Liberation and return

Rezmovits recalls the family's time in Klausen-Leopoldsdorf in Austria near the end of the war, where they posed as Hungarian refugees. They hid a young Jewish man whose looks might betray him, and heard that twenty Jews had been killed nearby. As the Red Army approached, he describes an Italian soldier and a cellar scene, in which German soldiers threw grenades into houses before entering.

Doman says he was in a labor camp. After liberation he began university studies in parallel with the rabbinical seminary. He says the observant Jews who spoke Yiddish in Budapest had mostly left for America, Israel and Australia. Kerler asks for a story about the old yeshivas, and Doman says he has too many to choose from.

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 arriving in Budapest after the war, feeling ill and looking for a doctor. He was sent to a sanatorium in Debrecen, sleeping in a cellar room with eight men, then to one in Mátra, and finally to a Jewish hospital in Budapest. He says he arrived there with a tallis and tefillin to pray.

Herbst and Kerler discuss a Yiddish song about a burning town, and Herbst tries to show a picture. Herbst then speaks about the postwar years, saying he spent five years in hospital after the war. He thanks the American Jews and the JDC for paying for his upkeep, including a monthly allowance and daily meals.

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

Reti speaks about the war: the 1944 deportation from Rohod and forced labor on the front. He describes his arrival in Auschwitz and the burning of people, then Mauthausen and Melk, from which he was taken on a two-week march of about two hundred kilometres to Ebensee, naked and hungry. He then tells of his brothers, held in Auschwitz and working in a household of Mengele (?), and one at the stables.

Reti recalls returning to Debrecen after the war, where his oldest brother took care of him. He worked in business for the government under a good non-Jewish supervisor who let Jewish workers keep the Sabbath. He goes to the cemetery on the anniversary of his father's death, who died suddenly in 1939 while Reti was at the yeshiva, and mentions that he was the youngest of his brothers.

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

Gurshteyn says there were six Jews in his family home, and that he alone returned after the war. He then worked in Shamshon. Asked when he married, he gives the forties (1940?). Kerler asks about a Purim play, and Gurshteyn says he knows one in Hungarian.

Galambos recites the words of 'Papirene kinder'. Kerler remarks that the film in which it appears came out after the war. Galambos says 41 people came back to Vaja and that he says Kaddish for his brothers, and Kerler asks about his brother's widow.

Kerler asks whether Galambos could continue his studies after the war. He answers by describing what he saw of the Jewish catastrophe, and bitterly says the wealthy American Jews did not come to help the survivors. He says he has no relatives in Israel but his brother's son lives in New York and calls occasionally. Kerler then turns to questions about the evil eye.

Altman speaks about finding her sister and about her husband's reaction after the war. She had lost an eye, and he stayed devoted to her. She describes their good, modest married life. She also says she lacked only a year to reach one hundred and answers Kerler's questions about the evil eye and the folk remedy of quenching coals.

Bukshpun says that after the war they worked in the village; his father had fought at the front. He names Jewish presence before the war in Kurzhevits (?) and Belyavintsy (?) and says Jews and Christians lived without problems. His father's shop sold goods on barter, and he says his father had no time for stories. He remembers the uncle's house in Briceni with its minyan and the elderly man Moshe who led prayers. He recalls the father's tallisim, the synagogue's candelabra and the Torah reading; he does not remember dancing on Simchat Torah.

Boltykh continues with his mother's return to Briceni, where her house was gone and neighbors would give back nothing. She married his father, who had come back from the war without a leg; his father died in the 1990s (?) and she then lived with Boltykh. Kerler asks for names and dates: his mother Zhenia (Sheyndl) née Shuster, born 1911, his father Avrom (Yankl), his own name Itsik, and that he has no siblings.

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.

Tkach names Jewish dishes she makes, such as gefilte fish and kugel, learned from her mother. She describes hunger and hardship in Chișinău after the war until about 1950, queuing at night for bread. The family found their house destroyed and lived in a shed; she was given a flat only in 1970. Her father played classical music, and she does not remember Jewish music at home.

Lipovetskiy describes the seven-class talmud torah, which was closed when the Soviets arrived. He explains that the synagogue where they sit was a shared glaziers' and bookbinders' prayer house. Jews returning after the war collected money and restored it, and he says it is now the only synagogue. He mentions the emigration of many Jews to America and Israel and speaks bitterly about the killers of Jews.

Sherman tells of his return after the war: his mother and sisters lived in Chernivtsi, where he took bookkeeping courses and worked as an accountant. He married and moved to Chișinău, where he became chief accountant and later an engineer. He also describes his further schooling: courses and a technical college in Moscow, and then an institute.

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.

