Jewish–non-Jewish relations

Rezmovits talks about his ill brother in Debrecen, with whom he now speaks Hungarian. In the family only Yiddish was spoken, but outside Jewish children were beaten by non-Jewish boys, so he learned to speak Hungarian and to box. Debrecen is described as an antisemitic town. In the talmud torah he studied Humash, Rashi and some Gemara and learned to write Yiddish. He says he was pious as a boy and gives the reason he lost his faith.

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

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

Herbst recalls how at about age ten or eleven he went to cheder in Rakhiv, sleeping at the melamed's house and eating 'days' with different families, including a rich sawmill owner. He attended four classes of the school in Berlabash, then a year in Rakhiv and a year in Oyber-Vishev (Vișeu de Sus), where his sister lived and he was near a large yeshiva. He recounts a fight in which yeshiva students drove off hostile attackers.

Herbst describes the mountains and river near his childhood home, where children gathered wild blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. He tells how they picked on Tisha B'Av, when fasting, and made them into syrup and jam, and how a group made noise to scare off bears. He then says he went to work at the sawmill and that war began after his bar mitzvah.

Gotlieb says she spoke Yiddish as a child and learned Hungarian in school, with some German. She mentions many Jewish children around her and that some non-Jewish children also knew Yiddish. She remembers her mother as clever and helpful, then describes the Sabbath food: soup, meat, compote and the baked Sabbath stew (cholent). She also talks about fish dishes and the difference between Hasidic and other tastes.

Gotlieb answers questions about terms for a non-Jewish cemetery and for a church. She does not know several of the words and says there were three churches. She recognises the word for ritual impurity (tume), used when Jews were not allowed to enter a church. At the end Kerler thanks her and asks her to repeat the second Purim play.

Rezmovits recalls Polish and Lithuanian Jewish refugees in Debrecen, who spoke in the local prayer house about what was happening to Jews. The Hungarian Jews would not believe them. He then discusses writers, among them Ilya Ehrenburg, Elie Wiesel and Soviet Jewish writers, with Kerler offering to send him a photocopy of a Yiddish book. They also discuss Rezmovits's own short piece on the Satmar Hasidim.

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

Rezmovits recalls sayings and songs from his Carpathian family tradition, such as not boasting about money. His parents came from Sighet and his grandfather was a melamed. He tells how his father, angered by a Romanian tax collector who seized his grandfather's tefillin bag, threw the man to the ground and his grandmother calmed the man with brandy. Kerler asks about songs of the grandfather and father, about love, and about a comic song about paper children; Rezmovits cannot place the last.

Rezmovits talks about forced labor in the early 1950s (?), when he was given only unskilled work smashing material with a large hammer in a factory, and wagonloads were packed each day. He then tells how he and a colleague, caught in a storm, asked a Polish peasant woman for a night's shelter. She turned out to speak Yiddish because she had once been a servant in a Jewish household. She offered them pork and gave a parting gift of a kind of red tea.

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.

Informal conversation, probably at a restaurant, about Yiddish and German and how they get mixed up when a person knows both. Kerler and a second speaker discuss a woman now in America, originally from Berekszó (?), who taught Yiddish. One speaker recalls the Jews of a small place before the war, who were partly German-speaking and partly Ukrainian-speaking, got on peacefully, and mentions a father who spoke Russian and Yiddish. Kerler also talks about filming for posterity.

Opens with a remark about which languages a woman knew: Russian, but not Hungarian. Kerler then asks Herbst about Purim in Upper Vişeu and in Bornobash. Herbst recalls being alone one Purim in a strange town, cared for by a friend of his sister, and children going from house to house with Purim rhymes. Kerler asks whether there was a Purim play about a chimney sweep, and Herbst does not remember one. A side conversation with S2 turns to work and jobs. The passage ends with Kerler asking whether non-Jews in Bornobash spoke Yiddish; there were too few Jews for that.

Herbst says he worked at the sawmill with Russians, Ukrainians and Romanians and heard no Yiddish there, and that after the war he met few Yiddish speakers outside the hospital. He and Kerler talk about his Yiddish, which resembles that of Hungarian-Jewish Debrecen, and about the words 'Litvak' and 'pani' (thief) as Yiddish usage. Kerler asks about photographs, and Herbst describes postwar friends, including musicians, a pianist he met in hospital, and professors. He mentions a painter friend (name unclear, perhaps Anton Revis) who painted his parents.

Deutsch answers questions about the terms for "mother tongue" and about German, Hungarian and Yiddish in his family, noting his grandmother's German. He then speaks about children in villages knowing several languages and about Polish Yiddish speakers. He mentions a woman who lit Sabbath candles.

Kerler asks why Pearl left his village. Pearl answers with an episode in Tállya: a man told the police how fast the Germans were winning, and the Catholic teacher at the school told the children the war could still reverse. Three days later a mail carrier told Pearl what was going on, and he left for Budapest.

Gotlieb recalls Purim in her childhood: children carried food gifts and received money. The Purim play was in Hungarian, performed by boys in costume and makeup, and a Yiddish play was performed at the Polish rebbe's house. She describes the Polish rebbe's dress and says she did not like the Polish Jews' Yiddish, which she found different. She begins to recite a Purim song.

Blobshteyn explains wedding customs: rich families held the wedding on Sunday, with a separate table for the poor and a jester (badkhn, 'gramer'). Two Roma musicians played at the chuppah. He then describes preparing for Passover: sewing and cleaning, making beet borscht in a large barrel, the matzo baking and cooking, and eggs. He mentions egg dishes, pickles and the Yiddish word for them.

Blobshteyn explains several terms (golem, a non-Jewish house of worship, dybbuk) in answer to Kerler's questions. He goes on to compare Christian and Jewish teaching, including the weekly Torah reading and Sunday services. They then discuss the Christian claim to be the true Jews and the origin of the Arabs. Blobshteyn also recalls a Jewish butcher who was denounced and imprisoned, and a village man he knew as a child.

Smajovics recalls conflict in the cheder over Ashkenazi versus Sephardic ways, and starting cheder at four. His father, a carter, was killed by his own horses, leaving the mother with small children. He names his brother, who later emigrated to Israel. He speaks about his grandparents, including his grandfather who had been an officer in the Hungarian army, and his grandmother, who gave overnight lodging to poor travelers. He also tells a story about a bearded man. The family had eight children.

Smajovics mentions the languages spoken in his village, including non-Jews who knew Yiddish, and a gentile who had grown up among Jews. He then describes the labor camp he was sent to, with barracks for 220 men, and the arrival of the Germans in March 1944. He was taken to Esztergom for Passover to a synagogue, and worked as a locksmith for the Germans, who treated the workers well. He tells of being moved to Budapest and then to Ercsi (sugar factory) in 1944, and of the front, the Russian advance and a Hungarian officer. The group was taken to an estate on the way to Budapest.

Herbst talks about working to support his parents before the war and giving all his wages to the family. In answer to Kerler's questions, he says he was a good child and discusses words for a non-Jewish cemetery, mentioning the Jewish and reformed cemeteries in his town. He says the Jews lived among the non-Jews.

Herbst speaks about Jewish life in Berlabashe, where Jews lived among Russians and Rusyns who spoke Yiddish and Sabbath goyim, and which languages he knew. He explains that he learned Hungarian after the war, then describes returning from Mauthausen, being registered as Czechoslovak and transported by car to Merikó (?) in Hungary. He then went on foot and by freight train toward Bratislava and then Budapest.

Doman and Kerler discuss differences between Yiddish and Hungarian Yiddish-German, including some words (Sukkot, travel to Vienna), and Doman's learning of German in school. He says his mother and grandmothers were strictly Orthodox and spoke Hungarian. He explains that Hungarian Jews' language shifted after emancipation in 1867, with women first. They also discuss Polish and Galician Jews in Hungary, such as those from Munkács and Ungvár, who spoke Yiddish and quickly learned Hungarian.

Reti speaks about Shavuot and Purim. For Shavuot they ate dairy foods such as cheese dumplings. On Purim, Jews sang and danced in the street, and there was the Yosef play. He recites passages from it, says his brother played Yosef, and that the young men from Rohod, Nyírmada and Vaja performed it for two hours; only boys acted, and local non-Jews attended without understanding. He also mentions his studies in Balkány and the Lichtenstein tallis factory.

Kerler asks about Sabbath songs (zmires), and Reti sings parts of Sabbath songs; the words are not clear in the transcript. Kerler then asks about Hoshana Rabbah and Simchat Torah; Reti recalls dancing with the Torah scrolls, the hakafot, and children being called up to the Torah. They also touch on whether non-Jews understood Yiddish, with Munkacs mentioned as a place where non-Jews spoke it.

Samadi recalls visiting Kaliv in 1944, shortly before the Jews were taken away. The head gendarme there was friendly to Jews and helped a young Hasidic man; Samadi also names a Sholem Leyzer. They discuss the Kaliver rebbe's grave and the new ohel built over it. Kerler closes by asking about a song.

Reti discusses the largest synagogue, which burned after the war, and S2 asks whether women also knew Yiddish. Reti mentions a Yiddish-speaking woman who lives near him and the town of Munkatsh, where even non-Jews knew Yiddish. They talk about the Munkatsher rebbe and the rebbe Chaim Elazar Shapira, whose film S2 mentions finding online. Reti also speaks about a rabbi who came to town and a kosher supervisor.

Kerler asks Reti about the Purim play, the costumes and the scene in the Joseph play where Joseph passes his mother Rachel's grave. Reti describes the costumes and the scene. They discuss summer performances before Shavuot, played in several villages, with non-Jews also coming to watch and partly understanding.

Reti and S2 talk about the Purim play and the other, summer play. They discuss how the plays were staged in a hall or school, with warm air for the heat of the desert scene. They also cover how non-Jews came and saw the play, the story being told first in Hungarian, and Reti's schooling in a non-Jewish school as there was no Jewish school in the village. Kerler ends by asking about Hungarian poetry from school.

