Memorials and commemoration

Rezmovits recounts the arrival of Russian soldiers and a Jewish officer who spoke Yiddish to the family, and says this made a deep impression on him. He then speaks about his search in Israel for survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, his meeting with two of them near Nahariya and his article in Hebrew on Masada. He then gives Kerler addresses of Yiddish speakers in Budapest to contact, including Tamás Miller and Shmuyevitsh (?).

Rezmovits and Kerler arrange a lunch invitation. Kerler asks about Rezmovits's years in Israel, and Rezmovits explains that he made a vow to meet Jewish fighters from the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He recounts a survivor's story of a transport toward Treblinka and an escape through the wagon, and then discusses Leon Uris and other American writers he read.

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

Pearl says he already had a trade and worked in Budapest, visiting Tállya for the holidays. He gives the size of the Jewish community in Tállya, about 200 people, and says the village was deported in 1944 and most did not return. His parents died in Auschwitz and his younger sister Edit died in Bergen-Belsen after liberation. His older sister lives in Paris and his brother, also a forced laborer, in France. He describes his own forced labor in the copper factory at Bor in Yugoslavia, where about six thousand Hungarian Jews were held, and the march in which many were shot. He mentions a book he co-wrote with an eleven-page contribution.

The passage begins mid-conversation about languages, mentioning Polish and Russian and Ladino among the Jews of Salonika. It then turns to closing the interview: Kerler says he is leaving soon and plans to spend the night commemorating the Holocaust. Greetings are sent to relatives, thanks and farewells are exchanged, and the interviewee says he rarely gets the chance to speak real Yiddish. A woman who learned Yiddish in Lithuania and reads Yiddish and Hebrew books is mentioned, followed by brief concluding remarks about Yiddishkayt.

Blobshteyn talks about Jewish families in the early 1940s, including a family with American relatives. Their journey to Kamianets-Podilskyi and a child's death in a car are mentioned. He recalls the 1941 roundup of Jews without Hungarian papers, including Polish ones, by Hungarian gendarmes, who deported them to Kamianets-Podilskyi, where they were shot. He notes a memorial there and a yearly commemoration.

Outdoors, Reti shows Kerler the former Jewish quarter: a rabbi's father's house and prayer house, the ritual slaughter house, a hall where hasidim stayed at Passover, and the beth midrash used all year, with the great synagogue for festivals. He describes kosher butchers, a bookshop and the mikvah, which is cold. He talks about a memorial stone with a board of antisemitic writing and a camera, and about vandals who broke in and set fire to the Torah ark, burning twenty Torah scrolls a few years ago. He names the chief Orthodox rabbi (Tshengeri, name uncertain) and describes the buildings around the synagogue.

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

Galambos gives the years of his yeshiva study and says the yeshiva life ended with the coming of the war. He talks about returning to Vaja and about Auschwitz, which he has visited. He was in the Hungarian army, and his father and four sisters were killed in Auschwitz. He gives figures for his family's losses, with nineteen heard.

Galambos describes a recent event in a synagogue where a man wept while speaking about the Holocaust. He says he came back to Vaja in 1944. Before the war Vaja had 184 Jews; 41 returned afterwards, and only a handful now remain. He adds that few survivors are left in the world, with a few in America and Israel, and mentions one man in Budapest.

Answering Kerler's questions about folk beliefs against the evil eye, Galambos says he does not remember such sayings and that Yiddish in Vaja was plain Hungarian-style Yiddish, not Polish. He mentions the Tosher rebbe's grandchildren who visited from Canada this summer. He criticizes the fund-raising of the Satmar rebbe's followers and recalls the Satmar rebbe Yoel Teitelbaum in Kleinwardein before the war. Kerler then asks about holidays.

Faiershtein talks about her life today as a poet: five books with 1,017 poems, and she explains their Russian titles. She mentions her sons, daughter-in-law and granddaughters, who have Jewish names. She speaks about a local teacher who builds Holocaust memorials, Holocaust denial, relations with non-Jews, and pensions, prices and Hesed help. She also talks about her late husband, a school director in Cupcini.

Faiershtein speaks about her husband, a school director for twelve years, and the school's high reputation, with visitors coming from other republics to learn from him. He died in Chișinău and was buried in Edineț; she mentions that her mother's gravestone and others were smashed at the cemetery. She says life was better before.

Faiershtein looks for and reads her poem in Russian, which she describes as an answer to those who say there was no Holocaust in Moldova. The poem names Vertiujeni, Cosăuți and Obodovka (?), and speaks of the camps. Kerler and Lemster comment briefly in Yiddish. At the end she says she herself was a camp prisoner.

Faiershtein renders in Yiddish some of her poems about the war: the first calls for remembering the dead and the survivors, and the second concerns hunger in the camp and the taste of brown sugar in a small pot. She reads parts in Russian, saying Yiddish is hard for her. Lemster says it is a pity.

Goldberg describes the return after evacuation: the house was destroyed, and the family lived with an uncle for two years, then in Bravicea, then Călărași, where they bought a house. One grandfather was killed by Romanians and Germans, and the other died in 1939. A grandmother died on the road and the other was shot with her husband. The remains were exhumed and reburied in Călărași, where a memorial now stands.

