Ghetto

Dof says he was born in Uzhhorod but grew up in Khust, where the great rabbi Dushinsky was and whose synagogue still stands. During the war he was in the ghetto with his mother, her sister and the children. He attended cheder and a Hebrew school in Khust, with a Hebrew gymnasium also mentioned.

Rezmovits recalls wartime scenes involving soldiers, Russian and Jewish officers and shooting at Germans, and says that Polish people were hostile to Jews and that many Jews were betrayed or had to hide. He then discusses with Kerler books and films about the Warsaw ghetto uprising and its Jewish historians, including Rezmovits's reading of one such book in Hebrew, and how many Germans were killed by the insurgents. The discussion turns to the importance of the fact of Jewish armed resistance.

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 talks about his copies of the tsene-rene and a prayer book that his grandfather owned. He found the prayer book in a synagogue after the family was taken to the ghetto, around Passover 1944. He recalls Yiddish speech, Sabbath prayer and Yom Kippur in a labor camp. He also describes how he made pots from scrap metal to survive, and he names grandparents.

Herbst talks about his childhood in a small village in the mountains with a minyan of Jews and one school, and about his bar mitzvah. He describes his work at a lumbermill, including an accident in which a friend fell in, and his job estimating timber. He mentions that he worked there until the ghetto, when his parents had to leave.

Kerler asks whether people from Vaja used to travel to a rebbe or a grave. Galambos says his father went to the grave of the Kaliver tsadik, and he himself did not. He tells an episode about the Tosher rebbe, to whom Jews came in the ghetto asking what would happen, and who answered that he was a simple man; Kerler tells a story of his own. They mention the rebbe's son in Canada. They then turn to Jewish weddings in Vaja.

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.

Bukshpun says that today old Jews attend the synagogue, speaking Yiddish, mainly on Sabbath. He then speaks of the war, naming the Obodivka district in Transnistria and the village of Petkovka (?), where about 750 prisoners were kept in a pigsty. There his father, mother and a brother died of hunger and cold. He came back in 1944 with his brother Shloyme and sister Leyke.

Kerler asks about the term for a good Jew and the Yiddish name of a cemetery, which Roif gives as a holy place; Roif describes the winter in the camp near Rîșcani. People froze, starved or died of disease. The bodies could not be buried in the frozen ground and were left under snow, where dogs ate them. He then recalls a nearby site at a station where a Russian colonel was friendly and thousands of Jews from Bessarabia and Bukovina were shot.

Brief talk about life today, with a mention of food and the interviewers. The recording then moves to a second man, who mentions seven schools before the war and a large ghetto in which many thousands of Jews died.

Mester describes three years in the Berlivka camp, including a stay in Vertiujeni where Romanian gendarmes beat prisoners and tore at rabbis' beards. She recalls being held in a forest for a few days and her elderly mother being helped to walk. In Berlivka, prisoners lived in a barn, her mother sewed for Christians in exchange for food, and they were taken to repair a bath house. Young people sang and danced; Germans searched for partisans, and the camp was freed by partisans in German uniform. Lemster and Kerler ask about words in camp speech.

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

Roif sings a lullaby-like song of a dying boy and his mother that she learned in the camp from a woman from Soroca, and a tale song of a shepherd boy who forgot to shut the door. She says it expresses the Jews' dispersal across the world, and she sings a verse of the Bessarabia song. Katz asks for more and she offers to sing another.

Gordin gives the size of his pension and of his mother-in-law's, compares their incomes and says they are small. He talks about German compensation, which ghetto survivors do not receive in Moldova, and about the Hesed and Joint food parcels and canteen for poor elderly Jews. He explains that he pays part of the cost, and that the Hesed could not transport his elderly mother-in-law.

Diner describes her mother's cooking at home, including baking and mamaliga with various toppings such as sour cream and cheese. Kerler and Lemster discuss the Yiddish word for cheese curd. She then talks about her older sister, who lived in Bucharest, met a man there and married him; the sister was later in a ghetto in Transnistria with her husband and his parents. She also says her father, a Zionist, worked all day and had little time for the children.

Few Jews returned to Nisporeni after the war, and the speakers cannot say how many died. They were evacuated, he to Kazakhstan and she to Andijan (?). Lemster and Kerler ask about Transnistria; Benderskij says nobody can say who was killed there, and mentions Jews from Bukovina and elsewhere deported to Transnistria.

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

Iosif returns to the war and says Romanian gendarmes beat the Jews in Bershad. He recounts that his paralyzed father was shot in 1941 on the way and that his brother Meir died there, naming brothers Meir, Velf and Shaps. He answers Lemster's questions about learning Yiddish, the game with nuts, and mentions that a non-Jewish master he worked with spoke Yiddish better than he did.