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

Dajch tries to recall a bridal song sung while the bride was seated at the wedding, but cannot. She then lists where she lived: Iași before the war, then evacuation in the Caucasus and Uzbekistan. She says there was no Jewish life in evacuation, worked as a bookkeeper on a kolkhoz, and gives 1942–1945 as the period, returning to Nisporeni in 1945. She mentions the cities she visited after the war.

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

Yaruskaya says she stayed in Krasnovodsk after the war, working in a factory. Her parents returned to Chișinău first and were given an apartment, while she stayed there, had a child and waited long for permission to leave. She travelled by ship across the frozen sea. The year of her own return is unclear in the transcript; she seems to say 1949.

Shmid says the postwar years were hard after the evacuation, with no house on return, and she cannot recall much about the prewar years. She describes her wedding after the war (?): the chuppah, friends, dancing, kugel and fish, and breaking a plate at the engagement. She speaks of her devout parents, who took the family to the city for the High Holidays, and again of the cantor in the mill, where a room was made into a prayer space. Lemster asks about wedding dances and customs.

Gordin says his mother died in 1947, in the hunger years, after the family returned to Moldova. He tells of finishing school, failing to enter an institute in Leningrad, serving in the army, and studying chemistry in Vladivostok. He then returned to Chișinău and worked a year in a village before taking factory work. Kerler asks what he studied. The year he finished school is unclear in the transcript.

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

Returning to the war, Sharhorodskij describes working at the Ulmu carpentry shop with a Christian wheelwright who was kind to him and brought him food. After a month he went back to Rîbniţa, where Jews were confined to the ghetto under the Romanians, for two years and eight months. He tells of forced labor, and of standing three times to be shot, and describes Kalmyks, who came shortly before liberation and were worse than the Germans. Asked about singing in the ghetto, he says there was little, with an occasional Jewish melody, and Kerler asks about a melody of the Rîbniţa rebbe.

Mirenburg answers questions on the meanings of 'dibbuk' and 'golem', then at Kerler's request tells of the war. Following the German and Romanian entry into Sguritzy on 22 June 1941 (as she gives it), she describes relatives arriving, soldiers shooting into the house and her family fleeing, her search with an old woman for her family among dead townspeople, and being reunited with her parents. She recounts the forced march to the Rubleniţa woods, then the Cosăuţi woods, with little food from villagers and men taken for labor; then Yampil, where a German soldier brought food. After returning home they were crowded into a Soroca synagogue, held at Vertiujeni for two months, and told they would go to Rîbniţa but were returned.

She speaks about her relatives: her grandmother Itte, her maternal grandmother (name unclear, perhaps Freyde) who died in a camp, and her father and brother who were taken to the front. She recounts how, after the war, a neighbor's soldier son helped trace the family. She describes her letter-writing to find her brother Shlomo and his address in Russia, and the answers she received, including from an official source. The interviewer asks her age at the start of the war.

Klichinskaia recalls that her father died in evacuation and her mother and sister returned, while she stayed in the army hospital. She was trained as a tailor, and served as a nurse in Prague, where patients came from concentration camps, including those with tuberculosis. Much is in Russian. She says she returned to Bender in 1948 (?), and recalls escorting a transport of patients.

Butorski tells of his life after the war. His schooling was interrupted, he worked briefly at a hairdresser's workshop and then learned cutting in a shoe factory in 1946. After army service in the early 1950s he returned to the factory and later worked in a repair-technical workshop until retirement. He went to Israel in 1995 with his wife and lived there nine years. His wife died there after operations, and he returned to Moldova. He has three sons, two in Israel and one in Canada, and he visited Canada.

Brief says that after the war Jews who came from the camp had to leave Romania, and that in 1945 one could still go. He says he has a good memory. Kerler asks when his father was born and then turns to his Chernivtsi childhood.

Brief says he has lived in Botoșani for eight years (since 1998). He came to Suceava in 1945 from Transnistria, as Lemster confirms.

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

Hershkovich speaks about postwar Jewish life, noting that many did not return and that Jews left after the communists came. He mentions prewar Zionist organisations such as Mizrachi and Hashomer Hatzair. He says he lived in Israel in the late 1980s, where his daughter works as a doctor, and why he came back, citing the heat; he also mentions relatives in America, and Kerler then asks about weddings in Dej.

Kraus describes the postwar years: most young people left for kibbutz or Israel, he spent a year in a kibbutz, and he stayed in Romania. His sister lives in Israel. He married in 1955 and has two daughters, an engineer and a doctor. He says his wife speaks Yiddish only weakly. He then discusses what is Yiddish and what is German, calling Yiddish a jargon, and Hebrew.

Hershkovich describes Jewish life after the war: a few years of communal life, then Jews leaving as the communists took over business, and almost no Jews left in Cluj. He tells of his own difficulties in recent years and of requests for help to the community. He moved to Cluj in 1969 (?) and worked in the tax service, and he describes synagogues, weddings, a wedding rhymer, and Jewish and non-Jewish musicians.

