Yiddish literature and press

Rezmovits talks about Zionist youth movements and the songs he learned. A song about the attic and the pioneers is recalled by Kerler and sung in part by Rezmovits, and he also recites a humorous rebbe song. He mentions the Communist Yiddish newspaper Frei Israel, which he read in Israel, and says he felt reborn on arrival, though he found conditions difficult.

Rezmovit continues about his mother's courage and what she told the Germans. He recalls a song of hers on not boasting when one has money, and says other poverty songs of hers exist. He mentions an American Yiddish songbook, in Yiddish transliteration with English text, that he received as a gift from the professor.

Rezmovit recalls childhood games in the courtyard, including a stick game with barrel rings and one named for a ball made of stockings. He says Zionism reached the Jewish community only after the war and that his devout father then wanted to go to the Holy Land. He discusses writing letters to his children in Hungarian, since the daughters could not write Yiddish. He speaks of translating his mother's poem and of Hungarian-language poets, and mentions his wife's death.

Gotlieb speaks about prewar holidays at home, noting that her family was not rich but gave generously to others. She says her mother taught her Hebrew reading, and that she attended two Jewish schools, a Neolog and an Orthodox one, taught in Hungarian and Yiddish. She tries to recall a poem or song from school.

Rezmovits describes being deported in a wagon from Debrecen and what he thought on the journey; he wrote about it in Hungarian. He then criticizes the idea of making a hero of Kasztner. He also recalls meeting Simon Wiesenthal, whose books he admires and who signed them for him.

Rezmovits speaks about a Polish official who, according to him, helped the Polish administration yet saved many Jews, and about his son, who became the first prime minister after communism fell. The talk then turns to Kerler's book of poems, which Rezmovits has begun to read and praises. He mentions that he writes in three languages and was told about Kerler by a woman, Sonya (?).

Deutsch speaks about a man named Shlomo Grosberg(?) who helped him in the war, and whose father wrote for a Jewish newspaper. He then talks about his brother, a good goalkeeper, who has many children and grandchildren and is very pious.

Gotlieb answers questions on prewar cultural and religious life: the library with Hungarian and Yiddish books and the beis medresh. She also answers questions on terms such as 'good place' for cemetery, 'good Jew', and Polish Jews. Kerler explains that the second woman speaks Sátmar Yiddish well and could be a rebbetzin.

Reti says there was no matchmaker in his village and that the Torah was read on Mondays, Thursdays and Sabbath; there were no Jewish newspapers. Before the war he lived in Rohod, in Balkány and in Fehérgyarmat (?), the last two places not clearly heard, and he mentions a rabbi in a small village. Children spoke Hungarian and all attended a Hungarian school, since there was no Jewish school. He describes cheder from age three or four, morning and evening sessions, with primary school during the day.

The group talks about prewar visits to Debrecen to pray, about the mikveh and other synagogues in the town, and about Torah scrolls taken away and later returned. They discuss a fire at one synagogue after the war and a local history book on the Jews of Debrecen, whose author the transcript does not make clear. They also discuss a rabbi, a memorial and a grave in a cemetery. A good deal is in Hungarian, and the speakers are hard to separate.

Faiershtein talks about her aging parents, whom she took in; they died within days of each other. She says she went to synagogue with them and that her grandparents came from Rakovits before her parents settled in Soroca, where she was born. She also mentions her husband's birthplace near Soroca, calls Soroca a Jewish town, and says she writes her poems in Russian and cannot easily render them in Yiddish.

Faiershtein answers questions about a Yiddish word for "ahead" and a sentence using it, and about the order of words in a sentence. She switches to Russian to say she has had several operations, clinical deaths and strokes, which affect her memory. She offers to read Russian poems, including one about her husband, and Katz blesses her.

Lemster explains the aims of the dialect project and asks what 'pure Yiddish' means to her. She says many non-Jews spoke Yiddish and that many Jews lived among Christians. He then asks about words, among them 'meshumed', Lithuanian and Bessarabian Jew, and a 'good place' for a cemetery, 'Jewish field' being the answer she gives. Other topics are the town's trades, Yiddish papers and books, theatre, concerts and cinema, which she says were expensive, klezmer, a wedding with a rabbi, hasidim and a 'good Jew'. She says she knows few of the terms.

Asked about his mother's childhood, Boltykh describes family gatherings at holidays in Novoselytsia. Lemster asks about her reading: she read Yiddish books, among them Sholem Aleichem. They discuss whether a Yiddish writer from Lipcani or Briceni, who left in the 1970s (?), was known, and a booklet of poems.

The Katerbergs say that people spent winter nights with different families, and Tatyana explains that Berlinți and the neighboring village of Bilavintsy (Beleavinți) had Jews who often gathered in the latter. Asked about Yiddish reading, they recall little; their son cannot speak Yiddish.

Kalussky sings a Yiddish song that mentions Simchat Torah, explaining the word rendlekh (gold, brilliants). He answers questions about a Yiddish writer, saying there were none locally. He distinguishes the rebbe who taught Torah from the teacher who taught writing and Yiddish song (the "doyne moyre").

Faiershtein sings a little of a Yiddish love song, then says she knows only Russian songs. She says she was in Obodovka (?) with Abramovich and describes the crowded room, about forty people, and the sister's child's frozen feet. She says she has poems in Russian and one in Moldovan about veterans, printed by Shmuel Kishinevsky, and starts to read.

Roif recalls how his father sent a cart to a neighbouring village on Fridays to bring Shraybman for the Sabbath and helped him. He also describes his father's generosity to poor Jews, prewar poverty among craftsmen such as shoemakers and tailors, a Jewish tavern keeper and the rich Jew Tuve Vinkelshteyn, who with his father helped others.

Roif answers Kerler's questions about prewar books and Jewish life in Duruitoarea, saying there were few religious books and no library before or after the war. He recalls Hasidim visiting the villages and his father's visit to the Ștefănești rebbe when his mother was gravely ill. The family doctor, also from Ștefănești, had given up on her; the rebbe summoned him and asked him questions, and she recovered and lived to ninety. Roif also mentions his father's work for the landowner Burski (?) before his emigration to America.

Kerler asks whether Bukovina Jews spoke differently, and Roif says they spoke a Germanized Yiddish. He mentions Traian Popovici, the mayor of Czernowitz who kept some twenty thousand Jews from being sent to Transnistria. He talks about the Romanian historian Lya Benjamin, whom he met, and her volumes of anti-Jewish decrees, and says fewer were killed in Romania proper.

Shmid answers questions about non-Jews in Onitskan: they did not speak Yiddish, only picked up a little from the children. She mentions a gentile who became Jewish and a Jew who converted for love of a Christian girl, whose name she does not remember. There were no newspapers in the village and no rabbi, only a shochet in another village, and the Jews did not travel to a rebbe.

Shpitalnik speaks about the prewar Yiddish Kultur-Lige: its meetings, members who wanted Yiddish at home, Lipe Altman (brother of the writer Moyshe Altman), the librarian Gitl Shvidkaya (?), and literary evenings. She says Rosenthal was a Zionist while the league leaned left, and reflects on peaceful relations among differing camps. She then describes her work as the only librarian handling Yiddish books today and the few remaining readers.

Shpitalnik speaks about her current work in the Yiddish library, where she is the only Yiddish specialist. She has set up a Yiddish study room and published a booklet on Bessarabian writers, and mentions a new literature museum. The passage ends with arrangements for the next day, her remarks on being helped during her husband's illness, and thanks.

Bengelsdorf talks about his schooling: a Yiddish school from the age of five, a seven-year music school where he studied piano, and four years at a music technical school in Khabarovsk, finishing in 1951 while his mother was in prison. He avoided applying to Sverdlovsk and hid his mother's arrest on the forms, and he began conservatory studies in 1955. His mother was released in January 1956. In 1949 the Yiddish theater and schools in Birobidzhan were closed and Yiddish books were burned.

Abelsky says he is the chief rabbi of Chișinău and Moldova and discusses the weekly Chabad press and the messianic question. He argues at length about the Lubavitcher Rebbe being the 'yakhid ba-dor', quoting the Talmud, and about opponents (mitnagdim) and Chabad figures. He also mentions yeshiva students and a friend from yeshiva days now in Paris.

Abelsky speaks about Jewish life in Moldova today: the uncertain number of Jews, people who do not know they are Jewish, and his students and community, with hundreds of families around him. He mentions the Russian-language newspaper he publishes, his three books and others he is preparing, and a kindergarten and a school with a yeshiva.

Abramovich and the interviewers discuss dates connected with Mendele: a 1927 anniversary of his death, Mendele's uncertain year of birth (1836?), and a family-memory remark about 1936–37. They consider asking a researcher at the Odessa museum. Chat about Mendele's age at death is mixed with side remarks about slippers and a dropped bag.

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 quotes a saying he attributes to the poet Rivkin (?), a former colleague of an acquaintance, and describes how that man's wife visited after he was taken away. Lemster and Kerler ask whether he knows songs by Zelik Bardichever and other poets, and ask about a formula said after mentioning the dead.

Sherman talks about collecting Yiddish songs on records and cassettes from America and Israel, and offers to show his collection. He answers Lemster's questions about Jews who converted, then describes his cheder, with a poor teacher who taught only prayer, and how he taught himself to read Yiddish and read many books. Whether Telenești had a talmud torah is unclear.

In answer to questions Diner describes Fălești as a town with many Jews, two synagogues, a beis-medresh and a kloyz, and many Jewish children in her class. She describes a childhood game of playing mother and father, and says that the gymnasium had much reading. She recites part of a Romanian poem by Coșbuc and says there were libraries, but no Yiddish books in them, though her parents read the Yiddish newspaper Undzer Tsayt.

Abelsky speaks about his past travels as an emissary of the Rebbe, then about the unreliability of historical books, which rest on archive documents. As an example he describes the Chabad rescue of Jewish children conscripted as cantonists in Russia. He mentions Dubnow, Graetz and the Rebbe's writings on historians, a Yiddish-language Chabad memoir series, and the fate of Jewish life under Communism. Kerler introduces the recording in the Chișinău synagogue and Lemster and another voice ask about Dubnow.

Abelsky continues about a dispute in a correspondence with a rabbi abroad over whether the Lubavitcher Rebbe is the Messiah, and about the lack of replies from other rabbis. He explains the Chabad idea of the 'tsadik of the generation' and the Rebbe's role in preserving Judaism in Russia. He also mentions his own writings, a planned website and the republication of a booklet.

Asked about a Yiddish library, Goldman says there was one in another town and mentions relatives there, including his father's sister. He cannot recall what he read, whether Yiddish newspapers came, or Yiddish theatre, though he says there was one Yiddish book at home. Asked about the war years, he mentions two Jews with him, one named Shaykele Bikhman (?), who is now in Israel and unwell. The passage breaks off with Goldman asking to finish.