Sharhorodskij speaks about Rabbi Yosef Ber, arrested at night; he knew of it only from his mother, as he was a child of about fourteen or fifteen. He answers questions about a library of Yiddish books and says his father did not read. He then turns to his sister Frume, whom he describes as devout and honest, and begins a story of her behavior in the ghetto.

Plotnik tells of the Bershad ghetto: the deaths of the mother and a child, and of Dudele's father. She also tells of a boy Brie, whom she cared for and who was taken in by a woman, and of how she later reunited him with relatives. She speaks of her husband, who died after three years of marriage, and of her son, who studied at an institute in Rostov, married in Russia and moved to Kishinev. She tells of her grandson, who knows five languages, and says she has endured a great deal.

Plotnik says she remembers few prayers and customs, such as kapores, and recalls her Kaddish. She speaks of her son and family today, then sings a version of Tumbalalaika with a riddle verse. Lemster and Kerler ask about further songs and she says she cannot recall them. A second voice then sings a Yiddish song about Bershad.

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

Milevskaya talks about elderly community members, many unable to speak Yiddish, and about young people having left for America and Israel. She describes former ghetto prisoners, including Ida Lazarevna (recently buried) and a woman held in the Savran camp under Romanian rule, and Pogrebinsky's family who hid in a tree and now live in Germany. The remaining speech covers the town's population and the geography of Pervomaysk, Golta, Bohopil and Olviopol, and the beer factory is mentioned. Arrangements for a visit to Sofia Lvovna follow.

Hershkovich answers a question about the term ilui (a child prodigy), then speaks about the head of his former yeshiva. He recalls that the rabbi's brother, a learned rav, left the Dej ghetto for Romania with ten children, while the rabbi himself refused to leave. Kerler then begins greetings questions from the questionnaire.

Freundlich mentions songs sung at Passover and a haggadah she gave to her grandchildren. The talk turns to people from the community who are still alive, and to the lack of a minyan in Satu Mare. She goes on in Hungarian about the Jewish population of the region, the ghettos and rabbis driven out of Székely towns, and a landowner's fate. The latter part is in a long Hungarian monologue about the Weinstock family dryer and a minister.

Isidor says his early childhood years, up to age four, were spent in Transnistria. His mother, Khale, was older than his father and died a natural death. He was an only child and does not remember his grandparents. After the war he was a student and became a Romanian teacher. He had a melamed at home but studied alone, and he now studies Shulkhan Arukh.

Hirsch discusses antisemitism under communism and today, calling it a paradox that it exists where almost no Jews remain. He says his son lives in Israel, apparently since 1987. He explains that his mother tongue was Hungarian and Yiddish was also spoken at home, and that the town was split between Hungarian and Romanian speakers. He studied in cheder in Yiddish and recalls Jews from the villages being concentrated in a ghetto in Luduș.

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.

Ruti and Davidovich answer questions about which language was spoken at home and recall that German was forbidden to them in Transnistria. Kerler asks about Volhynia place names, and Davidovich talks about his wish to visit Obodovka, Pavlovka and Pishchana; they discuss Bershad and a song Kerler recorded. They then retell their father's jokes and sayings: that a Jew is beaten twice, the rebbe who divides a sack of nuts, the woman who comes to the rebbe about her husband, and a joke about queueing. There is also a story about a synagogue and a shop selling yeast.

Macarie continues to list siblings and their Hungarian or Romanian names. She says her parents died in Auschwitz, and that her mother came from Slatina in Czechoslovakia, née Kaufmann, while her father was born in her own village. She had four classes in a Romanian school, with Jewish learning from her father at home. She remembers the Hungarian arrival when she was eighteen and the ghetto, and some prayer lessons. After the war she trained for a few months as a technician in medicinal plants.

Kerler asks whether a Yiddish newspaper appeared in Sighet; Mezei says she receives a Hungarian paper from Israel. She shows photographs of friends, including a man from Sighet whom everyone knows and his wife. She also recounts an interview given to students from the university in Cluj about the ghetto and Auschwitz, which lasted for hours.

Cojocaru says she was in Transnistria (Moghilev) with her stepmother, sister and father; the brother had been born there. After the war many Jews lived in Dorohoi on all streets. She mentions the Romanian and Yiddish word for the cemetery.

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

Salamon briefly recalls the ghetto in 1944 and the trains of Jews. She then talks about Purim: masking, which she and her brothers did not do, the visits and verses recited on Purim, and Jews visiting a local official named Smug (?) at his house, where they were given food and drink.

Kurtsberg talks about Hasidim in Siret and describes the holy place (the Jewish cemetery area) with its old and newer parts and the graves of famous rabbis, visited by Hasidim from America and Israel. The team then plays him a recording of Iosif Kogan singing songs from the Bershad ghetto, with brief remarks identifying Kogan, now in Tulchyn.

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.

Klimenko answers questions about Passover, saying she does not remember it from before the war. She says she begged for bread from non-Jews in the ghetto and was beaten. After the war she had no passport and worked for ten years as a cleaner in the ninth school. She also talks about how neighbours help her today.

