Evacuation

Goldberg says her brother was younger than she. During the war the family was in Stalingrad and then in the Urals, where he worked at a mine. She says Yiddish actors visited Călărași before the war, but she does not remember details. Lemster then turns to the Jewish holidays.

Zelda sings a Yiddish song of the displaced and homeless, scattered through the kolkhozes and called Bolsheviks. It is a song about longing for home, mother and the old house. Lemster then asks whether she remembers anything else, but the passage does not show where she learned the song.

Farber says his father was sent to the Urals (Kizel, Perm region) to work in the coal mines and later became a brigadier. He recalls Vertiujeni as having a rabbi and several synagogues, including tailors', shoemakers' and bakers' synagogues. He says his Yiddish comes from his grandfather Shlomo, and he mentions his mother as a seamstress who sewed for teachers and her baking in Vertiujeni.

Shpitalnik says she learned Hebrew letters in courses about fifteen years ago, with thoughts of going to Israel. She then returns to her paternal grandfather Meir, who refused to leave and was killed, and to her grandmothers: one wore a wig and prayed in the Russian theatre building. Her maternal grandmother died in evacuation. She describes visits to Dumbrăveni as a child, travelling by horse from Bălți.

Shpitalnik recalls that in 1940 Jewish refugees from elsewhere in Romania came to Chișinău, among them a Hungarian-speaking family from Transylvania whom her family took in and another from Bucharest. She says she was then in the sixth class and switched easily to Russian. She answers Kerler's questions on differences in Yiddish: Bucharest speakers, Baltic Jews who think theirs is the true Yiddish, and her own Bessarabian speech compared with Lithuanian Jews.

Abramovich talks about what remains of Mendele's legacy: autographs, the library, the museum, and his translations and interest in natural science. She says the family fled in 1941 when she was seven. She mentions a Polish song and a poem by Maksim Rylsky dedicated to Mendele, stories her grandmother told, an album made in Vilnius and now in Israel's National Museum, and her father's pseudonym. The visit then turns informal: cake, Israeli press clippings about her, a tennis-champion article, and book sales and names.

Sherman recounts being mobilized during the war and moved with a labor unit by way of Central Asia (Almaty) to near Moscow, to Rzhev, and later to Karaganda. They built bridges, railway lines and barracks for workers; Bessarabians were not allowed to join regular units.

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.

Mitlaeva recalls the small synagogue where her father took her before the war and some holiday customs. Asked about postwar Jewish prayer in Chișinău, she says she does not know how those who wanted to pray managed. She also comments on Soviet policy and says antisemitism existed, though the Soviet authorities also made evacuation possible.

Abelsky describes underground Chabad yeshivas in the Soviet Union, where he studied in Moscow before the war, with hundreds of students. He speaks of the wartime flight to Uzbekistan and studying in Samarkand, and of the postwar escape from Russia in 1946. He explains how a committee funded and forged papers to get Jews out via Lemberg and Chernivtsi, and mentions people who were caught, including a Matskin (?). He ends with a letter exchange with a Chabad contact abroad.

Fershtman describes the war: evacuation to Leninabad in Tajikistan, work as an electrician at a Tajik theater, and being drafted into the army in December 1942. He trained as a tank driver, received tanks in 1944 and went to the front in East Prussia, where he says he was shot at three times. He mentions medals and finishing the war around Gumbinnen (?), and the interviewer begins to ask when he came to Chișinău.

Leibelman tells how Bessarabia was taken by the Soviets in June 1940 and how the family fled on foot when the war began in 1941. The Germans caught up with them and her father was shot in 1942, leaving her with her mother and sister. She was taken daily to work, sewing, and brought food home, while others worked at stonework in Bershad. She describes arrival in Obodovka, where they were held in a horse stable full of Jewish people, and a terrible scene she witnessed there.

Akkerman answers Kerler's questions from the dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian words and phrases into Yiddish, with Lemster joining in. Items include greetings, thanks, body and animal words, colours, adverbs of place and time, sickness, honesty and piety, church words, and kinship words. She often answers in Russian and says she does not remember or does not know some words. She says that in Edineț one said 'krank' for sick. At about 17:27 she tells how her husband, mobilized in Uzbekistan, became an accountant in a military factory after he impressed the chief accountant with his handwriting. She had worked in the casting shop of the factory. She also remarks on being asked such questions of Jews.

Mundrian says she trained for three years from 1953 at Orhei and from 1956 worked in the hospital there. Asked about Jewish life in Susleny, she says she remembers little and tells of her mother's family: her grandfather was a Cohen and her mother the youngest of three children, who traded in Orhei. Her father was drafted in 1941 and killed, and the family returned from evacuation in 1945.

Sharhorodskij talks about a neighbor who was a German prisoner of war in the First World War and did not expect the Germans to kill Jews, and about those who evacuated. Kerler asks what he learned in Ukrainian and German classes; he names Ukrainian writers (Shevchenko, Franko, Lesya Ukrainka, Marko Vovchok) and Yiddish writers (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Bergelson, Pfeffer), recalling the lives of Sholem Aleichem and Mendele.

Asked whether people sang in the ghetto, Boiarskaia says nobody did, because people were afraid. She tells of a learned man named Yisroel (?), a fellow prisoner who wrote down life in the ghetto on scraps of paper and died after the war. She recounts how her family fled in 1941 toward Krasne (Krasni Okny), where Germans and Romanians seized thousands of people. The learned man collected gold from the prisoners to buy them off; the guards got drunk and the family escaped through the hills and villages back to their town, where a great slaughter was under way. She answers Kerler's questions about who carried out the killings, saying it was the Romanians, with the Germans passing through earlier. The passage ends with Kerler's question about vodka among Jews in her village.

Milevskaya gives personal information: she was a midwife for 30 years and has lived in the town for 38 years. She was born in Pervomaysk; her father Itsik was director of the beer factory there, famed for its Golta beer, and her mother Golda (née Shekhtman) taught German. She spoke Yiddish only with her grandparents. Her grandfather read prayers and the Torah, and the family was evacuated to Tatarstan; her grandfather worked at a poultry plant, and on the family's return a neighbour was surprised to see them.

Lerner explains that her street was called Lesnaya before the revolution and was later renamed after Kirov. Her grandfather moved from Rybnytsia to Balta in 1930 and bought the house. She describes the house room by room, including a passage room, the stove, a south-facing room with a balcony and a bedroom. She says she once took in lodgers and painted the floors herself. She also recalls returning from evacuation in September 1944 and living in part of the house.