Goldman recalls subjects at the Yiddish professional school: arithmetic, history, geography and Yiddish language and literature, taught by a teacher whose name is unclear. She mentions Sholem Aleichem and a work on an orphan, which Kerler identifies as Motl Peyse the cantor's son. She says she cannot recall Yiddish poets or school songs.

Dajch speaks about prewar Jewish organisations in Nisporeni: many Zionists and some communists, but no Bundists. She describes Simchat Torah, with men gathering in the synagogue to drink wine and eat nuts and bread, and women sitting separately. She explains that her mother read Yiddish books brought by Jewish students from Iași and nearby Boldureşti (?), that her brother studied in cheder, and discusses amateur theater at the Casa Națională.

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.

Manevich says she did not count the Jews of Tiraspol, which also had Moldovans and others. She recalls going to synagogue on holidays with her mother until about age seven and then stopping when she entered school. She describes the Yiddish school, where reading, writing, arithmetic and literature (Sholem Aleichem, later Peretz and Mendele) were taught in Yiddish, with Russian lessons alongside. At Kerler's request she tries a Pushkin poem in Russian, remembering only a little, and says she has forgotten much of the Yiddish.

Fershtman speaks about the Yiddish theater in Odesa, where his cousin Polina Osievich (?) worked as an actress or singer. He recalls few details of what she performed. He also answers questions about the newspapers he read in Odesa and about his work at the factory.

Shmid says she met her husband Aron, a native of Chișinău, while living at her sister's, and married before the war (?). She attended a vocational school in the city and says she learned Yiddish there but Romanian in the village school. Kerler asks about the languages of instruction (the answers vary), and about her reading Yiddish books and using a library.

Kerler asks about her life in Chișinău before the war, but Shmid remembers little. She says she lived at her sister's, studied at the vocational school, and had Jewish friends from the district. Kerler clarifies that the Orgeyev district (zhudets) is larger than a raion. She talks about reading and the Yiddish theatre and photographs from Israel and America.

At Kerler's request Shmid describes how she makes gefilte fish: cleaning, boning and chopping the fish, adding many onions, eggs and matzo meal, with only a little pepper, salt or sugar. She says sweet fish was the custom at weddings. Lemster asks about stuffed derma, which she never made, and about stories of Hershele Ostropolyer, which she has heard of but hardly read.

Akkerman recounts that her father's brother, who had been wealthy in Brazil, visited the Ștefănești rebbe and died a few weeks after the visit. Kerler asks about the evil eye, a dybbuk and a golem, and she knows only the golem. She answers questions about prewar clubs and the Jewish library, and talks about the postwar years, her hard work and her sons' education.

Mundrian answers Lemster's questions about her mother's stories of Zionist pioneers (chalutzim) and her grandmother's friends who left. She mentions relatives who went to Argentina, and a relative now in Israel. She tells of her own wedding and a Jewish marriage contract and chuppah done discreetly in the Soviet period. She says her mother loved Sholem Aleichem and that Jewish books were lost in the evacuation. Lemster asks about Jewish weddings in Susleny, where the songs were mostly Russian.

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

Sharhorodskij recalls Yiddish theater troupes coming to Rîbniţa from Odessa and Kyiv before the war, performing in a garden hall where tickets were hard to get. He was too young to attend, but his parents went. He mentions Sholem Aleichem and Mendele as sources of plays, and singers visiting. Asked about the postwar period, he mentions Epelbaum and the director of the Moscow Yiddish theater, Mikhoels, and a communal event. He then answers questions about Lithuanian Jews and speaks of the Warsaw ghetto survivors.

Kotliar recalls non-Jewish neighbors who spoke Yiddish and Moldovan, and a Christian woman who converted to Judaism after marrying a Jew and kept the Jewish festivals. Lemster clarifies the Yiddish word for conversion. She says she does not remember a Jewish library, and says she read Yiddish later.

Kotliar says she read Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish. She talks about an amateur Yiddish theater before the war, which she did not attend because of work and cost. She describes the rebbe going from house to house to gather a minyan and knocking at her door. She also answers questions about regional types such as Litvaks, Bessarabian thieves and Galicians.

Boiarskaia says she attended a Moldovan school in the village, and that Rîbniţa had a Yiddish school that was closed. Her father taught her brothers at home but not her. She recalls Yiddish books in the house and a Yiddish theater in Moscow that her father visited. Before the war, Yiddish artists still came from Chernivtsi to Rîbniţa.

Kerler asks about her life after the war, and Boiarskaia says she worked in a printing house in Rîbniţa as a typesetter. The work was for a Moldovan-language newspaper, and the interviewers confirm the Yiddish word for typesetter.

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

Mirenburg talks about her childhood friends, Jewish children and non-Jewish servants who spoke Yiddish, and mentions a Jewish girl who married a Christian, a rare case. She says there was a library of Yiddish books and recalls children watching the singer Sidi Tal perform Yiddish songs in a neighbor's courtyard; the interviewers ask whether she came from Chernivtsi. Kerler also asks about a fire brigade, which she does not know of.

She talks about the prewar High Holidays and Simchat Torah in Soroca, and recalls a Yiddish theater performance of Tevye the Dairyman in 1940. After the war, a touring troupe including Sidi Tal and Dina Zlatiyaner (?) performed. She comments on a prewar writer's account of arranged marriages and matchmakers. Kerler asks about libraries, and she describes the Yiddish papers and books her father had at home.

Milevskaya recalls her pious grandfather, who prayed constantly with a Torah or prayer book and a black velvet bag embroidered by her grandmother, now with her sister in Israel. She remembers her grandmother baking matzo a month before Passover and making potato latkes, and her mother's subscription to a Yiddish journal from Moscow. She also mentions school antisemitism and the former rabbi Fishl who celebrated all the holidays and has since left for Odesa.

Dunaevskij and Kerler discuss the book Motl Peyse dem khazns, which Dunaevskij read as a child, and a remark on coincidence and planning. Dunaevskij speaks about his maternal grandparents, whom he hardly knew. He says he learned the Modeh Ani prayer in cheder. Kerler then asks how the holidays were kept.

Brief says he left Chernivtsi at twelve. He attended a Romanian primary school, could write Yiddish, played football and collected stamps. He recalls the actress Sidi Tal, his mother's cousin, whom he saw once, and Yiddish theater plays in Chernivtsi including Shalom Aleichem and The Dybbuk. Lemster and Kerler ask about writers and Yiddish films.

Brief speaks about Chernivtsi, with a famous doctor named Sternberg who operated on him. Lemster and Kerler ask about libraries, newspapers and a culture league, and Brief says there was much culture, theater and none of the others. They then return to the Four Questions and a Yiddish riddle.

Brief says his parents spoke Yiddish at home and describes the Yiddish books in the house. His father read a Romanian newspaper all day. Brief discusses rabbis and rebbes and the difference between a rav and a rebbe, mentions a visiting rebbe, and describes a dish made of white flour and potatoes.

Burg speaks about his life today: he is very infirm and cannot read even with glasses, which he wore for many years. His wife Nina goes out and the two are alone, and their daughter lives in Germany. Asked about her family name he gives it as Abalensky (?) and the patronymic as Amidovna (?). Kleiman will read to him the booklet Kerler brought, and he has also received a piece about Moshe Hilman (?). He ends with a prayer not to be left helpless in old age.

Burg speaks about being forgotten after he is gone. He mentions a series about Joseph and says the new generation will not know about Yosef Burg, though his writing is tied to Bukovina and the Carpathians, and mentions an article about him by Mishe Lev. He complains that he can no longer walk or write. Kerler then asks about the word pares for money. Burg knows it from his father and neighbours in Vizhnitsa (?) and thinks it may be Bessarabian but does not know its origin.

Answering Lemster's and Kerler's questions about terminology, Kraus says he knows the word golem, and describes the Yom Kippur custom of shlogn kapores, with a rooster for men and a hen for women. He speaks about Yiddish texts and letters, the term "a gut ort" for a cemetery, and the word for the cemetery used by the community. He says that Romanian and Hungarian are spoken in the community today.

Freundlich answers Kerler's question about a Dybbuk play performed recently in Cluj. Kerler asks the meaning of 'golem' and of 'baal shem', and she answers briefly. She mentions a professor, Abraham Braham (?), who wrote a book on the Holocaust in Hungarian and came to Cluj.

Kraus recites a wedding blessing. They reflect on their age and the Yiddish books in the community library. Kerler then asks the meaning of sayings such as 'zog a gut vort', 'a gut ort', 'a guter yid' and 'a guter bruder'.

Kerler asks about a Jewish family name connected with the Hungarian word for green, and the answers confirm it. The recording then winds down with a stretch of repeated, looping words. Kerler talks about his own booklet and copies of it being sent from an institute, mentioning Vinnytsia and Khmelnytskyi.

Isidor talks about his studies: first the pedagogical institute in Iași, then university in Bucharest by correspondence while already working as a teacher. He recalls Jewish student societies and a cultural house in Iași, and a Jewish scholar's manuscripts of sayings and jokes that were never published. He says a teacher's service lasts thirty-seven years, fourteen of them in a village, and that he also led the Pioneers.

Chajim says his sister is three years younger than he is, nearly blind and living in Botoșani, and that he himself is hard of hearing and half blind but can still walk. He says he still blows the shofar in the synagogue on Yom Kippur. He recites rhymed cheder alphabet lessons and retells a Sholem Aleichem story about the difficulty of being a Jew, including a story about a minyan of nine. Kerler and Lemster ask him to pray.

Answers Lemster's questions on cemetery terms (holy place, field, beis-oylem). Abramovich says he spoke only Yiddish at home and learned Yiddish and Hebrew in a Jewish school, though he could not fully follow Yiddish books. He mentions Jewish libraries with works by Sholem Aleichem and Sholem Asch that were destroyed in the war, and prewar organizations such as Hashomer Hatzair and Gordonia.

Finkelshteyn says his father read and wrote Yiddish, and received Yiddish periodicals from his brother in America, reading them aloud in the courtyard in summer. He describes his father's advice to the children about conduct, drinking and thinking before acting. He adds that he himself was known in Iași as an honest carpenter whom people trusted with the keys to their houses.

The speakers discuss schooling after the war in Botoșani. The school was called a Jewish school but taught in Romanian, and the father taught there. They mention private tutors for Hebrew and Jewish subjects and two hours a week of Yiddish in the Romanian schools. Kerler asks about Yiddish literature and authors they read, and Itsik Manger's recorded Megillah is mentioned. The passage ends with his question about Purim after the war.

Resh speaks about Itsik Shvarts, also known as Andre Kara, a good friend. He remembers him as a Yiddish writer and historian who served in the Russian army. Shvarts broke his leg in a fall in old age, and friends looked after him for over a year before he died. Resh confirms that Shvarts used to pray, and Lemster thanks him at the end.

