Marriage and weddings

Gotlieb says her mother advised her to stay in Pest when the Germans came, and recalls hardship and the help of strangers. After the war she returned to her hometown and married in 1946 (the year is unclear in the transcript). She says her husband, a Jewish Red Army soldier, had lost his family, and she gives his name as Bela Gotlieb and his Jewish name. They had one son, who died young, in 1948 by the transcript's wording (this does not fit the catalogue's age of 48, which may be a mishearing). She then speaks about living alone today, her few contacts and her religious observance.

Pearl says his sons were circumcised despite some difficulty because his wife's family was not religious. He recounts that his daughter was married quietly under a huppah, and he and Kerler speak of marriage customs. Asked which rebbes the family visited before the war, he names Kerestir, Mád and Olaszliszka (?), and says that as a boy he went with his father each year in a horse and wagon.

Smajovics recounts his life after the war: he set up his own workshop and married in 1946, and a child was born. Around 1950 he moved to the town as the Jews left the villages and worked in a warehouse, bought a house and had two daughters. He tells of being arrested over a case of bribes and timber shipments, of the investigation and of a sentence of about two and a half years, of which he served roughly seven months. The details of the prison place and the sums are unclear in the transcript.

Kerler asks about the evil eye, and about the entertainer at weddings, and Reti is unsure of the term. Reti says his grandfather died before he was born and that his brother is named after him; the grandfather was a learned man. The talk turns to the women who helped at births and the small Sabbath loaves given to children visiting after a boy's birth (barkhes, which Kerler compares with challah), then to other expressions and a yahrzeit blessing.

Reti recites a prayer connected with yahrzeit, repeated more slowly at Kerler's request. He then returns to birth customs: during the week before a boy's circumcision children came in the evening to read the Shema (krishme), and this stopped after the circumcision. Reti says he has lived in Debrecen for ten years, that there has been only one circumcision and one wedding here in that time, and that almost all marriages are mixed. He describes Debrecen's former Jewish community of about twelve thousand, half deported to Auschwitz and half to Austria, and its synagogues.

Reti recites a humorous purim-shpil piece about a bride, at Kerler's request. He then tells stories about a Hasidic rebbe, including one about a lost cow, and answers questions about sick people and non-Jews who came to the rebbe. They also discuss divorce and halitsah and a Tash rebbe near Nyíregyháza (?). Kerler ends by asking about the best time in his past.

The speakers describe Shavuot food, namely cheese kreplach, and mention Purim food. Kerler asks about Purim plays, and a woman sings a Purim 'gutn purim' greeting that others take up. A play about a chimney sweep is recalled, along with who prepared the wedding meal, since there was no Jewish restaurant. The passage ends as Samadi begins a Hungarian remark about his father and grandmother, leading into the potato song.

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

The formal part of the interview ends with wishes for health and a long life. S3 and S2 comment in Hungarian on Reti's health and his taking things to heart. Reti sings or chants a snatch of text. Kerler then asks about rabbis of Hungary and Lithuania, a book about Hungarian rabbis, and whether a badkhn or grammer performed at Jewish weddings, especially Hasidic ones.

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

The sisters sing a Yiddish song about growing old, a failed match and the passing years. They describe a Yiddish ensemble in prewar Căprești, with Sara Leybovich(?) coming from Bucharest for evening gatherings of about eight days. They end with the lines of a song about times that will not return.

Bukshpun does not know the questionnaire terms for a cemetery, 'a good place' and a dybbuk, and finds it hard after years without Yiddish. He says ten members of the family died in the war. He then describes his postwar work as a brigadier, in a warehouse and as a manager, mentions a medal and a pension, and says he had a son and three daughters. He married in 1948 a Jewish woman from the village he met in the camp. The son lives in Haifa, the daughters in the village with Christian husbands, and he lists grandchildren.

Roif jokes about his own wedding after five years of service in the Black Sea fleet, and says he has been married over fifty years. Kerler then asks about terms like the seven blessings, a Lithuanian Jew, dybbuk, golem, and about Hebrew in Yiddish. Roif talks about the decline of Yiddish among Ukrainian and assimilated Jews, intermarriage, and today's meetings and monuments to those shot. A Russian aside by another person intrudes.

Mester describes how her parents, or the couple she names, met after the war through an Abraham Hershe, a harness-maker and trader. She tells where the wedding took place, who came, and the food, including pies. The tape ends with a joking exchange about cognac.

Shraybman recounts how she met her husband, apparently in Hungary, and that she, a Russian from near Chelyabinsk, had never heard Yiddish before. She says he was much older and lived to ninety-six, working almost to the end, and mentions the number of books he published and translations of them. She describes learning Yiddish from him and from his relatives, and the discussion touches on another woman's Yiddish studied with teachers.

Abelsky tells of his wartime evacuation to Uzbekistan, living in Tashkent and studying in an underground yeshiva in Samarkand. In 1946 he left Russia with the yeshiva, studied for a year in Germany and was then sent on a mission to Romania, where he stayed three years and had trouble with the authorities. He went on to Israel, married, taught in Chabad schools in Kfar Chabad and Kiryat Gat, and came to Chișinău around the Hanukkah of sixteen years before the interview.

Abelsky talks about religious families and figures of the Soviet period, including a rabbi born in Kutaisi (?) and a family of Lubavitch Hasidim. He tells of a man who saved a Jewish girl and was imprisoned, and of her later marriage to him after the rebbe's advice. He then begins a lighter story about a grandfather and a Mitnagdic rabbi in Moscow.

Abelsky speaks about students who return to Jewish observance against their parents' wishes, with stories of a boy who ran away and later married in a Chabad wedding. He compares his own Jewish upbringing in Moscow with theirs, describes attending the wedding paid for by the family, and tells of a Chabad wedding with a surprised, non-observant family.

Kishlyansky sings a song about Petrograd and speaks of his mother, a tailor, who sang at her sewing machine. He sings a love song she sang. He tells a joke or anecdote about a rich man in Briceni and a poor suitor for his only daughter, then says he can't recall other Yiddish jokes.

Kishlyansky speaks of the hard postwar years: his mother was widowed and sewed to raise her children. He married about fifty years ago, and his wife Mara is from Zhytomyr; a sister lives in Israel, and his son is a mathematics teacher in Canada. He says life today is hard and describes the support he receives from Germany.

Sherman says his mother did not sing to the children, because life was hard and earning a living the main worry. His parents were born near Telenești, and his grandparents are said to have come from Poland. He met his future wife while studying in Orhei, through friends; they married before the war in a civil ceremony without a chuppah.

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

Benderskaia recalls weddings, Purim masking and shalakhmones, and her grandmothers. She describes Sabbath: large challahs, a visit to the shoykhet, her mother's koshering and lighting candles, and her two brothers. She mentions fish on Sabbath and holidays, and Yom Kippur spent in synagogue.

Dajch recites a Yiddish poem her mother taught her, about an educated girl in Warsaw too choosy about suitors, and repeats the last lines at Kerler's request. Asked about songs, dancing and courting, she says she did not dance or like balls and read Romanian books and Sholem Aleichem instead.

At Kerler's request Dajch recites again the Yiddish poem her mother taught her, about the educated Warsaw girl seeking a doctor husband. She says the mother taught it to teach the children not to aim too high. Kerler then asks about Romanian poetry.

Shmid recalls childhood games with little stones and says her mother Faige, who came from Chișinău and had finished gymnasium, sang well, although she cannot recall the songs. She says her parents met at a wedding. She speaks of her sisters' marriages and of her brothers: David worked in the village and Yisroel went to the daughter in America, where he died.

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.

Shmid recalls Purim gifts of food sent from her sister's bakery in Chișinău to the groom during her engagement. She describes Sabbath at home, where her mother blessed the candles and was somewhat religious. She speaks of her maternal grandfather, who was something like a lawyer, her parents' village and city origins, how they met at a wedding and her father sent a matchmaker, and Yiddish as the home language. Kerler and Lemster then discuss with each other what to ask Gordin, and she praises her son-in-law.

Gordin says his father prayed only on holidays, with tallit and tefillin, in the synagogue where the women sat upstairs, and that Florești had a shoykhet before and after the war. After the war the family returned to Florești and found their house wrecked. He was married in 1965 and has a son in Ashdod, who knows Hebrew and English and some Yiddish. He travelled to his grandson's bar mitzvah.

