewery and was taken to a labour service, dying in Mauthausen, and his mother died in Ravensbrück. He describes the deportations from the Jewish quarter in Budapest, the Red Cross children's home, and the Hungarian fascists. He mentions an officer who helped hide the children and his mother and sister who worked in a kitchen.

Pearl briefly describes the work groups in the labor service and how the younger men helped the older. Asked when he was born, he gives 1924. He recalls Polish refugees in Budapest and the return of the Mukachevo rebbe from Poland, whose sermon he heard, and mentions the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Poland. He tells of meeting a man who had escaped a massacre and later reached Bor, and describes Jewish life in Budapest before the German invasion in March 1944.

Doman discusses his book on the Hungarian yeshivas, whose title refers to their secrets. It has not been translated into English. He wrote it because nobody had described daily life in these yeshivas. He then mentions the yeshiva in Galánta, now in Slovakia, whose four rabbis were killed in Auschwitz. He says Jews from the countryside were deported there and few returned.

Blobshteyn talks about Jewish families in the early 1940s, including a family with American relatives. Their journey to Kamianets-Podilskyi and a child's death in a car are mentioned. He recalls the 1941 roundup of Jews without Hungarian papers, including Polish ones, by Hungarian gendarmes, who deported them to Kamianets-Podilskyi, where they were shot. He notes a memorial there and a yearly commemoration.

Herbst recalls friends and acquaintances after the war, including a pianist whose name is given as Becker (?) and whose concerts he attended. He also recalls receiving clothing sent by the JDC and having trouble with influence and connections. He complains that the Carpathian Jews were sent in the first transport to Auschwitz.

Herbst describes conditions in Mauthausen in the last months of the war: prisoners of several nationalities, hunger, the lack of space on the bunks, and a single watery soup a day. He found a prayer book and tefillin there and recited psalms daily. He says he was liberated in early May and was too weak to go to the window.

Reti speaks about Nyírmada, a larger village than Rohod, where the rabbi lived and travelled to nearby villages. This was Rabbi Yankl Yosef Yungrays, from a family of rabbis. He says that the rabbi's family of twelve was sent to Auschwitz and killed together in the crematorium, and about the selection to left and right at Auschwitz.

Reti recites a prayer connected with yahrzeit, repeated more slowly at Kerler's request. He then returns to birth customs: during the week before a boy's circumcision children came in the evening to read the Shema (krishme), and this stopped after the circumcision. Reti says he has lived in Debrecen for ten years, that there has been only one circumcision and one wedding here in that time, and that almost all marriages are mixed. He describes Debrecen's former Jewish community of about twelve thousand, half deported to Auschwitz and half to Austria, and its synagogues.

Reti sings a Hasidic song about the messiah, sung at betrothal celebrations, and tries to recall a Passover song. He says that after returning there was no chance to continue studying. Five siblings and more than eighty relatives did not return, and he describes the deportation train, with only three of six brothers coming home.

Reti and Kerler discuss what a Jewish hat looks like, with S2 taking part. Reti then says his father was the village tax collector for some twenty-eight years (?) and followed a rebbe whose name is unclear, perhaps Kosoner or Tash. He goes on to the last Tash rebbe, who is associated with Auschwitz and with the saying that God can help but whether He will is unknown.

A passage on the wartime ghetto of Kisvárda (Yiddish Kleynvarden), where several thousand Jews were held. The speakers then talk about a drive to Nagyvárda and Arad and about a train route. Kerler asks about a song, but no Hasidic songs are clearly sung in the transcript. The passage is largely garbled.

Galambos shows family photographs, including a picture of his siblings; one sister died in Auschwitz. He explains that a non-Jewish photographer took the April 1944 picture of the family being driven to Kisvárda (the name is garbled). He also shows a group photograph of Jewish children in Vaja and talks briefly with Kerler about the Hungarian language.

Faiershtein reads and half-translates a Russian poem about the Holocaust, then recounts her childhood in 1941. She was driven toward the Dniester, saw children torn from their mothers and thrown into a fire, and was carried by other people because she could not walk fast. She hid with a Moldovan family in Rakovits and reflects on the poem's message never to forget the war.

Bukshpun speaks of the family being taken from their house at night in the summer. They were sent on foot for three months. The places named include Mohyliv-Podilskyy, Soroca and Vertiujeni (the last as a concentration camp where they stayed three months). Kerler then asks him to go back to his childhood.

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.