Shtaigman recalls going as a child to Jewish youth associations (Dror Habonim), where they sang and danced and spoke Yiddish and Romanian. He remembers Sholem Aleichem works (Tevye, Motl) from his Yiddish teacher but no poetry. He studied Yiddish in school until the lyceum, but few Jewish pupils were left, and in the last year 21 of 26 were Jewish. Kerler asks why the Jewish schools closed, and he adds that at the Iași furniture factory most of the staff were Jews.

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.

Shvartz says Yiddish books were not read in Bîrlad, only prayer books, and he does not remember Sholem Aleichem being read there. He then discusses gefilte fish: his mother made it, sweetened with sugar, but he did not like it. He also mentions latkes made from potatoes or matzo meal, vareniki, and his father's drinking of brandy.

Kaizerman talks about his schooling in Iași, a Jewish school where Yiddish, Romanian and mathematics were taught, and says he knew Yiddish and Hebrew well. He recalls reading Sholem Aleichem and Mendele and children's games. He then speaks of his bar mitzvah, tefillin and rabbis who taught him, one of them a professor-rabbi Shafran (?).

Kaizerman answers questions about Jewish life in Iași: occupations (little farming, unlike Vaslui), Zionist organizations including Gordonia, the Maccabi sports club with football and gymnastics, and the Jewish press, with a Romanian-language Jewish paper. He also mentions libraries, Jewish students from Bessarabia at the university, Yiddish films and klezmer music.

Chirilau answers questions about a relative's family today: someone has no car and no children, and a woman called Nechama (?) understands Yiddish. Kerler tells of a phone call with an elderly man in Haifa about his memoir of the town, which Chirilau has read, and which mentions a Purim play.

Leichtner says he wrote letters in Yiddish and received some, but none are preserved, and he has not read Yiddish books or newspapers. He recalls singing nigunim at the Sabbath table with his father and brothers. He says he liked all the tunes and cannot name a particular one.

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.

Salamon talks about her grandparents, Esther and Yankl, and her grandfather's yeshiva study. Yankl was taken to Auschwitz, and he came from a village near Sighet (the name is unclear in the transcript). She describes her father telling the weekly Torah portion at the table and the absence of Yiddish theater and press in Sighet. She says she attended a Romanian school, while girls of the Beis Yaakov school learned in Yiddish. She explains that Hasidic visitors do not enter the Sephardic (?) synagogue, and that her two grandmothers were sisters.

Answering Lemster's questions, Kurtsberg discusses non-Jews who spoke Yiddish and says he has not heard of converts. He names the Zionist organizations in Siret (Yikhud, Maccabi) and the Jewish Democratic Committee through which people registered for emigration to Palestine. He also answers questions about a Yiddish library, newspapers, sports clubs and Yiddish theater performances in Siret.

Mehler describes the Ştefăneşti rebbe as a holy man and miracle worker. She also mentions the Paşcani rebbe and compares them with present-day rebbes. She mentions a more recent rabbi, Rose, and her own work as accountant and secretary of the community, with the keys. The team thanks her and ends the formal interview, discussing how a German journalist's interview of her was published.

Galambos says the Vaja synagogue was ruined, like the Temple. He recalls that after the war a sister and three brothers returned and began businesses. He describes poor Jewish peddlers from other towns selling religious items and books, and says he read Hebrew, Yiddish and a little German but not Hungarian literature. He remarks that the Holocaust cannot be portrayed in theater or books.

Weinberger says no relatives remain, and that he visited Israel in 1969 for about five weeks (?), at a friend's invitation, and met Stropkov landsleit there. He then speaks about the contemporary Jewish community, including a woman from Breznica in Bratislava who knows Yiddish, an ethnographic project in Bratislava, other survivors of Auschwitz from the Stropkov area, and a book on Stropkov published by a woman in Be'er Sheva. He also mentions the Halberstam family and a Košice rabbi with an ohel in Košice.

Weinberger and Kerler discuss the fate of Jews in the region during the war. Kerler's family is mentioned: his parents served in the Red Army and his mother's relatives were murdered. Weinberger recalls the Babi Yar massacre and a book on it by Kuznetsov, which he read in Slovak. He says that after the war the Soviet authorities did not allow the killing of the Jews to be spoken of openly.

Pivnik talks about her time in the Jewish autonomous region of Birobidzhan around 1938–39, where her sister had moved and where Yiddish was spoken; she worked there in a school-related job (unclear). Lemster mentions the poet Lyuba Vasserman. She recalls a prewar concert in Balta by Clara Young, a performer from America, and an acting couple who settled in Balta. Many Jews attended. The conversation turns to Balta's size and to Hershl Polyanker's writings, then to her reading in Russian and Yiddish.

Khotenko describes prewar life as poor. She says she attended the Yiddish school for five classes and that a Russian and a Ukrainian school also existed. She answers Lemster and Kerler's questions about the Yiddish school and classes, her reading, and the Yiddish literature she studied. She recalls her mother singing old songs, though she remembers none of them.

Gorberg answers a few terminology questions: she does not know dybbuk, and gives answers for golem and meshumed. She says that in her home Russian was spoken, so her children know no Yiddish, and that her son in Israel noticed her Yiddish books. She mentions a Yiddish primer given by a teacher, then Lemster and Kerler look at family photographs; she shows her husband, the club and the Yiddish play.

Marmalevskaia says the family was poor when she was nine, her father worked in a tailors' cooperative, and she and her brother attended a Yiddish school in Bila Tserkva for ten years, finishing in 1940. She cannot name the school or the subjects, says she can read but has forgotten how to write Yiddish, and still has Yiddish books. She mentions marrying in 1946 and that her husband's family was killed by the Germans.

Marmalevskaia talks about her husband Marmalevskii, who worked at a factory as a smith, was a lifelong Yiddish speaker, and acted in the Yiddish theater in Bila Tserkva from 1989 until about 2000, playing Tevye the Milkman. She tells of her son in Kyiv, a geophysicist, and her daughter Vera in Petah Tikva, Israel, and grandchildren. Kerler asks about the theater, its director Anatolii Klorfeld (now in America), its repertoire and frequency of performances, and the video cassette she has.

Berman talks about founding the Jewish cultural society in Bila Tserkva around 1989 and his part in the Kyiv republican society. He lists its departments, a school and a library with books sent from Australia, and the clubs and literary evenings, including one devoted to Peretz Markish. He says many of the town's Jews have since left and the society is smaller. He also says he was born in Rivne, which was in Poland before 1939, and attended a Polish gymnasium.

Berman speaks of an editor of a Yiddish journal in Vilnius and shows a photograph of the memorial to murdered Jews in Bila Tserkva. Katz and Berman arrange to send each other videos, and Berman looks for photographs from Rivne. Kerler explains that the team is building a collection of Yiddish materials. The group gets ready for a closing photograph and the camera records the flat.

Berman begins a second interview, in his home, answering Katz's question about his first childhood encounters with Yiddish theater. He recalls seeing the best Yiddish actors in Rivne in the 1930s, among them the Vilna Troupe and actors from Warsaw, in the community's Yiddish folk theater (the gallery) and in a private theater. He describes the crowds around the singer Bentsion (?) Witler and how he heard Mikhoels on Moscow and Kyiv Yiddish radio, which led to his wartime correspondence.

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

The Vaismans briefly discuss the early war, when people believed the Germans would not touch them and many stayed. Beyle Vaisman names her two sisters, Esther and Zisl, and describes her father's observance, Yom Kippur and violin playing at brisn in the courtyard. Kerler asks about Vasily Grossman, a Berdychiv writer; they know the name and say he was Jewish.

Skobilitskii recalls his maternal grandfather's slaughtering knife, apparently used for slaughtering. He then answers questions about the Hanukkah top and what it was called, the word for a fool, colour words such as grey and sallow, and adverbs such as "quickly" and "then", with the second voice commenting. Toward the end he returns to a Yiddish book and to the writers Peretz and Sholem Aleichem.

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.

Breuer says Zhytomyr has several thousand Jews, that he is responsible for the surrounding towns, and that there were eight weddings last year and a yeshiva. He then speaks about his Hasidic descent, with rebbes of Chernobyl and other courts. He explains the differences between Chabad and Polish Hasidim, with a story of two Hasidim and their rebbes. The talk turns to the Messiah, Vilnius, and a Chabad Yiddish newspaper.

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.

Kogan speaks of his brother, his service reaching Berlin, and a manuscript of poems that someone took and may have taken to Israel. Kerler asks about the title and a classmate named Zitser.

Vainshelboim describes four years at a Yiddish school, where Yiddish was the language of instruction, followed by two years in Russian classes after the Yiddish schools were closed in 1939 (?). He names a strict director, Nirman (?), who taught mathematics and physics. He recalls the school hall, where students sang Yiddish songs, recited Sholem Aleichem stories and put on plays such as 'The Gold Diggers'. He also begins to speak of a communal soup kitchen.

Answering Lemster, Vainshelboim recalls childhood games such as hide-and-seek, which Jewish children played together. He says his father went to synagogue on Sabbath because he had to work on weekdays, and that he himself now prays morning and evening. He says he reads Yiddish but not Hebrew, and that life before the war was happy but for the Germans. He adds a few words about his parents' marriage and schooling.

Asked what survived from his grandparents, Vainshelboim recalls small silver spoons and little prayer books. He describes his father at holidays, matzo baked locally at Passover before and after the war, and the seder with the four questions. He mentions Purim pastries and children's Purim play. He says he took no part in these, and he speaks of school prizes and his love of literature.

Asked about well-known Berdychiv Jews, Vainshelboim names doctors, butchers and writers, among them Ilya Ehrenburg's Black Book. He mentions a tsadik buried in the Jewish cemetery near Berdychiv, whom people visit. He then explains his return to belief: during his wife's illness he vowed to go to synagogue, and he describes praying and asking God for her health.

Shor says he attended a Yiddish school for four years before moving to a Ukrainian school, and that he can read and write Yiddish. He recalls a teacher, Khirge (?), and writing wall slogans and posters in Yiddish. Kerler asks about subjects such as grammar and about writing the words for Sabbath and friend; Shor writes or spells them.

Berkovich describes Berehove as a different kind of town with Hasidim, Orthodox Jews and about seven thousand Jews. He belonged to the Zionist Hashomer Hatzair, whose meetings included singing and dancing. Asked about Yiddish, he did not read it but learned a little Hebrew in cheder. He does not recall using a Jewish library.

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

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

Burg speaks about his memory of the weekly Torah portions and his bar mitzvah haftarah, then recounts the Jacob and Rachel passage he was told to review. He calls it poetry, history and Zionism together, and defends cheder education as the source of Yiddish writers. He answers Kerler's questions about cheder and yeshiva in Vyzhnytsya, whether he was called a heretic, and his religious practice today. He describes Sabbath in Vyzhnytsya, including his father's pipe, and compares the town's moderate Hasidim with Hungarian ones, with a remark on Yom Kippur in Chernivtsi.

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.

Kapustina answers questions about her Jewish school, which was later converted to a Russian one. She recalls the teacher Zhuk, a principal, and a wall newspaper. She says that she has forgotten Yiddish and that her relatives did not go to Israel.