Reti recalls school and Reformed prayers and a Christian blessing recited before meals, and the Hungarian words he had to say when passing a cross or roadside shrine. Kerler and S2 ask about words for such things (a cross, a church) and what they were called in Yiddish and Hungarian. Questions on terminology are intermixed with Reti's recitation. At the end Kerler asks about a man who sang and served in the army in Israel.

Galambos speaks about his late brother and the last time he saw him. Kerler asks about the proportion of Jews to non-Jews in Vaja and in other places, such as Czechoslovakia, Munkács, Huszt and Beregszász, and where Yiddish speakers remain. Kerler then asks about Jewish weddings, and Galambos recalls three weddings of his sisters in the family. He says non-Jews did not speak Yiddish in Vaja, but did in the Carpathians.

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

Altman recalls a Yiddish saying about a slap and a word, and talks about a dispute with a neighbour. Kerler asks about stories her parents told. She explains the expression for 'empty dreams' and says she cannot recall old tales. She speaks of her pious mother and of her children's Soviet schooling.

Mundrian recalls an antisemitic agitation before Purim in Căprești, when notices were placed in churches. Nothing happened to the Jews, and the Purim that followed was a happy one. Dzigifker then tells how, after four years, a factory taken over by the Russians gave her mother a job, and how she worked there herself until the war in 1941, receiving grain for the factory. Kerler turns the talk back to Gertop.

Bukshpun says that after returning to Karkushany nothing was left; a Christian family lived in their house, and the mayor had run to Romania. He speaks of the camp and says that he tended a cow for the mayor of Stratiivka (?). Russian partisans came and he was claimed as the mayor's child, and the mayor later fled abroad.

Furman describes prewar Sabbath observance: no work was done, and the family went to the synagogue. He talks about the food, kugel and the mother's candle-lighting, and mentions a non-Jewish neighbor who lit the stove. He says he read Yiddish, mainly the Pentateuch, and remembers no Sabbath songs.

Furman talks about fattened poultry, holiday dishes, Shavuot food, Purim gift-sending and meat cutlets. She says few non-Jews spoke Yiddish. She describes the colony's farmers working the land, and the crops grown. She names the village rabbi Chaim (surname given as Feinzilber, then Zilberman) and the shoykhet Hershl, neither of whom returned from the war. She and her husband are asked about chalutsim and about collecting money for Palestine. She also talks about the cemetery in Capresti, where her father and grandfathers are buried.

Katerberg talks about cheder in Berlinți and his teacher, named Steingauz (?), who died in the war and who beat the children. He studied Humash and Rashi. He says he moved to Briceni fifteen years ago after being kolkhoz chairman in Larga, and that he lived among Christians. Lemster asks about his bar mitzvah; he recalls only a meal.

Katerberg talks about the ritual slaughterer, who came every week from Cotiujeni and served several villages, including a trip to Lipcani. Lemster and Kerler ask about rabbis and the 'good Jew' to whom people travelled. S3 tells the saying about a non-Jew who speaks Yiddish, and Kerler compares this with a Yiddish-speaking Ukrainian he met in Sharhorod. It ends as Lemster asks him a question about his time as a chairman.

Kalussky is asked about the war years and the ghetto. He says he was in a ghetto near a place called Vinets (?). He sings a sad war song and recites a ghetto lament. He then recalls being left with two small brothers and going out to beg bread from Christians, and says Ukrainians helped. Interviewers ask for his phone number and he says he may recall more later.

Goldberg says that after the war Soviet authorities did not permit prayer, so people prayed secretly in private houses and travelled to Chişinău for the holidays. At home they spoke Yiddish, though her children only understand it. She describes a grandfather who refused to leave her husband's home village and mentions one Jew who converted.

Roif speaks about a Jew who informed for a Romanian gendarmerie chief in Obodivka and was later sentenced. He adds that every people has its faults.

Zelda sings the song about the girl Sanyele who converted. Her mother begs her to come home, while the Christian tempts her with shoes and dresses on condition that she wash Jewish linen. She says she learned it from a relative called Sroel/Israel from Edineț and remembers it from about seventy years earlier (?). Kerler and Lemster ask why the girl would wash the linen, and there is talk of Kerler's university in New York.

Farber describes his mother as a Jewish housewife who baked, cooked, sewed and sang, with a cheerful home. He says his brother has lived in Israel for about fifteen years (the transcript is unclear whether a nephew is meant) and that he lacks people to speak Yiddish with. He sings Yiddish songs at non-Jewish weddings. His father worked as a clerk until 1940 and then went to the mines.

Farber tells of his parents' wedding in Vertiujeni in 1948 (?), held with other couples, and of his birth in 1954 (?) with a mohel brought from Soroca. He recalls his grandfather's work in Romania and how his parents met after the war, when his mother returned from evacuation and his father from the Urals. He also describes how the family found their two benches in the house of a non-Jewish man who had shot Jews in their garden and was later jailed.

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

Mester describes a Jewish wedding held in winter 1937, with the canopy outdoors in the snow. Neighbours from the whole village, Christians included, came to watch. She recalls the groom being met on the road, a klezmer or orchestra and the officiant brought from Edineț, and the glass being broken. She names the dishes: stuffed fish, soup with almond noodles, meat cooked in the ground, and portions of pie with leeks sent home with the guests. Christian neighbours were also guests.

Tkach is asked what Jewish music she first heard, naming instrumental pieces and a klezmer musician from Chișinău who later lived in Israel. She discusses how Moldovan and Jewish music are similar but not the same, with the doina and freylekhs as examples. Questions also cover Gypsy and Moldovan musicians, a Chișinău businessman and writer, and the music of Israel, Gershwin and Soviet composers.

Lipovetskiy tells a story from the first Soviet period, before the war. As a boy he was given cherries or plums by a Russian officer buying from a neighbour's shop, and he worried about what his family would say. He then says which street he lived on and describes a nearby canal and a bathhouse, and Kerler thanks him and closes the interview.

Kishlyansky answers questions about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish and says there were no conversions. He lists trades in Briceni and sings a song about a butcher. He recalls the visiting Yiddish troupes and the performers Sidi Tal and Anna Gintsburg, and says there were many cantors but no Hasidim. He says people knew of the Stefanesti rebbe and travelled to ask him questions.

Roif tells how non-Jews also went to the Ştefăneşti rebbe for help, such as her grandfather's neighbour. She says all Bessarabia, Bukovina and Romania knew of him. She says her husband has a small book about the Ştefăneşti rabbis at home, and Katz asks to see it.

Roif answers terminology questions about the word Litvak, differences among Yiddish dialects and what a dybbuk and a golem are. She briefly recalls Jewish weddings, a Jewish woman's spoken charm and Moldovan women who healed. She describes taking her child to such a healer. Katz also tells her where he comes from, and she mentions a BBC interview of her husband. She ends by saying she became a mathematics teacher.

Roif hesitates, then sings a song she remembers from childhood before the war about a Jewish girl in Edineț (?) who converted and married a Moldovan shepherd, in which the mother seeks her. She says the song is based on a true story, and Katz asks about other songs. Roif says the missing cousin's mother was her father's sister, Rivke, and her father was called Dovid or Dudl.

Roif sings the song of the Jewish girl who converted a second time. Katz asks for another Yiddish song, one sung by girls before the war or in the camp, and she says she knows only Russian and Romanian songs and only snatches of Yiddish ones. Katz then announces lighter dialect questions with a Russian word to translate.

Gordin describes Florești as a small town that became a city only after 1946, with a gendarmerie, barracks, a small tobacco factory, a mill and an oil press, and says Jews lived on peaceful terms with their Christian neighbors. He then names his grandfathers, whom he saw once in 1941, and his maternal grandfather Velvl Vinitski, and says he never knew a grandmother.

Sherman answers questions about non-Jews in the Telenești fire brigade (there was no organized brigade) and about prewar youth movements. Gordonia met in a hall for dances and heard speeches from visiting pioneers (chalutzim) from Palestine, and some friends emigrated. He also tells of clandestine communist literature smuggled in from Bucharest, in Yiddish translations, and of reading Freud.

Sherman remembers that in Telenești weddings had a chuppah and music from a small klezmer band, with Jewish dances; the musicians were non-Jewish Moldovans who had learned the tunes. Kerler then asks terminology questions: the plural of rov and rebbe, and the meaning of a "good Jew".

Diner describes working very hard with her mother in a factory in Siberia and escaping after three years to Novosibirsk without a passport. There she met a Jewish couple by chance. The man was a director of the Minsk Yiddish theater, evacuated to Novosibirsk, and he helped her get papers by making copies of a birth certificate until she obtained a passport. She says he could have been given ten years for it.

Mitlaeva describes her early schooling. Her mother taught her the Yiddish alphabet, and at seven she went to a Yiddish school with a woman director, named Rezhnik (?). The school shared a building with a Romanian one, and she attended the afternoon Yiddish classes for about half a year until the school was made Romanian by decree. She names her Yiddish and Romanian teachers. She also recalls a ceremony with three priests who came to bless the school.

Mitlaeva talks about her Karaite friends from Crimea, the Aivaz family, who kept Jewish holidays but not Christian ones. Lemster then asks about Yiddish books she read before the war. She recalls an alphabet primer, names Sheynberg (?) as an author, and mentions Poale Zion as a Zionist organization she attended.

Mitlaeva recalls her mother's sayings about Jesus on a Christian holiday. Lemster and Kerler ask for proverbs, jokes and curses, and she gives a couple of blessings and curses. Kerler then asks if she took part in any movement; she answers in Russian and Yiddish that she attended Zionist meetings.

Mitlaeva recalls 1942, when German forces approached the Kuban and she and her mother evacuated. She describes how border guards told locals not to leave, a bombed train split in two, and the journey by the Sea of Azov and onward. The route continues through Baku, Krasnovodsk and the Urals. She then talks about working in a school in the Urals where the director and a Jewish administrator helped her with documents and food.

Mitlaeva recalls the first day of the war in Chișinău in June 1941, with the bombing and Molotov's radio speech, and their evacuation about two weeks later. She describes the flight by cart to the Dniester and Bender, a night in a synagogue and a bridge that was bombed. The route then goes by train via Dnipropetrovsk to the Kuban, where she taught in Varenikovsky. She speaks of colleagues there, including a German teacher and a Jewish woman teacher who had been saved from a pogrom.