Miller tells how Rabbi Halberstam of Cluj, deported to Auschwitz, was freed by the Americans and, in his account, flown to America by Eisenhower. He tells of Halberstam's later life, including his money going to Netanya to build a yeshiva, synagogue and hospital. He then describes how in 1985 or 1986 (as heard) workers in Cluj found boxes of ritual objects and papers from his house on Dezsma street, and the dispute over them between Cluj, Bucharest and Netanya.

Hirsch speaks of being held in various camps in Romania from 1941 until the Soviet army liberated the area in 1944. He says his parents and sister left for Israel in 1960. He had a brother who was imprisoned as a political prisoner and died in August 1944, apparently of lung problems. He then begins to give his own name and the family name Hirsch.

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

Hirsch describes postwar religious life under communism: party members checked the services, and about ten percent of the Jews who were Communists attended on the High Holidays. He says the Great Synagogue was used for prayer until about 1990, and mentions that some Jewish men died every month. Kerler then asks what brought him to Dej after the war and whether Jews returned to Luduș. Hirsch answers that the work brought him, and that few came back to Luduș.

Hirsch talks about the decline of the Jewish population in Luduș after the war, from several hundred Jews to a couple of hundred around 1960 (?). He says his cousins had left for Israel by 1948, and Kerler asks where he lived in between. The passage ends with Kerler asking about a memory remedy before thanking him for his help.

Finkelshteyn speaks about his father's brother in America, who before the war sent money to the family, especially for holidays and for Passover. After the war the uncle sent parcels through the Red Cross and the Joint. He describes arriving home from the camp emaciated and in rags and being infested with lice. He says the Joint now supports the Jewish community and pensioners.

Davidovich says he returned from Transnistria at age 13 and was placed in the first class, knowing no Romanian but having learned Russian there. He knew some German from his mother, who was born in Siret and went to school in Austria-Hungary. Kerler asks about her name and work: Dvoyre (?) Shekhter, a housewife. Ruti confirms, and Kerler remarks that the twin siblings were together and spoke Yiddish.

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 says he was in Transnistria (near Mohyliv) during the war and then was drafted into the Soviet army; after demobilization in 1946 he returned home to Chernivtsi and the family left for Romania. He worked in the Iași meat industry as director for thirty-nine years (?). He speaks about Jewish Iași, its large prewar Jewish population and the 1941 pogrom, emigration to Israel after 1947, and his oldest sister's attempt to reach Palestine in 1948 when the British stopped her ship and she swam for hours.

Macarie says she cooks Romanian, Hungarian and Jewish food today, buying kosher meat. After the camp she returned home and married; her second husband has died. Her son is a school director with a good wife, and a daughter married a Jew from Johannesburg (?). She had no children with the second husband. Lemster asks about her first Jewish wedding.

Freundlich tells of becoming a Communist and being imprisoned. He then describes the end of the war: Horthy's proclamation, escaping with a friend, walking home through the mountains, and meeting a man who warned them the Germans were near. He and others were gathered by the Russians as prisoners and taken by train through Baia Mare. Kerler asks whether he hid in the mountains.

Freundlich continues his wartime story: a group of 47 men held by Russian soldiers, including Jews from the Carpathians who spoke Yiddish and Russian, and an officer who was Jewish. He calls his escape a miracle. Kerler asks about Purim plays and theater, and Freundlich recalls a Yiddish touring actor in Maramureș. He says there were few Hasidim in Baia Mare. He speaks of newcomers and rebbes, a dispute among rabbis, and a visit to a rebbe in Sighet. A passing question about the meaning of a word appears, but a clear dialectological questionnaire is not evident.

Mezei discusses prewar Sighet, where about half of the population was Jewish and few were rich, and the poor street where she grew up. She describes Sabbath customs in her home, including the cholent taken to the baker, Sabbath foods, and her grandmother's strict kashrut. She then tells of her husband's labor service, his survival in Budapest under a Hungarian name, his work at a stone factory, and his walking home to Sighet in January 1945.

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

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

Vaynman explains that after the war her mother and she were allowed to travel only as far as Vinnytsia and could not go on to Lviv. Her mother, widowed, feared bandits (Banderites) there, so she stayed and found work in a kindergarten and later a factory, then remarried in Bar to a veterinarian. Vaynman gives her mother's maiden name Sandler and her father's family name. She says they came to Bar at the end of 1944, and discusses her Yiddish and its closeness to Polish and Lithuanian Yiddish.

Kerler asks Zhovtis to go through the occupation again and Zhovtis explains the killings in January and the forced labor on the roads and in a town. He describes his work, going to Zhmerynka and Murafa, harsh treatment, the dangers of bridge-building near Mykolaiv, being weak and ill, and being taken to the station and to Mohyliv-Podilskyi. When the Red Army arrived he left on foot for Khmilnyk, found no Jews left, and was then drafted. He served seven years, in the north near Murmansk, as the only Jew among many.