Guzman answers Katz's questions about the Tomashpil ghetto, where her family lived in its own house on a street that was fenced off from the rest of the town. She dates the ghetto to 1941 and its end to 1944 or 1945. She explains that the Ukrainian police, working with the Germans, killed many Jews, some of them thrown alive into a pit. Her father was beaten at the gendarmerie and left an invalid. She says that after the war some Jews who had been evacuated returned, but few remain now.

Isaak Vaisman recalls Yiddish school lessons, including Hebrew, and the family's poverty; his mother worked at a factory. Beyle Vaisman says her father foresaw the closing of Yiddish schools and sent her to a Russian school. She describes a trip to Kharkiv with her uncle just before the war, his evacuation, and her father's last month in Berdychiv under the Germans.

Chukh gives the date and place of the interview and says the Berdychiv tsadik's grave is a pilgrimage site for visitors. She says she was born in Berdychiv, as were her parents, and was evacuated to the Caucasus during the war. Trained as a nurse, she wanted to go to the front but was kept at hospital work because she had a small child. She worked as an operating-room nurse and was later recognised as a war participant. She names her parents (father Yosl/Iosif, a sieve-maker from a place in Poland whose name is unclear; mother Tsirl, a quilt-maker) and her brothers, one in Germany. She describes her Jewish school (school no. 13, seven grades), her later nursing school and her long postwar nursing career in a Berdychiv hospital. She recalls childhood games, dolls she makes today from broken ones, and home life with Yiddish-speaking parents. She tells of the hungry early 1930s, when her mother sewed quilts to feed the children and the school later fed them. She remembers Soviet-era closing of synagogues, the synagogues of Berdychiv, the Hasidic rebbe's prayer house and holiday observance at home but not in school. Chukh also recalls Yiddish literature and press, a large library, visiting Yiddish theaters, the seltzer seller Itsik, and about 60,000 Jews in the town. She describes weddings with music and a rhymester, and Sabbath and holiday foods. She then answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire: translating Russian words and sentences into Yiddish (greetings, household words, animals, colours, adverbs, body and illness terms), plus words like dybbuk and golem.

Furman recalls being in hospital, where his leg was amputated, and coming to Berdychiv in 1945 to find no one. He bought an apartment, married and settled; his wife died thirteen years ago. He mentions the bombing of his evacuation train and being wounded, and says he worked as a furniture maker and did not go to synagogue. The passage ends as Kerler starts asking the Yiddish word for the cross.

Soyfer discusses religious life in Berdychiv. All synagogues were closed before the war; after the war the communists were asked and a synagogue reopened within a year, though children were not allowed to attend. He recalls charity before Passover, the closing of Yiddish schools, antisemitism in Kyiv, and being evacuated.

Berzon speaks about hardship before the war and the 1933 famine, when her father swelled with hunger and she herself fell from a third floor. She tells about the family's evacuation, hunger on the road, and her brother, a gifted student who had one weak lung and worked in evacuation. He later went to the army and disappeared, and the family learned of his fate only through a letter. She also tells how a book collection was hidden, and where the family lived in Berdychiv.

The speakers discuss the German occupation. Some say wealthy people stayed in Berdychiv and thought gold would protect them, but the Germans took their money and killed them. Vaisman tells of evacuation and army service from 1943 to 1946, and the woman recalls her trip to Kharkiv with her mother at the start of the war and her father's Jewishness.

The interviewee recounts leaving Berdychiv on 20 June to Kharkiv, where her grandfather lived, and how the war began two days later. A relative, a lawyer, came to take his family to Kharkiv, while her own family stayed in Berdychiv and was murdered. She evacuated with her grandfather to Uzbekistan and later found her husband through an address bureau.

They discuss the war years. Wealthy Jews stayed in Berdychiv because the Germans had not harmed Jews in 1914 and they believed money would save them. One family lost its relatives, and they recall the interviewee searching for her family at the station. She also reflects on war today in Israel.

The interviewee says the family was evacuated in 1941, first going to the Caucasus.

Vaisman recounts the war: evacuation toward the Caucasus and then to Central Asia, where he worked, and being drafted into the army and sent to the front after a short course. He served for about a year in Romania, catching deserters, and afterwards fought Bandera partisans in the Baltic region. He mentions Jewish comrades, a commander, being questioned about informing, and release from the army. The second informant tells of an old Jewish tailor who stayed under German occupation with his wife and two sons and was hidden by non-Jews. He hid under a bridge with a crying infant and was spared by a German soldier. Kerler also asks whether one could pray in the army.

Soyfer recounts that he fled in the war and went to the Caucasus, where Germans came and his grandmother was killed. His father was taken into the army. He says he served as a soldier and could not have killed an old person, and mentions that his wife died half a year earlier after twelve years of illness.

Sara, born in Berdychiv, talks about her family before the war. There were four children, and the elder brother was killed at the front. Her father Yankl Yakov Katz worked in a sausage factory, and her mother Dobe was a housewife. The family lived on the street near the market that was formerly Zhytomyrska and later Lenin Street. She went to a Jewish school and then a Russian one, and was evacuated to Bashkiria. They also remark on the large prewar Jewish population compared with today.

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

Kerler announces the date and place of the interview. Gvinter gives personal and family information: her father's two brothers in Washington and a relative there named Oister, and the naming of a relative Igor. She says she was born in 1930 but her passport gives 1928 because documents were lost and her mother resisted the change. Her father Yankl died in the famine of 1933, aged 38. A family album with photographs from America was lost in the Dnieper during evacuation, and her mother, Sharke, died in 1977.

Gvinter recalls the war years: at the age of about twelve (?) she was taken to Pechera in 1943, first under the Germans and then under the Romanians. She tells how she bought potatoes from peasants, passing as a non-Jewish girl, and sold them at the Jewish market. A partisan came to the family, who lived in the basement under the synagogue, and refugees from the area were brought in and many died. She also mentions an older sister who left in the 1941 evacuation, her mother's relatives, and money sent from America.

Geller speaks about his brothers (Velvl in the army, the youngest, Moshe, with aunts) and his father's second army call-up, which left him alone. He returns to Zhmerynka from Turkmenistan via Baku on 9 May 1945 and finds aunts there, then leaves for Kyiv in 1947.

The Gellers discuss antisemitism after the war. One says he never heard a slur in Central Asia, where Uzbeks were friendly. They reject the claim that Jews did not fight at the front, and compare the antisemitism of today with the past. They also discuss the Jewish press and the Doctors' Plot of 1952–53, when small towns were not affected. The speaker labels are uncertain in places.

Kelmenson confirms the surname Kelmenson and her maiden name Shtivelband, and talks about her family, including her father's family. Her grandfather had a tea plantation in Staraya Sinyava, was dispossessed, and went alone to Crimea in the 1930s, where he died. Her father was a Soviet employee. She says that during the war the family went to Tashkent, where her mother worked as an accountant.