Muchnik describes the activity of Romanian fascists in Orhei before the war: gatherings of peasants with sticks and sacks who were to plunder Jews. She recalls climbing onto the roof to watch their meeting place, and Jewish households closing shutters at night in fear of a pogrom. She tells of a night alarm in which neighbours knocked on windows to warn the Jews.

An account of the killing of local Jewish women in Sarai in 1941. One mother fell on her child and the child survived; a local non-Jewish woman took the child, had him baptized and raised him. Kerler asks who the victims were and where the story comes from, and they say the neighbours told it.

Benderskij describes how, before the holidays, he and his grandfather carried food and bread to poor people. A man nicknamed Yosele the Little and local assimilation are discussed, including a Jewish family whose son converted for a Christian woman. Lemster asks about poor and rich families, and about Christians converting to Judaism.

Benderskij speaks of his childhood and two friends, one now in America, and games played with ball and the Romanian game of zurka. He describes the arrival of the Soviet troops, an exchange between neighbours, and a grandfather's warning about children. Lemster asks about rescuers; the speaker recalls non-Jews who helped Jews and the search for relatives' property on return.

The couple discuss prewar drinking customs, saying that Jews did not get drunk, and a mad Jew in town. They go on to trades in the town such as tailors, shoemakers, smiths and harness makers, and winter and summer clothing. Dishes and their names follow (gefilte fish, kishke, potato pancakes, Passover potato dishes), with Kerler and Lemster comparing local terms.

Answering Lemster, Dajch describes Jewish life in Nisporeni: the old and new synagogues, one for the poorer and one for the wealthier, and her mother's synagogue attendance. She recalls Rosh Hashanah customs and lanterns, a brother's disapproval of a boy's bicycle, and the Jewish population with its shops, taverns and a few craftsmen. She tells of a Greek baker who was friendly to Jews and who taught her mother to trade grain for flour.

Dajch recalls a wealthy man's daughter's wedding in Nisporeni, where the groom was a learned young man and the leading men were invited. She mentions the chuppah and kiddushin conducted by the shoykhet, dancing in the Casa Națională to traditional dances, and Gypsy musicians instead of klezmer. She names a few people connected with the wedding, with some doubt about the names, and does not remember the synagogues or the rabbi.

Dajch answers a long series of dialectological questions, with Lemster and Kerler prompting in Russian and Romanian: greetings, 'please', luck, house and room, colours, deaf, cold, ill and sleep, believer, apostate, peasant, and others. Around 29:40 she talks about Jews in Nisporeni working the land: only one did, and a Jewish field worker is recalled. Further items include 'from where', midwife, 'on this street', river, well, potatoes, flowers, everyone, 'only Jews', attic, hazan's place, rich men, and enemy.

Rotner discusses the occupations of the Jews in Chiperceni, merchants, tailors, shoemakers and vineyard owners. Her father owned a vineyard and the family helped with the grape harvest each summer. She says there were no Jewish organisations or clubs, though a few young chalutzim left for Palestine. She describes her leisure as reading, helping at home and helping her grandfather in the shop, and says she read Romanian but not Yiddish. There was no Yiddish theatre, but her parents travelled to Orhei.

Rotner describes the return home in 1945: the house was gone and nothing remained. Her grandfather had been killed by neighbours the day after they left, and her father found the grave, reburied him in Orhei and visited every year. The family went straight to Chișinău, rented lodging and stayed with an acquaintance from the evacuation for a year before starting work and rebuilding their lives. She also recalls the hard work on the kolkhoz.

Rotner speaks about clothing before the war, fabrics brought from Orhei and village tailors and shoemakers. She says life in the village was good until the war and Christians worked their own land. She answers questions on terms for peasants and repeats that her sister moved to America. She says Yiddish was spoken at home, Romanian at school and Russian after the war.

Rotner describes how her mother made gefilte fish rather than chopped fish, using a knife and later a grinder, with the skin removed. The questionnaire continues with words for animals, colors, building a house, weather, distance, time, illness, piety, the street, the river, potatoes, flowers, and the home. Kerler and Lemster also ask about non-Jews who worked for Jews on the Sabbath, the Jewish New Year versus the Christian one, midwives, kinship terms, the prayer leader's lectern, the afterlife, and a game with dice. She says the session made her recall Yiddish she had not used for many years, and that she speaks Russian with her children.

Manevich names the director of the Yiddish school, Garber, and a teacher of arithmetic, and says she has forgotten others. Kerler asks about a Yiddish actor, Shloyme Mikhoels, whom she vaguely recognises. She says no Jews from prewar Tiraspol remain, that the town had Jews, Moldovans and Russians, and that she had Jewish friends from school. She tells how she met her husband, also from Tiraspol, after he returned from the war, and that they lived as neighbours. The wedding was held without a huppah, with klezmer music playing Jewish and Russian tunes and guests of mixed backgrounds.

Rojtman speaks about Hasidim and rabbis in the area, saying the local rabbis were good, ordinary men. She describes how people came from nearby towns, how roads and transport worked, and a fire at a Jewish bakery. Answering questions about folk healing, she mentions urine therapy and a Serbian woman healer who spoke Romanian. She recalls her mother's sister's belief in fortune-telling and her own fear of such women.

Rojtman describes her mother as a beautiful, decent woman who loved doing good, and she tells how the family home in Vadul Rashkov took in people who had to cross the Dniester. She says everyone in Rashkov spoke well of her mother and that the Christians of Rashkov used to visit. She also describes a visit to Rashkov a few years after the war, finding no old Jews and speaking of the age of the older residents.

Shmid mentions her son-in-law and then answers Kerler's questions about drinking in the village: Jews drank on holidays but were not drunkards, unlike the non-Jews. Her father took a small glass on Sabbath. She calls her parents' home very Jewish, and says the family went to the city for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, staying with relatives and later with the married children in Chișinău.

Asked about Purim, Shmid names baked goods such as hamantashen and baklava. She does not remember Purim songs or a Purim play, only masks worn by children. She describes the few Jewish families in her village and her father, who worked the land, took produce to the city and gave each of his seven children a dowry. Her mother came from Chișinău, could not speak Moldovan at first, and was later loved by her non-Jewish neighbours.

Kleyman talks about Jewish life in her childhood village. About forty Jewish families lived among some four hundred people; services were held in the house of her aunt (Khantse), where Jews from Belts and Chisinau sometimes came. She describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles, her limited Jewish schooling, speaking Yiddish with Jewish children and Moldovan with Christians. She tells of a Jewish mother and a Ukrainian father whose children did not learn Yiddish. She also tells of a trip to the rebbe in Chernivtsi at Sukkot and a conversation with Christians about guilt for the death of Jesus.

Kleyman talks about a holy rebbe in Stefanesti and another in Boyan, where people still go and light candles. She recalls a childhood game in Yiddish, then an encounter after the war in Ukraine with her father's former boss at a kolkhoz, who wept when she said she was his daughter. She returns to the rebbe and the grandmother who had been to America. She then tells the story of eight thousand Jews in Stryy, killed by the Germans, and of a holy man who spoke before being shot.

Raisa speaks about her mother and prewar home life; her blind grandmother Rivke was burned with other elderly people in the woods near the ghetto. She explains how to make gefilte fish (skinning, grinding with matzo meal, cooking two hours), cholent-like dishes and tzimmes with beans, and how Russian-speaking local intelligentsia came to eat at her home. She then talks about prices, pensions and the support she and Iosif receive from Hesed today.

Mundrian talks about prewar Jewish occupations in Susleny, naming shoemakers, tailors and craftsmen. She says it was a large, rich village before the war, and tells how her mother rose early to work for non-Jews. She also speaks of her aunt's life in Zhukovsky and the postwar synagogue, which was still open with few members. She tells of attending funerals and says she herself will find no one to accompany her.

Kigel recalls a Jewish couple who converted to Christianity. She says she did not learn to read or write Yiddish, because she avoided her tutor's lessons. She mentions a Jewish bank and Zionists and communists in town, and recalls going to the theater and the cinema, where the films were in Romanian rather than Yiddish.

Rapoport states that Jews made up more than seventy percent of the town's population before the war, and answers a question about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. He gives his birth year as 1945, after the war, and speaks about his father, who was taken to a concentration camp (Domanyovka) with a brother, and about four sisters he never saw. He mentions his father's name and role as synagogue warden and his mother's time in the Rîbniţa ghetto. Kerler asks where he learned Yiddish.

Before the formal interview, Grinshpun tells anecdotes from her work as a teacher and from her life in Moldova. They involve Moldovan and Romanian speech, how people took her for a Jew, and an examiner who sent her to the synagogue; the talk partly switches to Russian. Kerler closes the passage by stating the date and place and introducing her.

After the evacuation the family returned to Kobylna and found their house, whose contents had gone to neighbours. She says a family with a Jewish-sounding surname (?) was involved.

Sharhorodskij recounts the Rîbniţa ghetto and an evacuation attempt in 1941. He and his sister left with another family and stopped some fifty kilometres from Donetsk, where Romanian soldiers searched for weapons and beat them. He tells of being driven out of Krasne Okne with others to a mill, where the community bribed the gendarmerie commander with valuables and they were turned back. They fled at night, wandered for a month in villages and forests helped by non-Jews, and reached the Ulmu state farm near Rîbniţa, while those who stayed behind were taken to Dubăsari and shot. He also touches on Jews who lived better in the ghetto, a brigadier named Shtrakhman who was a bad man, and holidays kept in secret.

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 says she worked in Rîbniţa before the war and was driven out with the others. She describes being taken to a camp on the Bug in Ukraine with Bessarabian rabbis, the Romanians arriving after the Germans, and the ghetto formed from the old Jewish houses. Kerler returns to the 1933 famine in her village, and she says she was fifteen when she came to Rîbniţa; Ukrainians came begging for bread.

Magetman recalls her first year at school and names rabbis in the town, Zukerman among them (the spelling is unclear). She remembers her parents going to synagogue on the High Holidays and a non-Jewish woman who came to light the stove; she cannot name the town's several prayer houses or a tsadik. She attended a Romanian school before the war and a Soviet school after it.