Roif describes the arrival of the Romanians and how a priest rescued the family from a gendarme, then a camp near Rîșcani, the Transnistria cowsheds, and forced labour on the Dubyna state farm. A good gendarme chief who shared out food is mentioned, as are looting and the harsh winter, disease and death in the cowshed. He also speaks about hunger on the farm, Antonescu's order of 1943 to count the Jews, and the Jews who survived.

Kerler asks whether Bukovina Jews spoke differently, and Roif says they spoke a Germanized Yiddish. He mentions Traian Popovici, the mayor of Czernowitz who kept some twenty thousand Jews from being sent to Transnistria. He talks about the Romanian historian Lya Benjamin, whom he met, and her volumes of anti-Jewish decrees, and says fewer were killed in Romania proper.

Kishlyansky first speaks briefly about the outbreak of war: robbery, killings and beatings, then being driven in a column toward Ukraine. At Katz's request he returns to prewar life: Passover and burning the leaven, a cheder, a talmud torah, and the melamed Shaye. He lists the town's prayer houses, including the tailors' synagogue and the shoemakers' synagogue.

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.

Gordin tells of the war: his father was called into the Red Army, and the mother and children set out on foot via Vertiujeni and Camenca across the Dniester to his grandfathers' village in Ukraine. They went on to Kryzhopil and Zhabokrych, where his father worked in a German bakery and Jews were shot in a cellar. They were then held in a ghetto in a village whose name is unclear (Mierskivka (?)), where his father also worked at an oil press and on road building. The family bought its way out of the deportation of Bessarabian Jews to Kryzhopil. Gordin recalls hunger, disease and Red Cross clothing, and that they stayed there until 1944.

Diner recounts that the family was sent away in June 1941 and her father was taken two days later. They were told afterwards that he had been shot, in the first days of the new year. She explains that he was a Zionist who had worked to set up a Jewish party in the Romanian parliament because of the rise of fascism.

Kleyman says she remembers no songs, discusses how much money is needed to live decently today and compares it with her pension. Asked by Lemster about prayer in the camp, she recounts how her very ill mother was taken to Briceni, how the family waited three days in the Kasarulitser woods, and how only those able to walk could cross the bridge to Ukraine while the weak were shot. She tells of her grandmother Feyge's dream, which advised her mother on what to eat to survive, and of the cheap food they made.

Iosif tells of the outbreak of the war: Lipcani was burned, the family fled to Briceni, then moved through Ukraine and Moldova to the Bershad ghetto, where they stayed four years. His father was shot in front of his eyes by Romanian gendarmes, his mother and a brother died there, and he was liberated in 1944. Kerler also asks about a song about the Bershad ghetto.

Rapoport tells how the family was deported to Siberia, in the Irkutsk region, in June 1949, accusing the authorities of treating his father as a wealthy man, and says he learned Yiddish there among other deported families. They returned in 1956 and lost their property, but lived a hard life. His father taught him to read Hebrew prayers and put on tefillin and prayed daily. Asked about songs, Rapoport says he sang Yiddish songs on the transport but remembers none now.

Mirenburg continues her war account. Her group was sent to Yampil instead of Rîbniţa, and she tells of a family friend from Sguritzy who survived a massacre of a column. Then come the march through Ukrainian towns, food rations, and the Potashna cowshed, where she fell ill with typhus and had a dream while ill. Her brother and then her father died. In Bershad the family begged in the villages, and a Ukrainian village elder beat her and her mother. She also tells of a boy who was tied to a motorcycle. Kerler asks about a song the village boys sang.

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.

She describes the deportation: being driven through villages and along roads, with the mother and sister taken to forced labor. They were held in a ghetto in a village in the Bershad' area, passed through Yampil, and spent two weeks working in the woods. She recalls hunger, a collective march, sleeping in crowded rooms, and gleaning wheat. Kerler asks the meaning of the word for huts.

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

Brief tells of leaving Transnistria in October 1941 (?) with orphans, travelling eight days to Bucharest, and how an officer brought him to his aunt in Chernivtsi. He says the Germans did nothing there. Kerler and Lemster ask why he went to Suceava and Romania; he says his aunt wished to go there, and they discuss towns in the area.

A long talk in Yiddish, apparently with a local man (probably Kurtsberg), about the small Jewish community of Siret. Only a dozen Jews are left, there is no minyan, and the speaker is one of the few who speak Yiddish. He tells of a man whose father died in Bershad and who became a president in Nazareth after the departures for Israel in the late 1940s. He also tells of a boy deported with his grandmother to Ukraine in the Transnistria deportations, and of a Rădăuți widow who married quickly to avoid being taken. Interleaved are chat about a bottle and about smoking.

