Home and housing

Galambos answers Kerler's questions about his mother's Sabbath and holiday clothing: a white kerchief on the High Holidays and another cloth head covering on ordinary Sabbaths, whose name is unclear. He then speaks of the large unheated synagogue and the beit midrash in winter, and the seasons when services were held. Kerler ends by asking him to sing.

Gotlieb names her paternal grandfather Moshe Friedmann and grandmother Malke (née Blumenfeld), and mentions five uncles and one aunt on her father's side. The family dealt in leather. She helped her father, then after the war ran her own business with her husband until the Russians took everything. She speaks about her town's location, now in Hungary, and about her very religious mother's last words on keeping the Sabbath.

Gotlieb describes the family sukkah with paper cut-outs and decorations, where her father slept. She says she knew of no non-Jews converting to Judaism, and of Jews who converted to Christianity she says her mother considered them worse than a cat or dog. She recalls non-Jewish servants who spoke Yiddish, including one who worked for a rabbi, and then answers Kerler's questions about Hebrew-derived words used to prevent non-Jews understanding.

Rezmovits talks about prewar Debrecen and his Jewish community, including an episode of his mother and the ritual slaughterer. He describes his mother's humor and patience, and how she managed six children while his father was in forced labor. The family lived in a long courtyard on a street in Debrecen. He and Kerler discuss the word for a snack (a Hungarian-Yiddish word, "yaznt").

Herbst mentions his flat on a hill in Budapest and that he received it through work. He says he married in the 1960s (?). Asked by Kerler, he places his birth in a small village in the Carpathians known as Berlebash (Bornobash in Hungarian), between Rakhiv and Trebusa (?). It was a village of about three hundred inhabitants, mostly Ukrainians, with a minyan of Jews. He describes the surrounding mountains and wild animals.

Gotlieb says Yiddish and Hungarian were spoken in her childhood, with Hungarian at school and Yiddish at home and in the courtyard. Her courtyard had many children, and she mentions a family of twelve of whom three remain. She recalls playing with nuts on Sukkot, then talks about lighting the Hanukkah candles on the eighth day and singing Ma'oz Tsur.

Gotlieb recalls childhood games in the courtyard, such as jumping over squares, while there were no animals as the courtyard held over forty children. She says she carried a chicken to the ritual slaughterer for the Sabbath, and meat was eaten only on Sabbath. Kerler then asks about the school she mentioned.

Gotlieb recalls Sukkot at home: she says she built the family sukkah with decorations while her father slept in it. She then answers questions about the sukkah roof, Hoshana Rabbah and Passover, including the seder, the four questions and the song about the kid goat, which she remembers only in part.

Gotlieb tells, mainly in Hungarian and then summarised in Yiddish by S2, about her family's hardship in the early 1930s. Her father, a hide dealer, lost his goods in the cartel period and the family was evicted and lived in a broom factory, where her brother was born. Her pious mother urged him to buy a horse and cart, which brought him success. Kerler then asks about her mother's Sabbath observance.

Blobshteyn discusses Jews in surrounding villages (including the paternal village Siltse). His mother baked bread and cake for Sabbath and made plum pastries on Friday; the family ate meat in the week thanks to the father's trade and their own hens and cows. Kerler asks about dairy food, sour cream (smeyte), fish and herring, and Blobshteyn describes live carp from tanks and gefilte pike, and a Friday fish seller.

Blobshteyn describes taking a live turkey with his brother to the rabbi to be blessed at Purim, and how his mother sold the turkeys after the holiday to buy shirts for the children. His mother sewed all the children's clothes on an old Singer machine. He describes Sabbath afternoons, when old women sat on benches in the street and talked, and says that girls also went to a special cheder taught by pious women. He recalls the decorative papercut (mizrekh) on the wall.

Briefly discusses wall decorations in the home, including Purim items, papercuts and children's pictures, and the terms for Sabbath bread (challah versus barkhes). Blobshteyn then describes his father's place at the table and the respect given to him, including that no one sat in his seat.

Blobshteyn lists Sabbath foods, such as cholent with stuffed stomach kugel, and explains where cholent was kept at the baker's. He describes the Jewish street where he lived and typical foods, including fish, cholent, kugel, a dish called refenik (?) and plain dumplings. He tells how the religious tutor ate with his family on certain days of the week, and discusses brandy and a Passover drink called slivovitz and its kashrut. He mentions wine at Passover.

Smajovics describes meeting Red Army soldiers, among them Jewish officers who spoke to him in Yiddish and Russian. He helped carry ammunition and saw many dead Germans. About two weeks later he made his way home; in his village he found his house without windows or doors and only four Jews returned. Kerler asks about a mill and the return of the family; Smajovics mentions his sister coming back and his grandfather's house.

Reti says the village had one Orthodox synagogue plus the rebbe's own beit midrash, and that every village had a brick synagogue. He explains how the mikvah was heated with a samovar and wood, hot on Thursday and Friday, with the water changed on Sunday morning. Kerler asks about the Sabbath goy; Reti says Jews did not work on the Sabbath, but a courtyard non-Jew, called the 'hoyf-goy', did the heating and other chores. He adds that relations with the non-Jews were good and there were no quarrels.

Mostly informal conversation, much of it in Hungarian, about food and drink offered to the guests, fruit, her diet and illness, and her flat. Kerler and David touch on a Purim greeting and on which towns it is known from, and S2 remarks that men rather than women used to speak Yiddish. David talks of her health, an operation, her age, and a move to the present flat from the Kossuth street flat (?). Kerler says he recently came from America and describes his travels and his parents' ages at death. The passage ends with thanks and goodbyes to David.

Maryem begins by recalling that in the war she and others fled on foot for six weeks to Dnipropetrovsk (?). She then guides the drive through Bălți, naming the Nikolaevskaya and Kishinevskaya streets (?) and pointing out sites of former prayer houses and synagogues, a brewery, the Jewish hospital and the old Jewish street. Kerler asks about old Jewish houses and Maryem's childhood home. Maryem also asks where Kerler is from, and he says Moscow. Russian directions and talk about a church and a new postwar synagogue are interspersed.

The Katerbergs discuss the bride's and the groom's guests at weddings and where the groom's guests sat. They say that after the wedding they lived with the wife's parents in Lipcani until 1959, when he left for a kolkhoz.

Asked about childhood in Soroca, Faiershtein says she remembers little because of the camp. Non-Jewish neighbors did not steal from them. She mentions her two sons, one a musician, and says she suffered beatings in the war. Her family lived in rented rooms, and her grandparents in Rakovets, in the Soroca district, had a large house and a mill. She says she speaks only Yiddish when she meets Yiddish speakers.

Roif describes sleeping on straw in the Dubyna camp and the singing there, including new songs composed about their sufferings. Kerler asks about the song "Oy vey, tsores". Roif says his wife may remember songs, and they briefly discuss how the recording will be archived.

Mester describes Hanukkah in the village: candles made from half a potato with oil and a wick, the father's blessing, and gifts of money. She says her mother could remove the evil eye by an incantation in Moldovan, learned from a Christian woman. She also explains how coals were kept in a covered box and used for a samovar.

Lipovetskiy recalls prewar Jewish life in Chișinău: shops and factories, rich Jews helping the poor, and the institutions of a burial society, a mikveh and the large synagogue. He describes the Joint-supported Jewish hospital and clinic. He then talks about postwar shortages and rationing, and about where he lives now and the young people's lack of work.

Sherman describes the Jewish holidays before the war: on Yom Kippur eve the shops on his street closed for Kol Nidre. At Passover his father led the seder, reclining on a couch and reading the Haggadah, with the children asking the questions. Sherman does not remember who asked.

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.

Diner speaks about her life after her release from prison. She met a non-Jewish man from the Urals (?) and lived with him for three years until he died; she had no children, saying she did not want any and that doctors had told her she could not. She worked in construction as an engineer on labour and wages and received an apartment through work. The interviewers then praise a very old acquaintance with an excellent memory, and Lemster asks if she can read Yiddish poetry; she says she knows Russian poems.

Muchnik describes Sabbath food in her family, including gefilte fish, of which she gives a recipe with onions cooked in water and then oil, egg and bread. Lemster asks about the ingredients. She also mentions an unfamiliar dish called pitshe, noodles, kugel and small cookies, and tells how her mother baked challah every Friday. The cholent was sent to a neighbour's oven or their own, and she recalls the family kitchen with oven.