Pivnik answers questions about her family: stepsiblings, a stepmother and a stepbrother Misha who stayed close to her. Her family lived with a landlord near the synagogues and went often. She recalls her sister's wedding and being dressed up in clothes her mother sewed. Her mother worked at home as a dressmaker and her father was a baker who traveled for business and organized free kitchens in the 1930s. He was killed in the war; the transcript says that after refusing non-Jewish neighbors' offer to hide him and his daughter he was betrayed in the ghetto by a Jew. She also says Yiddish was spoken at home and recalls an aunt who spoke only Yiddish and friendly non-Jewish neighbors.

Lerner recalls the outbreak of war and the bombing of Balta in July 1941. Her aunt took her and her mother east in a cart, a journey that went as far as Rostov, and then to Kokand in Uzbekistan. Her grandfather Moyshe, a learned man, stayed behind and survived the Balta ghetto. Her grandmother was Sara (maiden name Gorina). She says he was hired to pray for others, kept bonds safe, and returned to his house after liberation. After the war she lived with him. She also recalls the synagogue that became a library, says she read Russian at an early age, and turns to Jewish weddings.

Berman says that after Stalingrad, in 1944, he wrote a letter to Mikhoels at the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow, describing the tragedy of the Jewish people as he saw it, and received a printed Yiddish postcard in reply asking him to keep writing. He continued to write, including about the rescue of Jews in the Budapest ghetto.

Vainshelboim recalls his service in military aviation in the mid-1950s, lasting four and a half years. After marriage he worked at a flour mill for about twenty-five years, becoming a foreman, and then at a brewery for five. He says no one from his family survived the war except himself. He then describes how a large crowd of Jews, some hundreds, was held for days in a cellar without food, and mentions the pits and a Jewish camp.

Vainshelboim lists the mills and factory where he worked for decades before retiring. He suggests another elderly woman as a possible interviewee, a survivor of the war. He describes the outbreak of the war and a Berdychiv newspaper that announced Jews must register and move into a ghetto district. He mentions looting of Jewish homes.

Gvinter talks with Kerler and Lemster about the song of going to Palestine, which was sung in secret in the ghetto and more openly after the war, and comments on politics and the Israel–Palestinian conflict today. He mentions his own illness and a daughter's family. He answers terminology questions about Bila Tserkva, about words for non-Jews and for a foolish or wicked person, and about a convert. He recalls the Bershad' ghetto, people from Chernivtsi held and shot at the stadium, and non-Jews who learned a few Yiddish words. He then speaks about his own life: neighbours and the shoe workshop, the sale of a building he was asked to sell, his marriage in 1958, his children, and his siblings. Finally he explains why one synagogue in Bershad' stayed open after the war while others were closed, and mentions the building turned into a cinema.

Kerler and Lemster ask about singing in the Bershad' ghetto and about a song, and Feldman recalls fragments of it. Other people in the room then ask what it means to be a Jew in Ukraine today. Feldman answers with her relations with a non-Jewish neighbor who brought her food when her arm was broken, and says that she herself eats matzo because she is Jewish.

Listengurt recalls a visit in early childhood with her father to a building that was a museum before the war. Kerler asks about the occupation of Odesa. She tells how the Germans gathered Jews, packed them into a warehouse and set it on fire, with one survivor. She also tells of a neighbor family: one man's brother and relatives who escaped and a girl and woman who were killed. She briefly mentions the ghetto.

Asked whether there was a ghetto in Zhornyshche, Sklyarskiy says there was none. He talks of a rabbi in Jerusalem who sent money, and the attitude of non-Jews toward the Jews. Much of the passage is unclear.

Pustilnik tells of Jews who prayed in the camp, and discusses the mezuzah on the door and her mother's and grandparents' ability to read Yiddish. She describes a brother in the ghetto and then the army, and the Weissmann family. A man called Pavel, who was reportedly friendly with the Romanians, was recognised and killed in Israel, and Kerler asks about the reason. She also mentions a sister who lived on a rich kolkhoz, and Kerler asks about the Razkin family (?).

Pustilnik recites, with Kerler prompting, a Yiddish song about a groom who wants to test his bride and a ladder, and says she cannot remember the rest. She then recites parts of "Papirosn" about a child selling cigarettes in the ghetto, with an orphan in the story; large parts are garbled.

She recalls the arrival of the Germans, who collected money, gold and clothing from Jewish homes, and then the Romanians, who fenced off a square by the school as a ghetto, six years long. She describes a woman accused of being a partisan because of a grenade and shot, and the memorial later built on the square from the bones.

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

Asked about songs, Kupershmidt recalls fragments of a camp song about children. He returns to the ghetto period and the German 'Judenaktion', and to anti-Jewish propaganda posters. He tells of a Polish Jewish officer who was mistreated by the police, and of a boy he rescued. The officer's later fate is unclear.