Answers questions about Yiddish theater and literature. She does not remember a Jewish theater before the war, and recalls only grammar lessons with a teacher who taught Sholem Aleichem's Tevye, before the school was closed. She read Russian and Ukrainian authors such as Pushkin and Tolstoy.

Shekhovich attended a Polish school for ten years and, besides it, cheder; she remembers little about the rabbi or the lessons. Polish was spoken at home as well as Yiddish, and she took part in a Jewish youth organization with singing and dancing. She says she felt no antisemitism before the war, since she moved among Polish children. She talks about an assimilated Drohobych acquaintance (Shreyer, whom she names) who knows no Yiddish, about Bruno Schulz, and again about the 'Russian Jews' who came in 1939 and were seen as a different people, with Kerler and a second voice asking questions about Poles, Lithuanian and Vilna Jews.

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.

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.

Schreier speaks about being asked to sing for a visiting group and answers Kerler's questions on Yiddish songs and newspapers in prewar Drohobych; he sings only a Yiddish song about a Kraków carpenter. He describes Schulz's murals in the villa of the Gestapo officer Landau, found by chance in a dining room, and shows photographs of them and of the Great Synagogue and other buildings. He talks about plans for a Schulz museum and a book on synagogues, and the wooden churches of the town. Kerler explains that he is a professor of Yiddish at Indiana University.

Asked about early memories of Nadvirna, Shekhter recalls a Jewish town with a river (the Bystritsa), girls and games by the water. He answers Lemster's questions about Yiddish writers (Sholem Aleichem a little, Hersh Polianker not at all) and recalls an amateur Yiddish theater and a club. He briefly says he fears traveling there now because of antisemitism, answers questions on terms (dybbuk, golem) and Purim songs, and recalls a sports club and football. At the end a woman and Lemster discuss in Russian and Yiddish who in town still speaks Yiddish.

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

Kerler puts Russian words and sentences to Bukshtein for translation into Yiddish: greetings, everyday words, adjectives and comparatives, words for house, mouse, window, sour and deaf. He also asks about sickness, piety, dialect words for bridge, brook and potato, and the sense of his answers. Bukshtein sings a short Zionist song and mentions a Yiddish poet's booklet. He says Jews at home would not drink and recalls drinking songs.

Answers Kerler's questions about prewar life in his hometown. Topics: Shavuot greenery and Yom Kippur fasting by Katz and his parents; the Sabbath goy who stoked the stove; Sabbath cholent baked in the bread oven; the word for beans. He then discusses non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, a woman living with a non-Jew, and antisemitism, which varied by period. He names the fire brigade, a Jewish football club, a drama club in Tlumach, Zionist and Bundist groups, and Polish and Yiddish newspapers from Lviv.

The team looks at Burshtein's songbook, and Kerler asks about photocopying it. Burshtein says some songs date from childhood. A young man named Chaim Dovid joins, and there are remarks about a visitor from America. The talk turns to Litvak and Chabad Jews and the Sabbath guardians, then to Yiddish periodicals that still appear and how to obtain them. Geller's turns include jokes about marital matters and a computer in his family's home.

Burshtein sings a Yiddish song expressing hope for a future in Eretz Israel and a song about longing for his home town, which he says he wrote recently. He mentions that he keeps writing songs and that the radio carries little about Israel.

Vertman recalls his cheder education with the teacher Meir-Leib (the name is partly unclear) up to about age eight, studying the prayer book, Chumash and Rashi, then a four-year and a seven-year Yiddish school. He names the subjects, taught in Yiddish, and the writers read (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Markish, Kvitko), and mentions Ukrainian and Russian literature and the school director.

Vertman names the Jewish professions of prewar Izyaslav (tailor, hairdresser, teacher, doctor, typesetter, carter, baker) and says there were no Jews in the fire brigade. He says there was no antireligious agitation in his school, and counts seven synagogues, all wooden, in the old town and the new town, plus the Maidan district. He says the synagogues were broken up around 1930 and Jews prayed at home, and he mentions the Komsomol, a public library and Yiddish books.

Lys speaks of his granddaughter, who studies Hebrew, lights Sabbath candles and visited Israel, and his hope that she will marry a Jewish man. Kerler then asks about prewar holidays. Lys recalls his mother's strict Passover kashrut and Sabbath, and his grandfather, a kohen. He also recalls his father, who read Yiddish and Russian books and Sovetish Heymland, the seder with the four questions in Yiddish, and that he holds a seder himself now.

A woman, named Liudmila Vladimirovna in the Russian lines, recites Russian poems. One is about a former synagogue that became a sports school and about Passover, a rabbi and longing for Israel. Another, called 'hands', is a personal poem, and a Russian tribute to the late community chairman Wertman (?) closes the set. She also recites a humorous Ukrainian verse about a godfather and a river. In between, others discuss booking a hotel in Zhytomyr.

After greetings, Later shows Kerler photographs from his war service, including a German officer's interrogation and the liberation of Vienna. He gives his name and says he was born in Smotrych. He names his parents, grandparents and teachers, and says he directed the Yiddish school there. He describes his schooling: a Soviet Yiddish seven-year school, a Ukrainian ten-year school, and Moscow institute courses. He also describes the kheyder and rabbi, the two synagogues, local non-Jews, and the Yiddish amateur theatre circle he led. He recalls the expulsion of the Poles in 1936 and the 'golden night' when Jews were forced to give up gold. The remainder covers the closing of the big synagogue and his brother's death in the war, followed by holidays, Soviet anti-religious campaigns, red weddings, the Jewish court, performers and klezmer musicians, songs, and the Yiddish literature he studied. The recording breaks off during talk of the Yiddish press and the Kyiv Yiddish theatre.

Kraidman recalls little of her Yiddish school reading beyond the name Itsik Fefer. She says she is old, and the interviewers reply that she is among the youngest people they interview. Asked about singing at school, she says there was none, apart from revolutionary songs sung in Russian. Lemster then asks about her grandparents.

Kaviner asks whether the interviewers are religious; Kerler says not very. Kaviner says his father taught him to keep Jewish tradition, that he prays but is neither a saint nor a fanatic, and that he owns very old prayer books. He says he is old and sick and would devour Yiddish books if he had them, and Lemster and Kerler promise to send some.

After mentioning the town madman Khaim and legends about the Derazhnya rabbi, Kaviner answers Lemster and Kerler about Rebbe Nakhmen of Bratslav, great-grandson of the Besht, buried in Uman, a great theorist and philosopher of Hasidism. His secretary Nosn was also discussed. He says his daughter has a Russian book of Nakhmen's tales, and says he once saw a lamed-vovnik.

Kaviner recites and sings the song "Afn pripetshik" by Mark Varshavski. He and Kerler argue over whether Varshavski performed with Sholem Aleichem and over the folklorization of his songs. Kerler says Varshavski's songs came out in a volume.

Kerler asks whether Vaisblai knows the name Sholem Aleichem and the Sabbath song 'Sholem-aleykhem', and Vaisblai describes himself as a good Jew. He lists his postwar work in trade, directing and cooperatives, totalling 45 years, and says he receives a pension. Kerler thanks him and asks the next person's name.

Snook talks about Jews in Israel and America, saying they are decent and speak Yiddish, and she also mentions less observant Jews. Kerler asks what she makes of a word for such people (the transcript is unclear). She expresses thanks and good wishes to the team and speaks of her own health, her late husband and the hard years after the war. Katz and Kerler ask for another song, and the formal interview ends with talk of Yiddish books and her husband's prayer book.

The team looks through Yiddish and Hebrew prayer books in Snook's apartment. Kerler and Katz examine a women's prayer book and a siddur, and Kerler reads out a prayer. They read the printing details (printed in Lemberg and in Vilna) and an inscription on a book's owner, who was a ritual slaughterer. Kerler then asks about where Jews lived and the Jewish street, which has shops and factories.

In the Khust synagogue Repkin explains its history in Russian: construction began in 1861, much of it is original, the paintings are original, the lions part came from Oleksandrivka, and the wiring was replaced two years before the visit. He recounts the Khust Jewish population in 1940 and its losses in the Holocaust, the ghetto from April 1944 and deportations to Auschwitz, and that Soviet authorities tried to close it for a club in about 1965–66 and a protest by women and children, apparently, saved it. He describes the books found there, with stamps from villages in the region and Yiddish, Hungarian and Slovak printings, and his catalogue of owners for a future museum. He also describes the repair of doors, donors from abroad, the mikveh-side rooms and a slaughtering knife found in the building, and talks about his own career at the shoe factory and the synagogue's upkeep, caretaker and minyan.

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

Smelanskii says Yiddish newspapers came from Kyiv and Moscow, and names classic writers such as Sholem Aleichem and Peretz, while saying no Yiddish writers visited Smila. He notes that young people left for institutes in the big cities before the war. He does not remember songs and says he was not a singer, and describes his work as a machine builder, with thirty-six years at one factory, and then as a dental-clinic mechanic making apparatus.

Shapiro tells how he explained a name and a father's name to the head of an elders' society, and he sent a book of his own. He says the man later became editor of a Jewish newspaper in Ukraine and received an order. Kerler tells him the interviewers are interested in Shapiro himself and ask him to tell his own story.

At the start the team is received in the house. The hosts discuss some books they want to give away and Katz says Kerler can take them, and Shapiro's helper is from Vinnytsya and now lives in Kyiv. Shapiro mentions his work at an institute, a congratulatory address and a gift of money from a former institute director, and the talk ends with the start of an account of his family and his orphaned father.

Katz and Kerler explain who they are and what the AHEYM expedition is. Kerler mentions his father, the Yiddish poet Yosef Kerler. They discuss a Vinnytsya man (Glovman, name uncertain) and plans to meet him, and Kerler outlines the route of the trip (Vinnytsya, Zhytomyr and other towns). They then ask to see the books.

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

The group looks at a Yiddish school certificate belonging to a friend named Roza, who finished a Jewish school in Zhmerynka. Kerler and Katz read the school and director names (the director's name is uncertain), and the discussion touches on Jewish schools in Belarus. They go through a leaf from Semyon's father's postwar Yiddish calendar, with its holidays, and look at the newspaper Eynikeyt. The interviewers ask whether they may take the originals.

Melamed says he has no special knowledge of Yiddish, only a passive childhood knowledge, and that he attended a Russian school. He describes his earlier work as a literary scholar, including books on George Kennan and Korolenko and articles on Jewish themes. He describes finding unknown material in provincial archives, such as the rabbinical school's files, and reconstructing about 70 members of Bialik's family. He also describes his work with Project Judaica and his archival guide to Russia, Ukraine and Belarus.

Kipnis describes her Yiddish schooling in Kyiv: school no. 33 on Kuznechna Street, where Yiddish writers and her father visited, and later school no. 60, which she attended from the sixth to the tenth class. She recalls teachers including the literature teacher and director, the closing of Yiddish institutions and the school's conversion to a Russian one, and visits to the Yiddish theater.