Zhovtis talks about his military service and its end, and about coming back to Litin and Khmelnyk after the war. He tells of marrying in the 1950s and of working in a factory for some thirty years. He also mentions leading a group of families across a border, a bridge over a river and Romanian and German soldiers. He names his children and where they live, including one who is a doctor, and a visitor from America.

Bublitskaia talks about the war years. The Soviets arrived in 1940, and with the German advance her family fled to Siberia, leaving behind relatives who were shot. They worked, got a piece of bread a day, and shared one bucket of potatoes among ten. Her brother married the chief engineer's daughter, and they went to Kyiv in 1943. In 1945 they wrote inviting her to study there, and at the institute she met her husband in 1948.

Furman says he was born in Berdychiv and was drafted in 1939 to the Far East fleet, where he served until 1941. In the war he was sent to the front and fought at Stalingrad, where he lost a leg. He returned to Berdychiv in 1945 and found his parents, brothers and sisters killed. He says he is a war invalid, group II, and the interviewers record his name, David Zelikovich, from his father's name Zelik.

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.

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.

Vainshelboim speaks about Ukrainian and German attitudes toward the Jews, and about neighbors taking Jewish property. He explains that in 1942 he feared his employer would betray him. On neighbors' advice he went to the Rozhysk district, where he worked on a state farm among prisoners for about a year until the Red Army arrived. He recounts the arrival of the Soviet forces at the end of 1943.

Shveibish talks in Yiddish about the Pechera camp and the transports of Jews, especially from Tulchyn, with others from Shpykiv and Mohyliv. She mentions a local policeman and the liberation, when soldiers on horseback came. Kerler learns that about 330 survived. She recalls the forced march and the freezing, overcrowded night, the lack of water and toilets, and the deaths. Her father was killed and her mother died within a month. Near the end the talk turns to Russian as they approach the camp and a memorial plaque.

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.

Burmenko recalls her life after the war: a friend of her husband's, who had been in the army, wanted to marry her, and she married him in 1946 (?) after reluctance. He was Zalmen Mendelevich Dimant, and he died in 1948. Her son was born in 1947 and is now 62. She says she stood by the pit when people were shot, and that her mother and sister were taken.

Hodinger says he was freed from the camp in 1945, after a year in the camp, and served in the Red Army for four and a half years as a driver and builder. He says army work was hard. He mentions a Jewish colonel.

Snook says her son has two daughters who live in Israel. She recalls Passover baking and the fast of Tisha b'Av. She says she married in 1939, before the war. Lemster asks about the return home, and she says the house was found wrecked.

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.

Sklyarskiy goes over his three escapes and his time with the partisans for several months in winter 1943, and a cousin who died. His sister found him and took him to a military hospital, where he stayed until the war ended in Germany. Kerler then returns to the Cossacks between Zhornyshche and Krasnenke and asks about the season and the hardships.

Loyf addresses Jewish life in Boryslav after the war: when she came there were few Jews, since the war had taken many, with around thirteen thousand Jews killed (as she says). Her father married a Jew who returned from the war. The talk drifts to very old Jewish informants Lemster has interviewed.

Kerler recalls what was grown and eaten (wheat, peaches, maize porridge), and Pustilnik then speaks about her mother in the war, in the Pechera camp. A German soldier there helped them with food, and Kerler explains that the Romanians were the camp's masters. She then turns to the family's return after the war to a looted house, with a mother who was ill for years.

Kupershmidt recalls being drafted in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, where he drove a vehicle and served in the army for another year or so. After the war his wife died in 1947 and their son later died as well. He says relatives had papers to leave for America. Another relative went to Israel, a nephew named Naftoli who is known as Talia (?), who phones every week. Kupershmidt says he and his wife stayed alone, receive some support, and are cared for by the people around them.

Khavin recounts the postwar prayer house in Chernihiv, bought by returnees from the army and evacuation with money collected around the town. After a story about the closing of the synagogue under Khrushchev in 1956, when the police threw out the prayer books and the matzah machine, he says the churches were closed soon afterwards. Private minyanim followed, until the last Torah reader died in 1989.

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

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

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

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

Gammer talks about what she heard of Jewish life in the town after the war, speaking of fourteen Jews who stayed on, of whom one remained at the end. Kerler then starts a new dialectological question.

Kapustina talks about her work after the war. She says she did not read Yiddish. She was asked to take a job at a textile factory, using her ten years of school, and says her father was shot, in one of six graves. There was nowhere to live.

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

Shames describes her evacuation, living with a Christian woman who treated her well and working in a factory. She wrote letters to find her mother, who had survived, and then returned to Khmil'nyk, took up work and rented lodging. Kerler also asks about her health, and she says she has not gone out for a long time and is wary of a neighbour.