Leibelman talks about fasting for her mother, then about her husband Yurkl, from Rezina, born 1920, a mechanic with golden hands who died three years before. They lived together for fifty-six years. She says his father was a cooper who made barrels, and that her husband could pray but did not want to. She finishes with a story about Hershele Ostropoler at a wedding, where he got fed on a borrowed suit, and the interviewers take their leave.

Raisa begins her own interview. She recounts her family of five children, brothers and sisters who died in the camp or of hunger, and her father and brother shot by a German. She and her mother survived on a pig farm in Obodovka, and she describes the march to Bershad. After returning to Lipcani she worked washing floors and married at seventeen, and she describes Iosif's work making sausage.

Lemster and Kerler ask about her youth. The talk turns to her husband's army service, when he sent her parcels and money. She also talks about hunger and about a golden wedding. She recalls her son's wedding in a restaurant. Interviewers ask about Hasidim; she says she heard nothing about them. Katz explains that he teaches Yiddish in Vilnius, and a Russian phone call interrupts.

Mundrian describes the family after the war: her mother's brother lived in Chișinău, her mother's sister became a doctor in Odessa and Moscow and traced the family in 1953, and cousins now live in Haifa. The family stayed in Susleny until 1956, and she married in 1957. She speaks of her husband's family, whose father was a cantor and whose family had a mill. She estimates the Jewish population of prewar Susleny at over 1,500 in a rich village, with a synagogue, kosher practice and a shoykhet. After the war everything was destroyed, and she tells how her mother studied in a Russian school and sang Yiddish songs.

Mundrian talks about holidays and food in her mother's time and after the war: Yom Kippur fasting, Sabbath candles and kiddush, and her mother's Hebrew. She also tells of baking matzo secretly and the difficulty of getting kosher meat. She describes dishes such as meat in vinegar sauce, and gives a detailed recipe for gefilte fish, a favourite of her uncle and her son. She mentions her 1957 wedding under a huppah, with the contract in Yiddish.

Mundrian answers questions about idioms and terms, and talks about religious life: her uncle going to synagogue in Kishinev, going to rebbes for blessings, cheder, slaughter of fowl before the holidays, and Passover dishes such as latkes, kugel, and potato and matzo meal dishes. She describes how a child's eye trouble was treated with spells and a village healer, and a doctor visit with a relative. Lemster also asks about sayings (a good place, praying on behalf of others, a bright paradise, not to be spoken of, rules about night-time knocking).

Mundrian talks about her grandmother's life after the war. The grandmother was reluctant to speak of her hardships, but in her last years was respected and lived with Mundrian's family. Lemster asks about the grandparents' wedding, which took place in Susleny with a chuppah. The passage ends with Mundrian giving a term for carrying the bride's dress, which Lemster asked about.

Boiarskaia says she met her husband, who was from Bucharest, during the war in Rezina. She says the few Jewish families in her village worked fields and gardens, and that their cow, named Rozhane, saved the family from hunger in 1933 while her brother who led the kolkhoz went hungry. She talks about wine-growing, selling wine to Jewish travelers, singing Yiddish songs and Zionist visitors, two widows who kept a goat and sewed, and peaceful relations with Christian neighbors who helped on Sabbath.

Rolshut recalls speaking only Yiddish as a child at home, then learning Romanian at school, and Russian from her parents. She attended a Romanian lyceum, finishing in 1936. Her mother died in 1927 and her father in 1928, and she was raised by other people. She married in 1945 her husband Eynekh Rolshut, a doctor who served in the war; her son was born in Germany and her daughter in Soroca.

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

Nusbrokh says he worked in Zguriţa until 1948, then moved to Soroca, where he met his future wife and married her in 1948. He worked in construction and as a technician, trained in Moscow, and then worked in a management organization in Soroca for all his years.

Finkel says there were three or four synagogues in Sulita and about three hundred Jewish families. She tells how her father led the Passover seder at home but remembers little of the customs. She did not go to weddings and says there was no Yiddish theatre in Sulita. Prewar Sabbath practice is touched on briefly.

Grunfeld says he married in 1949 and speaks Romanian with his wife. Answering Lemster, he says there was one synagogue in Zău but many in Cluj, including small prayer houses in each quarter, artisans' synagogues and a workers' synagogue, and he explains the word quarter (kvartir). He says about eighteen thousand Jews lived in Cluj before the war and about two thousand afterwards, and now about two hundred.

Hershkovich shows photographs of his family, including a grandson's bar mitzvah in Israel, a brother-in-law buried in Israel and his sister's grave in Cluj. Kerler asks about Jewish weddings and famous cantors visiting Dej. Hershkovich names some cantors, including Rosenblatt. The conversation turns to Kerler's own background, his documentation of Yiddish, and Litvaks and the Vilna Gaon.

Freundlich talks about her last visit to Satu Mare, a monument she set up there for her parents, and a memorial in Florida. She describes her husband Chaim Yosef Tsvi as a ladies' tailor, football referee and soloist, and mentions his well-attended funeral. She tells how they met in a hospital after liberation, and that they came to Cluj, his birthplace, in 1946.

Kerler asks about the 'brogez' dance and other dances, and Freundlich explains that it is a comic dance done on happy occasions and distinguishes it from the mitzvah dance. She speaks about her grandfathers: one was a regular visitor to the Belz rabbi, and the other gave a Torah scroll. She also describes her daughter's religious teaching of women in English and Hebrew, and a visit to Jerusalem.

Talks about his family and the Jewish families in the village, with a mother of the Levite line. He explains a custom of a firstborn washing the hands in the absence of a Levite and mentions counting families by tallitot. Kerler also asks about stories told at weddings, involving a wedding jester.

Kerler asks about Sabbath songs (zemires); Grunfeld recalls his grandfather at the Friday-evening table and singing Eshes Khayil and Sholem Aleykhem. They then discuss matchmaking and an observant man who ate only kosher food, died in Cluj, and was buried in Israel. They also describe religious life since the 1980s–90s.

Meir says there were many prayer houses in Dorohoi before the war. He married in 1951 a woman from Dorohoi, a tailor, whose parents died after returning from Transnistria. They have two sons, one in Israel and one in Iași. The sons had bar mitzvahs. Kerler asks about Jewish life after the war and Meir gives population figures for Dorohoi before and after. His brothers left for Israel in 1947. Kerler asks about a word meaning 'died', and Meir explains that it is Yiddish.

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

Chajim talks about Purim and its customs, mentioning gifts, and says he spoke with an old Jew in Bat Yam over 100 years old. He tells of his youth, when he played music and liked girls, and says he would not marry a rich girl.

Chajim recalls the seder at home before the war, where his father presided and he asked the four questions, and mentions wine and bitter herbs. He tells how he shlogn kapores. Kerler and Lemster then ask whether he knows the words gramer and badkhn at weddings, and he answers uncertainly.

Asked where he was born, Chajim says Podu Iloaiei; he settled in Hîrlău, married there and worked with Hîrlău Jews. He says it was a happy wedding. He recites kaddish for Moses and says he played trumpet in the military band at the wedding.

Resh names actors of the Yiddish theater in Chernivtsi and retells a humorous anecdote about a rich man's invitation. Asked by Lemster about holidays, he speaks about the sukkah, dairy dishes at Shavuot, and potato dishes in Hanukkah and in general in Bukovina. He says he married late, at 37.

Kerler opens the formal interview, giving the date and asking how Jews say the name Iași. Shtaigman says he was born in Rădăuți in 1937, was deported to Transnistria in 1941 and returned in 1944. He attended cheder briefly, then Romanian school and lyceum, studied in Bucharest and Iași, married in Iași in 1966 and had two daughters. He worked about thirty years as a bookkeeper at a furniture factory and has been the community's bookkeeper for nine months.

Shvartz tells about two brothers from Bîrlad who converted to Christianity, and about a Christian who converted to Judaism to marry a Jewish bride and had a Jewish wedding. The questionnaire then continues, with words for convert and mountain, verbs, short sentences and numbers.

Kaizerman briefly recalls Hanukkah in the house, with candle lighting and potato latkes. He then answers questions about local rabbis, the Yiddish words for a cemetery and the Hasidic groups in the city, including Chabad. He is also asked about matchmakers, written engagement contracts and the wedding jester.