Asked about the word 'dybbuk', Muchnik explains it as a stubborn person; Kerler and Lemster also ask about other words. She then describes her wealthy maternal grandfather, a landowner with a carriage and horses, and his richly furnished house. She also recalls the all-Jewish street where she grew up, and a Moldovan who bought a house there and became friendly with the Jews and learned Yiddish.

Goldman describes prewar holidays at home: going to synagogue, the Passover seder at which he as a small boy asked the four questions of his father, and Sukkot, when they built a sukkah and only ate in it. He remembers little of Hanukkah, Shavuot or Purim, mentions lighting Hanukkah candles, and recalls only some of his mother's cooking. He cannot say what tatshikelekh (?) were. In the middle he asks where Lemster was during the war and speaks of Israel.

Rotner recalls how she met her husband, who returned from the war and had been called up from Chișinău, in the family's first postwar months. They married in 1946, after returning in 1945, and describe their poverty and housing difficulties.

Rojtman recalls Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, including fasting and the kapores custom, and trips to the Dniester. She says everyone built a sukkah in the yard. For Sabbath, her father returned from synagogue with friends who had no family and came to breakfast, and her mother baked and cooked well, including in the Russian oven in the yard. She talks about papalikes (?) and balabushkes, candle blessing, and her mother's observance.

Shmid recites a spoken charm against the evil eye, in which a woman going to the field meets Elijah the prophet. Kerler has her repeat it, notes the three spittings, and tries to get her to recall who meets Elijah. Others in the room help prompt, and she complains that she forgets with age. Lemster asks about a word and about quenching coals, and she explains the coal-heated iron and how the coals were put out.

Shmid recalls the coal-heated irons of her childhood home and her older sister's bakery in the city, which sent sacks of coals home. She names her sisters, says there were seven children, and says one brother went to America. She says she speaks Yiddish with her relatives. Lemster and Kerler then ask the meaning of 'dybbuk' and 'golem'; she knows the latter as a madman.

Kotliar talks about holidays at home before the war, including Passover. Her father prayed in a tallis and was quite religious, and he taught the children how to behave at the table. She describes the family's food, including noodle soup, chickens and two cows but no pigs, and says they ate well but lacked money for furniture or new things.

Kotliar describes the street in Rîbniţa where poor Jews lived, among them shoemakers and tailors. She says the family first lived in the village Vărăncău for a few years(?) before buying a house, with neighbors, a Moldovan woman living nearby, and a large Jewish population. She is asked about numbers of Jews, which she cannot state.

Boiarskaia describes how Hanukkah was observed in the village, with a small cut piece of wick or rag lit in oil because there were no candles. Kerler then asks for the Yiddish word for Christmas, which she does not know; the interviewers continue to the next questions.

Answering Katz's questions, Magetman describes her mother blessing the Sabbath candles on Friday and on holidays, and her mother's charity. She recalls Sabbath cakes and challah in a Jewish home, and her grandfather, a man with a white beard who lived in a small house in the courtyard and ate with her mother.

Rolshut talks about her mother's cooking: gefilte fish, separate meat and dairy kitchens, and how she koshered meat using a wooden board and salt, timed by the clock. She recalls Friday challah baked in a Russian oven and mentions jam made from rose petals. She does not remember what her mother said while salting.

Rolshut describes finding her house in Soroca empty and full of feathers from torn pillows, and starting to work. She then found her boyfriend, whose family had been evacuated, by letter to the front, and they corresponded in Russian. His parents came to Soroca in 1944 and her own parents, sister and brother in 1945. He visited in autumn 1945 and went back to Germany. Lemster asks about two surnames of writers, which she does not know.

She recalls prewar holidays and Sabbath in her parents' home, including a Christian woman who came in winter to heat the oven, and her mother baking bread. Asked about her studies before the war, she says she learned a little and then forgot much, though she can still read and write Yiddish.

Talks about her parents' house and her grandmother, who baked home bread and Sabbath challah and kept a small shop. She mentions Passover baking, her father as a good provider, and that the family sold their house. The transcript does not clearly show a move to Soroca before the war.

Asked about his childhood, Butorski recalls the stove and hearth where his mother prepared the meal and the table, and her blessing of candles. He remembers his father going to synagogue on holidays and waiting to be last when donations were made. He attended Romanian school for four years, with no Yiddish teaching. At home a teacher, not called a rebbe or melamed, taught him and his brother a little Yiddish. He mentions that he later spent nine years in Israel.

Meir says his paternal grandparents lived in Botoșani and his maternal ones in Sulița (?), where they kept a cow and made kosher dairy products only for themselves. He recalls Passover customs: extra dishes, cleaning, keeping Passover things in the attic, and his father leading the seder with the four questions. He also describes Sabbath coals on the stove and fasting on Tisha b'Av and Yom Kippur. At home they spoke Yiddish and Romanian.

Kerler asks David about his childhood before and during the war. He recalls first and second grade, his father's forced labor digging trenches, the closing of schools, and the deportation train from Iași, and tells of hunger and shortages, shopping for food in a market square near the family's home, and non-Jewish neighbors. He also describes heating with wood and the restrictions of the Ceaușescu years.

David answers questions about the two prewar mikvas in Botoșani and the bathhouse, which Jews used first and non-Jews later. He tells how his father and brother took him to the baths and mentions a brother in Israel. He then turns to people who come from Israel to the synagogue and a Romanian Jew's gift of money.

Camera footage of a village house in Moldova, with a man guiding and commenting mostly in Russian. He shows the bedrooms, carpets and pillows from a dowry, a sofa where Lemster once slept, the kitchen with its stove, the bathroom and the ironing room. The hostess comes in and shows photographs of her late husband and grandson and offers vodka and home-grown tomatoes. The guide jokes that such tomatoes are not found in America, and Kerler and Lemster join the banter.

Hershkovich answers dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire. The items include greetings, requests, words for the cat and mouse, war and battle, teeth, minyan and the well, and prepositions meaning 'at the father's'. They also cover plurals, the Hanukkah dreidel and regional names (the Regat). Further items are Jewish and non-Jewish terms, the word for face, house, room, and several sentences to translate.

Long dialectological questionnaire session in which Lemster, often prompting with Romanian words, and Kerler ask for Yiddish equivalents. Items include greetings and thanks, small and belly, house and room words, window glass, floor, attic and beam, building and wall, ear and deaf, earlier and later, quick, sick and weak, to run away, pious, reliable, cross and convert, bridge, potatoes, shop and clothes. They also ask for prepositions ('in' or 'on' the street) and for translation sentences such as 'he said to him/her', and compare usage in Maramureș (?) and Moldova.

Freundlich describes her father's religious life in Satu Mare: the seats he held in the Hasidic and other prayer houses, the garden he donated for the Bixad rebbe's beis midrash, and his daily attendance at prayer and study. She talks about the Talmud volumes in leather bindings in the family library, and about the dowry gifts he gave his four daughters. Kerler asks about who studied with whom, and the passage ends with a Hungarian aside.

Walking outside with the team, Isidor points out the former Jewish streets and says Dorohoi is more truly Jewish than Iași. He names the Jewish owner of the large mill and the former large synagogue and describes the 1940 pogrom, caused by soldiers from Chernivtsi. A Jewish soldier who shielded his officer was honoured, and soldiers were shot for it.

Hirsch describes the Dej synagogue, which was not dynamited, because a quarter of poor people lived around it. He says that before the war a Jewish quarter and a Jewish street stood about fifty meters from the synagogue. Part of the account, in Hungarian, says that blowing it up would have destroyed the surrounding houses.

Chajim says he refuses to sell the Hanukkah lamp to an American offering money, because he used it in Edineț. He describes his well-furnished house with two rooms. He repeats that he is a man of over a hundred, and Kerler thanks him at the end.

After the date and his name are confirmed, Finkelshteyn gives his birth date and says he never left Iași. He recalls his childhood and his large family (three sisters and six brothers, whose Jewish names he lists) and his father David, a carpenter born in Pașcani (?) who lived in Iași. His mother was also from Iași. He describes his grandfather Aharon, a stove builder who made tile stoves for wealthy households and ate only kosher food, and Kerler checks the word for the stove with him.