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.

Kerler ends the interview with Hershkovich and asks for a few closing words on the continuity of Jewishness. Hershkovich comments on genealogical research by relatives from America. The camera then records family photographs. He identifies a sister, Shindl, and a brother, Yisroel (?), both in Auschwitz in 1944 (?), and shows a photograph of a synagogue.

Asked what she remembers of childhood in Satu Mare, Freundlich describes a strictly observant home with honest Sabbath keeping and simple parents. She tells of her parents' and siblings' deportation, a married sister deported with her husband and three children, and her youngest sister now seriously ill in a hospital in the United States (Florida/New York).

They discuss the Iron Guard and Cuzists, the Guard's January rebellion in Bucharest crushed by Antonescu, and Antonescu's refusal to deport Romanian Jews. One speaker claims a rich Jewish leader who had been his university colleague intervened. Kerler comments that Jews were useful as workers.

Meir describes the 1941 deportation from Dorohoi in cattle cars via Chernivtsi to Mohyliv and Sharhorod. Both parents fell ill with typhus and died there; they lie in a mass grave. He and his siblings were sent with an aunt to a village about twenty kilometers away, where Ukrainians took them in. He was then taken to forced labor at a peat site near Tulchyn with about two thousand Jews. The family returned to Dorohoi in December 1943. Kerler asks what the word for a work site means.

Setting up the interview, Shaia gives his family name, his Jewish and civil first names, and where he was born. He mentions his sister in Iași and his brother in Israel. Yiddish was the home language, and he found the Romanian school hard at first. His father was a tailor, and his mother, from a place whose name is unclear in the transcript (Hertsa?), helped him as a seamstress. He then describes how his wife's family, from Noua Sulița (?) in Bessarabia, was deported under the Soviets and Romanians and how one child died.

Grimberg recalls being deported to Transnistria as a child of about eight with her mother and sisters, while her father stayed in Romania in the labor service. She remembers the Mohyliv ghetto, her mother's severe illness, the family that traveled with them, and children going out to find food. She starts to talk about songs she learned there.

Hirsch describes Jews being taken from Turda to a labor camp until the Red Army arrived in August 1944. He mentions the fascist government, the Iași pogrom and deportations to Transnistria, saying that only a minority returned. Kerler then asks about his father, who was named Avraham.

Hirsch describes Jews from the villages being gathered in Luduș and then taken to a camp in Turda. He then recounts forced labor in a stone quarry near Constanța in Dobruja until the Soviet troops came in August 1944. He says every Jew could write a novel, and mentions his mother's work as a nurse with the Red Army and relatives who perished. He recalls Romanian soldiers returning from Odesa who told openly of killing about 15,000 Jews, mentions a recent visit to Odesa, and talks about Auschwitz and his parents' whereabouts during the war.

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.

Chajim and Lemster discuss his wartime labor in Briceni, Edineț, Rujniţa (?) and Hotin; Chajim says some 800 Jews were there. Lemster asks how many Jews lived in Hîrlău before the war. Chajim tells of a boy from Moscow whose parents were taken to Auschwitz and whom he befriended. The boy later died in Radauți (?) at about eighty, and the local rabbi wrote to Chajim to say so.

Abramovich gives the prewar Jewish population of Hîrlău as over a thousand families (about three thousand Jews), and says he spent three years in a camp or ghetto in Transnistria while the town's Jews were deported. Kerler then asks about his childhood: a Jewish town of merchants and craftsmen where making a living was hard. His father was Baruch Abramovich and both parents were born in Hîrlău. A closing remark about a bundle and a coat is unclear.

Chajim says he was held and made to work in Vyzhnytsya (Ukraine) during the war, in transports and wagons. He tells of a young friend whose father was taken to a camp and mother to Auschwitz, where she was killed, and the boy died at about eighty in Rădăuți (Bukovina); the rabbi there sent a letter and Chajim said kaddish for him. He says he played trumpet in the military band and used to sing, and Kerler asks about a Purim play.

Grinberg describes her plan for a museum in Rădăuți about the Jews of Bukovina, gathering photographs and family items from Jews worldwide. She says the Jews deported to Transnistria took no photographs with them. She talks about her religious family, her father's prayer shawl and kittel, and her ability to blow the shofar though she cannot sing. The talk turns to the interviewers' wish to record her and to Yiddish teaching in Romania.