Kipnis recounts attending events marking her father's hundredth birthday in America, where she spoke and a woman recognised her as a childhood playmate from Sloveshne. She then mentions her father's friendship with the Yiddish poet Moyshe (?) Shapira, who died young, and whose son fell in the war.

Torchinsky describes the Yiddish school in Skvire, school number two, and his first teacher, with an excursion by the river on which he played a prank. He mentions the Yiddish wall newspaper, his learning printed lettering, and drawing banners for Soviet holidays. He names the director Fishman, a geography teacher, and a letter episode involving the director's son. He recalls Yiddish literature taught, including Mottl Peyse by Mordkhe(?) and Itsik Fefer, and recites lines of verse. He reads a poem written as a school pioneer, and notes he went to a Ukrainian technical school in the 1930s.

Kerler puts questions on food terms (sour, sweet-sour dishes, tsimes and why it is made, latkes, chopped versus stuffed fish) and on the word 'Galitsianer'. Torchinsky then tells how the Sunday Yiddish school in Kyiv was founded, and shows the camera a newspaper clipping about it. Its president Levitas asked him to teach there, and Torchinsky was hesitant because of his limited schooling and decades without using Yiddish. A friend, the poet Yosl Bukhbinder, encouraged him. He later wrote a reader and poems, some printed in Birobidzhaner Shtern and Sovetish Heymland.

Khandros describes the school library he ran as a splendid cultural centre where young people met and discussed. His father's Yiddish school was famous in the area and was the last Yiddish school in Ukraine, closed in 1945. Until he was eight he knew no Russian, only his mother tongue and the many Yiddish folk songs his father knew.

Khandros sings parts of Yiddish songs his father knew, including one about a hammer and one about ringing bells. He says his father sang at family gatherings until about ninety-three and that he recorded his father's voice from 75 on, offering to let Kerler hear the recordings. He also mentions the school library and the many books his father loved.

Khandros and Kerler turn to the Yiddish school in Ozarintsy and the teachers. Khandros says his father attended courses in Kyiv in 1926 with the Reznik brothers, Lipe and Yoyse, and that the writers Lipe Reznik and others visited in 1934. The school ran from 1922 to 1945 and was the last one left. He recalls his grandmother Sure, his own illness at that time and the first time he saw writers. He also mentions his grandmother Miriam and the loss of Yiddish schools in the Vinnytsia region. He ends by mentioning the Black Book.

Khandros speaks of a non-Jewish Sabbath helper who grew up in the town and spoke good Yiddish. The Jews had helped his family in a famine, yet he was the only villager who took part in the action against the Jews on the first day. He was later imprisoned for ten years. Khandros says he wrote about this in his book and that the man's son told the story in front of the camera when a film was made in the early 1990s. He mentions that he has made more than thirty documentary films, including one on the history of the town.

Khandros shows a photograph of a gravestone about two hundred years old, taken for his film and book. Kerler asks whether a copy of the film can be bought. Khandros talks about the film's reviews, the English version he hopes to obtain, and his friend Borys Zabarko, a Yiddish-speaking man from Sharhorod. He says he has made more than thirty documentary films and has two feature-film projects that the actor Bohdan Stupka liked. Jerzy Hoffman is mentioned.

Khandros tells how he and other Jewish war veterans were bused to Babi Yar when the American president and his wife visited Kyiv in 1991. Afterwards he met in the Jewish library a man who had survived five camps and learned Yiddish in them. He wrote an article about him, and in the mid-1990s took it and his film about his town to Israel, where a Sokhnut official recorded him. Kerler then says it is late and proposes another meeting. Khandros ends with a story of a New York foundation director who did not answer about the film.

Derbaremdiker gives his personal data while Kerler fills in the form. He fled Berdychiv in early July 1941, and the Germans entered the next day and seized documents, among them his birth record in Yiddish and Hebrew. He names himself as Mordkhe, son of Levi Yitskhok, and his mother as Perl. His birthplace was the Kachanivka district of Berdychiv. He also tells what his younger brother in New York recalled of a house where Mendele Moykher Sforim once lived.

Derbaremdiker continues about his teachers: a gravestone of the mathematics teacher Lemberg, which he found in Kyiv, and the director of the fifth school, a Jew from Poland named Yarman who taught Yiddish language and literature. Yarman once read the class Peretz's "Three Gifts". He says he now teaches at a Sunday school, where he recently recited this story from memory to students. He then begins to retell it.

Derbaremdiker explains why he speaks Berdychiv Yiddish yet tried to speak literary Yiddish after reading a lot. He says the Berdychiv dialect differed from Zhytomyr's. He mentions articles on dialects and conferences in Weinberg's collections, his work on a history of the Berdychiv Jewish community, and an article of his on Yiddish after the revolution. He and Kerler also discuss the fate of Yiddish and Hebrew in Soviet times and the Spanish forced converts.

Asked by Kerler which Yiddish writers were studied, Rusakovskaia remembers Sholem Aleichem and Peretz and agrees about Markish but recalls no others. She says Yiddish actors came from Kyiv to perform at the club. Her friends were taught in the Russian school, so after the transfer the children spoke Russian, which was hard at first.

Derbaremdiker describes how he runs the Sunday school. It lasts eight months, and the students read and review grammar. He wanted to translate a Yiddish grammar into Russian but found a published book. He mentions reading material from the Forverts and Paris Yiddish journals, and articles on Warsaw Ghetto and Sobibor commemoration, including a Sutzkever interview. He explains the Yiddish letters used as numerals (the number 36). He ends with his own cheder schooling until age seven.

Derbaremdiker recalls his cheder and the Yiddish school he attended afterwards. He writes memoirs for a journal about Jewish education in the Soviet Union between the wars, and mentions an old teacher whose grave he found in Kyiv. He names other Yiddish teachers and acquaintances in Kyiv, among them a teacher called Shaykin who is ill in hospital, and notes that the Sunday school is almost the only Yiddish teaching in the city. He also talks about his contact with another man who may be from Berdychiv, and his own Berdychiv ties.

Kerler asks about Zionist and political youth groups, and Grayf recalls only some of them, among them the Bund. He remembers there was a Jewish football team. He read Yiddish books and newspapers before the war but remembers little, and does not remember a public library. Asked about Hasidim, he says there were rabbis.

Vider recalls Khelm stories he read, such as the townspeople hiding the moon in a barrel and carrying people to services on their shoulders so as not to spoil the snow. Kerler prompts with questions.

Krotsh recites or sings a fragment of rote translation learned in cheder, a Lag BaOmer rhyme and Hebrew songs from his school. Vider (S2) sings HaTikvah and another Hebrew song, and Krotsh recites a Hebrew poem. They discuss Bialik and other Yiddish and Hebrew writers learned in school, with a poem by Gordon (?) recalled in part.

Krotsh says that non-Jews never converted to Judaism in his town because Jews lived apart from their neighbors, but that many Romanians spoke Yiddish. Jews were the great majority in Stefanesti. He read in Yiddish and Hebrew in school, including Sholem Aleichem and religious books, and went to yeshiva while also working as a tailor from a young age.

Krotsh names the wealthy men of Ştefăneşti and their trades in grain, timber and cloth. He recalls one rich man's fine house, and the Yiddish books and newspapers in his home. He describes his yeshiva study of Talmud and Mishnah, studying with a partner, and his brother, a master tailor who refused to get rich. He also tells about a Romanian thief known by a nickname.

Krotsh describes how Jews inserted Hebrew words in Yiddish so that non-Jews would not understand. He discusses a word for money, and a song about a Iaşi newspaper man that a young man from Iaşi taught him in the army. Kerler and Lemster ask about Mihai Eminescu (?) and the old Moldova. He also mentions that Bialik was known from the school.

Vider tells that his father was a shoykhet who pitied the animals, and that the family had six children. His father also served as cantor in the synagogue on Simchat Torah in Iași. Lemster asks whether he knows of Zelig Barditshever. Vider recalls reading Hershl Ostropoler stories in Romania and describes a tailor neighbor who was a freethinker. Lemster also asks about a Romanian song on the tallis.

Belous gives his birth year (1962) and says he is not Jewish. He explains why he began studying Yiddish in 1981 and learned it from a journal and from older Jews. He talks about Yiddish schools before the war, which his father-in-law (Reichman) attended for two grades. He recalls the last two Jews in Polesskoye, mentions his subscription to Sovetish Heymland, and says he taught Yiddish at the yeshiva.

Kerler asks whether Belous learned from the lessons of Shapiro and Sandler. They talk about Soviet Yiddish learning materials and how well they worked.

Skop describes his eight classes at the Yiddish school and the writers taught there, among them Sholem Aleichem, Itsik Fefer, Abraham Goldenberg and David Bergelson. He recalls Sholem Aleichem plays staged in the local Yiddish theater. The school was closed in 1937 and he moved to a Russian school, finishing ten classes with no Yiddish or Hebrew taught. He says antisemitism began to show then, and that the war began when he was fifteen or sixteen.

A man named Groysman, from Tarashcha, is introduced and speaks some Yiddish about his move to Korsun' in the 1950s (?) and later departure. The rest is a tour of the museum of the association of Jewish shtetls. A Russian-speaking guide explains exhibits: old family photographs, famous natives such as the Tverskys of the Chernobyl dynasty, writers including Ivan Kulyk, Shimen Dobin and Itsik Fefer, descendants of Mendel Beilis, and the 1919 Jewish self-defense unit of Korsun' with a saber from Kotovsky's cavalry. Other exhibits are pogrom committee papers, a 1926 Berdychiv prayer book, Yiddish-Russian documents from Jewish village soviets, a Jewish school open from 1924 to 1938, family silver, a gefilte fish mold, a clockmaker's tools, a mezuzah and handwritten calendars. The guide also describes how the museum was assembled with American help after the association was founded in 1993. Kerler asks about scanning and clock terminology, and at the end the guide shows books by Poroshenko and Malka Pen.

Continuation of the museum visit. The guides show books, newspapers and a songbook from a festival at which songs were sung in Yiddish, and mention a play about Janusz Korczak. They describe the activities of the regional association of Jewish shtetls: outreach to small towns and villages, finding people of Jewish descent, Holocaust lessons in schools, Jewish participation in the Red Army, a regional Sunday school, a family camp, festivals, community programs and charity. They add that the Jewish population is aging and shrinking, with some emigrating to Germany, and that the programs depend on volunteers and have funding problems.

Asked about his childhood, Ocheretianyi recalls that the synagogue was closed before the war, and that after the war prayer was held in a house bought for the purpose. He describes his father, who was observant: he did not work on the Sabbath, wore a tallit and prayed, kept the holidays and had prayer books, which he later passed on to a friend. Ocheretianyi cannot read Yiddish, though his brothers could.