Shekhovich talks about the occupations of Jews in prewar Sambor, such as shops and trade, and says some lived very well until Hitler came. She says few Jews remained after the war. She did not go back to her house, which her husband avoided, and her daughter has seen it. When asked about Purim customs and songs, she says she remembers little. Her daughter urges her in Ukrainian to recall songs.

Khasidovich answers questions about reading: before the war she read Yiddish prayer books and Yiddish books, she cannot read Yiddish now, and she says she read little because of work and her children. She says she attended the Yiddish school for four classes, and Lemster asks about Peretz Markish. She remembers some Yiddish songs that she sang, then tells how few Jews returned to Fastiv after the war and how she remained a widow and busy with her work and children.

The passage begins with Later's postwar work as director of a large wholesale warehouse and chairman of a cooperative; he mentions a Yiddish journalist. He then tells his life story at Kerler's request: he went into the army in 1940, served at the front, and was twice wounded. He lists his many orders and medals, and mentions the extra pension he receives from the Ukrainian state. He names the places he passed through at the war's end, among them Warsaw, Germany, Vienna and Prague, and says he came on a camp soon after its liberation. He also says he came back to his home town on a short leave and found his mother, brother and other relatives had been killed. A Ukrainian friend of his had told him how this happened. He moved to Kam'yanets'-Podil's'kyy in 1955 and worked there until his eighties. From about 14:00 Kerler turns to a questionnaire on foods and words, and on how Yiddish was spoken in Later's home area. Items asked include gefilte fish and sweet or sour dishes, potato pancakes, words for devil, golem, thanks, please, mouse, house, wife and husband, and numbers. They also cover bodily words, colours and emotions, plurals, 'flowers', 'store', 'attic', 'beam', 'rich man', 'enemy', and the phrase 'to come back'. Later gives local forms and says which ones his own family used.

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

Outside Gelman's house and on the drive to the old town, a speaker (probably Gelman) with Kerler discusses a small prayer house and the old buildings of the Jewish district of Kamianets-Podilskyi, when they were demolished and when the synagogue was closed by the Bolsheviks. At the former Great Synagogue, now a restaurant, they talk about its origin under Turkish rule and its later history, and local Russian speakers describe its fires and restoration, the old town, the prison, the burnt archive and the church. The speaker (apparently Gelman) tells how his family fled in the war, the sister died on the way and the father died in 1943 (?), and he found his mother and a brother on returning in 1946. From about 26 minutes Kaplan, in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, tells Kerler about the Jewish museum, the community room, the old cemetery with its tzadikim and the synagogue's weekly and Passover events, and about Polish volunteers, the monuments to victims of the camps and ghetto (Pechora, Skazyntsi), his army service and communism, and how prayer continued in homes until a synagogue opened in 1948. He discusses prewar Jewish numbers, synagogues, hasidim and shoykhets, relations with the Baptists who took over a synagogue building, the community leadership, and a critical view of Joint, Hesed and Sochnut aid and of emigration.

Kraidman says she came to Khmel'nyts'kyy after the war. When the war started she was in Samarkand, where she had finished ten classes and wanted to go to an institute. As the eldest child she had to work, so she attended accounting courses, and after the war she was assigned to work in Ukraine.

Kaviner says he settled in Khmel'nyts'kyy after the war and the army. He explains that many Jews came there from the shtetlekh, which were emptied, and then emigrated when it became allowed, some fleeing to Bessarabia, Chernivtsi and America. Nobody returned, and only a few remain.

Vaisblai continues from village to village. He is taken in under the name Vasil' Ivanovich by a childless couple, and later by a woman named Maniya, who presents him as her nephew from Poltava. He herds cattle and horses at a kolkhoz, hiding that he is a Jew, and stays until the Germans are driven out in 1945 because the villagers frighten him. Kerler asks about places such as Zavadyntsy and Futori and about local words.

Katz tells of the camps: Buchenwald, Auschwitz, Monowitz and Birkenau. After liberation he was drafted into a labor battalion (construction) under Stalin, and served for about three years, until the end of 1950, building airfields in Abkhazia, around Novy Afon. He describes the mountain terrain, the monastery and the dacha built for Stalin, and the hard conditions and food. Kerler then asks him to tell what happened to him before the camps, and Katz returns to his father's call-up.

Kipnis tells about her father's life after the war. On his return to Kyiv he found his apartment occupied by a Ukrainian writer, broke in, and the occupant left a day or two later. She describes his arrest, his imprisonment in Kyiv, his exile to Karaganda, and the censored letters he was allowed to write. After his release he returned to Kyiv and to the family home, and later he was allowed to live outside the city with his older sister Dina.