Bielaia says there were no Hasidim in her town and has trouble explaining what a rebbe is. She mentions Sovetish Heymland, and says there was no professional Yiddish theater but amateur drama, in which her husband acted in Chernihiv before the war. She worked in Chernihiv and left in 1943.

Bielaia says her father Motl was a shoemaker and her mother Dveyre-Rokhl did not work, having many children. She herself worked before the war in a Jewish kindergarten as a teacher, 1936 to 1941, and was evacuated to the Urals.

Bielaia talks about her prewar life: she married in 1937, her husband acted in a Yiddish drama circle and she went to rehearsals and acted too. She worked at a Jewish institution until the war, when she was evacuated, borrowed Yiddish books from the library, and had a small daughter.

Bielaia says her father Motl, a shoemaker with eight children, prayed in the synagogue. She finished the seven-year Yiddish school in Nezhe, where all subjects but Russian and German were taught in Yiddish, and there was a drama circle. Religion was not taught, and she worked in a Yiddish kindergarten in Chernihiv until the war. She says her parents did not survive the war. She also mentions carrying a bench for her mother to the synagogue.

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

Shternberg talks about her sister, a member of Hashomer, who went to Palestine but returned to Khotyn when the war started. She also gives her family name (Kerzhner), her mother's name (Nekhe) and her grandparents' names, Leah and Hersh. She names three sisters and a brother, and tells what happened to them in the war: evacuation and Siberia. She sings the kibbutz text to the melody of "Vu bistu geven", and Kerler asks about a Yiddish expression for a non-Jew.

Shames speaks about the war years and after. She worked in a factory in evacuation and then came to Khmil'nyk, where her mother had survived the war. She worked as an accountant, did not attend a Yiddish school (she was taught at home at eight), then switched to Ukrainian. She tells how her father was killed and how her mother hid and survived, and cannot recall details.

Kerler invites Shames to tell something freely in Yiddish; she says she has nothing to tell and did not expect the visit. The interviewers explain they study the Yiddish language. She says she learned Yiddish as a child and speaks it now with nobody. She describes working for 23 years in a textile factory, where co-workers spoke Russian or Ukrainian because the boss was Christian. She recounts evacuation to the Urals, her parents being taken, her return to Khmil'nyk, where her mother had survived.

Kerler states the date and purpose of the interview, and Gammer gives her name, born Goldis, with her father Fayvesh, and says she was born in Khmil'nyk in 1924 to Khmil'nyk-born parents. Her mother was Eni. Her father was born in 1893 and was a tailor; her mother worked as an employee (a shop cashier, it seems) and died shortly before the war. During the war the family lived in evacuation in Central Asia. A second woman gives her name as Genia, and the town is said to have had about twelve thousand Jews before the war.

Gammer talks about her husband Bore Gammer, a first-group invalid who lost a leg in the war as a tank driver. His parents lived in Vinnytsia, and he studied there before going to a tank school in Kyiv. After the war he came to Khmil'nyk. She returned from evacuation in 1948 without parents and was taken in by her mother's friend.

Shames says she spent the war in the Urals, alone. She did not return to Yanushpol because no one lived there and her mother had been killed there (?). She says many Jews were killed near Khmil'nyk. She trained as an accountant in Yanushpol before the war and says life was always hard.

Weiss names his brother Edmund, who died in Plaszow, and says his parents lie in the Broniza woods ten kilometres from Drohobych. He describes the mass grave and the memorial erected with funds from a wealthy Tel Aviv man. He then recounts serving in anti-aircraft artillery, retreating, and being sent to the Urals. There he was ill and starving in a forest labour unit with bread rations tied to work norms. After being released he worked at an evacuated factory under a Jewish director until 1946, and recalls a Zionist youth leadership role in Drohobych before the war.

Shekhter describes the war years in a labor battalion: he was taken in Ivano-Frankivsk and moved on foot toward Kyiv under German bombing. He was later in Omsk with a Polish army unit and in Sverdlovsk, where he fell ill, and then worked as a cobbler, self-taught beside his father and brother. He met a Russian woman there in 1943, and he spoke Yiddish with Jews he met; later he moved on to another place (unclear).

Kopyt recalls the outbreak of war and the family's flight on foot toward Kyiv, and says seventeen relatives were killed. She talks about her mother, who was a baker, and her grandfather, a synagogue gabbai, and speaks about neighbours and Babi Yar. She describes her first husband's death after Chernobyl and her second marriage, her grandparents' hiding in the civil-war pogroms, and a visit to the site where her grandfather was killed. She also tells of her own fall.

Beigel recounts the war: the family went to her mother's parents but a week later killings began, so they fled to Krasne and were later sent back. The Dnister (?) river divided the German and Romanian zones. She was beaten in the ghetto. An elder of the community bought her out so that she would not be killed. She also escaped bandits and hid with a Pole, and three times escaped being killed.

Iuris says she moved to Kolomyya in the postwar period, where her husband came from, after her mother died and her father remarried. She describes Kolomyya's Jewish community then and now, and that her husband was transferred for work to Ivano-Frankivsk. Kerler thanks her, and she then speaks in Russian about her family's history, mentioning her grandmother's sister, relatives in Romania, food parcels, and the closing of the border.

Fishman talks about his family. His daughter is disabled, his son died after illness, and the Hesed in Zhytomyr helps with parcels. His sister lives in Baltimore with relatives in San Francisco, and cousins live in Israel and Canada; he gives their names, including Alla Fishman and a Feldman. He gives his name and patronymic and says he does not remember his grandparents. His grandmother died in evacuation in Kazakhstan.

Lys says he heads the local Jewish community and gathers Jews in its office for Sabbath and holidays, since no one in town can lead prayer. He recalls his mother's candle blessing, and baking matzo at home with boards and a Russian oven. He begins on Samarkand, where his mother arranged Yiddish lessons from yeshiva students.

Geller talks about his wife Feyge: a Kyiv university student evacuated to Tashkent, she volunteered for the army and served as an artilleryman and then radio operator. Her mother, siblings and grandparents were shot by the Germans, while her father and elder sister hid, the father surviving a pit during the shooting.

Gelman gives his Yiddish name and birth date in 1921 and says he lived in Kam''yanets' until the war. He describes his parents and grandparents, including a maternal grandfather who traded in Kitaygorod (Ketaret), and names his three siblings. He then recalls his childhood: leaving a Jewish school after four grades during the 1933 hunger, selling coal he gathered at the station, and his father's hospitalisation. He tells at length of his Red Army service, from the first bombing in 1941 through hospitals, a long march and tank-unit service, to the advance on Berlin in 1945, and mentions a decoration, work in Germany afterwards, and his later work buying cattle. Kerler's questions then turn to prewar Sabbath and holiday life in a poor household: meat versus challah, the mother's blessings, driving for others on Sabbath, the town's trades, the Jewish street, ritual slaughter, Passover preparation, Jewish and non-Jewish friends and neighbours, Hanukkah foods and the bathhouse and mikveh. These parts include terminology for shops, trades and foods.