Finkelshteyn describes the Iași market and the trades before the war, many of them Jewish: tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths and builders, including how houses were built. His master was a Jewish carpenter named Moshe. He adds that his own home had no running water, electricity or heating until after the war.

Finkelshteyn recalls the cheder teacher with his whip and the pranks the children played on him. He then describes the talmud torah and says he did not study further because he had to work. He speaks about his mother's hard work for the household of eleven to thirteen people, including an aunt's two children.

Finkelshteyn answers Kerler's questions about Yiddish words. He explains words for an ignoramus and a fool, and how a well and a pump with a handle worked. Most of the passage is carpentry and joinery terminology from his trade: planes, saws, the workbench, workshop, tools and a wooden mallet. He notes that many of these words come from German.

Asked about Purim after the war, the speakers recall hard times and hunger in 1945–46, with Purim treats made at home but no old-style Jewish life. At Kerler's request Iakob tells a story about his parents in Iași. They were given a flat in a block where all the doors looked alike, and his mother once tried the wrong door and met a neighbor. A passage on the word for a stove tile or similar (kakvele) also occurs. The story then turns to his mother's sister in Palestine.

Resh recalls a Yiddish saying, and a woman says she has one daughter. Lemster then puts the AHEYM questionnaire in Yiddish: greetings, request and thanks formulas, 'mazl tov', words for house, room, apartment, colors and adjectives, pickled cucumbers, body words, short sentences with tenses, comparatives, pronouns and 'barely'. Resh answers with his own forms, often not knowing the form.

Shtaigman recalls returning to Rădăuți and finding their small house and his mother's family dead in Transnistria. They lived there until 1952 and then sold the house instead of emigrating to Israel. His mother remarried a baker, a good stepfather who died in 1965. He attended school and lyceum in Rădăuți, where a few thousand Jews remained after the war, but they dwindled. After studying and working, he moved to Iași in 1966. He says Yiddish in Rădăuți was somewhat more Litvak-like (Polish-Jewish) than in Iași.

Kaizerman describes Friday and Sabbath at home before the war: the bathhouse, synagogue, his mother's blessings and the Sabbath meal. Fish, soup, meat and beans were eaten, and the cholent was kept warm in a fire prepared on Friday. He does not remember the fish recipe beyond potatoes and a sauce.

A long questionnaire stretch covers household words (attic, beams, garden, window pane), curses, colours, body parts, kinship and numbers, as well as sentence translations. Chirilau also answers questions about illness, verbs of motion, being pious or honest, a Jew who converted, prayer, the word for grandmother and street versus town. Toward the end she describes a Jewish street and a local pharmacist, Zakhachinski, and his wife, a doctor from Craiova (?).

Leichtner describes the Sabbath meals of his childhood. His mother was a good housewife, and after the synagogue the family had brandy and cake. The meal included challah, fish with the head for the father, onion with egg and liver, jellied calf's foot, cholent, and compote. The Friday-night meal was fish, chicken soup with noodles and farfel. Lemster compares some dish names with Romanian ones.

Freundlich describes how his mother baked for a family of seven children: the dough, about six kilograms, was prepared at the end of Sabbath and carried to the baker, and he as a boy carried it there and back. He explains the weekly rhythm of bread, mamaliga and the large challah made on Thursday for Friday night, which the children kept eating; the family had no oven at home. Lemster asks about how challah was baked.

Macarie completes the gefilte fish recipe and talks about bread. She describes the family house: three rooms (boys, girls, parents), a separate kitchen and a porch with steps and a threshold. Kerler elicits the porch word. She says on holidays they cooked, baked, ate and went to the temple.

Macarie says village children had few toys; they played in the garden, and she made dolls from corn silk. Lemster asks about Purim; she mentions a large shared courtyard and field where all the Jews lived together. She says nothing about postwar work as an accountant in this stretch.

Lemster asks where she was during the war, and Grinberg says she was evacuated to Suceava (Shots) for six months before returning to Fălticeni. She says almost all Jews came back and then many emigrated to Eretz Yisrael. The Christian Popovich, the only one on their street, is mentioned. She describes the state-ordered evacuation and finding her house dirty on return.

Salamon recalls that as a child she was not made to help much at home, because her mother let her sleep and said she would work enough once married. She says her parents were first cousins who married for love without a matchmaker. She explains that the children of two sisters could marry, and that the home was peaceful. Kerler thanks her for the long interview.

Kurtsberg describes Passover after the war: strict kashrut, matzo and beet dishes, and storing the Passover dishes in a large chest in the attic. He then speaks of building the sukkah with his grandfather, covered with corn husks, and says that he and his grandfather slept in it. He cannot recall the grandfather's stories at that moment.

Outside, Galambos talks with the team and says he has found it hard to recall old things. He recalls that his family came to Vaja when he was three. He mentions cheder and games with other children, and the group discusses the number of streets in Vaja. Hungarian chat with others and a gift of apples follow, then a song and warm farewells.

Weinberger compares Stropkov with Košice, where Jews studied at universities and became professionals, and says which languages Jews spoke in Stropkov and in the Spiš area. He then answers Kerler's questions about the Yiddish and Slovak words used at home for vegetables, wall and floor, and 'dove'. Kerler tries to draw him back to the songs he sang earlier.

Chaimovic tells the legend of the Golem of Prague, who was made from clay, protected the Jews and lies in the synagogue attic, as he heard it long ago. Kerler then puts dialectological questions about words for attic, ceiling and floor; Chaimovic gives Slovak equivalents.

Lokteva is asked where she knows Yiddish songs from and says her mother passed some on. She recalls fragments of a song learned from an uncle and discusses Yiddish in Balta in the 1950s–60s, including Jewish weddings and the custom of giving a gift called makes (?). She names her uncle Gavriil and talks about her mother's nine siblings, seven of whom survived. She gives her own name as Khayke Klara, and discusses the age of the house.

Lokteva and her sister show a family photograph from the house and name the people in it: grandfather Khayim and grandmother Leye (?) Dorfman and their children. She says her grandfather supported many children by his work. Kerler and Lemster explain the project and discuss a ceiling and other household words, and Dorfman relatives abroad. Asked where her wedding took place, she says at her aunt Etl's house two doors away. She says her grandfather died before the war and her grandmother in 1945.

Khotenko says she was born and lived in Balta until the war, when the family was evacuated. She describes her street and the Jews who once lived there. Her father, a baker, came from a village called Nestoyita (?), and her mother sewed. She names her grandparents and a maternal uncle in Odessa, and recounts the killing of the paternal grandparents on a forced march and the evacuation by her uncle. She also mentions her son in Tiraspol, her seven siblings and her surviving sister.

Khotenko says whether there were more Jews or sons-in-law in prewar Balta, and discusses the houses on the street and a Jewish invalid living in a nearby village. She answers questions about her house, privatised in her name, her two husbands, and the surnames Litnavetskii (maternal side) and Shvartsman (paternal side), plus Russian surnames of her husbands and sister's husband. She names a list of towns, and speaks of an acquaintance in America selling his house. She says her mother sang Yiddish songs and wrote Yiddish letters. Her son writes Yiddish using Russian words and speaks it well, and his travel route is discussed.

Epelman recalls the three years in the Balta ghetto, where the family was confined with others in a house near the hospital. He remembers German soldiers; as a child he saw his father's brother's wife and a child shot by Germans in 1942, and an old man killed. The rest of his family survived the war.

Kazakevich answers Kerler's questions about prewar Lityn but remembers little. Her father went to the one synagogue and she cannot recall whether he wore tefillin. She attended a Ukrainian school and was about fourteen when the Germans came. She recalls the Sabbath baking, played with Jewish children, and cannot recall the mother lighting Sabbath candles or the preparation of fish. Kerler's questions cover Sabbath customs, games and the home.

Vaynman describes Jewish life in Bar after the war, when survivors returned and lived in the few remaining old Jewish houses, which Kerler asks about (white walls, benches outside). She says her mother observed the holidays, her stepfather less so, and that she herself still keeps Passover and eats no bread then. Kerler asks about her mother's songs and Yiddish songs known from childhood, and about stealing the afikoman at the seder.

Bublitskaia talks about her housing, exchanging a large apartment for a smaller one, and says she lives alone. She says she turns eighty in August, on the 24th, and mentions that her husband died. Kerler then asks about the Yiddish theater.