Magetman answers questions about the meanings of dybbuk, golem and related terms, saying a golem is a bad non-Jew who did not help Jews during the war. She then recites the verbal charm she used against the evil eye for her grandchildren, with spitting three times, and describes a local woman healer, Brokhe the sprekhern(?).

Plotnik answers Katz's questions about the meaning of a few Yiddish words, including dybbuk and golem. She describes how she was treated against the evil eye: her mother took her to Jewish and non-Jewish healers, an old Christian woman and a Jewish woman called Malke, who used spoken charms and a knife. She also describes pouring wax for fright. Lemster asks whether she remembers more, and she says she does not bless properly.

Rolshut describes prewar Soroca's Jewish occupations: Jewish shops, butchers, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths and food merchants. She mentions three Jewish cafés and a restaurant, where youth gathered, along with the cinema and park concerts by non-Jewish military musicians. She speaks of Zionists, Maccabi, the Yiddish talmud-torah, and the Hebrew Tarbut lyceum, which gave Hebrew and Romanian diplomas. There were Jewish lawyers and doctors, but no Jews in the police, fire brigade or courts.

Rolshut answers Lemster's dialectological questionnaire, translating Russian prompts into Yiddish, with S2, S3 and Kerler helping. Items include greetings and times of day, "please", "excuse me", wedding congratulations, "mouse", sick versus sleeping, honest, pious, cross and apostates. Further items include a sentence about sitting, "before me", the synagogue, "grandmother" and a sentence on three people arriving. She repeatedly says she has forgotten much Yiddish. She also mentions a convert acquaintance and a relative who married a Russian and converted.

Rolshut says Jewish weddings with a chuppah and a rabbi were held in Soroca until 1940; she attended friends' weddings but cannot recall the songs or dances. She and Lemster discuss whether the town had a madman, klezmers and the water carrier she remembers filling a vat in her parents' kitchen. They touch on handsome young men and women of the town and Jewish communists. She recalls a group of Jewish communists shot on the Dniester bank after a non-Jewish guide betrayed them. Lemster mentions the poet Yasik Baltsan(?).

Mirenburg answers questions about Sabbath in her parents' home: her mother's blessing over the candles, the non-Jewish 'Shabbes goy' who came to heat the stove, and her mother's baking of challah and salting of meat. She recalls her grandfather, who knew Yiddish and Hebrew and acted as a peacemaker. She remembers beginning to fast on Yom Kippur at age nine (and fasting in the camp/ghetto), and recounts a childhood incident when she told her mother that her sister sewed a sack on Sabbath. She then describes the Passover seder led by her grandfather, the afikoman gift, the four questions, and Passover foods such as matzo pancakes, potato cakes and 'Pesach bagels'.

On return to Dumbraveni after the war, Plotnik found the house wrecked and the cellar plundered by people looking for gold. She mentions the family's vineyard and the barrels. She then talks, partly in Russian, about her troubles with a telephone company and about telephone use.

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

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

She talks about customs such as striking Haman at Purim, a postwar encounter in a synagogue in Odessa (?), and the Rosh Hashanah custom of casting crumbs into water (tashlikh). She mentions kosher butchers before the war and the mixed streets of Jews and Christians in Soroca, as well as her present life.

Milevskaya describes the local Jewish community: about 120 people receive assistance, of whom about 50 are Jews. Some stay for reasons of health or because their children live nearby, and mixed marriages are common. She mentions her daughter in Odesa, her son's three children in Israel, and her grandchildren's army service. Kerler then asks if she remembers a story or song from her grandmother.

Dunaevskij recalls the Ştefăneşti rebbe: his good advice, his authority, and his sparing, measured speech. He recalls that when the rebbe died in 1937 (?) the whole town mourned and Romanians and Jews both attended. He also begins to mention the Jewish school and its director Feinstein.

Dunaevskij describes Jewish weddings in Ştefăneşti: the chuppah, dancing, and Jewish klezmer musicians, and a badkhn named Motl who entertained the guests. He says people drank wine rather than spirits, and his father made cherry wine. He says too much time has passed to remember details.

Goldshteyn and Luminskaia answer Lemster's questions on Jewish weddings. They recall the chuppah and its escorts, the food (strudel, lekach), the music and the weeping of the parents. Luminskaia then sings a wedding song in which a mother-in-law is asked to look after the bride. They discuss the groom buying out the bride and whether this was a Jewish or a Moldovan custom.

Goldshteyn answers Lemster's questions about folk customs for averting the evil eye; he recalls charms and a non-Jewish woman who performed them. Luminskaia recalls that when she fell ill at the age of four, her grandfather covered her with a black prayer shawl and healed her, with a local healer also mentioned. She describes her affection for him. Goldshteyn then returns to the custom of dispelling the evil eye.

Kerler states the date and place of the interview. Moisei then gives a long historical account of Bessarabia under Russia and Romania, the Soviet period, and why Moldova and Transnistria split. He touches on Romanian treatment of Jews, pogroms under the tsar, and perestroika and Gorbachev.

Elizaveta describes Chimishliye as a small town with a synagogue, where people spoke Yiddish and Moldovan and non-Jewish servants of Jews learned Yiddish. She says she remembers little from before the war, only that she learned sewing at sixteen. After the war she worked as a crane operator in Russia in severe frost and later returned to sewing.

Elizaveta describes Jewish dishes she remembers, including fish, kneydlekh, stuffed items, a sweet dish with nuts, honey and lemon, and Passover dishes. She says she learned gefilte fish after her mother's death and talks about tsimes and beans. Lemster asks about the custom of throwing things at Jewish beards and about converts; she says she does not remember them.

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 states that about 19,000 Jews lived in Botoșani before the war, in whole quarters, owning the shops and working as tailors, carpenters and other craftsmen. He says about 92 Jews remain today, and Kerler and Lemster ask about conversion and mixed couples. David and Lemster then discuss Jewish youth, the Joint, camps for children and the communities in Oradea and elsewhere, partly in Romanian. Kerler ends by asking about a local bread type.

Brief recalls Transnistria, where he was held in the ghetto at Mohyliv with his mother and grandmother. He describes violence by soldiers, a Jewish ghetto leader, typhus, and hunger that killed many. His grandmother died of hunger and was thrown into a common pit. He says the Ukrainians were worse than the Russians.

Cohn answers a question about the word for a windowpane. He then explains he fell in love with his wife and met her in Botoșani. He describes the wedding, with a rhymester-entertainer named Finyele (?) and a badkhn. The musicians were a klezmer band, including some Christians, led by a Jew and playing modern and Yiddish songs.

Grunfeld says about twenty Jewish families lived in Zău, with a synagogue, cheder and mikveh, and he lived there until about the age of ten. He recalls Purim customs: sending gifts between families and going masked as a Romanian peasant child, with short Purim plays and visits to the Romanian teacher. Lemster asks for a Purim song, but Grunfeld says he cannot sing and recalls only a few words.

Returning to the village, Kerler asks about the melamed; Hershkovich says young men came from elsewhere for a term and the cheder was a small room in a courtyard. He confirms that only Yiddish was spoken at home, though his parents also knew Romanian and Hungarian, which were used with non-Jewish neighbours.

The new interviewee talks about languages in his youth. Jewish friends knew Yiddish, while Romanian and Hungarian were spoken with non-Jews and in town. He describes a village of about twenty Jewish families (twenty 'taleisim') with a melamed, mikveh and synagogue, between Cluj and Târgu Mureș. He recalls dressing as a peasant for Purim and visiting Jewish families, and Purim plays such as the Sale of Joseph and Esther.

Kraus says that Yiddish theater in Bucharest is rare today, and mentions a rabbi from France who visited. He says that before the war there were about seventeen thousand Jews in Cluj, with a number of synagogues and associations, and that Christians there spoke Yiddish. He says he first saw Hasidim at the yeshiva in Cîmpia Turzii. Kerler and Kraus then discuss the word shofer/sofer (the scribe).

Kraus speaks about the Jewish community in Cluj today, where non-Jews come to the services, and about the shrinking minyan. He served on the community board for twenty years and organized the storehouse, Sabbath meals and prayers. He explains that many Jewish men married Christian women after the war.

Freundlich says her childhood neighbours were Jewish, with one Christian family on the street, near the Bixad rebbe. She says her father respected but did not follow the Satmar rebbe and refused to kiss the rebbe's hand, and describes the kapores slaughter at home. She also tells of her grandfather's modest death on Sabbath eve in a snowy winter and his instruction to his son-in-law to say Kaddish.

Freundlich explains that she learned Yiddish songs from a nanny of Maramureș background in Satu Mare, and a second voice sings a lullaby about longing for a lover. The nanny was illiterate, and the rebbe had said Jewish families should hire orphans. Kerler asks about the word for a nanny and requests more songs.

Answering Kerler, Hershkovich describes Jewish streets and quarters in Dej, the languages spoken there, and the number of synagogues, and mentions the burial place of his rabbi's father. He also talks about whether Purim plays were performed at other times, who performed them, and Jews who learned a trade and spoke Yiddish.

Hershkovich answers questions about cultural terminology. He and Kerler discuss derogatory words for a non-Jewish child and for a non-Jew, and a Jew who behaves like a non-Jew. Kerler asks about the night before a circumcision and how a baby girl was named, which Hershkovich says happened in the synagogue with the father. Kerler then asks what Hershkovich would like remembered about the region.

Freundlich explains that at home the family spoke Hungarian on weekdays but only Yiddish on Sabbath, and that everyone knew Yiddish, the mother tongue. She describes her father's Purim meal and the Purim play, with youths dressed as women and a Purim rabbi, the charity given, and says she has a Hungarian translation of the megillah.

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.

Talk about Luduș and the Jewish villages around it, and which languages were spoken at home. Some of Kerler's questions are about terms: the Yiddish name of Luduș, a word for cemetery and the names for non-Jews. The speakers explain that Hungarians and Romanians were distinguished in speech.