Davidovich gives his birth date, with Kerler checking the year, and then tells of the deportation of his family from Siret in 1941 to Transnistria. They were held in several places, among them Pavlovka, Bershad, Obodovka and Pishchana, until 1945. In Pavlovka about 2,500 Jews were held in a pig farm, with starvation and typhus; he says nobody shot or beat them, but Ukrainian bandits came at night to kill and search for gold. His father went out looking for work, got a job making soap for a Romanian lessee near Pishchana, and brought the family there.

Davidovich talks about his mother's father, the melamed Meir Hersh Shekhter (name as heard), and his wife Golda. The grandfather taught small children and older boys Hebrew, and gave lessons in Latin and Greek to students preparing for medical studies. He describes how the old people left behind in Siret at the deportation, eight in all, some blind, were murdered by legionnaires, beheaded and buried in sand. He also tells of his other grandfather, who visited a daughter in America in the 1930s and came back because he could not keep kosher there, and who died in a trench on the march. A large monument now stands in the Siret cemetery.

Chirilau recalls the war years and the deportation of the town's Jews to Transnistria, and the return after the war. She tells about a neighbour who came back with four children after his wife died there, and about their poverty and illness. Two of the children went to Israel, one to Canada, and the interviewee remembers a visit from the Canada relative.

Leichtner gives his basic personal information. He was born in Ocna Șugatag, which was a salt-mining place, in 1922, and he gives the street and the distance to Sighet. He says about 25 Jewish families lived there and lived well until they were taken to camps. He himself was not in a camp but served as a soldier in forced labor.

Kerler explains the project: interviews in Yiddish about life before the war. Leichtner then names his parents, Zelig and Esther. His father, from a nearby village (transcribed Serp, i.e. Sârbi), was a kosher butcher, and his mother came from Rina. He grew up with three sisters and three brothers. Family members were taken to Auschwitz and only his father and two brothers returned.

Freundlich recalls women from Auschwitz and a household with a governess who was deported with them. She then describes a woman from Budapest who came to the synagogue wanting a conference on why Jews do not keep Jewishness, and her own reaction, with reflections on Jewish history and fate. Kerler interjects with a Yiddish saying about being born a Jew.

The formal interview with Mihai Freundlich begins. He explains the Yiddish name of Oradea and its fortress, gives his name, birth in 1921 near Baia Mare, and his Yiddish name Avrum-Khayim. He describes his parents (father a poor wood dealer, mother Rachel), his siblings, grandparents and the deportation of relatives. He says he and some siblings survived deportation and two brothers died in a camp.

Freundlich talks about his father, who was deported at about sixty-four, was strong despite a First World War injury, and was always an unsuccessful businessman. He tells how his father took the money he earned as a teenage employee, and recalls a confrontation with him.

Freundlich describes his Sighet-area Yiddish and the differences in pronouncing prayers compared with Hasidic and Hungarian Jews. Lemster then conducts the questionnaire with Romanian prompts, covering greetings, thanks, animal and body words, house and colour words, adverbs, and the terms for a pious versus honest person, a Christian and a convert. Freundlich also relates the story of a Jewish girl who converted, talks about words for peasants and Yiddish-speaking non-Jews, and Maramureș peasants who lived among Jews.

Freund says there were no Yiddish speakers among non-Jews in Baia Mare, and that he spoke Hungarian with friends and Yiddish only in cheder. He briefly says he took part in Purim plays as a child. He was deported in 1944 and put to forced labor, returning in 1947; he married in 1952 and has no children. He says Hungarian is mostly spoken in Transylvania, with some Romanian, and that Romanians object to this.

Opening of the interview: Kerler gives the date and purpose. Macarie gives her Romanian name Macarie and Yiddish name Khaye Rivke, and says she was born in 1925 in Sighet. She grew up in a village about three kilometres away, where only Jews lived, with one Hasidic synagogue. Her father, Yosl, wore a beard, sidelocks and a shtreimel, and was about sixty-five when the family was deported to Germany. Lemster closes by asking his occupation.

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 talks about his parents. His father Moshe studied in Vienna and spoke good German. His mother Rivke came from a small town near Baia Mare, and her parents were deported. He describes summers with relatives, with a large orchard and a mill, and also an aunt and uncle in Jibou (?). He recalls a relative's harsh manner and speaking Hungarian there. Kerler asks how to say 'poor relation' in Yiddish.