Skobilitskii describes preparing for Sabbath at his parents' home. His mother lit the candles and put the cholent in the oven, sealing it with clay. She baked large round loaves herself, and there was white Sabbath bread (challah) alongside the dark weekday bread. He mentions that bread was also sold in shops.

Skobilitskii answers more questionnaire items from Kerler, with the second voice contributing: ceiling, floor and a clay floor, how his mother's and father's speech differed, and how the town name Berdychiv was pronounced by old Jews. Further items are "put away", "back", "suddenly" and an expression for someone not thinking clearly. At the end the talk turns to the books the team bought and some thanks.

Skobilitskii explains how the children's game with nuts was played, by throwing them into a hole in the ground, and says Sukkot was marked by a balcony. He talks about his housing and about his son and wife, with visits to Israel. He says Sholem Aleichem's brother, a bookbinder, lived in Berdychiv, and names Yiddish writers he read, including Peretz and Mendele. He says he is soon eighty-five.

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.

Berzon talks about her childhood neighbourhood and her friends, mostly Jewish, in Berdychiv. She tells about a non-Jewish relative by marriage who spoke Yiddish and went to cheder with Jewish boys, and who later lost an eye in the war. He suspected that doctors wanted to remove his eye because he was not a Jew. She also describes his Jewish friends.

Asked by Lemster who made the meat kosher, Vainshelboim describes the shoykhet who slaughtered chickens, and the home procedure of salting, resting and washing the meat. He then explains how fish was cleaned, salted and cooked, naming kinds of fish, and how gefilte fish was prepared with ground fish and onion and cooked for a long time. He also describes Sabbath cooking done on Friday, bread dishes with preserves, and what his mother baked and cooked, such as pancakes and potato latkes made with buckwheat flour.

She recalls prewar Passover at home, with the large table, the whole family gathering and the grandfather leading the seder. Asked about Purim, they say they remember nothing particular. They add that the family lived comfortably though not wealthily, and her father knew Jewish history.

Kerler asks what Soyfer remembers of his childhood home in Berdychiv before the war. He speaks of an old house and street name, whether he can fix the year of Passover 1930, and says he was not invited to Jewish weddings. His father the shoykhet kept the holidays and the Sabbath, and the passage ends with Kerler and others commenting on reading and eyesight.

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.

Sara and Mikhail speak of their return to Berdychiv in 1944. They mention hunger and the rebuilding of a house on Zhytomyrska Street, and that Jews returned only slowly. They compare the Jewish population before the war with the few hundred today, and mention that Jews drive to the killing site on the anniversary of the massacre.

Vainshelboim recalls the street he lived on near the market, the courtyard with benches where young people sat, and a Yiddish- and Hebrew-speaking acquaintance named Vasilevsky (?). He says the prewar world was beautiful and the war took his best years. He then reflects on living long, the world's good and bad people, and mentions his son in the Zhytomyr region.

Burmenko answers questions about the food her mother prepared for holidays and the Sabbath: poppy-seed cakes, oven-baked cakes, gefilte fish, stuffed chicken, and challah baked in the oven. Kerler asks her to explain a term. She says she was a careful housewife taught by her mother. Russian side talk about keys and a shop interrupts.

Walking tour of Novoselytsya in which a local man points out former Jewish houses, a street once lived on, and a building that was a synagogue and later a sports hall, with Kerler asking when Jews settled in the town. There is talk about a non-Jew who keeps the Sabbath and considers himself a Jew, and about a Jewish school and soup kitchen. The group enters the building and discusses its decay and what restoration would cost, with figures for the town's Jewish families and students. The informant recalls the tailors' synagogue, the shoemakers' prayer rooms and small klayzlekh, and his father attending synagogue, before talk of the team's onward route by van.

Hodinger discusses Selish before the war. Munkács Jews are nicknamed 'onion Jews'. Selish was a small town with five synagogues. His family was poor: his father hauled sacks at a mill, and he carried luggage for travelers at the station. His father came from Ilnytsya and his mother from Pryslip (?). The house was of earth and unlit. He also recalls hardships in the camp and a beating under Hungarian rule.

Brief exchange about cooking utensils that Shor has shown. Kerler asks whether a frying pan is called by a certain Russian-Ukrainian name in Shor's Yiddish and asks about the words for a chopping knife and a pan.

Vygodner explains the layout of the synagogue interior, including the central platform, the ark and the old door, mostly in Hebrew terms and Russian. They then speak outside about the old Jewish street, a fire, and the streets of Bershad' where several thousand Jews lived. Family names tied to trades such as weavers, found in the cemetery, are mentioned.

After a brief exchange about photographs, Gvinter describes life after the war. The family lived in the synagogue building; her sister was killed and her mother was young. She began working before she was fourteen and worked in an artel. Her mother baked for weddings, as her grandmother and great-grandmother had, and she herself can bake too.

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

Loyf recalls the shoykhet in her town, whom people visited on Fridays, and how her mother koshered meat, though she cannot recall the blessing. She says her mother baked bread in an oven every Friday and worked hard all week, resting only on Sabbath.

Kupershmidt says he was born in Bratslav and so was his wife, and that his parents and his grandfather Meir were also born there. He was not born in a house of his own but in a two-room dwelling on the lower floor. Kerler explains that the project collects Yiddish and memories of earlier life. Kupershmidt begins to say that what he lived through in the war would take three days to tell.

Geller describes the kolkhoz housing, a cotton storehouse where families slept on the ground, and his father's army call-up in 1942. His mother, pregnant, gave birth in Dzhambul; she died in Samarkand and was buried in a mass pit, leaving three orphan sons.

Koifman says she returned to Vapnyarka in 1946 after the evacuation. She had worked during the war, apparently in a mine. She talks about her pension, whether the Hesed helps her, heating with coal and wood, and the neighbours and sons of acquaintances nearby. Kerler asks about the number of Jews left. The team then walks through Bratslav with her toward Kelmenson's house.

Kelmenson describes the house divided between her family and her parents, and says her children live in Tulchyn and she has grandchildren. Kerler and Lemster ask how important Yiddish is to being Jewish, and she answers it is a duty of the nation. She also mentions her sons' travel to Israel.

Khavin describes his father inviting many friends at holidays, then the building of the sukkah after Yom Kippur with boards from the woods, tables and the holiday meal there, including fried meat and noodle dishes. He says Shavuot was considered the best holiday and discusses Sukkot and sleeping in the sukkah. He ends with Simchat Torah, when children played games with nuts and received gifts.

Katz asks Bielaia Yiddish words for back, room, attic, well, a well-sweep (?) and potato, and a store. He also asks if she knows the Hasidim.

Walking on foot, Khavin shows a former Jewish street whose houses were inhabited only by Jews and were burned after the war; a kindergarten later went up on his father's house plot, and he says he did not give up the land. Kerler asks about terms, among them a Yiddish expression about a Jew. Khavin then describes the Great Synagogue and the New Market synagogue, including round halls and women's galleries with small windows, and mentions the tailors' synagogue. A Russian aside about the Polish town of Katowice and other places is included.

Burg tells how the family moved from Vyzhnytsya to Chernivtsi when he was about twelve. His father, a timber trader, continued traveling to Vyzhnytsya and lodged them in a tenement room, and died in 1938; the mother stayed on for two years until the Soviets came. He says Chernivtsi had seventy-six prayer houses before the war, and discusses the synagogues near where they lived.

Gimelbrandt recalls her prewar childhood: Purim with dancing, collecting money and wooden noisemakers, Hanukkah, and Passover seders at which her father had her brother ask the four questions. She finished one year at a Yiddish school; her brother attended cheder. Non-Jewish friends who spoke Yiddish joined the holidays. She describes Sabbath, Shavuot, Hanukkah and Passover food (challah, kugel, tatsh, cheese pastries, latkes). She names the street where her family lived, with a synagogue next door where her father led prayers.

Kerler praises her Yiddish. Shames says she is the only Jew left in her village or street and a Christian neighbour helps her. She describes her pension and her 20-odd years of service in a textile factory, where she worked in the laboratory and as accountant until it closed. She tells how she and her mother bought a house that was later taken and replaced by an apartment.

Gammer answers Kerler's questions on food. Only kosher food was eaten, with animals taken to the shoykhet. She has not heard of Jews raising pigs to sell to non-Jews. The family kept no poultry in the yard. She says she is old and tired.