Kerler asks Kraus to recall a song; fragments of a dialogue song about marriage follow. They discuss Purim before the war: sending shalekhmones between families, a competition over baking, and the Purim play. Grunfeld says he dressed as a Romanian peasant and visited the school director, and they discuss Yiddish among the village Jews.

They talk about the Sabbath goy who lit the stove for religious families. Grunfeld recalls a story told by his grandfather about a visitor and exile. Kerler asks about the meanings of 'erlekh' versus 'frum', words for gypsies and Roma, and the term for lacking money.

Kraus recalls the rivalry between children of the Romanian and Hungarian schools, such as snowball fights. He then describes his father, who owned two horses and a wagon and carried goods to the Thursday market in a nearby town, whose name is unclear in the transcript.

A business story about a Jew named Mikhail, a fur dealer, and Tuvye's dealings with him, in which a non-Jewish buyer takes many furs. The dispute is settled on Sabbath in the synagogue courtyard, with the culprit made to pay and give kiddush for four Sabbaths. It ends with a question about what year this was, answered as early 1970s (?), when several synagogues still stood.

Grimberg explains that as prayer-reader she says the tkhine for others at memorial prayers, since the others do not know how and only listen. She describes prewar Dorohoi as a Jewish town with some twenty-odd synagogues, a mikveh and a poultry slaughterhouse. Jews outnumbered non-Jews, and many non-Jews spoke some Yiddish.

Lipovici tells how an elderly Jewish couple, neighbours, were killed by a robber. He tells of trouble with a local official over selling sheep, and of the power of the dead. Kerler asks whether he has seen miracles of the dead; he says he felt them. Romanian is mixed in.

Isidor talks about the present Jewish community of Dorohoi and his work as its head: a cantor brought in, a Torah scroll bought, a club set up for cards and coffee, and difficulties with some congregants. Asked by Kerler, he says he spoke Romanian with his mother more than Yiddish. He mentions non-Jews in nearby towns who spoke Yiddish from working with Jews, and a few women in Dorohoi who still speak good Yiddish.

In an informal chat Isidor tells at length how he met his non-Jewish wife, a young woman working at a hospital who came to Dorohoi from a village. He describes their meetings, her family, and his teaching her Jewish customs such as keeping milk and meat apart. He also talks about the life of his household, a daughter who now lives in Italy, and his cousins in Israel. Kerler and a second man join in.

Hirsch talks about his family: his religious but modern father studied at a yeshiva in Oradea. Hirsch says he worked as a translator and speaks German, Romanian and Hungarian, and learned French at the lyceum. He explains that his wife's mother tongue is Romanian, with some Hungarian. Much of the passage, partly in Hungarian, is about Hungarian history and language in Transylvania, Cluj and the Hungarian university. It closes with a question about non-Jews in Luduș who spoke Yiddish.

Hirsch answers questions about cultural terminology, such as a golem, the word for a church or synagogue, and the term for havdalah. He names wealthy Jewish landowners and says rich Jews built the synagogue in Luduș. He also mentions the town's four churches and the Jewish community's social life.

Chajim tells of playing in the military band in the army and of Passover with German soldiers and Jews, and of being locked up for several nights. He answers questions about Christian terms and sayings, and about a custom, apparently against an evil spirit (?), of placing a stone in water at night. He seems to say he was born in 1906, but this is not clear.

Chajim says that the people around him were mostly Jews but also Christians. He says he can read and speak Yiddish and used to sing Yiddish songs. He reflects on how hard it is to be a Jew, naming Kiddush, the Shema, candle-blessing and Hanukkah. The wedding is hardly addressed. Kerler then asks about life under the Communists.

Finkelshteyn describes his time in Podu Iloaiei (spelled unclearly) until November 1941, when the men were put to work in agriculture and he worked with a Christian carpenter who paid him. Through this carpenter he sent money, hens and food to his mother. In May 1942 he was taken to a labor camp. He says Jews no longer believed the war would end.

Finkelshteyn speaks of his postwar work on the railway as the only Jew among a hundred Christians. He explains his religiosity: he would not do anything not kosher, and he is now eighty-three (?). He mentions how in the train wagons people had cried out to God for rain and water.

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

Ruti recalls the aftermath of the Transnistria years: only two families with children came back to Siret, and she remembers the dead being carried out on a cart. She describes a woman's body in a trench and two dead children. She then tells how a German doctor in Pishchana, when she was six or seven, took a liking to her and wanted to take her to Germany. Her parents hid her, he threatened them, and the Russians arrived before he could act. Davidovich adds details, and Kerler says the whole town knew the story.

Resh answers Lemster's questions about folk healing and customs for the evil eye. He describes older Jewish women who quenched coals and uttered spells over a sick child, natural remedies, compresses, cupping and bloodletting, and says that families usually had one general doctor, with many Jewish doctors and professionals in Chernivtsi.

Shtaigman talks about his wedding in Iași in 1966, held under a chuppah with a marriage contract and a rabbi who left in the early 1970s, after which only a shoykhet remained. Kosher meat now comes through slaughterers from Ukraine, perhaps Kyiv. He and S2 say klezmer music was played at weddings, often by Gypsies who spoke Yiddish, and mention a woman professor and poet from Rădăuți. Kerler then moves to the language questionnaire.

Chirilau tells a comic story about a short poor man, brother of Malka's husband, who was matched with a very tall bride. She says wealthy and poor Jews were about equally numerous. She tells about a madman, a drunk beating his wife, and a poor man who slept on a rag.

Chirilau names the local klezmer musicians, the Nadler brothers, Yoselekazak(?) on accordion and a drummer from Galati, who played in one orchestra at Jewish, Romanian and Ukrainian weddings. She says she will speak better the next day. She then describes the balls held for young Jews and Romanians, and on holidays, with fine clothes.

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 (?).

Chirilau tells how the family of Moshe Itsik returned from Transnistria after the war, hungry, lice-ridden and with nothing; his wife had died there. Her mother washed and fed the children, and the house they found was in use by others and they reclaimed it. Kerler suggests going to the cemetery.

Chirilau answers questions about foods that Jews cooked: fresh fish for memorial days, and Romanian dishes cooked by Jews, such as polenta and stuffed cabbage in several variants. She discusses terms for the stuffed cabbage in Romanian and Yiddish. She also mentions kosher meat, the slaughterhouse and that Romanians raised pigs but earlier Jews did not eat pork.

Chirilau answers questions on whether a rebbe lived in town, saying the nearby Târgu Frumos rebbe was visited by Jews and Romanians alike. She tells how her father travelled to Chernivtsi with a cart, and a quarrel over stolen leather which the rebbe settled by pointing out how the rich man should not strip the poor. She recalls her parents as good people.

Chirilau speaks about gefilte fish with a Sabbath fire-lighter and memorial-day treats, saying it was sweet, made with sugar, onion and pepper. She says Romanians now make it too and that she cooks fish patties herself. Kerler asks about plums and then says farewell, and she invites them back.

Leichtner says people did not sleep in the sukkah because it was too cold, but they ate there and made kiddush. He says there were no songs about the messiah. There were both Hasidic and non-Hasidic Jews, and both Ashkenazic and Sephardic prayer rites were used. There was no Jewish pharmacy or library, and no Christians spoke Yiddish. They discuss the share of Jews among the villagers and where they lived.

Shwartz describes the Jewish community of his village: over two thousand Jews, nine prayer houses including a large Ashkenazi synagogue, a Zionist one and a few craftsmen's houses of study. The Jews were mostly merchants plus craftsmen, with about half Hasidim and half Ashkenazim. Hungarian was the general language, with Yiddish in the prayer houses. He mentions a house of study of the Kaliver rebbe and a young cantor named Yosef Meir. The large synagogue stands now but has no Jews; he cannot recall songs.

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

Freundlich tells of a night when a light was left burning and neighbors were asked in Hungarian to put it out, noting that many people around him spoke Hungarian. Lemster asks whether Yiddish weddings had badkhn-style rhymers and about Purim plays; Freundlich recalls a visiting troupe performing in Yiddish at Purim once, and says there were no klezmer-type performers at weddings.

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

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

Shwartz talks about his work in Oradea after 1966, saying he was the first workman there and received permission to travel to Canada, America and Israel in the 1970s (?). He worked for a priest and later a bishop, and says Jewish customers from America, Israel and elsewhere ordered tombstones. He says he made old stones new and worked in many kinds of stone, including marble and granite, with lettering and decoration, and says he lost count of how many he made, for Jews and Christians alike.

Sings the song about how what was is gone, with Kerler asking about the refrain's wording. She recalls the summer theater in Sighet, the Hungarian and Yiddish actors Strömer and his wife, and an actress who sang there. She sings a song that a Jewish girl needs a Jewish boy, tied to a woman who married a Romanian and later died in Auschwitz. She mentions her friends' fates after the war, including those who went to Israel, and the judge husband of the woman.

Freundlich talks about poor peasant visitors from Maramureş who came to Baia Mare and other towns in Transylvania, and about how Jewish households fed and lodged them over the Sabbath. He describes how the synagogue beadle arranged hospitality for them. He also discusses who spoke Yiddish in the region, including non-Jews, and a Maramureş maid who spoke Yiddish with the children. He mentions that Hungarian replaced Yiddish among his own friends after the yeshiva.

After footage of the synagogue, Grinberg speaks about her recent activities: the city days at Gura Humorului where minorities bring food, and her baking of sugar cookies, then the Jewish periodical and the Romanian readers who buy books from the community. She mentions conferences in Constanța and Suceava, and complains about visiting foreign groups who presented themselves as rabbis.

Grinberg recalls Yiddish lessons at her Romanian school in Fălticeni in the 1950s, taught by a woman teacher for a year or two, using primers in Hebrew letters, which she found strange. She says her parents did not let her speak Yiddish so she would learn Romanian well, and spoke it mainly to keep things from others. The talk also covers Yiddish among non-Jewish neighbors in small towns.

Grinberg recalls playing as a child with Jewish children on her street in Fălticeni, which she calls an almost entirely Jewish town with a single Christian on the street. She describes learning at a Jewish school and at home with a private teacher who taught her to write Yiddish. She talks about her age, her health in recent years, and her only daughter. She also talks with Kerler about whether he will return to Romania.

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.