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

Asked by Kerler whether she saw Mengele, Mezei describes being in the Birkenau C sector near the infirmary block, where Mengele came a few times a week and the women feared a selection. She tells how her mother was taken by Mengele in October. She reflects that the world knew and stayed silent, and that men suffered more in the camp, including the Sonderkommando and Russian prisoners of war. She tells of a friend's brother, a lawyer in the Sonderkommando, who asked her through the fence about his sister.

Mezei concludes her account of Auschwitz, where she stayed six months, and then describes being moved to a factory in Thuringia. She talks about the mild climate, the heated quarters in an SS garrison, the washing facilities, and the poor clothing issued to the prisoners. She describes the camp barracks and the selection of women by their hands for lighter or heavier work. She had an easy inspection job and says she was liberated by the Americans in April 1945.

Mezei tells of an elderly relative's marriage match and her Romanian lesson, then answers Kerler about singing in Auschwitz. She tells in detail of Miri, a Slovakian or Hungarian block elder from Birkenau, who knew her fiancé's family and helped her and her sister with food while they were in forced labor. She describes selections, the transport, twelve-hour day and night shifts, singing Hungarian and Romanian songs with other women, and the final evening when Miri decided not to leave with them. The part also touches on an uprising by the Sonderkommando and her friendship with a rabbi's wife.

Mezei recounts her journey home after Auschwitz, by way of Prague and then Budapest, where she was put up in a hospital. In the yard there she unexpectedly met two cousins, who took her to their mother, her aunt. The aunt gave her a bath and fresh clothes. She goes on to Timișoara, where relatives of hers lived and had not been deported, and travels on by train toward home. She says she had heard in Prague that her fiancé was back; she returned on the first of July and married him on the first of September, and they lived together until his death nine years ago.

Salamon describes her return home to a house used as a stable and stripped of its contents. She says she returned hoping relatives had survived, and tells of the selection at Birkenau where she lost her mother and younger siblings, the tension with Polish Jewish prisoners, and forced labour in a commando with guard dogs. She describes the camp, its electric fence and the Arbeit-macht-Frei inscription, and says they marched to work with music.

Kurtsberg describes the deportation to Bershad: the night in the rain in the woods at Mărculești, the Dniester crossing where the sick were shot, and the winter in unheated houses. He tells of lice and typhus, of children collecting frozen vegetable peelings from Ukrainian yards, and of the yellow star. He describes street-by-street roundups, executions at an airfield and the mass graves, and children's games. He also describes theater performances, prayer in small groups, and two Romanian soldiers from the front who came to the house. Lemster also asks about songs.

Saldinger says she had a good childhood in Chernivtsi until the deportation to Transnistria, where she was in Murafa, with hunger and disease and everything lost on the way. She had one sibling. Her father, Yosl Krenter, was a flour merchant, her mother was Regina (Rivke), and her maternal grandfather administered an estate. Kerler explains the purpose of the archive interviews.

Mehler describes Jewish life after her arrival in Vatra Dornei, mostly in Romanian. The Jews of the Bukovina region were deported to Transnistria in 1941. The rich sometimes bought themselves out, and one family avoided deportation by faking illness. After the war many returned to find nothing and emigrated in a mass departure, up to about 1961. She also talks about prewar Jewish trades and the good relations before Antonescu, and about the Romanian Jewish leadership. The passage ends on Ştefăneşti.

Kerler notes swastikas carved on the wooden doors of the synagogue being excavated, and Steiner speaks about the cemetery. Gravestones were toppled some years ago and money was raised to repair it, and he describes the repair ceremony and good relations with local priests. He tells of a ten-day trip of priests to Israel, including Yad Vashem, and of the support of Rabbi Sher Yashuv Cohen. He says his family lives in Israel, and there is talk of phoning a man for the interviewers, and of plans to travel to Prešov and see the museum and synagogue from outside. He also discusses contemporary relations with the authorities and Jewish communities. He explains a memorial of the deportation route, with names of Košice Jews deported toward Auschwitz read at a ceremony. At the end he tells a cheder joke and there are languages questions, and car-travel talk partly in Hungarian.

Weinberger describes his family and Nižná Jedľová, a small village near Svidník with about nineteen houses, a few of them Jewish families including his own and uncles. He recalls his grandmother Leah (?) who cooked for him when he came home from cheder in Stropkov. His uncles were taken in 1942 and his father died in 1943 (?), his mother and siblings were deported, and an uncle hid him so that he lived on false Christian papers. He also mentions an uncle with eight small children, married to a woman from Poland, and the nearby border and villages.