Kapustina speaks about her family. She explains that the interviewers can have the tape sent to America, and that her brother lives in Los Angeles. She was born in Khmil'nyk; she gives her maiden name Kolomeir and her first name Sonya. Her father was a simple worker at a poultry combine, her mother was Liba. She discusses her grandfather Mordkhe, who traded in leather and built a house for his daughters, and her paternal grandfather Meyer, a leaseholder from a village near Khmil'nyk. She names her three brothers (Grisha, Avrasha, Nyoma) and talks about her second brother's illness and her own operation.

Kapustina reads from a booklet about Passover, which has Hebrew text in Russian letters. She recalls that her parents kept Passover carefully, that her father fetched Passover dishes from another town and kept them in the attic. Her mother could read Hebrew and the prayer book.

Kapustina talks about synagogues in Khmil'nyk before the war, a large two-storey one with a women's gallery where she went with her mother, now used differently. She describes the streets where the family lived, Voronovska and the street near the river, and where the synagogue stood. Kerler asks about street names.

The formal interview begins. Kopyt says she was born in Fastiv in 1935, and speaks about her mother, who lived to a great age, and about her father's Yiddish and Russian names. She describes the house she was born in and the Jewish street, formerly called Evreiskaia and later renamed Kyivska. She also talks about neighbours such as a watchmaker, and about a monument to a war hero named Chaikovsky (?), whom she wants moved to the town.

Kopyt describes how, after the war, Jews gathered in private homes for Sabbath and prayer while the synagogue was taken over by the militia, and she names families who hosted a minyan. Kerler asks what language was spoken at home. She then complains about housing and heating repairs and officials. She explains that she cannot go to Israel because of the graves of her relatives in Fastiv, and begins to say what songs she knows.

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

Bukshtein begins with a remark in Russian about a gift of caviar from relatives in Israel, then recalls a Russian film and a young Jewish man. Kerler asks about Purim plays, and Bukshtein recalls Purim as the happiest holiday and a family that staged Purim shows (a nickname that is unclear). He also recalls Jews walking in the street in prayer shawls without anyone mocking them, and the bathhouse with its mikveh, and bathing in the river Prut. He names the rebbes of Sadagora and Stefanesti, and tells how his mother, after a non-Jewish landlord's son attacked relatives, consulted the Stefanesti rebbe, who reassured her. Kerler then asks how far Mekhebush (?) is from Donetsk.

Lys offers to show his mother's old baking dishes used for Passover kugel. A woman, possibly his wife (?), explains how the matzo kugel is made, with soaked matzo, eggs and salt baked in the oven, while Kerler asks what the dishes were called. Lys then begins on a letter about the Lys family name.

Asked about Sabbath at home, Geller says his mother observed it but his father did not, and describes what she cooked for Sabbath, such as soup and roast meat. They discuss the term for roast meat and gefilte fish. Geller recalls the Sluch river at Kuzmin, where fish were plentiful, and the mildly sweet taste of his mother's fish, which was eaten with horseradish; he adds that his wife later made good gefilte fish.

Kerler puts the dialectological questionnaire to Geller, covering words for a good or holy place, a pious person, a good Jew, hasidim, 'dybbuk', 'golem' and 'goyets'. They go through Russian-prompted words and sentences: politeness phrases, cold, high, fast, near, early and late, and being ill. They also take body parts, house and building terms, the days and numbers, and words for a rabbi. Geller's idiom for 'Lithuanian Jews' and a story from his work after retirement appear in the course of it. A few religious terms he does not know.

Vaisblai explains that his father did not work on the kolkhoz because of a leg injury and instead made and remade caps. His mother died in 1937 and was buried in Kam"yanets'-Podil's'kyy; the father cooked for the children and later remarried a woman who bore no children. He tells how his father was beaten by a Soviet militiaman and the man was later sentenced. The passage ends as the war begins and his father says they must evacuate.

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

Shapiro says he wrote down in notes as a child which regime came to town, including Petliura. He says rabbis began to be shot under the first Soviet power. He recalls that his parents left Vinnytsya quietly in 1928 and went to Odesa, and he names his parents Yosef ben Yankev and Etele. He tells how his parents of ten children took in a refugee family from a pogrom in Kalinovka, since the house had five rooms. Kerler asks the names of his siblings, and he lists them: Yitskhok (Eyzik), Moyshe, Nakhmen (himself fourth), and the sisters Khaye Gitl, Leye, Rokhl, Rivke and Anele.

Kerler and Katz ask Shapiro about Jewish life in Vinnytsya before the revolution, including holidays, prayer and observance. Shapiro recalls a Jewish town with five rabbis and five synagogues, among them the Sandagerska (?) synagogue with a separate women's section and the Krochyk synagogue with a children's choir. He describes Yerusalimka, the neighbourhood where he was born, and his father's search for a larger apartment in the centre. He mentions his late wife's written memory of a Vinnytsya wedding, and explains that his father Yosele was a dayan, who settled disputes and was more popular than the rabbi.

Braverman recalls Solkhov childhood and mentions an essay she published about it. She describes her siblings, including a younger brother who was killed in the war, an older brother and sister, and a sister who died at age three, and how her parents hoped for a boy. She recalls a house without electricity and her grandmother coming with a basket of feathers and a Yiddish Pentateuch, whose pictures she looked at while hearing the Joseph story. An aunt in Tinkrad (?) gave her another book, and she recalls her grandfather praying in tallit and tefillin.

Braverman describes the layout of prewar Solkhov, the main road, and the absence of electricity until after the war; Semyon Braverman adds remarks on Ukrainian villages. She and Kerler discuss local food and dairy terms. She speaks of the Jewish population, the kloyz and the synagogue, the low riverside site, the mikvah her mother took her to, and the seder at her grandparents'.

Braverman recounts the first postwar visit, in 1946, when her sister found the house plundered, and she describes the family home. She talks of the many Polish families, teachers and watchmen near Solkhov and how they spoke Polish. Kerler asks about the name Solkhov in Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, and she recalls the Hasidic kloyz, Jewish holidays and a childhood memory of the synagogue gallery at Sukkot (?).

Kipnis speaks about her grandparents: her grandfather was a tanner who prepared hides, and the family's workshop was later taken by the Soviets. Her grandmother kept house, livestock and poultry and cared for the grandchildren, and visited Kyiv only briefly because she missed home. The grandfather stayed behind under the Germans and was killed in 1941. The segment ends with Kerler promising to return.

Khandros recalls a Yiddish library at home: his grandfather's old cabinet held Talmud and other books. His father studied with his own father, knew Hebrew well, and was more devout than the grandfather, who had been a cantonist and came from Chernobyl. Kerler asks about the generations in Ozarinets.

Rusakovskaia describes preparing for evacuation at the start of the war. She led the cow Manke out to the field. A barge loaded with salt was dumped into the Prypiat river so that people could leave Chornobyl', and her father hung the key on the house, expecting to return. Almost all their things stayed behind.

Rusakovskaia describes the return to Chornobyl', where their own house was no longer standing and the family lived with others. Her father, a carpenter, then bought a ruined house (the word is explained to Kerler) and rebuilt it into a fine one. She says she moved to Kyiv in 1967.

Krotsh first mentions meeting a stranger who spoke Yiddish, then recalls prewar Passover: his mother's latkes, bringing Passover dishes down from the attic, matzo and matzo meal, and going to synagogue. He worked for a tailor who stopped work for the eight days of the holiday. Kerler, Katz and a second man then discuss the distinction between the Yiddish words for 'erlikh' (honest) and 'frum/frim' (pious), with examples such as helping the poor and learning Torah day and night.

Back in the formal interview, Krotsh sings more liturgy and describes the Sukkot custom of eating and sleeping in the sukkah. He tells how he sold shmoes for money and how the sexton knocked on shutters to wake people for selikhes. Kerler asks about the bathhouse and mikveh, and Krotsh describes the bath and ritual bath of his shtetl. He tells how he spoke Yiddish at a government office in Israel when the clerk spoke Hebrew.

Bileichuk describes the war in his family over his new faith: his mother observes Sunday, he cleans on Thursday for Sabbath, and he makes havdalah and prays alone at a small homemade bima facing Jerusalem, with a compass. He says the Christian Bible is distorted and wants the world to read the Torah. He dates his search to four or five years ago and recalls how a friend's New Testament and the Sabbatarians led him to the Torah. He says nobody may forbid his conversion, compares himself to Abraham, and mentions a woman partner and their wish to have a son. He criticizes conversion in Israel as a matter of money and bribery, and Kerler thanks him at the end.