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.

Kaviner talks about the Soviet Yiddish prose writer Eli Shekhtman and about his own novels, which he wrote after the war. He says he borrowed the title of one, "Erev", from Shekhtman, and the other title from David Bergelson (?). Lemster asks about the novels' heroes and prototypes; Kaviner says they are ordinary petty-bourgeois Jews in the shtetl before and after the war. Kerler then asks about a tombstone in Kopaygorod and the Ludmir maid.

At the community center, Kramer gives his name and birthplace Berezdov, discussed with Kerler as a Yiddish place-name. He states his full name, his father Zelman, and his birth year and current address in Khmel'nyts'kyy. Kramer recalls living in Berezdov until the war, evacuation to Kazakhstan, return in 1944 to Slavuta, and the family's flight on foot with others. He names his siblings: two sisters and two brothers.

Kramer talks about his father's work in the Jewish kolkhoz, of which there was one beside a Ukrainian one in Berezdov, and compares them. He names his mother Leah, says he and his sisters also worked in the kolkhoz from age fifteen, and mentions evacuation to Kazakhstan and return to Slavuta in 1944. He also speaks of an uncle, Leybl, and his children.

Smelanskii recalls his grandfather, a respected man in Smila to whom people came with questions, and the six or seven synagogues that stood until 1941. He lists uncles, aunts and cousins with their names, occupations and places (Moscow, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Israel), says that relatives were evacuated or killed at Babi Yar in 1941, and mentions an uncle who ran the printing house of the Smila newspaper. He also says his father worked on the railway.

Asked by Katz about earliest memories, Smelanskii says he cannot recall them, and does not remember his grandmothers. His paternal grandmother lived in Cherkasy, and a paternal aunt's children included a son killed in the war. He says his father built a small prayer house after the war on returning from evacuation, and describes how a minyan needed official permission and a list of members. Katz asks about prayer and Russian is spoken at the end.

Derbaremdiker describes his cheder lessons: Chumash beginning with Vayikra, the letters, and the prayers. He says he can still read the siddur fluently but does not understand every word. He now goes to the synagogue because it is the only place to speak Yiddish, with the rabbi Yakov Dublikh (?). He mentions the languages he studied: English, German and French. He adds that after the war relatives in Canada found the family's address, which was in the Urals, through the evacuation centre.

Zak says she finished ten grades at a Jewish secondary school in Polonne, with instruction in Yiddish including physics, mathematics and chemistry. She then took courses and worked in a Jewish orphanage in Letychiv. She begins telling how the war started while she was on vacation and the family fled fifteen kilometers on foot to Miropol'.

Zak continues her wartime account: the family caught the last train out of Miropol' and ended up in evacuation, working in a kolkhoz with little to eat. Her father died of hunger there. They returned to Polonne in 1944, where she worked in an orphanage speaking Yiddish with the children, and in 1945 she was asked to organize a children's library, where she worked until her retirement in 1988.

Derbaremdiker describes his career in chemical technology for leather: laboratory head at a large plant, work at a scientific institute, and chief engineer at a plant in the Urals during the war. After Bleich arrived he cut back his work and began attending the synagogue. He mentions teaching a Yiddish course at the Sholem Aleichem university, now closed, and his Sunday school. He also describes a Jewish school on the left bank of the Dnipro and the other Yiddish teachers and groups in Kyiv.

Vider recalls moving to Russia in 1940 without knowing Russian. He worked in a coal mine in the Urals from about eighteen, spent years as a mechanic in the Karakum desert in the heat, and then worked in a mine in the Lviv region until retiring at seventy. He retired to Kolomyya, where his sister and brother-in-law lived and died, and where he learned cooking and baking from her; he describes how he prepares fish and fills a chicken neck, and remembers his parents' cooking and his father's Sabbath challahs.

Vider talks about his working life: he worked about twenty-six years in a coal mine near Chervonohrad, ten of them underground, and nineteen years as a mechanic on large refrigeration units producing ice. He says he came to the Soviet Union in 1940 aged seventeen, went to the Urals for mine work, and later worked in Turkmenistan in the oil industry until 1961, when he came to Kolomyya. He says he was valued as a Communist labour model and was asked to return after retiring.

Krotsh talks about kolkhoz life in the Krasnodar region. As a tailor with no Russian and no farm experience, he was sent to drive oxen. A Jewish brigadier and chairman from Bessarabia taught him the work, and he came to be shown off as a model kolkhoz worker. He then describes leaving the kolkhoz with his brother and working at an oil factory before being drafted.

Vider briefly tells of the war in Russia, where Jews were at first not taken into the army, and says he fell ill and the doctors would not let him go. Lemster asks about Itsik Manger and drinking songs. Vider says he was born in Sighet, moved to Hîrlău at age three and stayed about ten years. He mentions a younger brother who was killed, then went to Iași to study at a yeshiva. He wanted to learn carpentry, but his mother, helped by relatives in America, persuaded him to learn tailoring as an easier trade.

Futerman talks about her grandfather, who went to synagogue, and an aunt in Kyiv. She tells how her mother went to L'viv and married a drunkard, and how she herself came back from evacuation in 1946 and lived near her aunt. She recalls playing with a non-Jewish neighbour's child and a wartime incident with a grenade. Kerler asks whether folk healers existed; she says people went to non-Jews.

Prompted by Kerler to speak Yiddish, Katsman tells of his war: he was in the Minsk underground for several months, then chief doctor of a partisan brigade in Belarus, treating partisans and villagers. He later served in the army as a doctor and was wounded. He says the partisans blew up railway tracks and took people out of the Minsk ghetto, about twenty-seven of them, young people, some of whom may still be alive. Kerler promises another interview within a year.

Skop talks about being taken in 1940 with other Jewish children to a vocational school to learn a trade, and then, aged seventeen, being sent to Siberia. He was drafted into the army at eighteen. He fought at Stalingrad, in the Donbas, at Kursk and Dnipro, then in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

Groysman talks about school: seven classes at a Yiddish school, then a Ukrainian school. He describes teachers of mathematics and literature (Babych (?)). He recalls the night his parents left in the evacuation while he stayed, the farewell on being drafted, and the later reunion with his parents in Alma-Ata, where he arrived on crutches. He ends by thanking God for his health.