Kislinskaia says she was not taught prayers and that in the 1920s–30s the Yiddish school taught Yiddish and Soviet subjects, with no Jewish history. As a child she wrote letters in Yiddish to her mother's brothers in America and they answered. She recalls reciting poetry with a friend. She talks about Yiddish today: her daughter understands but does not speak it, and she can only speak it with the few Jews she meets.

Kislinskaia says that before the war Jews and non-Jews lived together without trouble, and she mentions her daughter's reception in the village market. She recalls non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, among them a man named Ivan and a master craftsman from Zaporizhia (?) who spoke Yiddish with her at work so others would not understand. Kerler asks whether there were converts to or from Judaism (there were none), and she says she read Yiddish books at school. She then talks about her goat and the work of keeping it.

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

Groysman answers Kerler's questions about the Yiddish school in Tarashcha: teachers, subjects taught, and writers read, such as Sholem Aleichem and Peretz, and Yiddish poets. He talks about his parents' religious practice: his father prayed, his mother read a lot, and as a pioneer he stopped going to synagogue. He tells a story about a man and dogs. Kerler asks whether he remembers songs.

Obodovskii sings and recalls a Yiddish children's song that his uncle used to sing, and says he cannot recall more. They discuss voices and the memory of tunes, and Leiderman remembers her father's songs. He also remembers his grandfather's Yiddish and Hebrew books and her father's death. Leiderman tells of her father's later life in Bershad, where he met an old man, and of Sabbath gatherings there.

Obodovskii says that most of the old Jews of Kotovs'k have died and the young have left, so there is no one to talk to in Yiddish. He is asked about the word dibbuk (?) and other Yiddish terms he does not know, and says he knows colloquial Russian rather than literary language. He recalls speaking Yiddish with an acquaintance, and mentions his many books and journals left in a half of the house. They then discuss the Yiddish film about Jewish kolkhozes in Birobidzhan, which was shown at the stadium, and a visit by the singer Iosif Kobzon. He remembers the war starting as he finished third grade, with the rest of the answer running on into the next passage.

The informants recall prewar cultural life in the town: a mixed Jewish and Polish football team, political movements (Bund, communists, Betar and Hechalutz), and visits by a Yiddish actor and singer named Shuster-Meyr (?) who performed songs. They discuss Jewish periodicals, books read (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz), and a Yiddish film given to a museum in Kyiv. The informant tries to retell the film's plot, and Kerler asks about a library and the cinema, which the informant says showed no Yiddish films.

Informal chat with Kerler about a Hebrew song from Betar days and about Yiddish dictionaries, universities and academic degrees. Kerler talks about his own position as a professor. The talk moves to cheder and Tarbut schools, the melamed in Sholem Aleichem, and the Rothschilds. It ends with a toast of vodka, tea and a remark about someone who stayed home on Victory Day.

Dorfman talks about itinerant Yiddish theater, then the Yiddish writers he lectures on today, including the Chernivtsi poets (Stern?, Altman, Manger and Celan). He mentions Fritz Markish and Uri Zvi Greenberg and their museum, and publishing books in Kyiv. He speaks of reading the Yiddish paper 'Unzer Tsayt' before the war and meeting its editors.

Dorfman recalls acting in Hebrew school plays and describes the Tarbut school, a private school with teachers who composed melodies and a Romanian teacher with annual inspections. He mentions the daily paper 'Unzer Tsayt' and a relative at the Hebrew school in Tarutino. Asked about non-Jews speaking Yiddish, he says no, and contrasts Chişinău with more developed Jewish culture elsewhere, giving the contact details of a woman.

Dorfman recalls Hasidim in white garments visiting his grandmother's house in Chişinău, from Stefănești and Sadagura among others, and the rebbe's fundraising. He then talks about Lviv acquaintances, including the Shenker family, Rabbi Kapliovatsky and his father-in-law, Rabbi Silberfarb. He speaks of his many journalistic articles and of a Chişinău rabbi, Tsirelson, a member of parliament. Kerler ends the session, planning to continue.

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

Leibel recalls going to Jewish gymnasium Purim and Hanukkah evenings even though he attended a Polish gymnasium, and mentions a doctor's family whose daughter died in the war. He describes his cheder years from about age three or four to seven, the Friday blessing and kiddush, the Polish primary school of seven classes and then the gymnasium, and a private Yiddish teacher named Mandelboym who came in the evening. He also recalls Polish-language religion lessons, and teachers including Balaban (?).

Leibel describes his private religious tutor who came in the evenings after the Polish school, teaching Hebrew, Humash and some Gemara. He recalls puzzling over a Talmud passage as a child. He and Kerler then discuss the books his parents read and his parents' observance, including his father at synagogue and his mother attending on holidays.

Dorfman talks about his work as chief engineer at a L'viv theater: night duty, technical responsibility and the reconstruction of the building. He then turns to contemporary intellectual life, criticising a book on Yiddish theater by a local author and discussing his own writing and reviews.

Dorfman points out graves and talks about people, including a teacher and school director from the Odessa region who was imprisoned in 1941 and whose brother edited a Kishinev Yiddish paper. He shows the grave of the cantor Baruch Shulman, father of the singer Zinovy Shulman, who was jailed for fifteen years. Kerler and Katz ask about dates and inscriptions, and the camera records the cemetery.

Leibel talks about Purim and holiday celebrations at the Jewish gymnasium, which taught in Polish, with choir, young people and outings to the woods. He describes a library, apparently the "Matsha Shkolna" (?), where he borrowed books daily. He says his father examined him on Sabbath on what he had to recite. Kerler then asks how people spoke Yiddish in Kremenets as against Rivne.

Leibel recites lines of Polish poetry from his school years and names a Polish poet. Questions follow on relations between Jews and non-Jews in the gymnasium. He says each was proud of his own background, that they studied together and were friends but not close ones, with a non-Jewish classmate who may have been a Nazi sympathizer (?). Kerler then asks about Purim players.

Kerler returns to the Zionist youth movements, and she describes Betar and the sports ground in the forest where football was played and Jews gathered on the Sabbath. She talks about debates, libraries in the clubs, and a local amateur theatre where she took part in a Hasidim dance created by a young man, later in Israel. She also talks about klezmer musicians at weddings and briefly begins a song.

Talks with Kerler about prewar cultural life in her shtetl. She comments on differences of speech between streets and on a proverb, and on the term for an older grandmother. She names Warsaw Yiddish periodicals (Moment, Der Shtern) that were read, and recalls klezmer and singers coming from Luts'k to perform. She also remembers the first car in the street, a Jewish teacher who taught singing, a strongman, and touring actors, though she was a small child then.

Asked about her early years, she describes Trokhinbrod as a Jewish town of tailors, shoemakers and other craftsmen. She compares Polish Jews with Bessarabian Jews and their Yiddish. She says she was taught Yiddish reading and writing by a private teacher at home, not in cheder, and read Sholem Aleichem. Youth organizations (halutzim, Communists, Betar) had a library, and Betar members spoke Hebrew. She later visited Israel and met people from Trokhinbrod.

Kerler asks about political organizations in the town before the war. She names Communists and Zionists, says there was no Bund, and mentions a Yiddish newspaper whose origin she does not know.

Kerler and Lemster show a book about the town, with an English edition, and talk about the author and a film made there. Shvardovskaia compares the book and the film, mentions her grandchild, and talks in Russian about someone in Lviv and about relatives in Israel (Jerusalem) and America whose grandparents came from the town.

Shoikhetman speaks about his family. Many of his father's relatives were killed in the war, and some had gone earlier to Palestine. An aunt read Sholem Aleichem to him in Yiddish. At home they spoke Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, he attended a Ukrainian school, and he knows some Yiddish and English. He says he came to Luts'k around Passover in 1959, and then begins to speak of his grandparents.

Khaiut shows rose jam she makes for baking, then recalls folk cures and charms from village healers (babkes). She tells how she turned down one suitor and then met her husband Khayem, who left for Moscow with a residence permit, and shows photographs of him. Kerler asks about the Yiddish newspapers and library she used before the war, and then puts a long run of vocabulary items for her to render into Yiddish: words for ghost and golem, thanks, greetings, colors, house, courtyard, deaf, ear, later/higher/faster/nearer, and breathing.

Pasik talks about prewar holidays she remembers little of, and says non-Jews in the colony spoke Yiddish and that there were craftsmen, such as tailors and shoemakers. Yiddish newspapers arrived. She lists other Jewish colonies near Mykolayiv, such as Novopoltavka, Bereznehuvate, Dobre and Romanovka, and Kerler and she discuss the name Efingar and the river. Kerler asks whether theater visited from Mykolayiv.

Kerler asks about Jewish life in Mykolayiv in 1940, and Tzentziper says many Jews lived there, some well off with houses and animals. There were Hasidim and three synagogues, some of which were closed after the war while others remained, and the modern synagogue with its mikveh is discussed. A shoykhet also continued after the war, and S2 gives Russian comments on the date of the slaughterer. Lemster asks about writers and Kerler about a singer. Tzentziper then tells of Golda Meir's visit in 1948–49 (?), when people gathered to be sent to Israel, and she rather urged them to go to Birobidzhan (?).

Cherner answers questions about family, memorial days and holidays; he says there was little Jewish observance in his home. Memorial customs, the cemetery and food are touched upon. He says Soviet policy removed Jewish culture, magazines and theaters, and that one had to join the Party to live. He recalls a Soviet Yiddish editorial office and writing in Yiddish.

Cherner talks about the song he sings at his mother's grave, saying he reads the words from a paper. He then tells about the song "Yerushalayim" he wrote, to words by Sara Zinger, whom he knows through Zhenya Fayerman. She is from Odesa and lives in Israel, and he recites a few lines of it.

Tokar talks about his Yiddish school: subjects taught in Yiddish with some Hebrew and Humash. His father sat on the parents' committee, which organised theatre performances and revue concerts to raise money, with dramas including Sholem Aleichem and other Yiddish writers.

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

Kerler thanks Vainbrand and invites a message for Yiddish students. He wishes them health and says Jews should remember they are Jews. Vainbrand says he is a Valedniki Jew and recalls going on Fridays to the shoykhet for his mother. Lemster asks about Israel; he says he would go but travel costs money, and that his son has to work. He thinks Jews should live in the Land of Israel. He adds that he reads the newspaper and hopes to live to a hundred and twenty.

Lerner is asked about the war and says his family was evacuated via Chkalov and Orenburg to Central Asia, to Fergana. He mentions that he reads a Jewish newspaper. Lemster then asks him to talk in Russian about Jewish life before the war.

Kipervaser answers questions about cultural life in Berezdiv. She says there was no Yiddish theater after the war and that people sang Russian songs. The library had a few Yiddish books, and few people could read them, including her husband and the rabbi's daughter. She finished seven classes at a Yiddish school, as did her husband, and the Yiddish schools were later closed and the pupils moved to a Ukrainian school.