Kerler opens the formal interview with the date and place, and Kislinskaia gives her official name, address and phone number. She explains her Yiddish name Tseytl, which she was given after her mother's sister who had died in America. Her mother's brothers in America helped the family until the war, and one sent a sewing machine. Her father died when she was nine, and she has a younger brother, now in Israel. The family's life was very hard on her mother's small wage. She mentions that the house is her daughter's.

Kislinskaia describes the problem of having no papers proving her wartime work, and her postwar work in a Korsun factory making candy, treacle cakes, wine and seltzer. Only two other Jewish women worked there, and she brought matzo to her Russian co-workers at Passover. She then talks about life today: prices, utilities, fuel, and the former Jewish houses of the town. Kerler asks about the Yiddish for a building, and she says many Jews were killed there. Kerler asks her brother's name.

Kislinskaia answers Kerler's question about prewar relations with non-Jews, but remembers little and passes on what her mother said: Jews alone lived by the river. She describes the neighborhood today, now Russian and Ukrainian, and says only a few Jews are left.

Gershtein describes his return to Holoby after the war to look for his parents. His house had been taken over and damaged, and lawyers told him he had no case. He then studied at a commercial cooperative technical school and worked for years.

The team and local guides drive through Zhovkva; the informant and a companion point out the town centre, the school and hospital, and former Jewish shops and houses. The informant says Jews lived here, some raised geese, and sold meat; the synagogue is pointed out. Part of the talk is in Russian and the audio is poor.

The team continues to drive and walk through Zhovkva as the informant and the companion explain the former Jewish neighbourhood. They point out where houses stood, mention Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Ivano-Frankivsk (?), and the informant recalls arriving after the war (the year is unclear in the transcript). A Polish gymnasium and a former town hall are also mentioned.

Nisman estimates Jewish numbers in Chernivtsi and L'viv today. She describes her parents' poor but strictly religious home and her father's work as a forest caretaker. Kerler asks about words for an honest man and a pious man, and she explains terms for a trusted forest steward and for an honest and a believing person. Her mother complained about hunger.

Nisman describes prewar Sabbath at home: her father went to the synagogue with the boys, where he paid yearly for his own seat. On his return the table was set with a white cloth and challah. Her mother baked challah twice a week, and Kerler asks what the dough-offering was called.

Nisman continues Yom Kippur: her father and brother spent the whole day in the synagogue, while at home the mother and sister prepared the table and the food kept warm in a sealed oven. She gives a recipe for a honey cake and describes the break-fast meal. Kerler asks about kreplach.

Nisman describes Sukkot: her father built the sukkah himself beside the house, with a roof open to the stars. On Hanukkah he made a menorah from half potatoes, with oil and wicks. She says her father kept Yiddishkayt at home even though the children were not very devout.

Leibel talks about Rivne before the war: a small town, the streets, the large stores and a small bookshop that sold school texts and serial novels read by Jews, and his memory of Friday night. He names his mother Golda and recalls his father as a soldier in the First World War who told stories about Jews freed to attend synagogue on the High Holidays. His grandfathers, a carpenter and a tinsmith, are named. He grew up with two sisters, and his parents and grandparents were born in Rivne. Kerler also notes that his own great-grandfather came from Rivne.

Leibel recalls a song his sister sang at the Yiddish kindergarten, remembering only the first lines. He describes the Rivne street where he lived, its Jewish and Polish neighbors, the synagogue on the hill, and local figures including a children's doctor who survived the war. He names a professor and an economic figure or factory owner. A neighbor later hid people in a hideout (?).

Leibel recalls Hoshana Rabbah in his home, with the synagogue attendant bringing the lulav and willow branches, and he answers Kerler's questions about it. They discuss Hanukkah food and his mother's Friday baking of challah in a big oven. They go over the shape of the challah (not braided), and the food eaten on Purim.

Meler places his hometown as a railway station of that name about eleven kilometres from L'viv. He describes the bath house, the mikveh by the cemetery, a mill and the mill owner's heirs. He recalls catching carp in the pond as a child.

Dorfman points out old Jewish houses, a former Jewish school, and the former Kraków market, now moved to the old cemetery. He shows where Uri Grinberg lived and says he put up a memorial plaque.

Brandler describes holiday and Sabbath food at home before the war. His mother made raisin wine and challah, and fish was a must, including fish dumplings; his mother's fish was not sweet, unlike his grandmother's. On Sabbath there was kugel and cholent, which he carried to and from the baker. He recalls an incident when the ritual slaughterer declared a fish treyf, and that the family ate plain food then.

Leibel describes his mother baking for the Sabbath on Friday morning, with challah and cakes, going to the synagogue women's section, and lighting candles. Asked about his grandmothers, he remembers Khaye Hinde, who sold hay (?) in small quantities by weight for her living. He says he does not remember much of Sabbath at his grandparents' but that Jewish life was good though not easy.

She recalls her childhood in the shtetl, where the family had land, orchards and fields, and describes the Polish police and school, the Catholic church and the four synagogues. She talks about the weekly Friday visit to the bath house and the mikveh. Kerler asks about the synagogue buildings and colour words, and she recalls her mother's blessing over the Sabbath candles. She says she can speak and write Yiddish well after all these years.

Dialectological questionnaire, with Kerler asking most items and Lemster adding some. It covers greetings, kinship terms, words for house and rooms, and food and household words, and also the Yiddish for 'Christian', 'gentile' and Ukrainian-language terms. Further items are religious and folk terms such as dybbuk, golem, cantor, synagogue, dreidel and the evil eye, and sentences testing grammar and word choice. Shvardovskaia sometimes mentions her native town and its Jewish street.

Shoikhetman remembers his grandmother's kosher household, with separate Passover dishes kept in the attic and glasses marked for Passover. Kerler asks about the dishes. Near the end he starts on something connected with his brother, which is unclear in the transcript.

Nayman describes prewar village life: a stone synagogue, work on the land with cows and horses, two or three shoemakers and some tailors, doctors available only in Mukachevo, and a book and religious-goods peddler from Mukachevo. He also covers Zionist and other political groups, non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, and how Jews from different countries spoke. Kerler asks about terms for Hanukkah and Sabbath foods, Hebrew letters, wells, the oven, cemeteries, and the shoykhet, and Nayman recalls foods for Passover, Shavuot and before Yom Kippur.

Camera footage in Mukacheve showing the building where Vider's cheder was and the house where he was born, on the former Jewish street. Vider and Kerler talk about the age of the building and its inscription.

Endelshtein talks about his grandfather, a cooper whose customers came from Moldova and Bessarabia, and about the house. He recalls the New Synagogue, a Torah scroll sent by Queen Marie of Romania, and putting on tefillin at thirteen. He describes a Passover seder at his grandfather's house with ten children and sings the opening of Chad Gadya.

Vaynshteyn recalls her childhood in Dzhurin, including Jewish classmates and a mezuzah on the door of the house. Non-Jews speaking Yiddish in Sharhorod are mentioned, and the brothers are discussed, one of them born during the war and the other in Israel. She describes the Sabbath at home, with no heating on Saturday, cooking in the oven on Friday, and her mother baking. Kerler asks the word for challah.

Trachtenberg describes prewar Jewish life in Novoseltsy, with the number of synagogues and the Jewish Culture House. His house, which had two floors, was burned down. He says he and his brother were the only survivors in the family, and that his mother and sisters died in the ghetto and camp. He describes living in barracks and a kolkhoz barn in the ghetto and the Mykolayiv camp, and the shooting of ten escapees.

Bakmayev gives his name as Itsik and his surname as something like Bak Meir. His mother was Jewish and from Berdychiv, and his father was a soldier there who named as Otman Abramovich. Born in 1929, he lived in the synagogue building, which in Soviet times was used by soldiers. His mother had 23 children, of whom five survived. His mother's brother and others were killed by the Germans in 1941.

Cherner talks about the Balta ghetto. Many Jews arrived from Bessarabia, Chişinău and Romania, and Romanian, German and Italian soldiers were in town. His family was housed in a room in a neighbor's courtyard, while Romanian and German officers lived in their own house. The family returned in 1945. He describes how the Soviet army's arrival saved the Jews from the Germans, and how an uncle, taken to work at the station, was locked with other Jews in a room and shot or burned; the details are unclear.