Weinberger goes through a book on the Stropkov Jewish community and the many photographs. He remembers local people: a tailor, a shopkeeper he carried milk to, a bank manager, a man who was driven through town with non-kosher sausage, and a Gardist who was a Jewish coachman's son. He also shows wartime Slovak antisemitic publications and speaks of Jews being gathered in the synagogue before deportation, and of selection at Auschwitz. He says he was a forced laborer in Sereď, and that there was Yiddish among non-Jews of Stropkov. He regrets there is no one to speak Yiddish with at home. At the end he gives his birth date (18 November 1927) and says he lives in Košice.

Weinberger names his father, Leyzer Kirshner of Krosno, who was a Polish citizen and so gave his Slovak-born son no citizenship. On arrival in Budapest he stayed in a prayer house with Jewish refugees, learned a little Polish and went to the Polish Committee under the Polish name Yosef Chibotsky (spelled Przybycki in the catalogue). He received papers, money and food, worked in the fields and a bakery, attended services and received meal vouchers from the Jewish community. Kerler also asks about the date of the crossing, which he gives as late December 1943, and about the arrival at the Budapest station. Weinberger also mentions the deportation of Jews from Subcarpathian Rus.

Steiner reads from and shows pictures in a book on the Košice community, speaking of the large Orthodox and Neolog synagogues, the talmud torah, and the present excavation for a memorial on the site. He explains inscriptions in the two kinds of synagogue, the history of Košice under Hungary and its role in the 1944 deportations, the cemetery, the Star of David of the destroyed synagogue, and the museum. Kerler asks about the buildings and his own travel plans.

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.

Klimenko tells of the Balta ghetto and of being sent out to a village, where she was kept in a barn. She escaped at night and walked to Bershad, where people hid them in a basement bed, then went back to Balta in snow and frost. Her father was taken to the front in 1941 and never came back.

Shveibish, who works for the Jewish old people's home in Vinnytsia, tells how she was deported to Pechora as a child, and says over sixty thousand lie there. She describes the monument, the fence she rebuilt with help from Vinnytsia, the Hesed and her family, and its upkeep. Lemster says he is from Bessarabia.

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.

Hodinger answers questions about singing in Berehove, saying that Jews once sang but few are left and only a handful gather for prayer. Asked about relations with the non-Jewish neighbors, he speaks of strong antisemitism in Hungary. He also gives the numbers of Jews who lived in Berehove before and after the war and mentions those who did not return from the 1944 deportation. The interviewers then ask about further songs and Purim plays.

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.

Burg talks about the arrival of Soviet rule in 1940, which Jews welcomed as a protection against the Nazis. Persecution soon followed, and the wealthy, politicians and Zionists were deported. He recalls a night in June when half of Vyzhnytsya was taken away in trucks and many never returned. Kerler then asks him to read one of his stories.

Prompted by Kerler to discuss the Soviet period, Burg says he came to the Soviet Union already a writer. In evacuation in Chelyabinsk he wrote an article on Jews in industry, which he sent to Eynikayt, and he met its editor in Moscow in 1945. He learned from a reply that his mother and sister had been deported to Vinnytsia oblast and shot, so he did not return to Chernivtsi; he was sent to the pedagogical institute in Ivanovo, where Levin was prorector and he befriended a docent connected to Dovid Hofshteyn.

Shekhovich says her father, mother, brothers and sister were taken from Sambor to Radłowice (?) and she was the only one of her family left. Lemster asks about her husband and their life together. He then asks about folk beliefs and remedies: the evil eye, charms, and putting out coals or bread crumbs. She says she cannot recall much, learned some from her mother, and knows new songs better than old ones.

Answering Kerler's question about his music, Schreier says he plays violin, sings and holds a conducting diploma for choir and orchestra. He then tells of the Judenrat chairman, Dr. Isaac Rosenblat, who after the August 1942 deportation of 5,000 Jews asked the Gestapo to allow a soup kitchen for the remaining small children in the synagogue. The Gestapo agreed after two days, and when the children first sat at the tables, police burst in and shot them all.