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

Chirilau says she worked as a tailor, in handicraft and in the fields after the war, and that her husband was an accountant. Kerler asks about her family name, Haynts, from Filip's family. She says the family was Romanian and that, before the war, Jews spoke Yiddish at home, though doctors spoke Romanian or German.

Women present recite a Purim-play fragment, with lines about a man with a long beard and a sick wife, and discuss it with Kerler. Chirilau says she cannot remember other songs, and recalls that there were different rhymers at Jewish weddings. A final question asks what she wants remembered about Mihăileni.

Leichtner speaks about youth before the war: after prayers young people went home, and older boys went to the girls. He recalls his own girlfriend. He says he married in 1952 at about thirty, to a woman from the village whose parents were also local and who was Christian. At home they spoke Yiddish, and everyone knew Hungarian and Romanian.

Shwartz speaks about his yeshiva years and then about his wartime losses. He married in 1939 and had a three-year-old child; his wife Khaye bas Binyomin and the child were killed at Auschwitz. He was in a labor detachment at the time and kept the cards his wife sent him. He names the child Menashe.

Shwartz says he returned home in October 1945 from Mauthausen and found no family left. In 1950 he married again and has lived with his second wife until now. They have no children; he gives reasons that are hard to follow. He describes receiving his first wife's card and a sleepless night, and adds that he returned to find antisemitism. Kerler asks him about the Purim play.

Freundlich recalls a Purim play and reflects on his Jewishness. He describes the poverty of yeshiva boys, favouritism toward rich students, and the honours of the minyan in a small village. He became a Communist at eighteen or nineteen and stayed away from synagogue until about sixty, and married a non-Jewish woman in 1956.

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

Freund says he cannot recall Purim play pieces. He talks about his father singing Sabbath songs (zemirot) while sewing at home. He says his mother baked challah for Friday night and that Sabbath was observed strictly. He did not attend Jewish weddings before his deportation, and there are no weddings or circumcisions among Jews there now.

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

Macarie describes a Jewish wedding, apparently a cousin's, with a chuppah set up (in the temple, though one word is garbled), and her own second marriage. She uses and explains a word for a decent, upright person, and describes her good relations with her son, grandchild and daughter-in-law.

Mezei recounts her journey home after Auschwitz, by way of Prague and then Budapest, where she was put up in a hospital. In the yard there she unexpectedly met two cousins, who took her to their mother, her aunt. The aunt gave her a bath and fresh clothes. She goes on to Timișoara, where relatives of hers lived and had not been deported, and travels on by train toward home. She says she had heard in Prague that her fiancé was back; she returned on the first of July and married him on the first of September, and they lived together until his death nine years ago.

Grinberg says her parents' marriage is unknown to her, and she married her cousin for love without a matchmaker. She says matchmaking happened among more pious families. She names a German neighbor, Wagner, who attended the Jewish school. She describes the Jewish school as taught in Romanian, with Hebrew, and then Kerler and Lemster ask about the words dibuk and golem.

Cojocaru says she has not been to a Jewish wedding or circumcision since her daughter's wedding and son's brit. She speaks about a relative in Bucharest who died without papers and was buried with vagrants. She says songs and stories are forgotten when no one sings or hears them.

Salamon speaks about prewar holidays, especially Passover with her father leading the seder and her brother stealing the afikoman. She tells how her sister married and wore a kerchief rather than cutting her hair, to her grandmothers' displeasure.

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

Bercovici says she married in Mohyliv, in Transnistria, and then they lived in Vatra Dornei. Her husband was from Maramureş, spoke Hungarian and Romanian, and died aged 94. They returned in 1945; nobody lived in the house in her absence and they found only a table, chairs and a sideboard. She spoke German with her mother and Romanian with her husband.

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

Milchenko speaks of her life today, her brother in Balta who speaks Yiddish, and her children, a daughter and a son in Mykolaiv. She tells about the ghetto in Balta, with about thirty families: at the end of the war the Germans shot twenty-seven of them and three survived. She also tells of Jews burned at the railway station and of children's blood being taken for the German hospital. Her mother cleaned shops after the war and died of illness.

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

Pivnik says she does not remember antisemitism before the war, and a Russian remark says there is none now. She and her daughter describe their housing and privatization, then life in the Soviet Far East during evacuation, where goods were cheap and she worked. She says her husband was an actor named Misha Petrov (?) whom she married in 1942. Her daughter explains she came to Balta at age three in 1947 and learned Yiddish from the large family of aunts, not her mother. Kerler urges them to speak more Yiddish.

Gorberg tells of returning in 1945 to find no home, and moving to her uncle in Odesa, where her brother learned confectionery after being disabled. The family moved on to Rîbnița, where she trained in accounting in Chișinău and worked on a kolkhoz. After marrying she returned to Balta in 1951 and worked as a planner and accountant for decades. She says there was no shoykhet, synagogue or Yiddish cultural life in Balta; Kerler asks about the singer Nekhama Lifshitsaite (?) or similar visiting artists.

Gorberg talks about her mother's cooking for weddings and holidays and gives her own method for gefilte fish and fish cutlets. She also speaks of Purim foods and a Purim play at the kolkhoz, Yiddish songs, and winemaking at her dacha. She talks about her husband's family and her thirty years in her mother-in-law's household. Her husband was a vulcanizer who drank, and he died in 1990s (?). Lemster and Kerler ask about food terms such as potato pancakes and the Yiddish word for grapes.

Bublitskaia talks about her life after the war. She studied at an institute in Kyiv and married a man from Kyiv. They then came to Bila Tserkva, where she worked for forty years at a shoe factory.

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

Kerler asks about klezmers and Jewish weddings in Orhei. Shor recalls a wedding of his mother's sister's husband's relative (?) with a huppah and musicians, but cannot recall a badkhn.

Answers questions from the dialect questionnaire and on cultural terminology: a bridal gift or dowry, the words for milk, yellow, flower and flowers, painting oneself, how Christians cross themselves and pray, and photographer and photographing. The informants also explain the expression 'gentile luck' and what Jewish luck means.

Talks about weddings before and after the war, with half marrying Jews, and about the daughter and grandchildren in America and a grandchild who knows Hebrew and English. The conversation then turns to whether Jews drink, and the informants argue that Jews seldom get drunk.

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.

Chukh tells about her late second husband Itzik. He was at the front, was captured by the Germans and escaped from camps, and worked as an electrician at a factory in Berdychiv. He had a traditional Jewish education and knew prayer. He had been married earlier, and she and he had a daughter together. He died at about ninety, and she describes how she spoke to him at the end.

Skobilitskii says that good teachers of physics and history helped him become an artilleryman, and is asked the Yiddish word for north, east and so on. There are elicitation items such as 'a good place' for a grave, a Galitsianer and a Litvak, and the word misnaged. He then recalls Jewish weddings with a badkhn.

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

Vainshelboim speaks about his wife, who is two years younger and speaks Yiddish. She wrote to him during his army service, and they married in December 1954. He praises her as a faithful housewife and describes her family's craftsmen, a clockmaker and the Katz family. He has two children, with grandsons in Israel and in Canada (?). He says that belief in God has grown since the war.

Asked about Jewish culture before the war, they recall visits of Jewish troupes and artists from Moscow, Kyiv and Odessa, concerts, and full synagogues at holidays. They remember Jewish weddings with a fiddle, and her father's work as an accountant and his many languages.

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

Burmenko talks about her work as a girl at a sack factory until she married. Her mother-in-law said the husband should support the family. Her first husband, Monia, was also from Berdychiv, his family name was Furman, and his parents were Pesl and Sruliq.

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

Burmenko says her best years were before the war and that she married at eighteen or nineteen, with a difficult father-in-law. She also speaks of her obedience as a child and of how things are different now. She mentions Germans in Berdychiv and says today's younger people do not know Jewish history.

Snook lists the village Jews' trades, including a shoemaker, a tailor and a glass cutter. She says the Jews did not dance in the Gentile manner. At weddings there was a 'gramer', a rhymester who was rewarded with thrown coins, but she cannot name one. Kerler asks who taught her to read Yiddish.

Snook says she sang songs at Purim and at weddings. When asked, she cannot immediately recall a song about a wife who eats too much, and she worries about her son in hospital. Kerler passes on greetings from a colleague who could not come.

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

Snook says she went to the village synagogue with her parents, and that her father prayed at length. Her parents kept a cow and horses and worked the land. She describes cheese made kosher with rennet and meat salted at home, with a shoykhet. Kerler then works with her to reconstruct a childhood song about a girl who marries and eats up the household.