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

Rusakovskaia recounts the family's evacuation. They left Chornobyl' and were turned back at Kyiv by the crowds, but her father insisted on going on with the children. In Dnipropetrovsk a friend related to Kaganovich took them on a special train. They worked on a kolkhoz near Stalingrad, left when the planes began shooting, and her father repaired another family's wagon. They were then sent east to a town with a military factory in the Chkalov region (Sol'-Iletsk), where they worked until the war ended. She also says when they came back to Ukraine.

Grayf says that he can still read Yiddish prayers and holiday texts learned in kheyder but remembers little at age eighty and lost his spoken Yiddish in the army. He worked on the railway just before the war and was moved to Voronezh. He was then drafted into the army in 1941 and sent to Khabarovsk, near Birobidzhan, and in 1942 to the Stalingrad front. After light and later heavier wounds near Leningrad he was discharged and worked in a district elsewhere, returning to Kolomyya in 1945.

Grayf says he returned to Kolomyya in the summer of 1945, retrained, and worked in a dental laboratory as an X-ray technician until pension. He then returns to his childhood, saying he attended a Polish school and a Yiddish kheyder, and discusses how the older generation pronounced the word 'kheyder'. He says that the Sabbath was kept only at home, not in the synagogue, that his father prayed there every morning, and that daily minyans no longer exist. He recalls a synagogue or prayer house on nearly every street and a great synagogue, now gone.

Krotsh tells of the start of the war in Moldova, flight past Soroca to Rîbnita and evacuation to the Krasnodar region, where he worked on a kolkhoz. He fled further to the Stavropol region and Azerbaijan, then served in the army at Baku until 1947. A friend from Kolomyya persuaded him to go there; he found the border closed and stayed. He recalls the synagogue still marked with Hebrew lettering in 1949, how it was later converted and repaired, and how few Jews remain in Kolomyya, many in mixed marriages. Kerler and Katz ask about the numbers and about some local Jews.

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

Asked about the Yiddish press in Odesa, Pensatii says he read a Yiddish newspaper published in Moscow, and a German-language paper. In Russian he describes using German as a Soviet officer in postwar Germany, where he hunted war criminals responsible for killing Jews and sat on a military tribunal. He retells an interrogation of a former Gestapo chief from Zaporizhzhia who explained Hitler's rise, and Kerler tries to bring him back to the interview questions.

Brandler answers whether prayer was possible in Peremyshlyany after the war. The synagogue was burned by the Germans, and nobody prayed except a doctor, Fridman, who went to L'viv. He talks about the lack of kosher meat and about a trip to L'viv to bring a Torah for a rabbi in Husakiv. Kerler compares this with the Carpathians, where kosher meat could be had.

Leibel mentions Yiddish and Zionist newspapers before the war. He says his uncle was a tailor and that his parents worked in a shop all day, warming themselves with a pot of coals in winter, supporting the family on very little. He then recalls returning to Rivne after demobilization, finding few Jews left, and mentions a milkman who remained.

Leibel talks about Rivne after the war: the Jewish street was nearly empty, a local milkman traded with peasants, and he felt a longing to return there. He then answers Kerler about his father's prayer habits, recalling carrying the tallis bag beside him as a child. He also mentions the special cap required at his gymnasium.

Shvartzbroit gives a detailed account of the Pechera camp. She tells of being sent out with Ukrainian Jews while Bessarabian Jews bought their way out with money, of the transport in wagons, of the dead and living in the camp and of how she was helped to leave. She then tells of her flight via Sharhorod, Murakhtu (?) and Ozarintsy to Mohyliv, where relatives took her in. Kerler's questions clarify the details.

Briefly recounts what happened after the war. After the partisans she went with her unit to the Carpathians and worked in a hospital for wounded soldiers, and the military commissariat then assigned her to a military hospital. Kerler remarks that his mother also became a nurse. She reflects on how the survivors felt, wild and unlike normal people, and on her age.

Continues with her army service in hospitals in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. She did not know that her sister had been evacuated to Kharkiv, and she found her there. She returned to Luts'k, married, and worked as a nurse for 55 years. She has a son in Luts'k with three children, and a granddaughter in Israel; her husband has died. She moved to Israel to be near family, in Bat Yam, but pined for Luts'k and came back, and she is now unsure whether to help the granddaughter who wants to return. Kerler ends by saying he has language questions to ask in Russian.

She says she came to Luts'k in 1946 after the war. Partisans found them in the forest and she worked in a field hospital as a nurse, and afterwards in a hospital. Lemster and Kerler ask about postwar Luts'k, and she says its Jews were nearly all newcomers from Russia and she was the only local Jew from Volhynia.

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

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

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

Tokar tells of his life after the war: unable to live in Zheludok, he moved to a town near Shchuchyn, where a small Jewish group formed that later emigrated. He married in 1954 a doctor sent to work there, with a civil registration and a dinner party but no huppah. In 1956 they moved to Odesa where her parents lived. He recalls partisan friends who left via Poland to Israel and says emigration was closed to them.