Medved tells an anecdote about two Jews who go to a cinema in Odesa. She talks about her mother's literacy and her cousin who learned from her, a Yiddish school in Odesa, and prewar Ukrainian schools. She recalls Yiddish theater, her father's acting in Miskivka and the plays performed, a Clara Young concert in Leninogorsk in 1943 and Anna Guzik in Makhachkala. She also mentions a kommunalka and an apartment with a sea view.

Vainbrand reads aloud from a prayer book and tries a Kaddish for the interviewers, who praise his reading. He explains the difference between the kloyz and the beys-medresh, saying the beys-medresh stood near the centre and the kloyz was up on a hill. The town's Jews were Hasidic and visited only their own tsadik's grave. Pilgrims from distant cities stayed at his mother's house, which stood on the road, and she served them tea and cookies.

Vainbrand talks about Passover preparations in his childhood home: the mother baked matzo for other families, who brought their own flour, and the attic held the Passover dishes. He describes how utensils were made kosher with heated stones in a pit of water, and the burning of leavened bread by the rabbi at the synagogue. Kerler then asks about the rabbi and his cheder teacher, who was also a shoykhet from whom the mother had meat for Sabbath. Vainbrand recalls the teacher's face but not his name.

Vainbrand describes how, in the month of Elul, pilgrims with children stayed at his family's house near the rebbe's grave in Valedniki, and how a man wrote notes (kvitlekh) that were taken to the grave. He then says how old he is and why he did not remarry, that his wife died after the war, and that he says Kaddish and lights yahrzeit candles. Kerler and Lemster then ask about the non-Jewish boy who learned Yiddish and became a policeman or translator for the Germans, who he says needed someone to tell them about the Jews.

Feldman compares the economy under Tsar Nicholas, when trade was free, with Soviet times, when state trade took over; he worked in a cooperative. He cannot name a best time in his life and recalls that his father was killed and that the war started for him in 1941 (?). He says he wants to sell his house in Ovruch to move to his daughter and son in Simferopol, and discusses prices. He talks about his second wife, who went to Germany with her children, and Katz suggests another match.

Turovskaia talks about holiday observance and food. She did not eat bread on Passover even in Siberia, and she describes her mother's baking and foods for Rosh Hashanah and the Sabbath. Geese were fattened and their fat rendered for Passover, and matzo was bought in Opshtshina (?). Before the war the family kept their own cow, sold milk to the hospital and neighbors, churned butter, planted potatoes and made wine from currants and cherries.

A stretch of questionnaire work led by Kerler and Katz, with the answers often discussed in Russian and Ukrainian. The items cover the devil and its epithets, a fool, daily greetings and farewells, house and room words, a porch, a window pane, pots, birds, building and stone wall, the grave of the holy tzaddik, borscht, blind, late, near, words like high and higher, breath and breathing.

Turovskaia describes her family. She lived with parents and siblings, and the family dwelling is described. She names her paternal and maternal grandparents and uncles. Several relatives were killed, among them her brother, shot by Germans, and her uncle Yitskhok, taken into the army. A man from Old Veledniki reported him, as she says. Kerler records the names.

Turovskaia talks about her return to Ovruch after the war: her mother died after she left on pension, her father was left alone and the family was scattered, and her husband stayed in Siberia for a time. She describes the destruction of the town and the house that was divided in two with several rooms, then the start of the war and what Polish Jewish refugees said about the fascists.

Answering Kerler's questions about her early years, Zak says her father worked for a landowner (?) and then in a factory after the revolution. The family lived in an old, dilapidated house, which he rebuilt shortly before the war. He died young. Her mother returned with her to Polonne after the evacuation and lived until 1969.

On the drive, Bentsianov points out old houses and Markish Street, formerly Naberezhna, near where Markish was born, with a plaque. Shevchenko Street could not be renamed. He mentions the river Khomora and that Germans forced Jews to destroy part of the cemetery. At the Jewish cemetery, which was locked, Bentsianov says he organised its upkeep. Kerler reads and explains tombstone inscriptions and abbreviations, including a rabbi's daughter and a woman's gravestone.

Kerler asks about his first days back in Rivne. Fish recalls finding his father's house occupied, meeting friends at the market and staying with them, and trying to recover documents. He then describes meeting his wife Ida; they registered the marriage at once, without a wedding, and had a religious ceremony months later. She lived with him forty-eight years.

Fish describes his housing in Rivne: the father's house on a side street had no running water, and he had an operation in the 1940s that left him unable to carry water or fuel. He later moved into a cooperative house and bought into it, and says he worked throughout. Kerler then turns to questions about the prewar bathhouse.

Shteingart says his family kept all the holidays: Hanukkah, Shavuot, Sukkot and Passover. He mentions the Shavuot flatbreads, an annexed sukkah in which his father slept, and matzo always being available in Poland but not in Russia. For Hanukkah he describes eating small pancakes or latkes of grated potatoes. Kerler then asks him to show photographs from an album.

Shvartzbroit describes Sabbath cooking at home, including cholent, beans and fish kept in the cellar. She also describes Passover practice: separate kosher dishes, silver and clay pots kept in the attic, the first seder with candles, and the removal of all bread from the house.

Fish recalls going to synagogue with his father and his mother lighting Sabbath candles on Friday evenings, and that challah was baked at home for Sabbath and holidays. He describes the street where the family lived, with its streets and its mostly Jewish residents, and answers Lemster's question about Yiddish stories. He ends on the point that under Soviet rule Yiddish could hardly be used.

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.

Kerler asks the meaning of several words (a non-Jewish holiday, the cemetery, 'good place'), and about the sukkah in Yampil', and the house where the family lived. Kleiner recalls his older brother Nute, a learned young man who died. He remembers Sabbath songs and kiddush. Kleiner then sings the memorial prayer for those killed, with a few words about Yampil', Lyakhovtsy and Karnitsa. Kerler praises it.

Krasner says a few words about the seder in the late 1940s (?) and before the war. She says the family house stood nearby and was ruined and plundered by Romanians. Kerler and Katz then arrange the trip to the cemetery.

Outside, Geller shows his yard and garden to the camera, including flowers, hens, a rooster, ducks, former rabbits, potatoes, onions, apple and walnut trees, raspberries and the stones removed from the ground. Kerler asks the Yiddish names of plants and animals. At the end he asks Geller for a Kotovsky story.

Kerler and Liberzon discuss Shemini Atseres and early morning prayers, and Liberzon recalls the sukkah in the corridor of her father's house, where neighbors sat at a table. She recalls carrying shalakhmones to her grandfather and calls the holidays happy ones. The passage is partly garbled by Russian asides; Kerler then asks about brandy in Slavuta.

She recites or tells a short humorous story about three women sitting on one stone. Questions follow on words and usage about heating irons with coals, the word for 'tasty', and the idiom 'it doesn't go into my head'.

Questions on plurals and forms ('we will go together'), the word 'mistama', and words for ceiling, floor, bridge, boards, fence and face. Also verb forms such as 'to overlook'.

Vainshelboim talks about Purim and Hanukkah in prewar Ostroh. He describes a Purim play, masks made from watermelons, singing, and a masked ball at the house of a rich man; he compares the poverty of those days with the prosperity of today. A woman in the room, possibly his wife, briefly interrupts in Russian or Ukrainian. At the end he says that Yiddish was spoken at home and his father prayed.

The scene moves outdoors in Haysyn, where Burshtein points out the old Jewish houses, a former synagogue replaced by a sewing factory, and how few Jews remain. The team thanks him and takes leave. A local man discusses in Russian how the children of Yiddish speakers lost the language, and the team talks about a Lithuanian-Yiddish speaker.

Palatnikova describes her family. Her parents were Moyshe and Rachel, her sister is Tanya (Teybl) in Teplyk, and Yiddish was spoken at home. Her grandfather and uncles went to America in the early 1920s, around the Petliura pogroms, and sent parcels until 1975, after which contact was lost. She describes her mother as a housewife and recalls her father's apprenticeship as a butcher. She stresses the poverty of the prewar period: cold houses and children sharing one pair of shoes. A question about felt boots leads to a remark that her Yiddish is mixed with Russian. She ends by saying life improved under Soviet power, before the war and after it, and mentions the murder of Jews in Ukraine.