Obodovskii recalls his schooling: he first attended a Ukrainian school in Kotovs'k with only Yiddish and was laughed at, then a Russian school in Siberia, and after the war a Russian school in Kotovs'k, which he completed after nine years. Leiderman says that until about seven she knew only Yiddish and nothing of Russian or Ukrainian. Lemster asks whether a synagogue existed in Kotovs'k.

Kerler and Lemster ask about religious life. Obodovskii says he never entered a synagogue and knows tefillin only from television. Leiderman says the family returned from evacuation in 1946 and that, in Kotovs'k after the war, older Jews gathered in private homes for a minyan, with candles and brandy. They also mention Pishchanka as a Jewish town with a synagogue where her father prayed.

Leiderman describes her mother as a seamstress who sewed for the family only. Obodovskii recalls his grandfather Khayim with a red beard, his grandmothers Anye and Gitl, and his paternal grandfather Yisroel, after whom he is named. He recounts the family's names, where the grandfather lived near Korytne, and that his grandfather ran a small shop in the NEP years. His maternal grandmother died around the Revolution. He then begins describing the 1941 departure from Kotovs'k in evacuation.

Leiderman describes her siblings, a brother Lova and a sister Brane, and the brother's disappearance in the war. She says she worked in a military factory and was not allowed to leave, until a relative's invitation let the family return to Kotovs'k in 1946. The couple say they met in 1962. They speak of Yiddish at home and of the difficulty of speaking it, and Obodovskii discusses a Yiddish dictionary and Slavic and German words.

Gershtein tells how, in June 1941 (?), when the war began, he fled with two friends and a girl, Roze Prager, who later died in America. They left their parents and travelled at night by horse-drawn carts. He was thirteen at the time. On the road they saw German aircraft, and he describes the group's flight.

Gershtein recounts his flight at the start of the war as one of four children. They reach Sarny, meet the Red Army in the woods, and a commander named Kuznetsov (?) arranges for them to reach the evacuation trains. A bombed bridge stops the train; they spend the night in a field, barefoot and with little clothing. A freight train takes them to Kyiv, where they are fed and put to work digging potatoes. He is then sent to Andizhan.

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 talks about his family: a son and a daughter, and his wife, a teacher and director of a Sunday school. She comes from the Vinnytsia area, was evacuated to Samarkand, and understands Yiddish. He describes her learning Hebrew after they came to Israel, and his own role reading Yiddish and Hebrew letters for others. He also mentions evaluating books and prayer books among Jews leaving the country.

Khonigsman tells of the outbreak of war in September 1939: he fled with friends and a young girl toward Chelm, took the girl back to Lublin, and spent a month under German occupation. He escaped again in October, crossed the Bug with a peasant's help and, in November 1939, found himself in Soviet territory. After a month on a kolkhoz he fled hunger to Kritchev(?) and Mohyliv-Podilskyy, worked as a porter at a sewing factory and started at the pedagogical institute.

Brandler describes his wartime route from Mostiska by foot and train to Husiatyn, where German planes bombed the platform, and on to Bobrynets in the Kirovohrad region. He was taken into a labor battalion digging anti-tank trenches and worked in the Rostov area and in a coal mine. In 1944 he was drafted into the army, fought as a mortar man, and was wounded and hospitalized. He later served in the artillery, was hurt again, and was demobilized in 1946. Kerler also asks how Yiddish speakers in his area said words like trench and dugout.

Leibel recalls being sent to the front with the Red Army and seeing German vehicles near Berezhtsi (near Kremenets), where he saw a Jew praying in a window, and reaching Pochaiv. He was taken to the Kharkiv region and, in 1941–42, to Sweden-bound (?) Polish Jews were sent east; he became a sergeant and fought at the Third Ukrainian Front, where he was wounded and commanded a unit. In 1945 he was sent to a lieutenants' school, which was then disbanded, and he was demobilized.

Kaplan gives his official and Yiddish names, his birth date and place, and the Yiddish name of the town and region. He names his parents and his brothers, corrects the count to three brothers and no sisters, and mentions the twin brother in Hanover whose wife was killed. He recalls his grandmother's death from hunger in evacuation in Central Asia, and a childhood of poverty and strict discipline, with a mother who taught literature. He then mentions the Jewish school and gymnasium and the number of Jews in the town.

Masovich recalls the postwar communal apartment in Chernihiv, where one Jewish and two Christian families shared a kitchen. His father hid under a wardrobe to put on tallis and tefillin so the neighbor would not see. His mother Khaye was a housewife. His brother Naftali, who graduated from the pedagogical institute in 1941, went missing in the war. His grandmother died in Saratov, and his grandfather Avrom, a tailor, lived at the cemetery in Chernihiv.

Dubinskaia says she fled with her sister Sima, while her eldest sister Dvoyre was already older. Her brother Yasl served in the army throughout the war and died some years afterward. She speaks of evacuation in Uzbekistan, where local people were kind and one man gave her a piece of liver. As a child she carried post six kilometres between villages. She came back to Berdychiv in 1945 (?), since no one was left. She says she does not want to go to Germany or take money from Germans, after they killed her father, brothers and mother.

Kerler explains the interview, and Listengurt settles in to speak. She speaks about the early Jewish settlement of Odesa and its large prewar Jewish population (a majority). She tells how the Germans and Romanians took the city in 1941 and how long Odesa held out, and she recalls a Jewish history teacher and her own challenge to antisemites. She says Stalin was good to the Jews and names local figures such as the party secretary Naum Gurevich and General Petrov. She also tells of her father, who worked in the port and was a Communist, and of the early days of the war. Her father was nearly blind and ended up in Tashkent. Her older sister served at the front for the whole war, was a medical-institute student and afterwards a nurse (?). She also discusses catacombs and local building stone.

Medved speaks about her time in the east, with the many Dagestani peoples and their languages and Russian as the common language. She mentions learning some Kazakh and Tatar, and a teacher's remark when she entered the seventh grade. Kerler then asks about a performer's visit to Odesa after the war, and the passage ends with a remark about her husband understanding Yiddish through his grandmother.

Tokar describes the destruction of Zheludok under the Germans: resistance, burning of the town, a ghetto with a Judenrat, and the mass shooting of more than a thousand Jews. He tells how he escaped by bicycle with his younger brother, how the brother turned back and he went on alone to an aunt in Kharkiv. His brother Gedalye was moved to the Lida ghetto, joined the partisans, tried to shoot himself, survived, and was flown through the front to a hospital in Russia. They met again in 1944–45, and Tokar says he himself was disabled at the front.

At the yeshiva premises the rabbi describes in Russian his Sunday class of adult beginners, aged from about 38 to about 70 and funded from his own money. They study Torah with commentary and the laws of Jewish life. He tells how he grew up in Kherson after his parents' evacuation, and his father's war wound. He recalls that he went to Avram Katsev with his poems at 37, which led him to learn about Jewishness and to study in a Jerusalem yeshiva and kollel. He and Kerler discuss Katsev's life as a Yiddish poet and teacher, and then the group moves toward the school.