Burg reads aloud his own short Yiddish story "Eykho", about a train journey on which the narrator meets a Warsaw ghetto survivor who fought as a partisan. The reading turns to memories of the Warsaw ghetto uprising on the first day of Passover.

Pause in the interview, with Kapustina showing documents. Lemster and Kerler ask her to talk about earlier life, and she begins to describe how they were led out, with no cellar.

Kapustina describes being gathered in winter 1941–42: the family went to her aunt's house to be together, her father heard Germans on the road, and they were led in deep snow past the bridge toward a pit, with dead bodies lying about.

Schreier talks about Jewish streets and houses and the languages of his home, where Polish was spoken, his father knew Yiddish well and his mother did not; he describes his bar mitzvah in his uncle's small synagogue. He then speaks at length about Bruno Schulz: his walks in the poor Jewish quarter, his teaching of drawing and carpentry without a formal permit until 1936, his family, translations of his work and Schulz festivals in Drohobych. He then describes the German occupation, the 'Black Thursday' shooting, the Gestapo officers Landau and Günther, and Schulz's murder.

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.

Beigel describes Tyvriv as a Jewish shtetl with a center where Jews lived well, and Jews and their non-Jewish neighbors in the neighboring villages. The family fled a pogrom to Krasne, where they were taken in kindly, but after two years were sent back to Tyvriv and a ghetto.

Beigel speaks of the hunger and hardship in the ghetto, and says that no Jews remain in nearby Voroshylivka and only a few in Krasne and Tyvriv. The Jews left for Vinnytsya, America and Israel. At the end Kerler asks about the gefilte fish her mother made.

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.

The interview winds down with joking about Kerler's status and a local young man who learned Yiddish. Kerler notes that a Christian cannot convert from Judaism. Beigel then discusses Jews in Kopaihorod and Sharhorod: none are left in Sharhorod, which had a ghetto. She mentions a book about it by an author now in Israel, which she read in Russian.

Geller explains a prewar kolkhoz brigade term and sugar beet quotas, naming several non-Jewish kolkhoz workers in Kuzmin. He then tells about the Jews of Kuzmin being driven into a ghetto and shot in a village nearby, where a memorial now stands; he no longer has relatives there and he and his wife visited several times.

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.

Yarmolnik starts a story about a Petliura-era pogrom that her mother's family experienced in Proskuriv, and then recounts the German arrival in July 1941, when her father got the family away just before the Germans entered. She tells how an aunt's non-Jewish husband's relative, a policeman, handed over the aunt and her two children, who were killed in the ghetto. She lists the deaths of her brother, husband and son, and describes working in a wartime munitions factory in evacuation up to eighteen hours a day.

Introductions and first questions: Kerler asks about names and who speaks Yiddish. Vaisblai says he is from Chemerivtsi, near Kam''yanets'-Podil's'kyy, and was in the ghetto as an eleven-year-old (?), where he saw what the Germans did to the Jews. Kerler explains the project and asks whether he was recorded earlier for the Spielberg project.

Kerler returns to the rabbi's words. Vaisblai says the rabbi, Dudye, told the Jews of Chemerivtsi that they must go to the slaughter for their sins, and that he heard it himself. They discuss people's faith in the rabbi, who was consulted in quarrels. Vaisblai ends with the cell in the Kam''yanets'-Podil's'kyy ghetto, where one man refused to go.

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.

A man introduces a film about his family. He remembers his mother as a poor, pious widow with ten children and his brother Shmuel, who used the name Artur and was a Bund leader in Warsaw. Artur organized the underground, spoke against the ghetto, escaped through Belgium and France, and represented Polish Jews in the Polish government in London. He took his own life in protest in 1943 (?), and the film, in Polish with English subtitles, is about him. Part of the talk is translated into Russian by another speaker.

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.

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

Asked by Kerler, Khandros recalls the blacksmith Kive Roznblit, a long-armed, very poor Jew and friend of Khandros's parents. His daughters studied in Khandros's father's school. Khandros recounts Kive's sayings and his habit of raising his hands in curses and questions. He recalls Kive's last words, which became his own motto: go, stand, or die. Kive died in a ghetto, in a place the transcript renders as Dashinets (?). Khandros ends by introducing a friend he met in Kyiv on the day the American president came.

Start of a second interview, with Grayf, born in Kolomyya in 1922. Grayf gives his parents' names (Gershon and Etl), names the seven surviving siblings, and says that his sister and parents were deported from the ghetto and perished, while a brother died in Israel. He says that he and his brother David live in Kolomyya and have a niece in Frankivsk. He then describes how the region passed between Poland, the Ukraine and Romania and where the Bukovina border lay, and begins to answer Kerler's questions about his father's work, his mother and his schooling.

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

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.