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

Kerler asks about his parents. Gvinter names his father Moshe, a shoemaker born around 1890, and his mother Khasia (Khaye), born around 1892, who was a seamstress. He mentions her relatives in Chernivtsi and her death in 1987 after hospital visits in Vinnytsia. He then describes his wife Nekhama and her mother, who baked bread and prepared fish for weddings, and recalls working in a sewing workshop alongside his mother.

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

Feldman talks about leisure after the war, such as cinema, television and the lack of Jewish merriment in Bershad' today. She says she did not have a Jewish wedding or register her marriage. She recalls her poverty and her mother's illness and death. She tells how a Jewish man collected money for her mother's gravestone, and how his daughter later gave her money. She says the monument is now crumbling.

Sklyarskiy speaks of the better years after the war, his marriage and the birth of his children. He tells of his daughter, who lived in the Donbas, and her sudden death after a visit to a doctor, and of how he and his sons learned of it by phone. He also mentions her husband, a worker, and his father-in-law, who died at about fifty-four.

Loyf describes Passover customs in Dzegovka: neighbors gathered to bake matzo, and a non-Jewish woman did tasks on Sabbath. She says her mother prepared Sabbath food, and she reconstructs her move to Boryslav in 1953 and marriage in 1956 (dates discussed back and forth). Her husband came from Podkova (?).

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

Loyf says she has a daughter in Israel and a son in Berehove, Transcarpathia, who has two daughters. She sorts out when she married and when the son was born, and that he was circumcised in Dzegovka by someone she cannot name. Her grandchildren are not Jewish. Lemster asks whether her mother told Jewish stories, but she says there was no time.

Talks with Lemster and Kerler about places she was taken to during the war, including Berlovka (?), and about now living in Boryslav with no one to talk Yiddish with. She mentions her poverty, her marriage in 1960 (?), and her two children, a daughter nearby and a son in Israel. She describes the son's family and his three children, a trip to Israel, and her work there as a massage therapist. She also says she took a grandson to a synagogue. The questioning then turns to a rabbi in her home village.

She speaks about her marriage and a relative who lived with a non-Jew, and says how glad she is that the interviewers came. Kerler mentions a large cemetery in Łódź, and she repeats that she loves Jews.

After the war she finished seven grades, then studied three years at a technical school in Moldova and worked there. She married in Sharhorod with a Jewish wedding, in 1958.

Sofia describes Passover before the war. Her mother baked three pud of matzo for a family with six children, and the chametz was removed from the house and sold. A discussion follows of the contemporary Jewish community, a clever man, and the few remaining Jews and non-Jews. Katz asks whether Bratslav Jews were called 'Bratslaver' or 'Breslover' and about the tsadik Nakhman and Nosn, and whether she heard Hasidic stories. The group then chat about the ages of the interviewers. The passage ends with a wedding klezmer, a caller and table dancing, and Kerler asks how the 'sher' dance went.

Bielaia lists trades, including shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers and others. She remembers a wedding at a neighbor's house as a child, and carrying a bench for her mother to the synagogue. Katz then asks the meaning of Yiddish words such as a golem.

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.

Khavin and Kerler talk about matchmaking and about the shortage of young men. Kerler asks for Yiddish sayings and Khavin offers a few, some in Russian or Ukrainian. Khavin also recalls the old Sabbath kiddush (?) in the synagogue basement, led by Sasha, and the meeting after the war.

After a brief exchange on addresses and contacts, Burg recalls Shames (Ful beShames), a docent of old Russian literature in Ivanovo who loved Yiddish. Shames invited him to hear a Russian-speaking student read a Yiddish poem by Halkin; she became his wife Nina. Burg describes her Obolensky family background and her father, a former tsarist officer who became a peasant after the revolution and later an accountant at a textile factory. He recounts his first trip abroad, to Austria in 1989, where he met an émigré count at a dinner and the family's Russian aristocratic connection became apparent. He says his wife was a teacher, studied with Shames, and learned Yiddish from him.

Kapustina describes life after the war: raising her young brother, working her way up to chief accountant in Khmil'nyk, and later her marriage and her husband's departure to America. She describes her relatives in Israel (Netanya), Los Angeles and New Jersey, her visit to Israel in January 1991, and her long account (largely Russian) of trying to get an Israeli, then American, immigration, being refused over pension and medicine. She says she is upset and lives alone.

Shekhter describes his postwar life: his first wife, a Russian, died in the 1990s, after which he looked for a Jewish wife and moved to be with her. He then answers Kerler's questions about his family. His father was a cobbler, his mother Manya did not work, and he names his brothers and sister and their birth order.

Shekhter describes the war years in a labor battalion: he was taken in Ivano-Frankivsk and moved on foot toward Kyiv under German bombing. He was later in Omsk with a Polish army unit and in Sverdlovsk, where he fell ill, and then worked as a cobbler, self-taught beside his father and brother. He met a Russian woman there in 1943, and he spoke Yiddish with Jews he met; later he moved on to another place (unclear).

Khasidovich says that her parents, brother and sisters stayed in Fastiv and were killed, while she survived. Lemster asks whether there was a ghetto, and she names her siblings and says that her father was a tailor, her mother a housewife and her grandfather a wigmaker; the grandmother's name is discussed. She describes four years at a Yiddish school before moving to a Russian school, her marriage to Dudye (Davidke) and his work in construction, and a civil wedding with no huppah. The passage closes with Kerler asking what life was like in Fastiv in her childhood.

Kopyt recalls the outbreak of war and the family's flight on foot toward Kyiv, and says seventeen relatives were killed. She talks about her mother, who was a baker, and her grandfather, a synagogue gabbai, and speaks about neighbours and Babi Yar. She describes her first husband's death after Chernobyl and her second marriage, her grandparents' hiding in the civil-war pogroms, and a visit to the site where her grandfather was killed. She also tells of her own fall.

Beigel remembers Passover seders and the prayer book she kept. She also recalls a wedding canopy at her own wedding in the 1940s, with scant food. She talks about her grandsons and what her son understands of Yiddish and Jewish holidays. She confirms that her parents were from Tyvriv, not far from a town whose name is unclear.

Beigel talks about her father's work after the war and her own studies and work as a medical assistant. She married a man who returned from the front and a former classmate; he was from Voroshylivka (?) and his father was killed. She names her siblings, Esi and Grisha, and her grandfathers.

Beigel says the stories were not told because her parents were always working. She says Hnivan' was a non-Jewish town without Jewish weddings. She talks about her son living in Hnivan' and her two grandsons, lawyers in Kyiv, and describes how the family helps her. She says she is blind in both eyes with glaucoma and cataracts and cannot read or write. Kerler then starts the word questionnaire.

Long dialectological questionnaire in which Beigel gives Yiddish equivalents, often mixed with Russian or Ukrainian words. Items include words for the senses, greetings and wishes such as congratulations and thanks, everyday and household words, pronouns and verb forms, and religious terms such as praying, honest or pious Jew, and Christian. In the middle she tells at length about her youth and marriage. She mentions a Bukovina acquaintance who left for Israel, her husband's wartime imprisonment and later head illness, and her 46 years caring for him. She remarks on her failing memory and that the questioning tires her.

Answers Kerler's questions on cultural terminology. Topics: the difference between rov, rebbe and rabbiner, and their plurals; a good place as a name for a cemetery; a good Jew as a rebbe; Litvak; tsadik; Galitsianer; and Yiddish words for various types of person. He recalls a Jewish wedding. He also discusses the Dybbuk and the Vilna Troupe's performance with the Turkow brothers in Stanislav, which he attended in 1924.

Lys says he spoke Yiddish with his parents, then attended a Russian school and an institute and became a teacher of Russian language and literature. He has been a school director for 38 years. He tells of his daughter, a teacher and translator, his granddaughter and grandson studying, and his son in Moscow, and mentions his father's holiday drink. Kerler asks about his parents' life, and Lys describes their marriage, his mother's elder sister, and his own marriage.

Kerler asks about anti-religious propaganda in Kuz'myn and whether people could still go to the synagogue. Geller recalls that his father could neither read nor write, and that his grandfather would drag the boy to the synagogue. Geller describes the sukkah, with eating and drinking in it, and says he remembers Jewish weddings with music. Kerler asks about the badkhn (wedding jester) and klezmer.