Lemster and Kerler ask about Jewish weddings in Fălticeni before the war, and Grinberg describes the huppah, who performed it, and the musicians. She and S3 say Christian klezmers played together with Jews. She recalls a violinist named Stainer who also taught children, and the pianist Lazar Offenberg, a pharmacist who played for himself. Lemster begins a question about Yiddish libraries.

Cojocaru says she had a Jewish mother who kept the Sabbath and ran the home. After the mother died, the father remarried, and the stepmother treated the children well. She names the stepmother and says her father attended synagogue morning and evening. She recalls the call to the synagogue in Romanian and tells of a local Jew who married a non-Jew and wished for a Jewish burial. She also mentions the large Jewish cemetery.

Cojocaru answers questions about the terms "mame-loshn" and "a gutr yid". She says there are no good Jews today, and remembers that formerly Jews were friends and visited on Sabbath. She describes an unpleasant encounter with a non-Jewish neighbour. She says she knows of no other rebbe besides the one of Ștefănești.

Marcus describes holiday customs: people went to synagogue, visited and strolled. On Purim children dressed up in costume and went from house to house. He tries to recall a Purim song but can only partly remember it, and Kerler fills in some lines. He says he cannot name longer plays such as a Purim play. Lemster also asks about the present population of Săveni, which is mostly Christian. A second voice interrupts about the television.

Marcus speaks about returning to Săveni from Israel, a difficult process involving housing and citizenship papers, and about his son and other family. Kerler and Lemster ask about secret words that Jews used so non-Jews would not understand, and about a woman of German origin who speaks Yiddish. Towards the end they ask about Jews who converted, and about non-Jews who became Jewish. Several stretches are garbled.

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.

Salamon describes how she lights Sabbath candles today and says only the blessing. She says her mother knew the old prayer and that she herself was not taught, because of the deportation. She explains why Jews left for Israel, recalls her visit there, including Bnei Brak, Jerusalem and Sukkot, and recalls how Sukkot supplies were once sent from Bucharest. Lemster asks about Christians who spoke Yiddish and about Jews who converted.

Prompted by Kerler, Kurtsberg describes prewar Jewish life in Siret. He says Jews were a large share of the population (a figure around thirty-eight percent is given), lived above their shops in the center, and sold to peasants on credit. He contrasts this with Mihăileni, where Jews were an overwhelming majority. He ends with a long humorous story, heard from his father, about cavalry horses quartered at an estate near Mihăileni and an officer whose horse grew horns. Kerler thanks him at the close.

Mehler addresses her childhood schooling. She attended a Romanian school for two years, was then moved to a Jewish school and later a Jewish lyceum held in synagogues, and went to a state school after 1944. She says she lived in a Romanian neighborhood of Iași and describes the Jewish quarter, where Christians also spoke Yiddish. She also mentions a stay in Cernăuți.

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.

Bercovici shows the team her German encyclopedia and a prayer book, and the conversation moves to Romanian. She talks about her friends, Jewish and Catholic, and the synagogue. She says her mother was observant and her father less so, and that Passover was kept at home. Travelling Yiddish theater came from Chernivtsi; she recalls a Purim for children and an Atlas grandmother who died in Mohyliv, and the Stern family from Siret and Poland.

Galambos reads from the prayer book and says the verses recall Auschwitz, where children were thrown into the fire. He contrasts prewar life, when Jews lived peacefully with their neighbors, went to synagogue and cheder and walked freely day and night, with today.

Galambos recalls the camps after liberation, where Polish Jews spoke Polish, Russian and Yiddish while Hungarian Jews mostly did not speak Yiddish. He names places in the area where Yiddish was spoken, mentions that American soldiers came with a Torah, and describes devout Polish Jews. Kerler then asks about the happiest time in his life.

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

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

Weinberger talks about life in Budapest, where he spoke Yiddish mainly with Polish Jews and kept apart from the Hungarian Jews. He tells of the German occupation in March 1944, when the Polish Committee was seized and Poles were persecuted. Under a new name, Yosef Panko, he used false papers as a Subcarpathian Rusyn. He recalls going back to Slovakia, being arrested by the Gestapo with a group but released because of his Russian name, jumping on a train in Levice, and a second border crossing. Kerler asks about words such as advent and about money. He also mentions Polish Jews who had surgery to restore the foreskin.

Weinberger describes the occupational and economic structure of Jewish Stropkov before the war. He mentions shopkeepers, tailors, and the many families who could barely earn a living, with a small rich minority. He then tells of a stigmatised group of families called kitchers (?), said to descend from a Roma man, whom others would not marry, and of how they were killed in the war. Near the end he begins on Simchat Torah memories.

Weinberger describes local Hasidic rebbes and wonder-workers around Stropkov, mostly from Poland, and who visited them. He talks about a baal shem and a dybbuk, and the kitchers, whose lack of marriage prospects he mentions. He tells a story about a child in cheder, and says he read from the Torah at his bar mitzvah. He notes that his family was not very observant.

Chaimovic names his hometown Hanušovce and mentions its yeshiva, whose rabbi had five sons who became rabbis. He says the synagogue was burned on the eve of Yom Kippur in 1938 by Germans or local nationalists. He gives the village population as nine hundred, with about fifty Jewish families, and says a servant spoke Yiddish. He answers Kerler's questions about the town's location, 60 km from Košice, near Prešov and Vranov, and about the border.

Chaimovic talks about his childhood: his family was not rich and not poor, and he went to cheder from age five and to state school from seven. He describes what he learned at home, such as the morning prayer and blessings. He played with non-Jewish children in Slovak, and S2 explains a Slovak word for a ball game.

Chaimovic says he visited Munkács and other Transcarpathian towns after the war, and Kerler asks about a rabbi of Munkács. He speaks about Jewish trades in Prešov, the Maccabi sport club and Zionist youth groups such as Shomrim, Betar, Mizrachi and Agudah. He says he was a member of Mizrachi, where they sang and danced.

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.

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

Kerler asks about Kazakevich's family. Her father died before the war and her mother survived, hidden among Ukrainians who took in the mother and the children; the daughter passed as Ukrainian. She had five siblings, including the eldest, Chaim, and a sister Bronya. A brother who was a football player died at the front and a sister who was a nurse also died. An off-camera relative speaks Russian and supplies much of the family information, including half-siblings now in America and Israel.

Zhovtis tells in a long and hard-to-follow account of the German occupation. He describes the first killings of Jews and communists near Khmilnyk, and the roundup of Jews from the town and surrounding villages, including his mother, siblings and himself. He escaped while his mother was being beaten and was taken in by a non-Jewish villager, who gave him milk, but a local officer turned him in. He also describes forced labor for German and Romanian commanders, repeated escapes, and falling ill. He was taken to Mohyliv-Podilskyi. He names several places, but their spelling is not clear in the transcript.

Berman says his father was a known merchant and a communal activist, his mother a beautiful woman, and that his parents were killed in Rivne. At Kerler's prompting he describes his parents' home as a kind of salon. He recalls a Jewish minister and personal autonomy under Petliura's Ukrainian People's Republic, a doctor he treated who told him of his own part in it, and the pogroms. He says he wrote about the pogroms and recalls his Yiddish being self-taught.

Shor says that only one non-Jew lived near them in Orhei and he spoke Yiddish fairly well. Asked about Hanukkah, he remembers Hanukkah money and playing dreidel. He describes Sabbath at home: his mother baked challah, made a meat soup with noodles, and bought fish and stuffed it.

The Vaismans talk about prewar Berdychiv as a Jewish town, saying there were around 60,000 Jews among 80,000 inhabitants, that Yiddish was spoken openly on the street and that some non-Jews spoke it. They discuss the Yiddish newspaper Shtern (?), Yiddish reading, Sholem Aleichem and a street named for him. Beyle Vaisman mentions letters in Yiddish from her parents in Kharkiv.

Answers questions about the words for a peasant and a peasant woman, a non-Jewish woman, and what Jews meant by saying someone 'speaks gentile'. Then recalls the Passover seder at home, including the closing song Khad gadyo, the four cups, the plagues, stealing the afikomen, and the burrs thrown at people. The questions come from Kerler and Katz.

Talks about Jewish coachmen in prewar Berdychiv, who sometimes drank, and says they spoke Yiddish. The speaker also says that non-Jews spoke Yiddish before the war because there were so many Jews, while the grandchildren today do not know it.

Kerler begins an informal interview with Fania in Yiddish. She is a native of Berdychiv and speaks Yiddish at home. Her father was imprisoned under Stalin, in the 1930s (?), leaving her mother with four children. She says non-Jews, including a friend whose father was also imprisoned, spoke Yiddish before the war, and that Jews did not marry non-Jews. Her husband is an invalid.

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

Skobilitskii describes the German round-up of Jews in 1943 from the synagogue. He recounts his own education and says he completed eight classes in a Yiddish school, one of eight Yiddish schools in prewar Berdychiv. About eighty percent of the inhabitants were Jewish, and Yiddish was spoken in the streets. He recalls a non-Jewish classmate who later spoke Yiddish with him.

A long dialectological word-list: stones, ear, cold, high, late, near, sleep and sick, and the difference between 'honest' and 'religious'. There are discussions of Belaya Tserkov in Yiddish, converts, mixed marriages and Yiddish expressions for 'I ask', 'young' and 'right'. Other items include the midwife, 'to pray', the word for a shop and its wares, potatoes and flowers, and sentence-translation items. Berdychiv usage is compared with Litvak usage, and a Haifa anecdote is mentioned. The passage includes a few Russian prompts.

Furman talks about his childhood and school in Berdychiv. There were many Jewish schools alongside Russian, Ukrainian and Polish ones. About 60,000 Jews lived there, and many were killed at the airfield. He gives his siblings' birth years and says his friends were killed in the army. He studied in a Yiddish school, remembers Tolstoy and Sholem Aleichem, and says non-Jews also spoke Yiddish. He lived near the edge of town.

Furman explains how he came into the army: called up at twenty, then on the front when the war began, after naval service. He says he and his friends spoke Yiddish before the war and not Russian.