Vainbrand speaks about visiting the rebbe's grave in Valedniki and about his wife's burial, which the transcript places in a town whose name is unclear. After the war he came to live where she lived. He feels he has lived too long and mentions his age. He gives his father's trade as shoemaker and his wife's father's as a rope-maker (?), and answers questions about the Chernobyl rebbe and the Khabne preacher with no recollection.

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

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

Stotland says he taught his son Yiddish so he would not forget Jewish culture. He describes Jewish life in Ovruch after the war: returning evacuees found their houses occupied and lived in hardship, with no housing or work. Jews were then still found everywhere and Jewish children and teachers were numerous. Today almost no Jewish children remain in the district, the old have died, young people left, and only a small number of Jews are left, many of them in mixed marriages.

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

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

Zak says that many Jews returned to Polonne from evacuation but most of their grandchildren later left, so that only a few remain. She recalls that Peretz Markish visited her school in the ninth class at a New Year's tree celebration. He shook everyone's hand and stayed until the early morning. She later heard that he was killed in 1952. Kerler remarks on the Yiddish spoken in the town.

Zak describes the mass grave of Jews killed near Polonne, which lies about four kilometres away. After the return from evacuation, Rozmarin (?) organised volunteers to dig a trench around the site, find remains and put up a stone monument. She says he later died in Israel.

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

Fish tells of Jewish life in Rivne after liberation: few local Jews survived, and the community was made up of returnees and newcomers from small towns. A Jewish cultural organization named for Osher Shvartsman was founded in 1989, rented a room in the tailors' synagogue, and in 1991 registered a religious community and had the building returned. He was its bookkeeper and has been gabbai and cantor since the mid-1990s. He explains that younger leaders of the other Jewish organizations and the Hesed do not attend, and that only three community members are native Rivne Jews.

Fish recalls going with his father to the Jewish bath on Fridays, and the mikveh inside it. He says the city was smaller than Tarnopol (?) and that after the war the Soviets rebuilt it and Christians took over the emptied Jewish houses. He recalls his brother's synagogue and says each trade had its own synagogue, with some forty-four in Rivne.

Kurliandchik recalls returning to Novohrad-Volynskyi after the war, when a few Jews had come back. His sister-in-law and her mother tell him that those who survived must fast on Yom Kippur. He also describes his school class, in which few of the eleven girls and nine boys survived, and says about half the town was Jewish before the war.

Fish gives Rivne's prewar numbers (about 28–30 thousand Jews of 40 thousand) and the latest census (442 self-declared Jews, a few percent Yiddish speakers, most from mixed families). He then narrates the war years: flight on foot to the old Polish border, Korets, Kyiv, Voronezh, Kazakhstan and a Korean kolkhoz. Mobilized in 1942, he fought at Stalingrad, Kursk, Belarus, across the Vistula in Poland and in Berlin, was wounded, and was posted to the Far East; he returned to Rivne in February 1946.

Asked about the Jewish population, the second voice gives a figure of fourteen thousand for Shepetivka. Few Jews survived or returned, in Shepetivka or Yampil'. Kleiner used to travel to Yampil', about seventy kilometres away, and talks about the river.

Bivson says she has forgotten most songs but recalls fragments of a Yiddish song. She answers whether Polonne had a bathhouse and several synagogues. She explains that after the war she left Polonne for Starokostyantyniv because her house was bombed out.

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

Gliazer says he lived in Chortkiv and moved to Ternopil' in the 1960s. He estimates 150 to 200 Jews in Ternopil' and fewer in Chortkiv, and says the synagogue in his hometown stands empty and unharmed. He recalls the wooden synagogue in Chortkiv, torn down by non-Jews for building wood after the war.

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

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

Golfeld speaks again of the Chechelnyk rebbe and of the town after the war, when no Jews remained and houses were wrecked and occupied by Gypsies. He mentions Jews remaining in Bershad' and a friend from there who writes in Yiddish. He tells how Leybish Kishke was killed by the Germans in 1941, which he saw himself, and what happened when the Germans entered Tul'chyn.

Presler says she finished four classes at the Yiddish school before being driven off to a labor camp. She describes the hunger and homelessness afterwards, and how people without regular work were sent to the Donbas between 1946 and 1948. Her sisters worked at a distant factory, and her husband, an orphan whose father died in a camp and mother died, was seized for the Donbas and returned after about three years.

Presler speaks of what she and others expected on coming back from the camp, hoping for mercy and help, and of the hostility they met afterwards. She compares the postwar mistreatment of Jews with what happened before. The details are hard to follow.

Kogan describes marching with the Red Army through Poland. At a Wrocław-area (?) site soldiers died after drinking from a poisoned barrel. He mentions Warsaw destroyed and an attack on Germans by his unit, then Berlin and the Reichstag, where he wrote his family name. He recalls soldiers drowned in a bunker flooded with water in May 1945. Kerler asks about the Yiddish school.