Geller talks about police work and about thieves, with no Jews among them. Asked about his mother's songs, he says he was too young to remember. He tells how he later led the automobile and motorcycle society for years, describes his car and his pension, and his Yiddish learned from his parents in the Yiddish-speaking town of Kuz'myn. His first wife Feyge died in 1991; her parents were killed in the war. He remarried after meeting a woman by chance, they registered and have been together some fifteen years. He mentions his son in Moscow, his garden, and the Colorado beetle.

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.

Kerler and Lemster ask for a love or romantic story. Kaviner says Soviet Yiddish literature has no significant love stories, and he explains conversion to Christianity before the war. The two ask about town legends. The tape winds down with talk of further interviews, a telephone number and travel plans.

Kerler and Kaviner talk about Kaviner's daughter, a doctor in town, and his grandson, who finished school with a gold medal and an institute, worked in an international firm and then in an inspectorate. Kaviner hopes his grandson will marry a Jewish girl, and Kerler mentions Jewish matchmaking in Zhytomyr (?). Kerler then speaks of how nicely Kaviner prays.

Snook describes the small prayer room in the village, with three Torah scrolls, and the dwindling Jewish community in Khust today. She tells of her siblings (six children, her father in the First World War), who led the seder, and her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren, with five grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Israel who speak Yiddish and Russian. Kerler asks about Sukkot, Shavuot and Simchat Torah, and she tells how betrothals were arranged at Simchat Torah. She also exchanges words with Katz about his age and home in America, and she mentions knowing Hungarian and Russian, though only Yiddish was spoken at home.

Answers questions about Smila's synagogues and prayer houses, saying there were six or seven because Jews could not walk far on the Sabbath, and Kerler asks about the sabbath limit (tkhum shabes). He also says there were klezmer musicians, with violin, flute and drum, who played at weddings, and recalls the chuppah, and that the 1930s brought some pressure on religion. Kerler then begins a question about Jewish–non-Jewish relations.

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

Shapiro and Katz discuss getting help to continue the interview, with Kerzhner of Kyiv suggested. Kerler asks about Jewish weddings in Vinnytsya, and Shapiro says his wife's sister told him about them. He recalls holding the wedding canopy poles as a child. He recounts that in his time two Jewish schools, Krupitsky's and Faynshteyn's, opened in Vinnytsya, and that in these schools many Jewish pupils were taught in Russian. One of them had a large hall where weddings were held. Kerler asks about the klezmer groups.

Shapiro describes the Krochyk synagogue before the revolution, with a choir of twenty and Yiddish singing, and funerals with a children's choir; Kerler and Katz question him about klezmer and music at weddings and burials. He says it was the finest synagogue, held services in Yiddish and was supported by wealthy members. Kerler and Katz ask him to sing a children's song, and he says he must prepare. He recalls being given a piano during the war by the wealthy Rabinovich, and being sent to Moscow to fetch an aeroplane and speaking with generals there. The passage ends as Kerler proposes a pause.

Shapiro talks about his family. He recalls a grandmother's story of a daughter's match to a young man who studied well but was poor, and the in-laws' reactions. He then mentions that Vinnytsya had five rabbis and five synagogues.

Braverman repeats a rhyme about three women on a stone and recalls a lullaby for sick children. She discusses the ideal bridegroom in songs, a learned and rich man, and the Soviet literary ideal of poverty. Kerler then asks about the 1930s.

Torchinsky recounts finishing the seven-year Yiddish school in 1933, moving to Kyiv in 1934 and being drafted into the Red Army in 1938. He was then sent to a military school in Odesa and became a political worker. He married in March 1941 and lived with his wife for three months before the war began and she was evacuated.

Torchinsky repeats that he graduated from the military school in Odesa, became a political worker and married Manye (Maria) in March 1941, who is from Pereiaslav. Kerler corrects the length of the marriage to three months and asks about the poem he plans to read.

Torchinsky reads his own poem to his wife, written in the 1980s for her jubilee, about their meeting in Pereiaslav, three months of marriage and separation in the war. Another poem reads as a letter from the front in Bessarabia, mentioning being wounded in 1942. Kerler and Torchinsky then discuss her name, Mariam, Maria and Manye. Kerler asks to hear about how he became a teacher.

Answering Kerler's questions, Torchinsky recalls the prewar synagogue and bes-medresh in Skvyra, where only men went to pray and women sat apart, and describes praying there with his grandfather. Kerler asks about klezmorim, wedding customs and a place name (apparently 'tsvinter'). He continues with expressions used when mentioning the dead and then with greetings, thanks and congratulation, the word for stomach and for book, and the difference between 'sick' and 'sleepy' (the transcript is unclear on some of these). Torchinsky mentions his own Yiddish-Ukrainian dictionary of six thousand words and begins to read another poem, about Passover and the Exodus.

Vider tells how he left the yeshiva in Iași to learn tailoring with a neighbour, against his father's wishes (his father was a shoykhet, his mother Nekhama), and went to the USSR at seventeen as a communist. He recalls the Botoshaner Rebbe, who lived in the neighbouring courtyard, selikhes, the rebbe's table, notes and wedding of his sister. He ends with a joke about a man tricked into paying yortsayt money three times.

Krotsh sings the song about where one finds wives like those of long ago. He recalls Yiddish theater coming to Stefanesti, his mother's love of it and a famous actress who died in Chernivtsi, and answers Kerler's questions about plays such as Mekhires Yoysef and Akeydes Yitskhok, which he knows from his Bible study rather than from the stage. He sings a variant of Lomir ale in eynem. Asked about Zionist activity, he says halutsim passed through, names several Jewish youth groups, and says there was no Bund or socialist party under the rebbe's influence.

Vider sings the song of Jacob lying on the stone, a story of a sick father, his family praying and a boy asking the cantor to say kaddish with him. Kerler then asks about another song, which Vider sings: a wedding-matchmaking song about two in-laws and Moshe Rabeinu as matchmaker. He says he learned it from his father.

At the start of his interview, Krotsh answers Kerler's questions on language differences between towns and on Romanian loanwords used in Yiddish. He names the word for the wash tub (magalnitsa), the pharmacy, the railway station and the word for certainly (?), and explains that flowers were not brought as gifts. At a wedding the gift was money.

Kerler asks Krotsh for a song and prompts him, but Krotsh says he does not remember the songs. A second interviewee then tells a story, of a poor tailor and his daughter attacked by a bandit, and Kerler asks questions about it. Other talk concerns signing a paper and a wedding saying. The transcript does not clearly show the songs named in the catalogue.

A recorded Yiddish comic sketch plays. A man and a woman banter about a matchmaker named Moshe, a prospective bride, the man's claim to be a modern cantor, his earnings and his age. Kerler's closing remark is that no Yiddish items can be found in the catalogue shown on camera.

Asked about songs on tailoring, Krotsh remembers only snippets of a tailor's song. He then sings a Yiddish song about an orphan girl at the wedding canopy and the three occasions of weeping in a person's life. He repeats it at Kerler's request, and Kerler asks about unclear words. He says his mother loved songs and the theater.

Krotsh says he does not know Itsik Manger. He mentions a Hasidic man in Ştefăneşti, Chaim (surname unclear), who was close to the rebbe and was sent to Transcarpathia after the war. He says he married in 1949 a woman from Russia and came to Kolomyya the same year. He lists the places he lived and worked as a tailor, among them Balta, Kuban and others; the transcript is unclear on several of them.

Vider speaks about his first wife, who was Jewish and a communist and worked in Germany until the end of the war. He says he could not live with her. He recalls his sister and brother-in-law, who died, and how he took over their house and cooked and baked, including gefilte fish, for a family wedding. Some details are unclear in the transcript.

Belous describes playing at holidays, bar mitzvahs and recently a kosher Jewish wedding in Zhytomyr for one of his students. They discuss whether a badkhn performed at it, and the groom, who works as a baker.

Kerler asks Futerman for another song; others in the room discuss a young musician and his father, who is in Israel. She then begins to tell about a cousin of her father, a furrier, and his daughter's wedding.

Groysman gives personal information: he was born in the small, mostly Jewish town of Tarashcha, with three synagogues. He recalls going to synagogue with his father, carrying his tallit and tefillin. His parents, both from Tarashcha, are named, his father born in the 1880s (?). His father and his four brothers were watchmakers, and his sister married a watchmaker. He grew up with two sisters, one of whom lost her husband in the war. He mentions his mother's cooking and baking and his wife's kugel, and that he met his wife, also from Tarashcha, before the war.