Soyfer compares Berdychiv with Zhytomyr. Berdychiv was more Jewish, and Jews could live there although they were restricted in Kyiv and elsewhere. He says that Berdychiv had no pogroms of its own except one by the Poles around 1918–19, and that young Jews fought non-Jews.

Soyfer speaks about his grandmother Rukhl, who spoke Yiddish, Ukrainian, Polish and German but no Russian. In her village, non-Jews could speak Yiddish and ate at Jewish tables, including at Passover, and he recalls a related story from his father. Lemster asks about her sayings and about Christians who spoke Yiddish.

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.

Vainshelboim tells of the first days of the German occupation, an attempt to flee that was abandoned, and the September roundup of the family to a camp. His mother hid him in a baking oven, and he escaped from two policemen and hid in a straw shed. He tells of the family's separation, of being held in a cellar before the shootings, and of an escape naked through fields. A Russian woman helped him, and he was then hidden by an old woman in a village. He recounts his escapes from the Germans, from the police and from his father's group, the killing of his mother, sisters and brother in 1941, and the fate of his aunt and her child in 1942.

Vainshelboim tells of being caught by Ukrainian policemen in a village and of his escape by swimming under a bridge, hiding, and a Ukrainian family feeding him. He then went on to Tereshkivka (?) and Petrivka (?), where he worked for a man tending pigs and horses and lied about his origins. He moved on to the Ruzhyn district, where he worked for about a year until December 1943. He then took a horse to a woman in a village and worked at a mill for six years from 1944.

She names the relatives lost in the war: her mother Sara, her sisters Ester and Zisl (the youngest was four), and her grandmother. She says she will show photographs. Kerler then asks about non-Jews in prewar Berdychiv and Yiddish. Both speakers say Yiddish was widely heard in the streets and that many non-Jews spoke it. They describe a Ukrainian locksmith who spoke good Yiddish, and say that few Jews now remain and Yiddish is spoken between themselves.

Kerler asks about mixed marriages before the war. They answer that educated Jews often married Russians, while more traditional ones had a wedding canopy. The interviewee then reflects on the losses she suffered in the war.

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

Soyfer explains how, before the revolution, Jews were barred from living in many places and from owning land unless they had served long in the tsar's army, or converted. He gives a story of a Jewish family in a village forced out unless it converted, and speaks of the cost of gymnasium for Jews. He says Berdychiv was a place where Jews could live and mentions pogroms, emigration to America and his grandmother's languages. Kerler then asks for his birth year (1930) and he begins to speak of his mother's death.

Asked what he wants remembered about Jewish Berdychiv, Soyfer describes it as a Jewish town of honest people with Jewish trades and small prayer houses on every street, where there was no pogrom because young men defended it. He speaks of Yiddish-speaking neighbours, his grandmother in a village near Zhytomyr and the Germans' killing of Jews. Kerler thanks him and asks about his daughter's Yiddish, which Soyfer explains, and the passage ends with comments on yeshiva students and mixed Jews, and Kerler handing over project information.

Vainshelboim recounts the first days of the German occupation. His mother was taken for forced labor and left him to watch her bread in the oven; Ukrainian policemen came in and he fled. He hid with a Ukrainian man, and later learned his mother and siblings had been killed. He tells of a roundup at the airfield and how he escaped it. He reached Novosilka, where a family took him in, and an encounter with a brigadier, Andrei Shcherbatiuk, led him to an old woman named Korshenyuk in a village whose name is unclear. He stayed with her for about a year. He says four members of that family were recognised by Yad Vashem.

Vainshelboim speaks about the claims made to Yad Vashem and for German pension compensation, and about the year he spent with his rescuers. He recalls working for a peasant as a farmhand and his four years of Jewish school, which let him pass as Ukrainian. He tells how he was caught by Ukrainian policemen, escaped by swimming a river in 1942, and was helped by villagers. He then worked for a peasant named Petrivskii, and tells of the three times he escaped death.

Back at the camp, Shveibish describes how the gate was guarded and how people were beaten or shot if anyone tried to leave. Her father was shot on the first day, when he went for bread. She speaks of the lack of food, water and toilets, of lice and disease, and of Romanian Jews held there. She points out the cellar where the dying and dead were kept, and discusses the river Bug and the Jewish police from Tulchyn. Kerler asks about these points, and Russian and Ukrainian exchanges about the walk to the river and the cemetery run through the passage.

Mikhail tells of his wartime escapes from the police and from a shooting at a pit. His mother hid him in an oven behind baked bread when police came, and his father, a painter, was released. He tells of being held with thousands in a cellar and driven towards the airfield park. He crawled away naked under fire in October and walked to villages. A Ukrainian family hid him for about a year while he begged bread, despite a German reward for turning in Jews, and he escaped pursuers by swimming. He also gives the ages of his parents and siblings and says the elder brother was at the front.

Vainshelboim narrates his escape and wandering in the countryside during the war. He swam a river, was given old clothes and food, hid in an attic and passed himself off as a non-Jew. He stayed with several peasants and farm owners, including one who sympathised with the Germans, worked as a herdsman, and later moved on after the arrival of the Red Army. Kerler asks clarifying questions. The passage ends with him living with relatives after the war and working at a mill.

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.

Snook says some local Christians learned Yiddish and spoke it. She talks about Jews and Christians living side by side. She notes good and bad people in both groups, and that Christian neighbors help her today.

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

Bershadskaya recalls Chernyotka, where few Jews lived and several worked as tinsmiths, tailors and shoemakers serving the villagers. There was no synagogue, so people prayed in a private house, and kosher food and burials involved Bershad'. Kerler asks about the number of Jewish families (about fifteen) and about her friends, Jewish and non-Jewish.

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

Gvinter returns to the Pechera shooting and describes seeing a man named Max from Chernivtsi and his wife, who carried their six-year-old son, being murdered. She says she escaped in 1943 and was taken in and cleaned of blood by a peasant woman whose husband was a commandant. She was passed on by partisans from town to town through Tulchyn and back to Bershad'.

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.

Feldman cannot remember postwar synagogue holidays and answers a greeting exchange that Kerler tests her on. She describes celebrating Passover at home, with chicken soup cooked for her children and grandchildren, with no formal seder. She talks about Hanukkah, including Hanukkah money and latkes made from potatoes. She also mentions a Christian neighbour's grandchild who does not speak Yiddish, and an interruption by a Russian phone call.

Answering Kerler and Lemster, Feldman describes folk healing in Bershad': a woman who cured a child who had fallen asleep by rolling an egg, and the evil eye with spells against it. She tells how a Christian neighbour was advised to wash a child's face. She then answers questions about mourning, including sitting shiva, and the custom of burning the shoes of the deceased and of a dead person's clothes.

The second man opens by explaining that the synagogues were closed before the war and that after the war only a few were allowed. He recalls that a synagogue building stood on a spot in Bershad', and points out the main street, which became Lenin Street. Sklyarskiy then gives his name and patronymic and says he was orphaned young (his mother died when he was three, his father when he was seven) and brought up by an aunt and uncle in the shtetl Zhornysche, where about two thousand Jews lived. He tells how in 1942 the Jews were driven out by police, he was shot at and wounded, and the family hid in a dugout in a field. His sisters and their children were killed when he went out for food; he then joined the partisans and was wounded again. He describes his father as a carpenter, his sisters, and his schooling: a four-year Yiddish school, then a Russian one. He talks about the shtetl before the war, a rabbi, holidays in the synagogue and the postwar murder of a Jewish man. Kerler asks about the length of the hiding and the number of people in the dugout, and asks him to retell the first shooting and the forced labor under the Germans, including burying dead soldiers.

Kerler and Lemster ask Sklyarskiy to sort out who was in the pit: three sisters with their children and Sklyarskiy's brother, with names of the mothers and their children. Sklyarskiy then tells of joining partisans in 1944, a brother's volunteering for the army, and the time in hiding in the forest. He also recalls hiding among trees and in an attic, a non-Jewish man named Vasyl who helped, and how he remembers the date of the shooting.

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.

Sklyarskiy and Kerler finish the formal interview and he speaks of today's life, the market and the neighbours. He recalls a Jewish couple, and a pious man who prayed, and says that few Jews and some non-Jews still speak Yiddish in Bershad'. They discuss the cost of dental care and the polyclinic. He returns to the story of the two hiding places and to the geography of Ivanky and Lipovets. Kerler thanks him and offers blessings.

The guide, speaking Russian and Yiddish, shows the former synagogue and women's section and says it was used as a sports hall in Soviet times. She describes the restoration by a benefactor named Fishl (?), the current neglect of the building, and the Hebrew classes upstairs. She recalls holidays filled with 140–160 people and says it was not comfortable to speak Yiddish in the street. Kerler asks about Moldovans, Bulgarians and Gagauz in town, and the meaning of the town's name is explained.

Loyf discusses postwar Jewish life in Dzegovka: there was Jewish life but few Jews remained, many Jewish women married non-Jews, and the synagogue in Drohobych was repeatedly looted. She says kugel (made of matzo or potatoes) and other dishes such as potato kugel and tsimes were made. Lemster also asks about her mother's cooking and her stay with her sister in Mohyliv-Podilskyy.

Berkovich says he was once in Kyiv in Russia, where he worked as a carpenter for an exhibition. He mentions Jewish and non-Jewish colleagues. Lemster says he lives in Israel and mentions Russian-speaking help at home, a woman from Moldova. Berkovich talks about who pays, partly the Hesed. Kerler and the second man ask about the number of synagogues.

Pustilnik describes the march on foot to the Pechera camp, where those who could not walk were shot. She mentions a small book of Jewish survivors, and Kerler notes that he has recorded people in Tulchyn who were in the camp. She tells how the pregnant mother and small children escaped from a Gentile who had been paid in wheat to take them. The father was in the Red Army, and the passage ends with the mother pregnant in 1942.

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 (?).

She describes the Jewish street near the monastery and a prayer house in the shtetl after the war, and thanks the interviewers for coming. She says she knows no Jewish story but recalls a song, and speaks about living among non-Jews and about killings of Jews at a place near the shtetl.