Nisman gives her father's name (Moshe Yosef Weissman) and says he was born in Raşcov. She names her mother, Feyge Shpre (?), and both sets of grandparents, those on the mother's side being in Slobodia (?). Two of the children died; six siblings remained before the war, and she alone survived. She says she was in the Chernivtsi ghetto.

At the Janowska camp site, Dorfman describes the sand pits, the camp for Jews, the uprising of November 1943 led by a poet, and the burning of corpses with a mill. He talks about the stone memorial put up with help from Freiburg, the Munich professor Alexander Schwarz, plans for a larger monument that he opposes, and Ukrainian recognition of rescuers. He also describes the camp's labor and the Nazi report that Galicia was free of Jews.

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.

Shvardovskaia, asked by Kerler to speak of the war, describes first the Polish period, then two years of Soviet rule with closed shops, and the arrival of the Germans in 1941. Jews were confined as in a ghetto, forced to hand over valuables, and the first skilled Jewish worker was killed at once. She describes Jews thrown into pits and shot, her escape and flight into the woods, and a Ukrainian acquaintance who hid her in an attic, where her father and a sister joined her for three months. Later they hid for a year in the forest, fed at night by Ukrainians, escaped a second shooting, moved between villages, and finally joined Russian partisans. She mentions that her father and brother were killed; the details are unclear in the transcript.

The drive continues past street names, former Jewish buildings and the castle synagogue, now apparently a dental clinic, of which nothing remains. Shoikhetman talks about Jewish schools in the town, some teaching in Yiddish and others in Polish. He also tells of a woman survivor who was denied compensation because her village had no ghetto, and mentions the Spielberg interviews and a woman who had been in the ghetto.

Kaplan describes his father as a soap-maker and cantor, and talks about Sabbath food and customs, a Russian neighbour lighting the stove, Hanukkah, Purim, and Hebrew lessons. He tells of the camp at Pechera, the escape of a group of Jews with a Ukrainian guard's help, the walk home along the river, and the family's hiding in the cellar of Polish neighbours (Zbigin?) until 1944. He covers the Jewish police, the drowned orphans off Constanta, commemoration work led by the late rabbi Sobol, and a ghetto song. He also tells of secret Passover matzo baking after the war, the three cemetery fields, non-Jews who speak Yiddish, the word Litvak, and the term for a 'good Jew' (rebbe or tsadik).

Bakmayev describes the arrival of the Germans in 1941 and the order for Jews to move and wear a star. His family hid in a cellar with other families. He went out to beg for food in villages, walking about twenty kilometres. They were freed by the Red Army in 1944. He also names the siblings he lived with there, and the passage includes a question on how many hid and survived.

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.

Lerner speaks about his family. He and his wife were both born in Ostroh and lived on the first street, near the synagogue. His father had a small shop and his mother was Beyle, née Harpak (?). Uncles were killed by the Germans, one with his wife and children in the ghetto. A grandfather named Aron is mentioned, a grandfather worked at a sawmill for a Jew, and relatives lived in America. His daughter lives in Israel. Lerner has difficulty recalling Yiddish words and several details are unclear.

Kaviner and Lemster discuss quotas for Jews in Soviet higher education, in the 1960s–70s especially in Moscow, versus easier admission elsewhere. Lemster asks if anyone in Starokostyantyniv can speak Yiddish. Kaviner mentions a man who survived the ghetto but would know little of Jewish tradition. They also touch on the songs Shalom Aleichem and Friday evening singing, and on his war service.

Bivson says she returned to Polonne in 1945 from Birobidzhan. She answers questions about the Jews there, fewer than before the war because many were killed and tortured, and about relatives, neighbors and friends. She mentions the ghetto and non-Jews who rescued Jews.

Burshtein answers Kerler's questions about prewar entertainment in Sobolivka: songs, weddings with klezmer musicians brought from Bershad'. He says Bershad' was a ghetto in the war, and that Jews who escaped the killing went there. He also recalls a local violinist named Siame (?), his family, and a house connected to him.

Palatnikova estimates that about two thousand people were killed locally, among them Jews brought from Romania and Czernowitz. She describes the camp: hard labor in a quarry, regular inspections, and the killing of those who could not work. She escaped, helped by non-Jews, and reached Haysyn, where her father worked as a specialist. She was then sent to the Bershad' ghetto, which held many thousands of Romanian and Polish Jews, with hunger and disease. There wealthy Romanian Jews set up a children's home. Her father sent food parcels, partly through the German's help. Her family of four survived and was liberated in March 1944.

In the car, the guide mentions a thematic collection on the Jewish ghetto and photographs of the Battler-Kanner family. She describes the Lyceum and the museum, and says a diary kept as a boy by Roman Kravchenko-Berezhnoi (?) about Nazi crimes against Jews, now living in Murmansk oblast, is to be published in English. She also tells how the family hid in an attic, how a baby's crying during a roundup caused the mother to poison the child, and how she then hanged herself with her father's help. The planned visit of kobzars and the museum's opening hours are also mentioned.