Groysman talks about his work after the war. He worked as a watchmaker like his father, later became a foreman, and says he never met antisemitism. He moved to Korsun in the early 1950s. After the war he took a course in massage and worked in a hospital, and he worked in his father's workshop after his father's death. He went to Tarashcha, met the girl he had known before the war, and married her.

Angelova speaks about her postwar life: she moved to Kotovsk after the war and worked as a bookkeeper. She says she worked in Topole and Chorne before and after. She recalls her housing and moves. Kerler and Lemster ask about her marriages, and she says she had two husbands and two children born in the early 1950s. Lemster asks about a dialect word, dybbuk.

Nisman talks about her first husband, a bookkeeper who was shot. She was married to him for only a few months and remains in touch with his family. Discussion turns to the Yiddish and German poet Kubi Vol (name unclear in the transcript). She says she was his wife, not a lover. They met in Chernivtsi in the 1930s, and he died young of tuberculosis. He wrote twelve Yiddish poems. She reads a last poem from his book and shows photographs, one of them with Romanian writers. She names other Chernivtsi Yiddish writers and teachers.

Brandler says he worked in Peremyshlyany for about forty years (?) and liked going to the forest alone to pick mushrooms. He married in 1948 and had a son born in 1949 and a daughter born in 1952, who died abroad in an accident. His wife died in 2002, and since then he has lived with his son in L'viv, at a street address he names. He attends the Hesed and the Sholem Aleichem society in L'viv, which he says he has lived in since 2003.

Leibel speaks about his return to the institute in L'viv and finishing his studies, after which he was assigned to work. He met his wife in 1948 in a Jewish family; she taught Yiddish. They had a son, and both the son and wife have since died. Kerler clarifies that a woman relative is a cousin of the wife. Leibel then begins to say he attended synagogue on holidays and fasted on Yom Kippur in Soviet times.

Mostly in Russian, Diner describes his postwar years: he was sent to a military factory in Moscow and then returned to Lviv, with hard housing conditions. He has war medals. He married first a Russian (non-Jewish) woman who died after bearing a daughter; the daughter is in hospital and he visits her. His present wife is Jewish.

Shvartzbroit speaks about her past catering. She cooked and baked for celebrations and weddings. She offers Kerler her recipe and her son's address, and says that her son speaks Yiddish and sings songs on a cassette. Kerler repeatedly asks her to give the recipe for gefilte fish.

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.

Shvardovskaia discusses who among her acquaintances spoke Yiddish, including a friend in Lviv, and says the family did not always speak Yiddish with visitors. She says she married in 1944 (?) after the war, with a matchmaker mentioned, and answers Kerler's question about the best time of her life. She names her army service as that time and recalls the end of the fighting and the question of where to go afterwards. A woman invited her to travel home to Kharkiv, and she mentions her husband.

Vider sings a Sabbath song, partly in Hungarian, that his father loved, and explains how songs were sung at home on Sabbath. He says he learned some Hebrew from friends at the Hebrew gymnasium. He describes moving from Mizrachi to Betar, where he heard Jabotinsky speak in German, and then to Hashomer Hatzair. He jokes that he followed the girls. There is also talk of caterers for weddings in Mukacheve, a brother in Toronto, and a Jew in Klechanove (Moshe Neiman) to visit.

Dubinskaia talks about being left alone after her son's death and about her own illness and pills. She mentions a niece who went abroad and a bus episode with visitors from America. She says she married in 1946; her husband's name sounds like Isaak, and the transcript is unclear on his origin and on how well he spoke Yiddish. She says she attended a Yiddish school and not a Russian one.

Kerler asks whether Dubinskaia remembers old women who warded off the evil eye, and about extinguishing coals as a cure; she does not remember either. She then talks about good years of married life while her husband was healthy and his death. She tells of a man who invited her to a café and her polite reply. Kerler ends by asking her to sign something.

Cherner introduces himself: his first name, Alexander, with Shure in Yiddish, and his birth in 1935. Lemster says he is from Chişinău. Cherner mentions an uncle who was repressed under Stalin as a revolutionary, and his grandfather Khayim Zise, a glazier, who was a klezmer. He says he writes klezmer melodies, more than five hundred, and songs in Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. He played the violin with his grandfather's band at Jewish weddings in Balta and describes dancing the sher. He recalls no Purim-shpil texts, only melodies.

Vainbrand speaks about how meat was salted and about his father buying a calf in the village and having it slaughtered in Valedniki. Kerler asks about his mother baking matzo for others, who brought their own flour, and about the perforating wheel. Vainbrand says his parents died before the war. He tells how he and his wife attended the same school and married in Valedniki, and he praises her.

Brodsky is asked about the best time in Odesa, and the talk turns to matchmaking and marriage arrangements, with his parents' wedding mentioned. They recall wedding customs including a song for the in-laws. Lemster asks whether Jews drank vodka, and Brodsky says yes, with many drunks.

Asked about his childhood, Feldman instead says he married in the 1930s. His eldest daughter was born then; she lives in Canada and is a dentist, and has lived in Israel. He mentions a son-in-law who worked as an editor in Simferopol.

Kerler asks whether Feldman knows a word for a husband leaving his wife and about an abandoned wife (agune). Feldman says he does not know the word and that husbands only used to divorce in his time. Katz then asks about interesting people in the town in his youth.

Stotland says he married Beyle, a native of Ovruch, and they were married 52 years until she died. He studied at two institutes in Kyiv and worked as a teacher, then as a school director in Ovruch for some twenty years. He has two sons, one also a teacher.

Kerler asks about a term for a man leaving his wife, and Turovskaia explains that he abandoned her, and that a convert was involved. She says no get was given. He went to Siberia, traded and later came back, and the tzaddik told her what to do.

Turovskaia says she blesses candles and recites the blessings and holiday-candle prayers. Kerler asks about morning prayers and a Yiddish prayer after Sabbath. She says she prays in Yiddish, and that at home Yiddish was spoken, while her father knew Hebrew well. She married in 1949 (?).

Zak sings a Yiddish wedding song about Itsik who has married and a broken bed on three fish. Kerler thanks her.

Fish follows his army service from Kursk through Belarus, Poland and Germany, where he was wounded in the leg and later took part in the battle for Berlin. After a short officer course he was demobilised and, after a stay in a Moscow hospital, returned to Rivne in February 1946, where he found his house occupied. He began work as chief bookkeeper at Restaurant Ukraine, studied at an institute, and married Ida from the Jewish colony Kalinindorf; they have three sons and six grandchildren, and one son lives elsewhere.

After the war Kurliandchik lived for about a year and a half in Novohrad-Volyns'kyy. He met his wife, Khase, in Chernivtsi after returning from Austria; she came from elsewhere. He has two children; his daughter, a graduate, lives in Rivne and married a Russian. His son emigrated to Israel in 1990 (?). He has four grandchildren, two in Ukraine and two in Israel, one of whom was in the army.

Frayerman worked in the bank and transport office in Novohrad-Volynskyi until the war. Her husband Gershon died in February 1943 (?), four months before the younger son was born, and she raised their two sons alone. Both sons became military officers, the elder a lieutenant colonel (?), and her son talks in Russian. She shows photographs of grandchildren and the family.

Shvartzbroit speaks about her grandfather the rabbi, kosher Passover dishes kept in the attic, and her giving money to the poor for Passover. She mentions her husband's trade and travel to Romania and Moldova. She says her father arranged weddings for poor orphans in their home. She gives her birth year as 1928, though her papers say 1930, and says she came from Pechora aged about fourteen. Much of the passage is garbled and the sequence is unclear.

Lighthearted talk about drinking brandy, with a reference to a rebbe, and a toast. Krasner mentions her brother's wedding in 1948, with a chuppah (?).

Krasner talks about her brother's wedding, held in Kyiv. She mentions that her brother now lives in Bila Tserkva, and talks of gravestones photographed.

Shvartsburg speaks about religious life in Skvyra under the Soviets, when circumcisions and weddings were held quietly. He says most Jews do not speak Yiddish today, and that his own children and wife do not. Asked by a member of the team, he also discusses the town's shoykhet before the war.