She says her father the tailor sang while sewing, and Kerler and Lemster ask about the words of the song. She says Yiddish was understood by Ukrainian neighbours and tells how her father went blind and worked in an artel. She has two brothers and a sister, and mentions a husband Pavel and a daughter Adelke, and ends by saying she loves Jews.

Kupershmidt describes a non-Jewish forced labor group of about a hundred men that was released to the districts and warned to avoid Jews. He fled from this group and returned to Bratslav, where he worked in a garage for a German firm, with papers allowing him to move about, and drove a German to Vinnytsia. He used the driving to look for his family in the Bratslav ghetto. One day he found his wife, child and parents gone to the camp at Pechera, and he tried to get them food. He describes false documents and the camp under Romanians, flight to Mohyliv-Podilskyi, and being in its ghetto before his draft into the army.

Kupershmidt talks about prewar Sabbath at home, with his mother's blessing and the cholent kept warm. The conversation turns to Kerler's own background and where he and the others live, and Kupershmidt says Poles also killed Jews and speaks of the ghetto. The passage ends on an apology that is not clearly explained in the transcript.

Kerler asks what she wants future generations to remember; she wants people to help each other and live in peace without war. She recalls what helped during the war (giving away belongings for bread, a woman who gave bread) and her mother's work, and her brothers' later careers.

Kupershmidt relays what a former neighbour told him about the children of a prewar Jewish orphanage in Bratslav. The Germans threw the younger ones, about two hundred (?), into the river, and the neighbour wept when she told it. He adds that he cannot understand how he himself survived the Germans.

Kupershmidt describes being held in a column near Zhytomyr, being stripped, a night alarm and how he hid in an attic. He says Jews were shot and carried off on carts. He then recounts signing up for a work gang, a former acquaintance who knew him, getting passes, and walking to Nemyriv and home. A woman he met there gave a harrowing account of the ghetto, and he mentions a Volksdeutsche family and a policeman.

Lifshitz answers Katz's questions on non-Jews who became Jews or Jews who converted, saying non-Jews were friendly to Jews. He is asked about trades in the shtetl and answers briefly about millers (?).

At the mass-grave site Khavin says the community gathers each year in September to pray, say the memorial prayer and Kaddish, since the Jews were killed in September (1941). Kerler and Katz read the monuments: one erected after the war names only Soviet citizens, and a separate community stone gives a number of Jews, which Khavin puts at about fifteen hundred and Kerler reads as 800. The number is unclear in the transcript. Khavin also jokes about money and pensions.

Khavin tells of Maksim (surname not recalled), who wanted to become a Jew. He studied Torah, kept kosher and prayed with the minyan. The community sent him to learn in Moscow, but he was refused conversion by the rabbi. A neighbour called the militia, and a policeman shot him, about three years ago. The community buried him and put up a gravestone. Khavin says Krichevsky knew him well and that Krichevsky's grandson studies in a yeshiva in Bucharest (?). He then proposes to show the Jewish street and the Great Synagogue.

Burg recalls attending a Romanian state school until age thirteen and the cheder in Vyzhnytsya in the afternoon and evening. He names the melamed Shloyme Hersh and describes his discipline. He then recalls Eliezer Steinberg's children's stories and summer colony, and retells a tale about the Baal Shem Tov meeting a Hutsul leader in the Carpathians. The passage ends with a brief aside about women wearing bracelets.

On a drive through Chernivtsi, the guide points out the former Jewish quarter and where the ghetto began. Kerler and the guide discuss which streets were rich or middle-class, a monument to Bukovinian victims of Jewish murder put up by Ukrainian nationalists, and street names such as Russian Street, Shalom Aleichem Street and Karl Marx Street. Kerler also asks about the non-Jewish population, converts and a Yiddish plural form; much of the talk is in Russian directions to the driver.

Kleiman describes his father as an honest, pious man who prayed daily, and recalls the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, Passover preparations and food such as gefilte fish, and Purim customs. He remembers going with his father to the rebbe on holidays and the rebbes and dayan of Vadrashkov. He also covers the Jewish centre of the town, trades, reading, visiting theatre troupes, political groups, Hebrew learning and weddings with the chuppah by the house and the badkhn.

Gimelbrandt tells how her father lost his parents at four, his sister was taken to America, and he grew up with a tailor, working there so that he could attend cheder. He was taken to the front in 1941 and returned badly injured. She recalls her mother's upbringing in Vyzhnytsya among Hasidim, where Yiddish was the only language she spoke, and her grandfather who sewed uniforms for the Vyzhnytsya rebbe. Her mother used to tell of the rebbe's good deeds. Local non-Jews sought his advice and spoke Yiddish.

Shternberg talks about the war years, when she was held in a camp from July until March at Kopaihorod (the name is garbled). She sings two songs in Russian that she composed there, and describes hunger, her mother bartering for bread and potatoes, and local non-Jews warning of gendarmes. She also sings a Yiddish song she heard in the camp, and speaks about praying in the camp and Yiddish among younger people today.

Shternberg says her father was a merchant who took partners and traded goods. She recalls her mother visiting a rabbi to ask for blessings and describes the Sabbath at home: blessing the candles, two loaves, charity money, a non-Jewish woman who heated the stove and the cholent kept warm. She sings a Friday-night song. The talk turns to taking a piece of dough, the God of Abraham prayer, Yiddish writers, Purim players going from house to house, water carriers, and folk remedies against the evil eye.

Shames says her father remained a miller until he was killed. Her parents went to the synagogue on holidays and took her; as a child she could read Hebrew but now knows nothing. Kerler asks whether non-Jews in Yanoshpol spoke Yiddish, and she says no. She remarks on the synagogue's fate under Soviet rule.

Gammer says Khmil'nyk had about twelve thousand Jews and was a Jewish town. Even the Ukrainians understood Yiddish, though they could not speak it well. She names three prayer houses (the tailors', the shoemakers' and the rich men's synagogue near the sanatorium) and recalls the wealthy Jews. She recalls her father as a poor tailor who sewed for villagers. Lemster then turns to her schooling.

Shames says many Jews left Donets (?) and few remain. Kerler asks about a Jewish mother and daughter who live nearby, and they discuss trying to reach them by phone. She describes a Christian woman who helps her, cooks for her and looks after her, as she has not been outside this year.

Asked about nearby towns, Shames recalls little. She has not met Yiddish-speaking Christians. She says a teacher taught her Yiddish as a child and she went with her mother to synagogue, but she now remembers nothing of Yiddish and has no one to speak with. She mentions four neighbours.

Kerler asks about the Christian woman from whom she rented a room in evacuation. Shames says she was good to her, and the woman rejoiced when she learned her mother had survived. She then returned, took up work and buried her husband.

Shames speaks about Jewish life in Khmil'nyk after the war: she and her mother worked and prayed there, a synagogue existed for a time and was later closed, and she cannot say when. Today there is no synagogue and she says few Jews remain. Kerler asks about a shoykhet, Yom Kippur fasting, whether she receives matzo or help from outside, her TV viewing and Israel, which she has never thought of visiting. She speaks of a Christian helper and her family.

Srulova describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles, and that her daughters do so today. Katz asks about prewar Jewish culture in Zvil: visiting Yiddish theatre troupes, Yiddish and Soviet newspapers, a Yiddish library and school. She recalls the rabbi who stayed through the war, the Jewish street, and weddings with a canopy, breaking of a glass and a fiddle.

Kerler asks about Shekhovich's schooling: a Polish primary school of seven classes, then a Polish gymnasium. She answers partly in Ukrainian. They discuss a Yiddish saying about who sits at the table and about money not buying happiness. Kerler then asks about her survival in hiding. She says her husband and his Ukrainian family hid her at risk to themselves, and that her own parents did not know.

Shekhovich says she was the only one of her whole family to survive the war, thanks to her husband, who risked his life to hide her. She says she can say little about her brothers' fate. She talks about reading Yiddish, Jewish newspapers and the need for money for school, and recalls her grandmother reading a tkhine and her mother's use of Yiddish. She says her husband knew Yiddish better than she does.

Shekhovich and her companions, mostly in Polish, talk about growing up in a Polish-language environment. She went to a Polish school and kindergarten, spoke Polish in the street, and understands Polish better than Yiddish. The Polish language is dear to her, and she says that Yiddish was little spoken with children at home. Asked for Polish or Yiddish songs, poems or the Polish anthem, she cannot recall them, and says she lived through terrible things in the war.

Schreier tells what happened after he was found on the road. He was taken to a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, where he slept well, and then to a town camp filled with displaced persons. He went on with the Italians toward Roßwein, where a German woman gave him bread, and then to Freiberg in Saxony, where he stayed in a former camp for a few days. He was liberated there by the Soviets around 7–8 May 1945. A French and a German doctor tried to help him. Afterwards he looked for work at the department store opened for Soviet officers.

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.

Khasidovich talks about Jewish holidays before the war, about the former Jewish street in Fastiv (Kyivska Street) and about how she is now the only Jew in her building. She answers questions about whether non-Jews spoke Yiddish and about her mother's cooking, including gefilte fish, how it was made and what fish were used, and also a dish of meat with vinegar. Kerler asks about Purim: she names the Purim pastries and says she has forgotten the Purim songs and does not know the word purim-shpil. She and the interviewers then talk about how life was before and how young people behaved, and Kerler asks about visiting Yiddish theater.

Khasidovich talks about the war years in Fastiv: she stayed in town with her small children and hid with them in a cellar, saying survival was a matter of fate. She mentions the killing site (garbled in the transcript, possibly Babi Yar in Kyiv), says she has no friends left from before and that her children are her only family, and describes working in the bakery at night to feed them. She says that non-Jews also helped her and that she helped others. Lemster closes by asking about Jews who visited the bakery.

Answering Kerler's questions about songs, Kopyt sings fragments of Yiddish songs she recalls from a non-Jewish shoemaker neighbour who worked with Jews, and a toast at a wedding. She sings the tailor song again in full, adding one on Sholem Aleichem. Kerler notes how to pronounce Yiddish words in the Ashkenazic way. Lemster then asks about gravestones, and she says she has photographs showing the Babi Yar-type memorials (a mass grave of Jews and one for kolkhoz peasants).