Kerler is led to the home of the Zhivokritskiis and interviews them. Alexandra, born in Tomashpol' and named Sure, says she was in the ghetto at Zgivka with her uncle, a tailor, while her father was in the army. She recalls her marriage in 1950, buying the house, her two sons (one now in Israel), her parents Grisha and Libe, and Passover at Uncle Yankl's. Her husband grew up as the only Jew in a village. They describe Sabbath fish, the difference between gefilte and chopped fish, grated-potato dishes, and life today. The rest is a long word-list questionnaire: household words, adverbs, kinship, the evil eye, Hasidic terms and sentences to translate.

Tkach, born in 1935 in the small town of Chernivtsi ("Kleyn Tshernovits"), talks about her parents, grandparents and the traditional Jewish house with its mezuzah. She recalls her uncle the gabbai, the synagogue with its women's gallery, her aunt reading tkhines, and the killing of another aunt's family. She describes the war years, refugees and the ghetto, the postwar schools and her brother's studies, and her forty years as a journalist in Yampil'. She then covers food customs for Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah, children's games, Yiddish-speaking neighbors and friends, and weddings with their dances and musicians. She also talks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, the postwar fear of speaking Yiddish and the antisemitism of the Doctors' Plot, and Ukrainian literature. The last part is a dialectological questionnaire: she is asked how various Russian words, phrases and sentences would be said in Yiddish (greetings, house and window words, colors, comparatives).

Formal interview with Sapozhnik, who says she is a native of Tomashpol' and speaks Yiddish with her brother in Israel. She talks about her parents Nusn and Rukhl and the kolkhoz, her siblings, the old synagogue and how women prayed, her father's siddur and her poor childhood. She recalls the war, with her brothers drafted and the killings and ghettos under Germans and Romanians. She also mentions the town's remaining Yiddish speakers, and answers Kerler's questions on Yiddish words and on fish, melay and Passover food. Katz adds a general question about the best years.

Interview with Sapozhnik in her yard. She describes how hard her life is now, living alone, not eating well and missing her teeth. She gives her name, birth in Tomashpol' in 1924, her parents Nusn and Rekhl and the family surname, and lists her brothers and sisters, with their birth years and where they ended up (Israel, Moscow, the Far East). She recalls the kolkhoz where her parents worked, the old house with mezuzahs, the Romanian occupation and the ghetto with refugees and killings, and her marriages and the deaths of her husband and son. She also describes Sabbath, Hanukkah and Passover food and fish dishes, the old synagogues and the Yiddish school she did not attend, Yiddish-speaking non-Jews, and a rabbi killed in the war. She tells of her garden and sea-buckthorn oil, and of her mother's folk healing and cupping.

Sapozhnik shows Kerler and Lemster old photographs. They include the kolkhoz, which she says was Jewish, and her husband, son, brother Leib, her father, and a granddaughter in Moldova whose mother was non-Jewish. They ask when the kolkhoz photo was taken, and about window frames and a cellar. She also speaks about the ghetto and forced labor, a sister-in-law who emigrated, and her complaints about the repair of her house, the toilet and the local official. The team thanks her and leaves for the next interview.

Gingold is greeted at her door, and Kerler explains the university project. She says she is alone, her parents and brother having died, with two cousins in Israel. She gives her names, birth year, and her father's and mother's names and occupations. She also names her grandparents. She attended three years of Yiddish school before moving to a Russian one, and says she never worked and has a small pension. She recalls Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot and Purim customs, and the Tomashpol' ghetto. The interviewers then put questionnaire items: greetings, kosher salting, foods, and Russian words rendered into Yiddish such as 'spasibo', 'mouse' and 'poceluj'.

Miaskovskij mentions a sister in Israel and answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about prewar Jewish weddings in Tomashpol' and his father's house. The house is about a hundred years old and has a mezuzah on the door but not on the window frame; he explains what a mezuzah is for. He recalls his pious grandmother and speaks about the languages he used and his Ukrainian school. He says his mother died before the war and that his father hid during the occupation, with a ghetto mentioned. Kerler asks to see the father's books in the attic, but Miaskovskij says he cannot climb up.

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

Shveibish describes conditions in the Pechera camp until spring 1944: killings, rape, no food or water, lice and typhus, and the dead dragged away. Her father was the first of the family killed, in 1941, and her mother died a month later, leaving her with her older brother. She recalls begging, and old non-Jewish women who gave food or took rings for bread, and the Romanian guards. Germans on the far bank of the Bug fired at those who went to the water. Prisoners came from other towns, from Bukovina and from Bessarabia, and the Judenrat is criticised.

Shveibish says the Judenrat was bad and cared only for itself. She describes overcrowding in the camp, children buried alive, and able-bodied prisoners taken to build a road and buried alive once it was done. A place name for the labor site is garbled, and the catalogue gives Baranovich. She also describes how the dead were buried in the woods in a large pit when it grew warmer.