Vainbrand says there was apparently no ghetto in Valedniki because the Germans feared the holy place and did not go to the rebbe's grave. Most older Jews were evacuated to Uzbekistan and elsewhere, or died. Lemster asks about Jewish life in Odesa after Vainbrand arrived, and he answers that he had no one to speak Yiddish with there. He says it is a Jewish city because many Jews live there, and he is asked about Natan Lurie, Drucker and Shloyme Mikhoels, with little recollection. Lemster asks about his daughter in the United States.

Brodsky remembers Budapest and Hungary at the end of the war and a landlady there who spoke of a Jew. He answers questions about words (dybbuk, golem), and says there were many Jews in the Red Army and no antisemitism there. Postwar antisemitism and Jews in Odesa during the war are discussed: evacuation was not total, and there were ghettos and camps. He says a non-Jewish friend (Yanya Manevich or Maniovich, now in Israel) was among those who rescued Jews, and mentions a memorial with trees.

Kipervaser speaks about her husband's family, whose three sisters and other children were killed; she says that she and her husband mark their yahrzeit every year. After the war they did not return to Berezdiv, as no Jews were left there, and came to Slavuta in 1944. She says the Yiddish name of the town is Slovite (?). She talks about Yiddish at home, a child named Itsik who died, and the Jews who came back from evacuation. Her daughter completed an institute. Lemster asks whether a Yiddish theater came to Berezdiv.

Stotland sings a school song about how to make a whistle. He mentions Yiddish translations of Pushkin and Shevchenko. He then describes the evacuation of the orphanage by horse cart, its bombing by German aircraft, and the few survivors. He names his brother and two sisters, one of whom emigrated to America and another to Israel.

Stotland tells of his wartime experience: after the bombing he wandered, arrived at the railway station in Kharkiv, and helped at a field kitchen beside a military train. He then volunteered for the front and served until the end of the war. He was wounded twice and became an invalid. On returning to Ovruch he found no one, worked at a hotel, and met his future wife.

Turovskaia says 125 Jewish families lived in Veledniki, a town in a border zone that required a special permit to enter from Ovruch. She then begins on the start of the war: her father was taken into the army and her grandmother was very ill. Her mother had seven children, of whom four survived.

Turovskaia recounts in detail the evacuation of her family. Her grandmother was dying but urged the family to leave, and a teacher neighbor took Turovskaia to Kharkiv. The grandmother was carried to a wagon among pillows and taken to the station and by train toward Chernihiv. Turovskaia dug trenches, then received a telegram saying the family was at a kolkhoz in the Tambov region and traveled with Polish Jewish refugees. At the kolkhoz she found no one, and a woman from Ovruch helped her find her mother. The family later went on to Buryat Mongolia in Siberia. Her father fought at the front and returned in 1946. She describes the destruction of Veledniki when they returned, including the roofs taken by Hungarians.

Turovskaia says she taught history in schools in Ovruch before she married. Her husband was a veterinary doctor, and they went to Siberia, where they worked in schools for thirty years. She returned to Ovruch in the 1980s, after retiring on a pension, to care for her father; her sisters and brothers lived elsewhere. Kerler and Katz ask when her father wrote his notes, and she cannot give a year.

Turovskaia says a dybbuk story is among her father's written tales. Katz and Kerler ask what the word means, and she describes something entering a person or animal. They discuss related Yiddish words such as 'apir' (?) and 'efremye' (?). She then mentions Yiddish records: after the war her father brought a record player and they bought records. She says she lived in Siberia until the 1980s.

Turovskaia says a sukkah was built in the corridor at her father's house, where the family ate. Answering Kerler, she says there was anti-religious propaganda in Soviet schools, even Yiddish ones, with informers, though believers kept faith. She recalls the war years in Siberia, the death of her grandmother in 1943 (?), and her trips to Mongolia (?).

Turovskaia describes a small stream at Velednik and a bathhouse with a mikveh there in the past. She recalls her time in Siberia, where she worked in a school and fasted all day on Yom Kippur, eating only potatoes when she came home.

Turovskaia talks about Dovid Katz's earlier visit and about her family. Her father died long ago, and relatives were evacuated. They discuss Jews who are no longer in town, including a man named Feldman and a couple from Slavechno (?). She says her children live in Siberia (Kansk, Krasnoyarsk region) and in Pskov, and mentions her late husband, a veterinarian.

Turovskaia talks about her friend Roza, whose father was in the Revolution. Roza was talented and a good speaker, and Turovskaia remembers school events. She tells of Roza's early death and the start of the war, with evacuation. She says she dreams of Roza and says Yizkor for her. She ends with blessings for the interviewers.

Zak tells about her husband, who is Jewish but grew up in a village and does not speak Yiddish. His family lived in Shepetivka before the war and was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where his father was killed at the front and his mother died of hunger. After marriage he worked at a ceramics factory for 36 years. He now has health problems, and his commemorative plaque (?) is mentioned.

Zak tells how the family left in evacuation: her brother and brother-in-law were sent to the front, and her father did not return. Two sisters died in Polonne, and others are in America and Israel. She mentions her postwar work as an official in an organisation and as a librarian, and that she and her husband now live alone with no family nearby, apart from a relative in Moscow.

Khiterman says there was no antisemitism after the war. Kerler asks about Zionists in Berezhov (Berezov?), which she does not remember. She recounts being arrested in the early 1950s (?) and taken to Kyiv, apparently over a mix-up with a woman connected to a committee. She says her small child died in evacuation at Katta-Kurgan at the age of two and was named after her mother. Her relative, mostly in Russian, describes her poor health and how isolated she is.

Fish says he married in 1946. His wife Ida (Yide) Lakir grew up with her parents and brother on a Jewish kolkhoz in Kherson oblast, where she attended a Yiddish school until it was closed. Her father evacuated the kolkhoz livestock when the war began, and after the war the family moved to Rivne, where Fish met her through an acquaintance. He describes the housing difficulties of the first months and answers Kerler's questions about her and her father's names and the kolkhoz.

Shvartsburg explains that about 1,200 Jews were shot in Skvyra in three massacres within six days in September 1941. In 1947 their bones were gathered and buried in the new cemetery under three stones, and he says no marker stands at the killing sites. He also says that few Jews were left, many having been evacuated. Then he talks about Jews and their children today, including intermarried families and two grandchildren studying in Zhytomyr.