Vaisblai recounts the German occupation of Chemerivtsi. The rabbi says the Jews must go to the slaughter for their sins, though Kerler's question shows it was unclear who said it. A man took Jews' gold, and his family was driven on foot fifty kilometres to the Kam''yanets'-Podil's'kyy ghetto. He describes hunger, an old and a new ghetto, escapes by day for food, narrow escapes and hiding, and flight to Dunaivtsi and beyond.

In the Khust synagogue Repkin explains its history in Russian: construction began in 1861, much of it is original, the paintings are original, the lions part came from Oleksandrivka, and the wiring was replaced two years before the visit. He recounts the Khust Jewish population in 1940 and its losses in the Holocaust, the ghetto from April 1944 and deportations to Auschwitz, and that Soviet authorities tried to close it for a club in about 1965–66 and a protest by women and children, apparently, saved it. He describes the books found there, with stamps from villages in the region and Yiddish, Hungarian and Slovak printings, and his catalogue of owners for a future museum. He also describes the repair of doors, donors from abroad, the mikveh-side rooms and a slaughtering knife found in the building, and talks about his own career at the shoe factory and the synagogue's upkeep, caretaker and minyan.

Torchinsky reads his poem about the Warsaw ghetto, dated 1992. It describes the German conquest, deportation, killings, burning of victims, and the uprising and the hope of liberation. Kerler then says he has a few questions and asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish.

Grayf says he worked on the railway when the war began and left for Russia within days, while his parents stayed. His parents were taken to the ghetto and deported; many Jews were shot nearby and others sent to Germany. His younger brother and sister jumped from a transport; the sister was caught, the brother hid in town and later reached Palestine and Tel Aviv. He says Ukrainians sheltered some Jews, and he blames Bandera's followers for antisemitism after the war.

Biter describes the Polish nationalist policies before 1939 and the arrival of the Soviets in September 1939. Jews were pleased, Poles were not and Ukrainians were divided. He recalls Soviet soldiers buying up goods in the shops and the abolition of letters in the alphabet. He tells of a Snyatyn millionaire named Birnbaum who fled to Romania, after which his family was deported to Kyiv.

Krotsh recalls that his parents' town was wiped out and the Jews were driven to Botoşani. He had by then crossed over to the Russians, with his middle brother Michl. He names his sisters and brothers, and says his older brother served in the Romanian army or gendarmerie. He also mentions a cousin or niece now living in Israel.

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.

Vider and Kerler look at photographs of Fruma's wedding and of the rebbe, and Vider recalls the wedding in the courtyard, with dancing and Yiddish and Hungarian songs. He sings a song and sits with S3 singing along. He mentions his own wedding canopy and a circumcision he knows of, and says circumcisions are performed in Mukacheve today. He shows a book on the Holocaust in Transcarpathia and other volumes, and is asked about a Yiddish term for a non-Jewish church. After a discussion of food words, including challah and berches, he shows a video of a relative who is a musician.

At the new Jewish cemetery, Vider and the team look at gravestones, some moved from the old cemetery, with names such as Chaim Yona and Meir Shteynberg (?). Photos on graves, which the Munkács rebbe forbade, are discussed. A mother's four children who died in Auschwitz in 1944 are named on a stone, and the stone of the Shapira family and the Holocaust memorial are mentioned. The place Benerikovitsh near Chernivtsi (?) comes up in connection with a rebbe's wife. There are Hungarian-language asides.

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

Snook says she was born in August 1921 in a village called Lazes (?), where about sixty or seventy Jewish families lived with a shul. Her father was named Leyb and worked with horses, and the family kept a cow and lived from the land. She had two brothers and three sisters who were taken away; she was already married by seventeen and living in another village.

Endelshtein talks about the start of the war in Bolgrad, with Germans arriving in the first days and then Romanians. He says Jews were sent from Bessarabia to Transnistria, and mentions Bemaniovka (?).

Trachtenberg recalls the shooting of about a thousand Jews in one night under the Romanians. He was at home that night. In 1941 the Jews were driven to the Bershad district, to a ghetto, and later the Germans took him to forced labor. Kerler then asks him to describe Novoseltsy, and he mentions Jewish streets, including Khotin Street.

Trachtenberg describes his schooling (Yiddish, Romanian, Hebrew) and then the war. He describes the camp in Mykolayiv, where Jewish boys from all over Ukraine did forced labor, were given little food and were shot when unable to work. He tells of the mass shooting in Novoseltsy in 1941 by Romanians, Germans and Italians, the 939 victims, the drive to the Bershad district and the Kosharyntsi ghetto, and his transfer to Mykolayiv in 1943. He compares Germans and Romanians and says he was freed in 1944.