Shveibish speaks about her life after the war, in hospitals in several cities, and about repression. She recalls the outbreak of the war, when the Jews were put into a former Jewish school and then sent to Pechera. She tells how her father was killed and her mother died a month later, leaving her with her brother, and recalls herself as a five-year-old girl and her doll. She describes how hard the years after the war were.

Kerler asks whether Kogan remembers Chad gadya and asks about the songs he wrote. Kogan says he wrote many Yiddish songs, including during the occupation, and talks about the ghetto and the camp as their subject. He also speaks of his parents and his Red Army service, and mentions a Hanukkah song written by someone else.

Kogan sings or recites the song about the camp near Bershad, with its refrain about Jews fasting and the Sabbath-eve atonement chicken. Kerler asks to record it again later. Kogan chats briefly with the interviewers about the notebook he reads from, then starts reciting another song, "Aheym, briderlekh, aheym."

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

Kogan recites the partisan song "Zog nit keyn mol," and with Kerler's help tries to recall who wrote it. Kerler says he wants to hear Kogan's own songs. Kogan starts the Bershad camp song again.

Kogan sings the whole camp song again. The verses are about Jews in the camp, the shoykhet Gedalye at the gate, the Bershad cemetery and the refrain about atonement chickens. He then starts "Aheym, briderlekh, aheym."

Kogan sings "Aheym, briderlekh, aheym" again and, answering Kerler, says that he wrote it in 1942 (?). He then sings the first lines of "Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt," about the ghetto and the fence around the town.

Shveibish tells about her husband Itsik's family from Horyshkivka. His father came from Tul'chyn after the pogroms, he was a craftsman, and there were six children. She describes the Romanian-era ghetto in the village club, a sister who was shot at and traumatised, the siblings who emigrated or have died, and the parents' graves in Tomashpil. She talks about Horyshkivka as the model for Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish theatre troupe in which her husband's father acted, and pogroms in Tul'chyn and Khmelnytskyi's time. She then describes Jewish life in Tul'chyn today (the community's difficulties, no shoykhet, no minyan, a memorial, aged pensioners), and Jewish food and holiday customs, with a recipe for gefilte fish. The passage includes dialectological questions on words such as store, courtyard, well, potato dishes, thanks and please, and idioms.

Kogan performs his song of the ghetto, 'Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt', then sings 'Aheym, briderlekh, aheym' at Kerler's request. He says he wrote the songs in Yiddish while the Germans were there, and that he had attended seven classes of school before the war.

At Kerler's request Kogan performs his three Yiddish songs again, in order: 'Dos lagerl' (the Bershad' camp and cemetery), the song about the Jews driven over the bridge, and 'Aheym, briderlekh, aheym'. He ends by saying he thought about the songs in Bershad'.

Kerler offers to show Kogan a recording made in 2002 of him singing, and Kogan thanks the visitors. Kogan, joined by S2 and S3, then sings Dos lagerl again, naming the slaughterer's forest and the Lechetser family, and then Aheym, briderlekh, aheym. They talk about how long the ghetto lasted.

Lemster asks whether there was a rabbi in the Pechera camp. Yurkovetskij and the guide recall a rabbi and shochet, and a pious Jew who kept the dietary laws there. He also talks about Jews selling hidden gold, begging in villages, and the camp as a ghetto. He often drove from the camp to Tul'chyn to fetch rags and clothing.

The woman says she was born in Tul'chyn; her mother came from Balta and her father from Tul'chyn. Lemster and Kerler remark on Balta's former status as capital of Moldavia, and ask about her age and whether she would sing. Talk turns to Bershad' and Bukhlovka (?) in the war, and to a man from Bessarabia who had been to Edineț.

Kogan says he wrote songs in the ghetto and hid them from others. He begins reciting the text of his song about the camp near Obodivka, but the passage is broken by a recogniser loop. Talk with the second voice about a visitor and an operation follows, and Kerler asks him to sing both songs again for the record.

Kogan sings his ghetto song about the camp near Obodivka and Bershad', about Jews, kapores and the Bershad' cemetery. He then says he wrote only part of another song and starts a further one, with Kerler and the second voice prompting.

Kogan sings a song about Jews driven in the ghetto, including refugees from Bukovina, Bessarabia and Hungary, then "Aheym, briderlekh, aheym", a song of Jewish homecoming. He says he wrote the songs himself in the ghetto and kept them hidden. He recalls the reaction of listeners, a suit brought to him by refugees from Bukovina, and a request to send his songs to Israel. Kerler then asks how he came to be called into the army after liberation.

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

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

Gvinter is asked to repeat a sentence in Yiddish about how Jews lived on the streets before the war, and speaks of Jews living close together. She tells of reading books by Sholem Aleichem and Mendele and of giving her books away when she left for Israel. She also says the ghetto was very large and lists places from which Jews were brought, including Chernivtsi, Mohyliv and Sharhorod, and recalls Jews being bound in chains.