Dorfman says Slovechno was a friendly Jewish town; no cheder or melamed existed in his time, only before. He studied three grades in the Yiddish school (Yiddish, literature, arithmetic), remembers Itsik Fefer, and says there was no hostility to the pious before the war.

Dorfman recalls Yiddish periodicals: Sovetish Heymland and Der emes, possibly Der shtern, in the prewar and postwar periods, and talks about actresses (Klara Young) in prewar Slovechno and Ovruch.

Stotland talks about the only Yiddish school in Ovruch, closed a year before the war, and about his childhood in the orphanage. Twelve Jewish children lived there and spoke Yiddish among themselves, switching to Russian or Ukrainian when a teacher came. He names teachers and says subjects were taught in Yiddish. They read Sholem Aleichem and Itzik Pfeffer.

Stotland says that before the war they did not know the word antisemitism and religion was not taught against in school. Yiddish writers visited the Yiddish school, and Yiddish plays were staged in the local theatre by a Yiddish company in Ovruch. He remembers a visit by Itzik Pfeffer.

Informal talk about the decline of Yiddish and the lack of people to speak it with. The women say they are now learning Hebrew. Katz suggests sending Yiddish newspapers from America and asks who might receive one.

Asked whether she read anything in Yiddish after the war, Turovskaia says there were no newspapers and there was no time, because she worked, studied and had a household to run. She speaks of hard years and of finally having a home of her own with children. Kerler then asks about a phrase for a good place.

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 says her brother went to cheder in his first years and later to a state school. Kerler describes a filled pastry made with raisins and nuts, then asks if Zak remembers other Yiddish writers visiting, besides Markish.

Zak says that writers visited the library after the return from evacuation. Before the war there was Yiddish theatre, including Sholem Aleichem plays such as Tevye the Milkman (?). There was a craftsmen's club where actors performed and where she and other young people organised a choir. She says she was too poor to dress for the stage. She agrees to sing.

At the Peretz Markish museum in Polonne, S2 (the catalogue's Bentsianov) guides the team and talks mostly in Russian about Markish's life, with Kerler putting in a few comments. He covers Markish's birth in Polonne, cheder, singing in the synagogue, early jobs, his move to Yekaterinoslav, the Polish and Paris period, Palestine in 1923 and his return to Kharkiv and Moscow. He also mentions Markish's family, with pictures of the parents and siblings, his children Olga and Shimon, and his wife Esther. He describes the museum's collection of photographs and books. Zak is hardly heard in this passage.

Kerler writes an entry in the museum's visitor's book, and the team reads other entries and press clippings. The clippings are from Moscow, Kyiv, regional, Lviv and Israeli papers and one from Krakow. Bentsianov comments on the authors, including a journalist who praised the museum, a critical remark about the synagogue being turned into a museum, and an English-language entry.

Back at the museum, Kerler asks to look at Bentsianov's publications. Bentsianov shows an article about a Jewish boy, a congratulation on his seventieth birthday, and a certificate from the Jewish community. The talk turns to his articles on Markish and those translated into Yiddish.

Fish explains that the building is the former tailors' synagogue, since each trade had its own synagogue in Rivne. The Great Synagogue, now a sports hall, was closed in 1955. Kerler asks about Yiddish newspapers; Fish says they come from Birobidzhan and he distributes them among the community.

Kurliandchik says he had no melamed and went to a Soviet school. His mother wanted him to begin putting on tefillin, and a teacher taught him a little before his bar mitzvah at thirteen. He did not learn the Shema or much else. The school then taught Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Mendele and Bialik.

Litvak mentions a former classmate from the Yiddish school with whom she now finds it hard to speak, and talks about Jews today who do not know Yiddish. Kerler asks whether Yiddish writers visited Zvil and whether Pepper or Hofshteyn were taught at school; she recalls no visits and does not remember Pepper, and says she has read Hofshteyn.

Discusses Yiddish performances: children singing Yiddish songs today, and prewar events. She saw a production of Tevye the Dairyman, probably by a Kyiv troupe, and the film later on television. She recalls the town club with a Yiddish drama circle putting on plays in Yiddish and Russian, and the amateurs included tailors and shoemakers.

Kerler and Shvartzbroit clarify who the visitors are, a professor of Jewish history and a Yiddish professor. She tells a religious parable about a rich man who wanted paradise and about Solomon asking for wisdom. She says she attended Jewish school no. 3 for four grades and that all subjects were taught in Yiddish. She names the director (Terk? the transcript is unclear), says she now reads Russian but can only sign her name in Yiddish, and says she has forgotten the old songs.

Outside the Vaisman house the family and the interviewers talk about a document Abram Vaisman was seeking and about the daughter's former typing and stamping work. They discuss computers, a Yiddish word for the harm screens do, and what is left of Jewish life: roughly forty Jews in town and delegations visiting. The family explains why they stay in Sharhorod and not go to America or Germany, and one family member answers in Ukrainian. Vaisman then leads the team to the cemetery of the two tsadikim, with talk of gravestones, inscriptions and a story of a man shot by soldiers. He also speaks of the prewar Jewish population and emigration. Kerler explains the thistles thrown on Tisha b'Av, and Vaisman brings the team to Feyge Rivelis. In the interview Rivelis speaks about her tailor father, her pious parents, and holidays and the Passover seder. She also speaks about a Yiddish school, Sholem Aleichem, the war years of hardship and help from peasants, and her year in Germany. She says she worked fifty years and knows little of Hasidim. She answers a few word questions and Kerler asks about her father's books. The last minutes are garbled.

Kleiner describes the Jewish school: first lessons in a borrowed room, then the community built a floor and later a second one. The director was Jacobson, and she names teachers including Reizman, Gershman, Milshteyn, Brenner and Fok, and a German-language teacher. She lists the subjects and the language of instruction, the Yiddish literature taught, anti-religious teaching, Pioneer activities, school meals and the neighbour teacher Brenner, who taught her to read Yiddish at four.

Kleiner describes his cheder teacher, Pinkhes, and the books studied, from age seven to nine. He says he finished ten classes and speaks Ukrainian well. He recites Ukrainian verse by Shevchenko. In the army he did not eat non-kosher food. He also says there were three ritual slaughterers in Yampil'. The Pioneer question comes up again.

Krasner says she reads small religious books in Russian, because she cannot read Yiddish. She is not religious, but says one reads a little at a holiday. Her favorite holiday is Passover. She says she bought a few books from a Christian woman, and the talk touches on Sholem Aleichem.

The team asks Krasner whether there was a ghetto in Shpykiv; she says she lives among Christians now and asks where the Jews are. Talk of Jewish houses and a plan to walk down the street. Someone asks about the poems of Perets Markish.

Liberzon names her Yiddish school teachers: the literature teacher and director with his saying to get pupils to study, and teachers of mathematics and history. She says that in school they learned poems by Kvitko and Peretz and passages from Sholem Aleichem and Mendele by heart, and that she finished the early grades under one teacher. Kerler asks what she remembers of the verses.

Liberzon and the team discuss familiar interviewees and the writer-teacher Berlman, who lives in Germany and writes about Slavuta klezmers and food. S4 mentions an old man who prayed in the synagogue and his wife. They also talk about where Berlman publishes.

Liberzon talks about Yiddish today: Hebrew words entering it, the rich Yiddish literature, and Yiddish books she read as a girl, including translations. She describes asking a neighbor for a Yiddish school book. Kerler then asks whether she sang the Sabbath songs with her father.

Klein recalls her school: a Yiddish school that became Russian, with the same teachers. She mentions the Yiddish literature taught — Sholem Aleichem, Mendele and Peretz — and Yiddish theater visiting the town. She mentions that non-Jews spoke Yiddish, and that only Jewish children attended the Yiddish school. She notes that about 20,000 Jews were killed in the town.

Klein explains why the Yiddish schools were closed, then speaks about the Yiddish press she read, her mother's piety (candle blessing until death), and Sabbath cooking such as cholent and gefilte fish. She says there was a rabbi's absence today but a synagogue and Hesed, and that the shoykhet died years ago. She notes that her parents were both from villages, Hrybenynka and Sakhnovtsy.

Klein and Kerler talk about the Yiddish plays shown in the town, performed by Moscow Yiddish theater. She names plays including 'Tkies-kaf' (?), and mentions that Goldfaden was born in Starokostyantyniv. They also discuss a street naming and a Soviet writer from the town.

Bivson, born in Polonne, recalls a good childhood there: her father was a laborer and her mother worked. She attended a Yiddish school for five grades, later a Ukrainian school, and describes the Jewish life of the town. She mentions the poet Peretz Markish as a native of Polonne, the many shoemakers and tailors, and the synagogue, and says she fled on foot when the bombing began.

Largely garbled with Russian: general remarks of good wishes, then Kerler asks about a Yiddish library, newspapers and theater in Polonne, and about visiting a rebbe or a 'good Jew' for a blessing, which Bivson explains.

Klein and Kerler discuss school languages: Russian, Ukrainian and German were taught, and other subjects were taught in Yiddish. She mentions reading Mendele and Sholem Aleichem in school, with some unclear remarks about Yiddish teachers.

Klein reflects on the purpose of the recording, which will go into an archive as history, and on books and a Yiddish journal she reads, noting that few Jews remain to read them. Kerler asks what a term for wedding bread (?) means.

Klein says her school taught many subjects and produced professors, and that many relatives were killed. Kerler and Klein discuss sending copies of photos and material through a Hesed. They talk about the great synagogue and about Gotlober, whose name she checked, and Kerler says he left memoirs and works in Yiddish, Hebrew and Polish.

Marinina names the kolkhoz station and local geography near Simferopol', and Kerler asks about a Crimean song. She recalls reading Yiddish writers such as Itsik Fefer and Peretz Markish. She says the school taught in Russian, and her father, though not religious, was a cultured man who taught her to read Yiddish and a few Hebrew words. She recites a verse about a mother-in-law (a song fragment). She describes her mother's strict Passover preparations and her own Passover cooking, the latkes for Passover and Hanukkah, and her mother's baking and gefilte fish.

Gliazer says he studied in a Polish state school for seven classes. In the late 1920s, he says, he went to learn the printing trade in a printing shop in Podgaytse. He lists the work printed there: documents for merchants, posters and brochures for Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish organizations, and pamphlets for Catholic clergy. The shop also printed some Jewish material, including Hasidic leaflets. He remarks that the community had been rich and lively. Kerler adds a break and a question about reading.

Kaddish is recited at the memorial. Afterwards the guide and Kerler discuss a planned uprising in the Kremenets' ghetto, drawing on Samuel Schutzman's writing, and the manuscript held in Ternopil. She mentions eyewitnesses, and that Germans carried out the shootings openly, so local boys watched from trees. She recommends Stanisław Szeybel's (?) memoir in Polish held in the museum, and mentions a list with over 30 relatives of a named person (Paivol?). Katz asks about a rabbi and a shoykhet, and the area of the former ghetto is pointed out.