Shvartzbroit names her sister Rivke and describes the deportation to the camp in cattle wagons, the Romanians and then the Germans, and the gold teeth pulled from prisoners. She tells of a Bessarabian Jew killed by a policeman, of Tulchin Jews like skeletons and of her mother. Her escape is told in detail: she walked about two hundred kilometres on foot as a child, hid in the forest and was helped by a non-Jewish woman, and some of it is hard to follow. She reflects that Jews are only guests in this world, and mentions a son in Israel and a daughter in Germany with two grandchildren, promising photographs.

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.

Tartinets, answering questions in Russian/Ukrainian, tells how Jews in her village were taken away on carts and how she ran barefoot after the cart with her friends. She names the family of a Jewish ironmonger (Haskl, ?) and friends such as Rivka and Hana. She recalls playing with Jewish children, lighting the stove for them on Sabbath, and praying with them; she speaks of her injuries and how she was a worker at a poultry plant after the war. Kerler asks whether the Jewish children spoke Yiddish with her.

Answering Katz, Gliazer describes the Soviet entry in September 1939. Poor Jewish workers welcomed it, wealthy Jews and non-Jews were later deported to Siberia, and Jewish theater, schools and cultural groups were closed, with only one rabbi left open. He also discusses the Yiddish newspaper Eynikayt, which was read, and the earlier German propaganda. Much of the stretch is garbled.

Shveibish speaks of earlier persecution and pogroms, then of the Romanian-run Transnistria period. Local non-Jews looted Jewish property while police and soldiers with dogs and horses drove the Jews, shooting those who could not walk. At night the column was driven through a village called Torkiv, then on to Pechera.

Kogan recites his song "Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt," about Jewish refugees from Bukovina and Bessarabia arriving in the Bershad ghetto. They arrive hungry and cold, with bundles and small children, and the song hopes for liberation. He then starts to introduce a poem he took from a Jewish writer whose name he cannot recall.

Golfeld recalls how the Jews of Tul'chyn were gathered after the Germans' arrival and driven to a disinfection in a bathhouse. They were kept in school no. 2 and then driven out in groups in the rain and winter of 1941, spending a night in a kolkhoz stable, where the first people died. He was nine or ten years old and was driven with his mother some thirty kilometres to the Pechera camp. The camp is a former sanatorium with a gate and bare plank beds.

The man and women describe how Tulchyn Jews were driven from their homes and held in the Ukrainian school, where they were disinfected naked in front of Romanian police before being sent to the camp. Kerler asks about the distance to Pechera, about 25 km. He proposes driving there, and the talk turns to a prewar sanatorium.

At a former religious school and matzo bakery now used by the university, Naybauer says the Uzhhorod Jewish population before the war was ten thousand, and that many more (a figure he gives as fourteen or sixteen thousand) were taken from the ghetto, where he was from the first to the last minute. He says he was born in 1924.

Furer tells of his war service: the Caucasus, Stalingrad where he was buried and concussed, and an escape across a river near Konstantinovka. He describes his work in the airfield and specialist school, and the Crimea, where he took part in the removal of Tatars. He ends with Belarus, Baltic states, Prussia and Königsberg, and a mined airfield there.

Barshteyn describes the great synagogue of Sharhorod and her mother's story that a wall was found in the earth when it was built. She recounts how the Soviets took it over for a factory, and how, during the Romanian occupation, deported Jews were forced into the synagogue and beit midrash and many froze to death in the winter; the bodies were thrown into a pit. She also mentions a German unit's short stay and a German who worked in the mill.

Barshteyn describes the war years in Sharhorod. The Germans were there for two weeks and took what they wanted. Romanian authorities followed, and Jews deported from Romania came into the shtetl. She says Jews could not speak Yiddish freely in public but did at home. She was twelve (?), her sister eight and there was a baby, and her mother was left alone without work. Lemster asks whether her mother sang; she says she sang only at home, in the ghetto.

Nayman talks about her daughter and granddaughter and about Purim: dressing up, going to relatives, and a Purim rhyme. She recalls Passover at her father's table. She says she had no time to play, since she helped her mother and herded cows. She names her grandparents and says her father came from near Uzhhorod and her parents were both Shvarts but unrelated. She describes two cases of the evil eye, her mother's death in Auschwitz, and how coals are extinguished to cure it, with Kerler asking about wording.