Kerler puts a few dialect questions, including expressions for a headache and a short sentence with the word for 'as soon as'. Vainshelboim then says he has family in Israel, and that he married in 1946 (?) a woman from Slavuta whose parents were killed there. He ends by saying a pit with sixty people was found in Ostroh.

Klein describes Olt-Konstantin as a Jewish town with a fortress and castle of the Ostrogski family. She recalls weddings she attended as a child, including customs involving the bride and a cake and the 'malke's broyt'. She also speaks about her mother lighting Sabbath candles until her death, going to the shoykhet, and her Yad Vashem testimony.

Bivson says no chuppah was set up at her wedding and recalls the postwar gap in synagogue life in Starokostyantyniv. She answers Lemster's question about whether the Yiddish in Birobidzhan differed from hers, saying it did not, and gives a few word variants such as mame and broyt.

Bivson tells that her husband was a Jewish hairdresser from Starokostyantyniv (?). They married through a matchmaker when she was about forty-eight, after his first wife died, and lived together for over thirty years. She says there was no chuppah at her wedding, discusses the local shoykhet and his death, and Kerler asks about Yiddish in Starokostyantyniv.

Klein recalls religious life in the 1930s: the home was Jewish, services were held in small private prayer houses, and people kept the holidays. She describes the Purim baking and the absence of masks, talks vaguely about weddings she attended as a child, and mentions klezmer. Kerler then asks about poetry.

Klein explains a wedding custom (?) and recalls that the town was Jewish and that Yiddish was spoken until the war, and less afterward. Asked about non-Jews who knew Yiddish, she says there were many, and that after the war a non-Jewish man even prayed in Yiddish. Kerler then asks where she is now.

Marinina says she has no one to talk Yiddish with, mentions reading a Yiddish booklet, and notes that her granddaughter married a non-Jew, a militia officer. Kerler continues the questionnaire with words for book, pigeon, tooth, ten, a shed, to build, thousand, near, face, blue, green, yellow, and the Sabbath loaf (khale). She also recalls her father giving Hanukkah money and the size of her family.

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

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

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

The questionnaire with the woman continues. Kerler and Lemster elicit Yiddish equivalents for Russian words: near and later, very, sick and sleepy, honest or religious, cross and Christian, peasant. They also ask for words for relatives, village and street terms, potatoes, shop, half and a liter, and sentences to translate. Along the way she talks about her father making wine, and she recalls a Jewish wedding in the 1950s with a chuppah and baked goods. She also says that no Jews remain on her street.

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

After opening chat among those present, Shusterman gives her father Toyva's name and says he was born in Tomashpol' in 1901 and died in 1995 aged 94. He worked in several jobs, including at a bank, and wrote well in Yiddish and Russian. She describes him as an honest and pious man who prayed daily and led the Passover seder. After the war he acted as a kind of rebbe, saying kaddish for the dead, and the militia broke up prayer gatherings. She says she cannot tell about Jewish life before the war and then talks about his singing and her own love of music. She talks about her own accounting career, leaving work at 53 to care for her blind father, and then knitting and selling at the market. She also covers her own illness and depression. The few Jews left in Tomashpol' (eight) gather for holidays and yortsaytn, and she explains why she will not emigrate and a relative in Germany. She says antisemitism was present earlier, and she describes her wartime evacuation to Mordovia and the postwar housing and compensation. She also talks about her husband, a non-Jew, and a lost love from Odesa. The passage ends with Kerler's thanks, a promise to send Yiddish songs, and fragmentary talk.

Futiran gives his Yiddish name and age, and says he was born in Tomashpol' and comes from a long line of local people. He names his father, a coachman (balegole), and his mother, an orphan from Tomashpol', and says there were six children. Two brothers were killed at the front in 1944, and other brothers are named. Futiran says he later learned the hatmaker's trade from Jewish masters, and he worked for decades as a hatmaker. He mentions two marriages, the second to a non-Jewish woman, and two sons in Moscow and Israel. He recalls a poor childhood, four years in a Yiddish school before a Ukrainian one opened, and a Jewish library. He also recalls Yiddish songs, klezmer music, Jewish weddings with a huppah, and visiting Yiddish artists. He speaks of hunger in 1933, evacuation and work during the war, and eight synagogues in the town. Kerler and Lemster ask about coachmen's stories and songs, and the father's song is mentioned. The passage ends in his workshop with a Singer sewing machine and hats the visitors try on.

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

Shveibish speaks of her marriage and her two sons, then of nearby towns, the Tomashpil district and Shpykiv. There are no Jews left in the first, and in the second many Jews stayed in Pechera or left, with some remaining. Kerler asks how many Jews live in Tul'chyn now.

Presler gives her parents' and grandparents' families: both parents were born in Tul'chyn, and her mother had six sisters and two brothers. Her maternal grandfather was a glazier, and her father's family were musicians who played in a klezmer band for weddings, Purim and holidays. She describes growing up in the Kapsynivka quarter by the little river with crowded houses, and the family gatherings there with food, dancing and Yiddish songs. She recalls the 1933 famine, in which a relative died, and the dollars her sisters sent from America. She describes prewar hunger and poverty, and discusses her sisters' wartime and postwar lives, one of them marrying a non-Jewish officer. She answers Kerler's questions about plural forms, Yiddish words and dance names, and recalls Purim and weddings. She also talks about her grandson's singing and her prewar religious life, a synagogue building taken over, and her father's prayer. The passage ends with photographs of Pechera camp survivors, including one from 1990, the year her husband died.

Yurkovetskij says the grandmother did not go to synagogue, but they kept Passover as best they could in poverty, with matzo and only a few eggs. By 1936 he had become a driver and the grandmother had died. He says he married in 1937, shortly before being called into the army.

Questions on prewar Tul'chyn: whether the family cooked itself, and how kosher meat was obtained, with shoykhets (a Moyshe shoykhet is named) and a few matchmakers. Kerler presses on the Yiddish way of saying numbers of shoykhets and matchmakers.

The women tell how Kiselman, back from the army, was taken in by his mother's sister's family, living crowded in a small room and cooking in tin cans. They discuss the Jewish custom of cousins marrying, and Kerler asks his mother's name. A relative who makes hats is mentioned, and Kerler talks about where he lives.

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

Kerler asks about Purim terms (shalakhmones), the Purim play and singing; the answers are brief. Others recall matchmaking and local girls. The passage ends with talk about the project, addresses and where Kerler lives in America, and about the size of Tul'chyn.

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

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

Pecherskaia shows Kerler photographs, apparently from Israel and America, including a photograph album her son-in-law made for her and a picture of her husband. She mentions her husband's death and gravestone, and says she married in 1945 when she was very poor. She names three half-sisters who share a father but not a mother and are in America, one of whom phoned her. She also mentions a visit to Vinnytsia where she had six operations, and says life is a dream.

Gvinter is asked how her mother prepared fish for Jewish weddings and explains the recipe for chopped fish. Kerler suggests a name for the dish; she mentions onion and a little pepper. Another voice thanks her.

Efim sings or recites a few Yiddish songs, including one with a Rebbe Nachman refrain about dancing in hard times and a wedding song. He then speaks of the family of klezmer musicians in Buki, especially his uncle Hershl Bonder, who played the cornet. A relative named Nadya played the drum (?). He also mentions that during the famine of the 1930s hungry children were told to dance.

Rubin talks about the many klezmer families in Buki and nearby towns, who played at weddings. He recalls a wedding entertainer who spoke in rhymes and the klezmer slang for words such as water, bread, money and meat. Kerler then asks about Purim plays, and the speakers recall visiting Yiddish theater troupes from Kharkiv, Kyiv and Moscow, and a play seen in childhood.

Asked about school, Rubin says there were several Jewish schools and workers' schools (for tailors, shoemakers and others) where reading, writing and singing were taught. He recalls a gramophone and songs, including a wedding song about seating the bride. He describes his family of klezmers who played clarinet, flute and fiddle, and Hershl Bonder (?), the leader of the klezmer group, whose four daughters also played.

Liudmila sings the Yiddish in-laws' song, in which a mother leaves her daughter with the family of her new husband.

Barshteyn says non-Jews took over the Jewish houses. Lemster asks about stories, and she says her father told Yiddish stories, including an anecdote about a joker and a stern rebbe. She recalls the town cantor and describes weddings with klezmorim brought from Moldova and Bessarabia, the chuppah held at the synagogue, and the women's gallery upstairs. Better cantors were hired from Zhytomyr and Moldova.