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

Asked about Ilya Ehrenburg and Shloyme Mikhoels, Gliazer identifies Ehrenburg as a Soviet writer and Mikhoels as the Yiddish theatre director who led Jewish wartime contacts and was later killed by Stalinists. Kerler asks about Yiddish newspapers and Soviet Yiddish writers; Gliazer remembers the newspaper Der emes and the name Fefer.

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

Questionnaire session with Tkach. She is asked for Yiddish equivalents of Russian and Ukrainian words and sentences: verbs, adjectives, synonyms for 'sick', words for honest and religious people, a convert, a midwife, family terms, house and household words, the dreidel, and sentences to translate. She says she has not spoken Yiddish for some fifty years. Katz and Kerler then ask about earlier songs, pious Jews and a poor 'tsadik' in Kleyn Chernevits (Mala Chernivtsi?), tsadikim's graves, the abandoned houses there and Yiddish writers she has read.

Miaskovskij is interviewed after a move to another room. He gives his name and his father's name, and gives dates of death for both parents and for a sister. He tells an anecdote about a Soviet delegation and a KGB minder who understood no Yiddish. He says he finished ten classes in Tomashpol' in 1941 and then served at the front, with orders and medals. His father was a factory worker and his mother a seamstress; the family was once rich but lost everything after the revolution. He names childhood friends and other townspeople. He mentions that he wrote a poem and sets it to music, sings Tum balalaika and other Yiddish songs, and says his father's books are still in the attic. He studied at the Moscow institute and says he cannot read Yiddish.

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

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

Kogan offers drinks and says he does not drink, and speaks of acquaintances who wanted to see him. Kerler plays a recording of a woman from Chişinău who sang a song beginning like Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt, and Kogan notes it differs from his own songs. Kerler explains that variants of the Balanivka song were collected from some fifteen to nineteen people and that he wants to copy Kogan's texts. The talk includes good wishes that he and his wife keep Yiddish alive.

The interviewers close the formal interview and Kogan and his companion exchange thanks and good wishes. Kogan mentions a teacher or writer from the Yiddish school in Bershad, who also wrote songs, and asks that those who perished not be forgotten. Kerler asks about the writer Matvei Geizer from Bershad; Kogan says he is dead, buried on the Jewish cemetery, and mentions relatives in Israel.

Yurkovetskij names places he drove to as a chauffeur (Edineț, Soroca, Bălți) and mentions a writer from Soroca named Zeltser (?). Discussion of beer and drinking and then of Jews who held official positions in Soviet institutions such as a chairman and editor, some before the war.

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

Concluding the Bershad' visit, with wishes of health exchanged. Local people talk about the Jewish community, the Soviet and Jewish schools, and the writer Brodovsky (?), who lived in the town for some years and had no luck there. Part of the passage is town footage with voices in Russian.

Rubin says that great numbers of people come to Uman' for Rosh Hashanah, Purim, Hanukkah and Passover, and that he has been going for fifteen years. He gets kosher matzo at Passover, reads Yiddish letters only a little, and says there are no prayer books in translation. He and Kerler talk about a Yiddish story book and a siddur with a Yiddish translation. Rubin also speaks about Matl's ill sister, a son who lives in Jerusalem and works at a dairy firm (?), and his own visits to his mother's grave in Israel.

Waldman names her mother Khayke and her mother's siblings, including Yankl, her mother's youngest brother, who studied at a Yiddish university in Odessa. She recalls Yiddish songs, freylekhs dancing, and readings and theater of Sholem Aleichem. She talks about the writer Polyanker, who has a street named after him in Uman', and says she wants a museum in his house in Rakovka. She also mentions a museum in the city.

Waldman recalls that before the war Uman' had three Yiddish schools, and her mother's youngest brother was a school director. After the war Jews gathered in private homes because there was no synagogue, and Yiddish theater and drama circles existed. She tells of a woman who recalled a Yiddish play, apparently Goldfaden's Kolduniye, and of Sabbath eve as it was in her own home. She also mentions a Jewish cultural center that brought together Yiddish and Hebrew literature.

She remembers a non-Jewish family in Vinnytsya that spoke Yiddish because the mother rented out her houses to Jews. She comments that Jews once wanted to become gentiles and now gentiles want to become Jews. She talks about help from the Joint and a food parcel. Kerler then begins asking about Yiddish books and newspapers.

Lemster asks whether Yiddish theater came to Berdychiv before or after the war. Vaisman says there was no thought of theater before the war because the family had no bread. Asked about Yiddish reading, he says he studied in the Yiddish school until it closed in 1938 and could read Yiddish after four classes. He read no Yiddish books because hunger was the only concern.

Barshteyn leads the team through the former Jewish quarter of Sharhorod and points out former Jewish houses now lived in by non-Jews. She says there were ten synagogues, of which only the big one remains. She describes a church and a monastery, visiting theater troupes, wealthy men and cantors from other towns, and Jews working as tailors and shoemakers. She says she left Sharhorod for Vinnytsya in 1983, recalls her mother's holiday cooking and Hanukkah latkes (?), and says she studied in a Yiddish school and can read Yiddish (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Mendele). Her family house was pulled down and is now a garden; the former synagogue is now a library, and she points out traces of a mezuzah, the house of a woman called Klara, and a place linked to hiding. Several Russian exchanges with locals occur.

Tsodikovich answers Lemster's questions about Kopayhorod food customs, such as stuffed geese and cracklings, and says some things were not done in his family. He remembers his grandparents as very religious, with his grandfather praying morning and evening. They then discuss the town's tailors, barbers and shoemakers. Tsodikovich and Lemster try to recall local musicians and singers, a father and sons who played accordion and guitar, and Yiddish periodicals read in town.

Khazin recalls a Sholem Aleichem play he saw as a small child. He describes its tailor, the maid and the comic scene about a twenty-five-hour working day, then recalls a song from a Goldfaden operetta. Lemster says the interviewers want Yiddish, and Khazin says he knows a little Hungarian, German, Polish and Tatar.

Khazin shows a Russian-Yiddish dictionary and says he bought it but never worked on it. He describes himself as a Russian-Ukrainian Jew. Kerler and Lemster ask some questionnaire items on words such as 'dybbuk', 'goylem' and 'beter'. He then gives opinions about drinking, smoking and modern medicine, and recalls a joke from a stage play and a Yiddish theater and institute in Vinnytsya in the 1930s.

Yatskova says her parents spoke Yiddish and Russian at home and that her father read Sholem Aleichem in Yiddish to the children, including Wandering Stars and Yosele Solovey. She says her grandfather was an educated pharmacist, that he and his relatives were in Odessa and that the Germans killed them all. She has one brother, Hershele Kremer, two years younger, who lives in Israel and does not write to her. The talk turns to phone numbers.

Yatskova talks about her grandfather the pharmacist in Murafa, later a dock porter in Odessa, whom local non-Jews remembered, and about a non-Jewish woman who spoke Yiddish better than she did. She explains that she read Sholem Aleichem in Russian and that her family spoke Russian with the children. Asked about Kopayhorod, she says she knows nothing of its history or of Malkele at the cemetery, and she complains that visitors from Israel throw away her flowers. She says neighbours treat her well, that her father was respected and taught many locals, and that she regrets not leaving after the war. She recalls friends the Grinmans, Misha playing the accordion while she directed stage shows, and her visits to the Odessa Jewish theater and its actors. She finishes by thanking the visitors, and Lemster offers her Yiddish books. The transcript ends before the catalogued passage ends.

Lebvol recites a protective formula against dogs that she said as a child. She says she can't read Yiddish, only Russian, and that her father read from the prayer book on Sabbath after the meal. He was not Hasidic, and a Sabbath goy named Stepan came to the house; Kerler then starts the language questionnaire.

Burshtein speaks about how Yiddish was spoken in Poland as against Babruysk and Riga, and Kerler asks for a word meaning small children. He explains how he worked in Zhytomyr from 1944 as a typesetter for the newspaper Radianska Zhytomyrshchyna and for a Yiddish journal. Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for typesetter, and Burshtein returns to the family's years at the Babruysk factory.

After the break, the camera turns to a second man, who talks about Yiddish newspapers in Kyiv and the Soviet Yiddish magazine, which he used to read. He mentions a Polish-born cantor with a good voice and Burshtein's talent for singing. Kerler asks him questions in Yiddish.

Shraibman is asked about songs. He mentions his grandfather, who played the violin and sang, and sings a tear song and a tailor's song. He also mentions Paul Robeson and a recording of Sholem Aleichem's Motl, and a second man joins in a lullaby. The talk then turns to antisemitism in the army.

Shpitz recalls attending a Yiddish school before the war, on a street whose name is unclear in the transcript. He mentions subjects such as physics and chemistry, and that he was poor. Asked about Yiddish literature, he says he read the classics, Mendele and Sholem Aleichem among them, and loved Yiddish books. Kerler notes that he still reads Yiddish today, and the passage ends with a turn to Passover and the four questions.

Burshtein describes Jewish political life in Gorovo, with Zionists, Bundists and Betar members who marched in uniform with a Star of David. He sings a song of longing for Eretz Israel, and says German Jewish refugees came to Gorovo and walked the streets with it. He describes Gorovo as a small town of several hundred or a few thousand Jews, with tailors, shoemakers and other trades, and mentions Yiddish newspapers. He begins a refugee song.

Answers questions about the Yiddish school: the subjects, the director, and the Yiddish writers read, among them Sholem Aleichem and Mendele. She says she has forgotten much, including the songs learned there.

Nibulskaia names her teacher as Khaver Arye Vaynberg, whose grave she visits in Zhytomyr, where he later became a school director. She says she studied seven years but cannot remember the literature taught. She then begins to sing a school song about a beautiful girl named Belke.

Nibulskaia continues the Belke song. She then explains that people went to libraries and read newspapers at that time, and that a Russian-language one was not wanted by someone. Kerler asks in which language they read.

Nibulskaia says kosher meat was bought from the shoykhet in Korosten. She then talks about her family: three sons-in-law, two good and one bad, and one who knows Jewish religion but not Yiddish. She names relatives, including a cousin Nobelman and a journalist and writer, and the group discusses writers.

Kerler asks what the word Dybbuk means. Shraibman says it is the play and cannot be translated into Russian or Yiddish. He recalls the Yiddish theater before the war, including The Dybbuk and Sholem Aleichem plays, and notes that the theater after the war was Russian. He adds that young Jews took part.

Kerler asks what the word golem means. Shraibman links it to Sholem Aleichem and gives a phrase about a "lamternem shisser" (?). They discuss Sholem Aleichem in Russian.

Nibulskiy sings a begging song about a poor man's hard life. He says it came from a blind old Jew who sat begging in Korosten, and he is asked to write the lyrics out. After a short exchange with Kerler about a word for abandoning one's family, Ida recites a poem about the coming of electricity. Nibulskiy adds a Russian verse about poles and wires, and recalls the first radio, the first silent films and the first power station in the shtetl. He also mentions a brother who was killed at the front.