Liberzon remembers attending the Yiddish school for five classes and being told in 1941 to buy Russian textbooks as Jewish schools were closed. She recalls anti-religious agitation: an anti-religious meeting poster on the eve of Passover, and a teacher giving her sister money to buy a roll. After evacuation to Krasnoyarsk she attended a Russian school, where a teacher made an issue of pork. Russian remarks by others interrupt.

Liberzon says that during the war the family was in Siberia while Jewish theaters and schools were closed across the country. Her father was highly respected, and the Slavuta synagogue was the only one in the country not closed, opened at the end of 1947, after the war. Kerler asks about the permit required, then turns the conversation back to her mother's side of the family.

Kerler opens the interview with Roza Klein, who gives the date and her name and her patronymic. She says her father was Shmuel, and the town is called Olt-Konstantin in Yiddish. She was born in 1923 and was evacuated during the war.

Bivson begins to tell about the war years, when she was evacuated to Birobidzhan. She describes the hard journey on an open platform in the rain and says she survived on hardship. She traveled with her sister Khaike and her parents to her older sister Mindl, who lived in Birobidzhan.

Yakuta gives her name and birth in Teplyk in 1921 and says she lived there until the war. She names her father and says he was born in Teplyk, and that he and her mother and three children were killed by the Germans. Her father was a hatmaker, and she describes the lined caps and collars he made. She gives her grandfather's name and her parents' names and birth years, lists her siblings, and says two brothers were evacuated to Tashkent. One brother served as a military doctor, and the family is now partly in Tel Aviv.

Kerler meets Reznik at her home and explains the interview. She says she was born in a village near Tomashpol' (name unclear) and gives her maiden name, Kordonskaya, and her husband's family. She went to a Ukrainian school, took courses in Kyiv and worked as an economist and bookkeeper. She was evacuated in 1941 to the Urals and then to a kolkhoz, and returned in 1944, married and bought the house. She names her parents and where they came from.

After opening chat among those present, Shusterman gives her father Toyva's name and says he was born in Tomashpol' in 1901 and died in 1995 aged 94. He worked in several jobs, including at a bank, and wrote well in Yiddish and Russian. She describes him as an honest and pious man who prayed daily and led the Passover seder. After the war he acted as a kind of rebbe, saying kaddish for the dead, and the militia broke up prayer gatherings. She says she cannot tell about Jewish life before the war and then talks about his singing and her own love of music. She talks about her own accounting career, leaving work at 53 to care for her blind father, and then knitting and selling at the market. She also covers her own illness and depression. The few Jews left in Tomashpol' (eight) gather for holidays and yortsaytn, and she explains why she will not emigrate and a relative in Germany. She says antisemitism was present earlier, and she describes her wartime evacuation to Mordovia and the postwar housing and compensation. She also talks about her husband, a non-Jew, and a lost love from Odesa. The passage ends with Kerler's thanks, a promise to send Yiddish songs, and fragmentary talk.

Futiran gives his Yiddish name and age, and says he was born in Tomashpol' and comes from a long line of local people. He names his father, a coachman (balegole), and his mother, an orphan from Tomashpol', and says there were six children. Two brothers were killed at the front in 1944, and other brothers are named. Futiran says he later learned the hatmaker's trade from Jewish masters, and he worked for decades as a hatmaker. He mentions two marriages, the second to a non-Jewish woman, and two sons in Moscow and Israel. He recalls a poor childhood, four years in a Yiddish school before a Ukrainian one opened, and a Jewish library. He also recalls Yiddish songs, klezmer music, Jewish weddings with a huppah, and visiting Yiddish artists. He speaks of hunger in 1933, evacuation and work during the war, and eight synagogues in the town. Kerler and Lemster ask about coachmen's stories and songs, and the father's song is mentioned. The passage ends in his workshop with a Singer sewing machine and hats the visitors try on.

Kogan speaks about the first bombing of Bershad' near the bridge and the burning of a house. He mentions refugees from Pechora and a man from Tul'chyn, giving bedding to refugees and a photographer who escaped to Germany. Kerler asks whether a text is a song, and Kogan says he wrote it in Russian.

Vainer-Shpak gives personal information (born in Vinnytsya in 1921; the address of her prewar home) and names her family: her father Froyke, a Bratslav Hasid, her mother Dobtse from Pryluky, brothers, sisters and grandparents. She tells of her Jewish model school in Vinnytsya, her studies as a dental specialist and the assignment to a sugar factory village in 1940, then her journey toward Odessa on foot at the start of the war and her return, hiding and survival in Vinnytsya, with her husband. She also talks about her parents' religious life, Sabbath, Purim and Hanukkah food and customs, the synagogues of Vinnytsya, and a story about Haman and Esther.

Lev tells of being sixteen when the war began, of young people being gathered and sent to Voroshilovgrad province in Ukraine and then to the Urals, and of evacuees there. He says his father was taken into the army and did not return. At eighteen he was drafted, finished artillery training as a sergeant, commanded seven soldiers, and fought under Zhukov through Poland and across the Vistula toward Warsaw and Berlin.

Chirkova describes applying to a technical institute and meeting Stalin (?) or an official about it, and how gifts were given to a duty person to get things done. She says God records everything a person does, speaks of a trial of her factory director over goods sent to the front, and mentions Uzbekistan and her parents' death there. The account is difficult to follow.

Chirkova recalls being sent to the front as a nurse and working in a hospital in Uzbekistan, with an episode involving a transport of canned goods and an accusation to be cleared before a tribunal. She describes Uzbek customs she saw, such as eating on the ground and men having three wives. She ends by saying she wants to speak, joke and sing in Yiddish.

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.

After a few lines of chatter among the interviewers, Vaisman says he was born in Berdychiv and that his father, Yosl, died in 1928, so his mother raised him. Lemster and Kerler discuss the Yiddish word for 'raising' a child. Vaisman says his mother worked at a factory and that there were two children. He studied in a Yiddish school until 1938, then in a Russian school, and fled in 1941 with his mother and sister to Central Asia.

Asked about the 1932–33 famine, Vaisman says only that they were always hungry and ate cornmeal porridge (?). He did not know his grandfather, who died in 1927. His mother spoke Yiddish at home but could not pay a melamed, so he had no cheder. He recalls evacuation with his mother until 1943, after which she stayed with his sister in Central Asia while he was taken into the army and was in Romania. The passage ends with Katz asking about songs.

Geller says where the shtetl lies near Berdychiv and Chudniv, and Kerler asks how its name is pronounced. During the famine his father went to Dnipropetrovsk to earn money. His grandfather in Zhytomyr, a carpenter, took the family there in 1936 as orphans after his father's death.

Geller talks about his technical school studies and the start of the war in 1941. The Germans entered Zhytomyr on 7 July, and his family was evacuated toward Kazan. He was drafted in 1942 and wounded three times, the last time in Latvia near Riga. He spent half a year in hospital in Kalinin, where a doctor who knew his family helped save his legs.