Liza Petrunenko joins and gives her name and Yiddish name. The talk covers her parents and grandfather, and the family's work in the kolkhoz. Reznik and Petrunenko recall prayer in private houses, the many prayer houses of the town, and Sabbath and Passover customs. Reznik names her siblings and recalls childhood games. They discuss non-Jews who spoke Yiddish before the war and today, and Reznik shows the old mezuzahs on doors and windows and her old house.

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).

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.

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.

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.

Golfeld speaks about childhood language, with Yiddish at play and Russian at school, and about the many synagogues of Tul'chyn, with different trades having their own. He then answers a long run of questionnaire items: building and household words, body and colour words, adverbs of time and place, comparatives, animals, 'where are you from', adjectives of taste and illness, numbers, and terms for relatives. He translates Russian sentences into Yiddish with Kerler and the second person helping.

Golfeld talks about prewar Tul'chyn, with its Jewish-run shops and houses built on Turkish-style vaults. He continues with questionnaire items, including the words for 'everyone', as the speaker and S2 compare 'ale' and a variant, and also flowers, and sentences to translate.

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.

Shveibush, with a second man adding comments, talks about the village of Horyshkivka and its Jewish kolkhoz named after Stalin, where his mother was a team leader with six children. Kerler asks about Jewish holidays kept quietly in secret, about food such as gefilte fish, and about his father's amateur theatre. Much of the talk concerns the village as Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish stage production of 'Tsigele', pigs on the kolkhoz, Simchat Torah customs and kerosene lighting; the passage ends with thanks and goodbyes.

The guide continues about the site: a medical school was here after the war, where she studied nursing (?) before going on to Vinnytsia. She says travellers once stopped overnight at a Jewish house here, that Jews still lived here after the war and that non-Jews live here now. Kerler and Lemster ask about visitors from Israel and about the many synagogues before the war.

Yurkovetskij says he worked as a driver for fifty-three years in Tul'chyn. The family lived on the barber's trade, and the eldest brother began working in a barbershop at twelve or fifteen. The grandmother took in lodgers in the large house they had on Lenin Street near the market. Lemster asks about the years before the war.

Yurkovetskij says he lived in Tul'chyn and went to Bratslav only to have his son circumcised. He describes building his present house in 1947, its cellar, and winemaking. Lemster and Kerler ask about Jewish dishes such as gefilte fish and kugel, and about the term for grated potato pancakes. They also discuss Bershad under the Romanians.

Waldman talks about the poverty of Uman's Jews and about her family, many of whom were communists. Her father Avrom, an orphan from Zhytomyr, worked in a factory. She says they lived near the market and she has no photograph of him. The passage ends as she turns to the first of August, when the Germans came.

Naybauer and the group approach a former synagogue building and discuss neighboring buildings, including a former large restaurant that employed many Jews, a shop owner, and a house of Dr. Neumann (?). He talks about the Jewish market and the community's size of about ten thousand. He says the Czech period was a good time, followed by Hungarian rule. He also talks about a Jewish bank director who sent money to America.

Zinger describes returning in 1946 to find that his parents and the rest of his family had been taken to Auschwitz and no one was left. He moved to Uzhhorod, into the house of his sister Khaye, which he inherited. His family had five members: his parents, his sister Khaye and his brother Leyb. His sister's husband and child also perished, and he alone came back. He calls Velykyi Bereznyi a fine little town.

The Shors answer questionnaire items including 'probably', 'near' (nave, nahent), floor and floorboards, 'cloth' and 'face'. They also say a few things in Russian and discuss the word for 'floor' and the swearing sense of 'tsire' (?).

Kerler puts a further run of questionnaire items on late and later, the dreidel, a Purim noisemaker, to ask or beg, bed, attic, all together, floor, boards, and the whole life. Furer answers and comments on the words, some familiar and some not.

Barshteyn recalls her childhood in Sharhorod: a small one-room home, three daughters, and a father who worked alone. The family was not rich but never went hungry. She briefly mentions her late husband and offers to show a photograph later, and Kerler asks about her mother's housekeeping.

Russian talk among the group and locals, with Katz commenting. A local man speaks English, saying he has led the Jewish community since 1994 and that very old Jews are gone, buried in the cemetery or emigrated to Israel, Germany and Australia. Kerler then asks whether Jews kept dogs. Barshteyn says she had a dog and a cat, in a house lower down near the river.

Barshteyn describes kosher meat: the shoykhet slaughtered, the blood was drained and the meat was salted for an hour. She describes Passover preparations, with the dishes brought down from the attic, a special oven for baking bread, and the house cleaned and whitewashed. Her father baked matzo using a perforating wheel. Lemster asks about the fillings of Purim pastries (poppy, jam and similar), and Kerler asks about the evil eye and a remedy using a glass, which she half recalls.

Sobol answers questions about the river and the bathhouse, and recalls the big synagogue on Stavyshche (?) Street that her parents attended. She says that today there is no minyan and the Kaddish is paid for or read in Russian letters. Asked whether Christians spoke Yiddish, she says yes. She says her husband knew Yiddish, Romanian, German and some Hebrew but no Russian when they married. She also tells how her husband had lost his parents and how they lived in her father's house with her stepmother.

Nayman answers a long sequence of dialectological questionnaire items from Kerler, with some follow-ups from Katz. Items include household and building words (house, floor, window pane, bed, attic, beam, bridge, yard), the body and ailments, adjectives and adverbs of degree, kinship and midwife terms, and numerals and dates. She is also asked about forms of address (singular, plural and honorific), verbs and grammar, a few religious terms (cantor, prayer, rich man, wishing the dead rest), and example sentences. Along the way she explains words, tells a short proverb about a pious man and a cross, and mentions that her father died in the First World War. At the end the interviewers thank her.

Lebvol describes the Polish fire brigade in the courtyard, and the bathhouse and mikveh in Zhovka. She recalls a Hasidic neighbor, Frenkel, whose wife wore a wig, and the names of their three children and parents. Asked about a Jewish library or youth movement, she says she did not go.

Shpitz recalls the street where he lived as a child, a street inhabited only by Jews, among them several doctors, and says his father was a cobbler. Kerler adds a couple of questionnaire items, including the word for an honest person.

Mixed questionnaire work and memories. Shpitz is asked for words such as cart or wagon and 'road', and says that his family had no wagon and that Jewish occupations included fish dealing. He explains golem, the dreidel, the ceiling and cleaning the floor for Passover. He also describes the interior of a house.

Burshtein describes arriving in Zhytomyr at fifteen and seeking work and training, and getting registered and food products from a director. He remarks on the ruined city, where the largest houses had three storeys. He says he did not know Ukrainian and learned it gradually, and that he writes and reads Russian and Yiddish well but finds Hebrew difficult. Kerler's question leads him to speak of prayer.

Skobilitskii points out the house of a wealthy local businessman (named something like Magazanik, uncertain). He ran a large farm with cattle, sent dairy products to Zhytomyr and Kyiv, and owned a leather factory that exported to Czechoslovakia. Many Jews lived in his buildings and worked for him. Skobilitskii also mentions a four-year Jewish school after the revolution, an old ornate door, and a visitor from Canada who no longer knew Yiddish.

Skobilitskii shows the house on Kachenivka street where he lived and his younger brothers were born. It belonged to a rich man whose family name sounds like Krupnik (?), and tenants paid him rent. He remembers sledding in winter, and describes the large synagogue that stood nearby, with a mikveh and bath fed by the river. He mentions friends from Berdychiv now in Haifa and Netanya, the mostly Jewish surroundings, and walking to synagogue on Shabbat.

Nibulskaia describes the kolkhoz near Novozlatopil': two rows of eighteen houses, with her father working as a kabl (?) and her mother as a cook. Her younger sister attended a two-class school in the nearby settlement and studied at home, while she herself struggled with school. A Yiddish theater company used to visit them.

Nibulskiy describes the pedlars' trays carried round at Hanukkah and how his father said Hanukkah was always muddy. He then explains the street without paving, with ditches and boards laid over them for walking.

Bluvshtein names the best time of his life as coming home from the war. He and his family first slept on the floor at his mother's brother's place for half a year before getting an apartment. He then compares work and pay then with the difficulty of finding work now.