Gvinter recites a song she learned in the camp or ghetto, about the killing of a family at the pit, a child and the Jewish cemetery. She says she is an orphan who lived through it; Kerler comments on her strength.

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.

Answering Kerler, Naybauer says he did not know of the killing of Jews, even in Auschwitz. Kerler asks about his work as a boy after his father fell ill. He describes carrying goods from villages to town in the ghetto period and an episode on Passover; the passage ends mid-sentence.

Shor says he was born in Kopayhorod in 1925, and the couple recall that Jews outnumbered non-Jews there before the war. The Yiddish name of the town is discussed and the later district reorganisation. He studied in the Jewish school for seven grades, then in a Ukrainian school until the ninth grade. The war and occupation by the Romanians, life in the ghetto and camp, liberation in 1944 and his call-up to the army follow.

Chirkova speaks of her grandfather, who was tormented and killed during the war, and of Jews of the ghetto who were forced to dig their own graves and thrown in alive. She says she returned with her son and was helped through the ordeal, and she speaks of God keeping her alive. She also mentions an album of pictures about the Jews and the people who came to take things.

Chirkova speaks about Jews during the war, how they gave up valuables to survive, and what she kept or gave away. Katz asks for the Yiddish word for a silver or gold object, and she settles on a ring and a watch. She says she has passed these things on to a Jewish person since she has no children. Kerler asks about her having no children.

Furer describes the crowded living conditions of Jews in Kryzhopil' during the occupation. He tells of his younger brother, drafted at 17 and sent to work in a kolkhoz, who was killed in 1943 at 19. He then says he himself was wounded and concussed, and begins on the Caucasus.

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 points out a former militia building and shop, and the walk continues. Lemster asks whether Jews under Romanian occupation used coded words in Yiddish so that others would not understand. She replies that Jews spoke Yiddish at home, and that in the ghetto they were allowed to walk on one street only until six o'clock.

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.

Katz says she never knew her grandparents. Asked about the happiest time of her life, she names her wedding after the war, and tells how she met her husband, a film mechanic, through his first wife, who was killed in the ghetto with their children. She also recalls meeting him in Kyiv, and tending the wounded General Vatutin, who died there.

Fishman explains that he was sent from Odesa to Yampil after the institute and worked as a credit inspector at a bank. He lodged with an elderly Jewish couple and learned Yiddish from them. He recalls the synagogue near their house and a story about a Jewish elder in the ghetto under the Romanians. He estimates the Jewish population of Yampil after the war, notes there was a synagogue and a shoykhet but no rabbi, and mentions his grandmother taking chickens to the shoykhet.

Tsodikovich says he lived in the Kopayhorod ghetto as a child, apparently at a station about five kilometres from the town. At home the family spoke Yiddish with his mother and grandparents. He recalls that his grandparents were strongly observant and that the town had two or three synagogues. He remembers Passover, Purim and Hanukkah gelt, a hard year in 1946, and that his family left in the 1950s. He also remembers good relations with non-Jewish neighbours.

Tsodikovich recalls Kopayhorod, whose population was about half Jewish, half non-Jewish. He says there was no antisemitism, and that non-Jews helped during the ghetto. He names Jewish neighbours, a water seller called Avrom Rud(?), the rabbi and the shoykhet Leyb. He says a mohel was brought from Sharhorod or Zhmerynka, and matzo came from Mohyliv(?). He describes festival dishes, and mentions Yankl, the shoykhet in Vinnytsya. He also gives dates: studies in Zhytomyr, army service on Sakhalin and Kamchatka from 1958 to 1961, and a wedding in Kopayhorod around 1961, without a khupe but in the club, with Jewish klezmer in heavy snow.

Yatskova says her father, mother and brother were with her in the ghetto. After the war her father was director of a Ukrainian school, since there was no Yiddish school, and her mother worked as a librarian. Yiddish was spoken at home. Her parents studied at the Russian gymnasium in Zhmerynka. Her father also had a Hebrew and yeshiva education, and few in the Vinnytsia region knew Hebrew. Lemster asks about food at home.

Burshtein recalls the start of the war and the bombing of his town. His family took refuge in the prayer-house, where the Torah scroll was opened and psalms said. After Polish soldiers announced the Germans' approach, the family fled by night with his father, mother, two sisters and two brothers. They ran into German motorcyclists and reached Ostrów Mazowiecka, where Jews were driven out of their homes and assembled and some were held for days. He describes hunger, bread thrown over the fence, shooting and a curfew, a German officer's cruel jokes, and the Germans' searches. His father and a brother were held, and the family searched for them. They crossed a bridge to the Russians' side, where the rabbi's wife told how Goworowo's synagogue was burned with people inside.