At the interviewers' request, the man recites Yiddish rhymes and a song about a mother arranging a marriage, set in the attic, with the refrain that there is no money and no good looks. Kerler and Lemster explain that they are recording for a university and studying Yiddish, and they ask him to repeat it several times. They also ask in Russian about payment and about other songs.

Lemster asks the man about his father's name and what he worked at. He answers in Russian that he was formerly called a speculator and is now called a businessman. He recalls a Jewish militiaman named Berman (?) who helped someone wrongly accused. Kerler then asks whether he attended Jewish weddings.

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

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

Asked about songs in Kopayhorod, Tsodikovich cannot recall any Yiddish songs, nor wedding songs or customs. He says the town was half Jewish, half Christian, with good relations, and that only one Jewish woman remains there now.

After demobilization Khazin came back to Vinnytsya, where his parents had returned from evacuation. His father was shell-shocked and walked unsteadily, while his mother helped and took charge. He married Sofia Lvovna Polik (?), a student of the English department at the pedagogical institute. They had two children, both now in Israel.

Asked about languages, Khazin says his father's mother spoke Ukrainian with him and Yiddish with his mother, and he understood it. He explains that his first wife left him; their five-year-old daughter chose to stay with him while their one-year-old son went to the wife's mother. The daughter later went to the mother, whose second husband was a well-known surgeon in Mohyliv-Podilskyi (?), to enter an institute; the son studied at a mining technical school. After the second husband died, the ex-wife took the children to Israel.

Khazin says he married a second time, to Sofia Borisovna Novoseletskaia, from Shepetivka (?). Her cousin Isaak Petrovich Novoseletsky heads the Jewish community at the central synagogue. They have two sons, Igor and Fima, and all the children received higher education.

Kerler puts a series of dialectological questions to Goikhman, often prompting with Russian words. The items include words for ear, attic, potato, blue, luck, broth, groats, deaf, and cross, and Goikhman's memory of Litvak speech. Further questions concern Hanukkah and Purim customs, the word for 'mekhutn' (in-law) and similar family words. Goikhman then recites or sings in-law verses and the tailor song 'Bin ikh mir a shnayderl', and Kerler thanks him.

Lebvol says she came back to Zhovka in 1945 and worked in an office issuing passports. She had seven Polish classes and taught herself Russian and machine sewing. She married Mikhail (Misha) in 1940 without a chuppah, and has daughters in Moscow, Leningrad and Los Angeles, and a great-grandchild. She says one daughter lives as a Jew and another with a non-Jew, and that no Jews remain in town since the death of Leyner.

Geller recalls returning to Zhytomyr after the war, finding neighbors in the family home, and rebuilding his life. He married in 1949 and was married for 48 years. He talks about his daughter, son and grandchildren, one of whom works in the Jewish school, and a great-grandchild.

Burshtein sings a song he composed about leaving his hometown Goworowo and the longing for it, then a song of hope. Kerler asks about Hebrew songs; Burshtein says there was no Hebrew singing in cheder and mentions Sabbath and liturgical chants. He then sings Yiddish songs from Polish childhood about a wedding, an orphan child, love, hope of going to the Land of Israel, and a prisoner's return, with remarks on how they were sung.

Geller sings a humorous Yiddish wedding song about a bride who marries a man for his dollars. The song has klezmer music at the wedding canopy, and the bride leads the groom by a string. The passage is entirely song and ends as he starts a new remark.

Antsis recalls that her childhood was very hard. After finishing technical school she was sent to the Donbas to work for several years before the war. She returned to Zhytomyr, married, and the war began. Her husband was a lieutenant, and her child was six years old.

Geller says he left Pyatka in 1936 and that his father worked in the fields. He recalls the Yiddish heard in Vinnytsia region and Zhytomyr, then tells a folk tale about a matchmaker, three daughters and a suitor made to chop wood, which he performs in a rhyming refrain. He did not attend cheder. The Yiddish school became a Ukrainian one with the same director, Frenkl, and he learned a little from his older brother. He also mentions grandfathers killed in earlier violence (details unclear).

Geller recalls Sabbath in Pyatka. He discusses terms for tidying up and for taking the candles off the table, and a child's memory of carrying his grandfather's tallit and a neighbour's request on Shabbat. He also tells an anecdote about forgetfulness after a wedding held in a restaurant. Kerler asks about local words for these things.

Partnaya recalls the content of a song her grandfather used to sing. It is about a boy who has a non-Jewish wife, and her grandmother would not allow a marriage to a non-Jew. She does not sing it, and she is asked about its melody.

The woman from Zvil recalls a large family, her grandparents and her father baking matzo, and her grandmother Faige. She says she is two years younger than Chane Gitl. She mentions Yiddish singers and actors visiting Zvil, and recalls her grandmother's Yiddish songs and fragments of a wedding song.

Burshtein sings a series of Yiddish songs he knew from Poland: a matchmaking and wedding song, a song on love as a passion, a Zionist song about all Jews going to the Land of Israel that was sung in the months before the war, and songs on homesickness, a prisoner's oath and a street song about a lonely orphan. Kerler asks about Purim songs, which he does not remember. Katz then asks for a prayer from the siddur, and he answers about how a Jew was addressed.

Burshtein sings two Yiddish songs: a love song about a young man marrying a girl he met in a park and finding her ugly, and a song about childhood and the loss of his mother. Between them he is asked about the word shlemazl. Katz and Kerler also ask about a song from Russia, which he says he knows.

Geller talks about his family today. He has a daughter and a son and grandchildren who are teachers, and he mentions a grandson in Kazan. He married in 1949 a woman from Zhytomyr, whose father was a tailor and mother a housewife. He speaks of an old-fashioned Jewish wife's duties and, in garbled lines, of a son's circumcision; Lemster then asks about cooking at home.

Geller says people ate meat only once a week, and that life was hard and lived in fear and hunger. He married after the war and began to build a life, and he quotes a saying about people loving while God worries. Lemster then asks him to say more about Pyatka.

Geller recalls the synagogue with its women's section upstairs, and his grandfather's brother, who raised the children after the father died and took the child to synagogue each Sabbath. He describes Purim visits and paper masks. He lists his siblings: five children, one died of hunger, a sister in Ashdod, and a brother who went to America and died there. He mentions another Pyatka family in Zhytomyr and a wedding of a fish seller, then ends the interview with thanks.

Shpitz speaks of his war service, in Poland and Finland, ending with the defeat of the Germans. He is a war veteran with an order and about ten medals, and also some for his work. Asked when he married, he answers 1949 (?). A Russian-recogniser line in the span is mostly noise.

S3 sings his own song about his hometown Goworowo (Govrove). It recalls childhood, the war, the graves of the fallen martyrs and renewed life. In Russian he explains that he composed it, and Kerler confirms it is his own shtetl. Lemster then starts asking about Jewish weddings, mentioning a custom of serving the groom and the in-laws.

Nibulskiy tells a long legend, which he heard from his grandfather, about the Baal Shem Tov and a young couple who worked at a tavern and wanted to marry. Their stingy employer gave them money instead of a wedding. The Baal Shem Tov met them on the road and married them under a makeshift canopy of sticks. He then helped an injured nobleman's son, and the local landowners gave the couple land as a wedding gift. Kerler asks how a wedding canopy was called in his town and comments on the story.

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

The speaker mentions that the son in Kazan was greeted by phone in 1985 (?), and talks about Jewish girls supported by the synagogue and a yeshiva in Kazan. The rest, a discussion about a match for a young woman and her father, is largely garbled.

Asked by Kerler what it means to be a Jew, Shraibman answers that it means believing in God and keeping Yiddishkayt, though the first part is not binding for him. He calls his whole life the best time. He talks about his wife Mere, a school friend whose mother died before the war and whose father was killed in it. They met again after eleven years apart and married when he was about 30 and she 29. The passage ends with remarks on Jews coming from small towns and a garbled closing.

Nibulskiy tells anecdotes he heard from his grandfather: a bad son hammering nails into a gate, the Ba'al Shem Tov marrying a young couple and the feast and gifts from the landowner, and a story of babies suffocated by a sorcerer in cat form. He then tells of a carpenter in Pulen and the Makarever rebbe, and of other rebbes' power over visitors. Kerler asks questions on the words and the stories, and S2 occasionally speaks.