Answering Lemster and Kerler, Kogan says the best time of his life came after he returned from the army. He then declines a drink, saying that his hands shake.

Asked about the best years of his life, Yurkovetskij says they were after he returned from the war, when he reunited with his children, rebuilt his life and worked as a driver. Kerler wishes him long life, and they discuss old photographs and sending a message to Tul'chyn natives in America. Photographs for the exhibition are discussed.

A speaker talks about prewar acquaintances and a Jewish man who acted as a spy among the partisans, with Kerler asking about him. They then talk about the killing of Jews around Vinnytsya and in the region, including the time it took. Kolodenker recites another camp song asking for pity, and the speakers discuss Jews who returned after the war.

Pecherskaia and the team try the dishes she has prepared. She speaks about her son, who lives in a new district of Tul'chyn, and about relatives in Israel and America, including half-sisters whose city she does not know. She describes going to Pechera every year at Rosh Hashanah, where her family lies, and being photographed and interviewed there. She names her family and gives her name, maiden name and birth year; her father Yosif worked as a coachman or carter. She had four siblings, including her brother Hershl, killed in the army at seventeen, and her sisters Shele and Rivele, who died in Pechera. She gives a long account of Pechera: her mother killed with shovels, her sisters' deaths, her escape and recapture, the German camp in Bratslav with its killings in the forest, and hiding in a pit and with a Polish woman until the partisans came. After the war she worked at a brewery in Bratslav and married in 1945. She talks about her husband Shune, her stepfather, her children and grandchildren, and a daughter in Israel. She recalls prewar Bratslav, a field wedding, her grandfather and prayer, Passover, the Bratslav tsadik's grave, and the hunger of 1933. She also talks about Tul'chyn after the war, her fasting, Passover matzo and gefilte fish.

In the restaurant, the formal interview begins with Naybauer's family, whose parents died in Auschwitz. He describes his childhood in a poor family in Mala Dobron (Kis Dobron), where he was born in Natkapash (?). His father, from Dubove, died when Naybauer was ten or eleven, after a failed shipment of cabbage; Naybauer then helped support the family. He talks about his grandfather and uncle, lists the Jewish families of Mala Dobron and describes its stone synagogue, rabbi, shoykhet and mikveh. He also mentions receiving compensation in Budapest and being liberated by the Americans.

Naybauer describes returning home and his mother's remarriage, then goes back to the ghetto under the Hungarian occupation. He hauled munitions for the Germans and prepared a hospital for wounded soldiers. He recalls Auschwitz-Monowitz, the starvation transport to Gleiwitz and then Dora, and the deaths of his brothers, naming David and Mordechai.

Naybauer returns to the woods shooting, saying a bullet hit his left foot. He lay in the woods, then went to a village and town and was taken to a hospital. There he met an American Jewish doctor from Berehove, and describes his liberation at the end of April.

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

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

Chirkova tells how a Roma woman came to her after the war and offered to tell her fortune, and how she tested her by asking for a glass of water and then an egg poured into the glass. The woman predicted things about her husband and a child and said a guide would come to her. Chirkova speaks about her return from the front.

Furer returns to Kryzhopil' after the war, finding his mother and one brother. As a Communist he becomes a shop director and a cooperative chairman. His wife dies, and he later moves to Vinnytsya at about 60 where he works at the railway hospital.

Vaisman recalls being drafted into the army in 1943 and serving until 1946, then returning to Berdychiv. Asked about life before the war, he says it was very hard, with hardly any bread. His mother worked at a factory washing, and Lemster presses him on her job. He names his sister Sonya (Yiddish Sara), who is still alive.

Lebvol talks about the Jewish house in which she lives, which belonged to a single wealthy owner, and the wooden house her own family had before the war. She recalls returning from Stalingrad to find nothing left, the Jews who stayed with her in transit to Poland, and the synagogues of Zhovkva. She also describes Passover customs, the seder, the afikoman, matzo from Zhytomyr and a seder in Rava-Ruska.

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

Sandler says that at home the family spoke Yiddish: parents, grandmother and grandfather, a shoemaker. He began speaking Russian at the Russian school. He describes evacuation to Uzbekistan, to a place near Bukhara, where cholera broke out and his father died. His mother returned with the family to Starokostyantyniv and died at about eighty. He lived there briefly after the war and then moved to Zhytomyr, where he had no one to speak Yiddish with.

After the war Nibulskaia returned to her sister's village. The sister, a teacher, had been saved from the Germans because her Russian husband said she was not Jewish. Her brother-in-law brought her to teach in Pulyny (Chervonoarmiysk), where she met her husband without a matchmaker and they married. They lived in Pulyny until 1977 and had three children; two now live in Zhytomyr and one in Kyiv, and a grandchild is on a kibbutz in Israel.

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