Burshtein recounts the start of the war in Goworowo (Govrove) and the arrival of the Soviets and then of the Germans, who began killing Jews. His father refused to gather with the others and led the family toward the Russians. He describes crossing a bridge past German guards and meeting Soviet soldiers. He recalls the testimony of an elderly woman about the killings and burning of Goworowo. He then describes the journey via Zambrów and a committee that fed refugees, to Białystok, where refugees stayed in a club and later in empty apartments, a Polish village and a slaughterhouse. His father decided they should register to go further into Russia, and the family was taken to Babruysk, where they were disinfected and helped by local people.

Burshtein recalls the German attack on Babruysk in June 1941, with days in a cellar and bombing, and the family's flight over the Berezina and by train through Belarus toward the Tambov region. He describes the village Strel'tsy near Tambov and then the district of Yelan', where he worked as a shepherd and food was plentiful, and the recruitment of his brother Peysekh into the army. The family went on to the Urals, where winters were harsh and food scarce, and where his parents died. He was sent to a metallurgical training school and beaten by Russian classmates until a Jewish man helped him. The surviving relatives left with Zhytomyr Jews in 1944 and arrived in June, without a place to stay.

A long run of questionnaire items: flowers, potato and the Belarusian word for it, 'everyone', at/by the table, 'on the street' versus other forms, a rich man, a fence, the face and its descriptive words, 'back', 'suddenly' and others. Kerler and Katz also probe prepositions and phrases such as 'on the road', and the informant remarks on which words are not pure Yiddish. From about 38:16 the informant says that he was born in a small town near Warsaw and that he was evacuated to the Urals, working on a kolkhoz in the Yelansky district. His brother was killed at the front, and he came to Zhytomyr in June 1944.

Katz and Kerler interview Goluvinskaia, who is said to have turned a hundred, with a helper explaining a Hesed video. She was born in Zhytomyr. Her father worked at a factory and died when she was a child, leaving five children, and she names her mother and some siblings. She worked in a cinema before the war and was evacuated in 1941, the place being unclear. She recalls praying, going to cheder alone, Sabbath candles and holidays, which she mostly no longer remembers. She says her grandfather was a rebbe who held gatherings at his table, and she mentions a Russian school. She then answers Russian-prompted questionnaire items (breathe, ear, attic, sky colour, mouse, deaf, pigeon), with some of her answers uncertain.

Burshtein, interviewed by Kerler, says he was born in Goworowo, a small town near Warsaw (Polish Goworowo, Yiddish Govrove). The recording date is given as 23 May 2003. He came to Zhytomyr in June 1944 after evacuation in the Urals (a kolkhoz in the Elansk district), having first gone with Zhytomyr Jews, who then left. He recalls that his brother was taken into the army and was reported killed at the front.

Burshtein describes life in Babruysk, where his father worked at a factory whose goods were shipped to Germany. Russian Jews were forbidden to speak about the Germans and did not know what was happening to German Jews. He mentions that German Jewish refugees came and that he learned songs from them.

Burshtein talks about the German Jewish refugees in Russia and the Soviet-German pact, after which nothing negative could be said about the Germans. He tells how people on arrival in Babruysk would not believe the accounts of killings, and recalls Hitler's speeches heard on the one radio in town, in the school. He also recalls a Jewish forced-labour episode and his brother's return home, and reflects on why the Germans were so cruel to Jews.

Burshtein says he worked in a printing house in Zhytomyr after the war, after arriving in June 1944 from the Urals. He tells how the war began in Gorovo, with bombing and the family sheltering in the beis-medresh. They fled toward Ostrów Mazowiecka, where an aunt lived. There the Germans entered, rounded up the Jewish men, and drove his father and brothers away. Only one brother died, in Bobruisk, and the others survived.

Sandler talks about postwar life in Zhytomyr, where he says few Jews remained and not all spoke Yiddish. He spoke Yiddish with his mother and sisters before the sisters left for Germany, and his brother went to Jerusalem. He returns to his father's death from cholera in Uzbekistan and the mass grave where the dead were thrown. Kerler steers him back to prewar Oltkonstantin and notes that he was fifteen when the war began.

Geller says his family left Pyatka in 1936 and he lived mostly in Zhytomyr, where he worked in a factory. Yiddish was spoken at work, but now no one is left to speak it with. He describes his daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, some at a Jewish school, and a granddaughter's concert. His wife was evacuated near Kazan, where his son lives, and he recounts visiting that place with a grandson. His younger brother died in San Francisco. Some stretches are in Russian.

Nibulskaia gives her family background. Her father was born in Fasova near Korosten, worked as a kabl (?), and has the surname Segal (?). Her mother, Feyge Reyve, was born in Selets, and she names her grandparents. She had three siblings, the brother David and the sisters Mindl and Genia; two died in the war, and she describes how one sister was lost during the evacuation.

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.

Nibulskaia describes the synagogue in Zhytomyr with its shames and gabbai, then talks about her brother David, who went to the front and had a wife and child, probably in Moldova. She gives her husband's biography: evacuated with his parents, he studied at a pedagogical technical school and an institute, and later taught drawing. They lived poorly with three children, moved to Zhytomyr in 1977, and she taught math for 39 years.

He tells how he searched house to house in the Volga region and found his grandfather in a village on the Volga bank, recognising him by his fine beard; they were reunited there. Three months later, in 1942, he was drafted into the army.

Nibulskiy recalls that he was fifteen when the war began. His father worked in a hospital and could not leave. At his request, the military commissariat took Nibulskiy and his brother with a group of young people for evacuation. He went to Saratov and studied there.

Shraibman recalls his grandfather's view of 1918, when he thought the soldiers were cultured people and dismissed reports against them as Soviet propaganda. He then describes how the family fled on foot from their town to Korosten.

Bluvshtein describes his mother's Sabbath baking: challah and strudel, with the dough rolled out and filled. He then begins to say the family was evacuated.

Bluvshtein tells about a brother who lived and died in Moscow and a sister in Zhytomyr, and which of them was oldest. In answer to Kerler he recalls Stalingrad: hiding during the bombing, hunger, and the city destroyed and rebuilt as Volgograd.

Nibulskiy sings a Yiddish song about lost childhood years, home and family. Kerler asks whether the word for the chimney is the Pulen form, and Nibulskiy says he reconstructed the song from memory. He says it was sung by a man named Khanine Shlepak (?) from Pulen, who was evacuated to Kazakhstan and became a dentist. Kerler asks whether anyone in Korosten still speaks Yiddish. The talk turns to a relative in Israel who is writing a book about Korosten's Jews and was a military commandant after the war.