Roif talks about the present day: speaking and losing Yiddish and Hebrew, his daily unpaid community work, help to sick and elderly Jews through a German sponsor, and payments made to homebound people. He then speaks about Romania's official recognition of the Holocaust, the denial of it by ordinary Romanians, and the estimated numbers of Jews killed in Bessarabia. Kerler asks which government recognised it, and a passage on Jews without citizenship follows.

Roif speaks about the shooting of Jews from Bessarabia, Bukovina and Chernivtsi, and says he and his wife spent three years in the ghetto and camp at Obodivka. A priest and his wife saved them from being shot while they were locked in a small building. He describes the Jewish badges they wore. Kerler asks about the priest's name and where the ghetto was; Roif places it in Ukraine, near Bershad'.

Farber, who says he will show his shtetl and what remains of it, takes the interviewers to the Jewish cemetery. He recalls his part in clearing it in the 1990s (the year is unclear). He then discusses with Lemster the Yiddish and Russian songs he knows.

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

Asked about Hasidim, Roif says she remembers only her mother-in-law's talk of the lamed-vovniks. She then tells how her husband recognised a woman from the camp at a sanatorium in Odessa, by asking where she had been in the war, and she says the boys could slip out of camp while she stayed inside. She also mentions in Russian her husband's invitations to various cities from prisoners' associations.

Gordin recalls the return to Florești in 1944 after liberation. His father was drafted again and killed that year, and is buried in Latvia (?). He describes the great hunger of 1946 and his mother's death in 1947 (?). He says the postwar decades were hard. He then outlines his education and career: Russian school, army service in the Far East, chemistry at Vladivostok University until 1963, a year as a village teacher, and Chișinău jobs in a furniture factory, a trade institute, a mirror factory and a door and window factory.

Gordin sends good wishes to Jews all over the world. He criticises the Iranian president's statements about Israel. He talks about Holocaust denial and hostile writing in Moldova and Romania, including a television discussion of a book. He says antisemitism is not felt in daily life, recalls his trip to Germany, and reflects on why many Jews did not flee early in the war.

Answering Lemster and Kerler, Muchnik says the Yiddish actress Sidi Tal used to perform in Orhei before the war and she herself was not much at the theatre. She tells of the fate of her parents and a lawyer friend of the family during the war, who went to their death. She regrets that no memorial marks the place where Orhei's Jews were killed and buried.

Muchnik explains family photographs, including one of her sister and her husband, and speaks of items she plans to give to the local museum: old postcards, photographs and her sister's diplomas from Bucharest. She tells how she once sold postcards and regretted it. She also mentions her sister's studies and a professor's comment about her nationality.

Goldman discusses her father's religious observance: his synagogue attendance, his prayer shawl and tefillin, and how she donated family portraits and items to a new Jewish museum in Chișinău. She then answers Kerler's questions about the professional school: it was not religious but socialist/communist in spirit, run by two women, and taught Yiddish literature but little Jewish history.

Benderskij describes his uncles' vineyard and winery in the village: cellars, large barrels, wine sold to non-Jewish buyers and sent to Bukovina by rail. He also describes the drying and export of plums to Paris and elsewhere on contract. Kerler asks about the Romanian word for plums; Benderskaia mentions lists of the dead and numbers of Jews in the town.

Yaruskaya sings a Yiddish song about a tailor and recalls meeting Polish Jews during the evacuation, noting their different accent. She describes returning to Hâncești after the war. The murdered Jews of the town were dug up from graves shown by a local non-Jewish woman. Remains were found, including the rabbi's candlesticks and children's shoes, and were reburied in the field. Her mother's parents had stayed behind and were killed there.

Leibelman describes the Bershad camp, where people lay like sheep and the dead were carted away, and the Bershad memorial. After liberation she walked to Rîbnița in April, barefoot. The army would not let them cross toward Rezina, and in a village they were given food and found a house empty for years. She then answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about dybbuk, golem and a legend of the dreamers' boards, about speaking like a Litvak, and about dialect differences.

Lemster asks Nusbrokh what he wants remembered about Zguriţa; he says he remembers the houses, the streets and the Jewish majority and that there was a Jewish life there. Lemster thanks him and the interview ends.

Finkel says the Jews of Sulita went to Israel and no one lives there now. She describes visiting the Jewish cemetery about two years earlier with the president of the community and her son. It is fenced with many stones and neglected. She asks who would work there. Lemster asks for the Yiddish word for the fence, and she says her father is in Israel.

Footage in Rădăuți and a visit to the community museum. Grinberg shows items from her parents' home, including a megillah, her father's tallis, shofars and Hanukkah lamps. She says her parents were pious and that this made the museum possible.

Hershkovich tells of a family from America who came about three years earlier to find their roots in his native village, and how he helped them with a translator in finding graves. He recounts the story of the Rozman family and their sons who emigrated. They speak about the term for relatives and Yad Vashem, and Kerler asks whether there were other wedding jesters in the region.

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.

Freundlich mentions a rabbi (Schonfeld) who left Cluj in 1958 and how her own family applied to emigrate and was harassed. She talks about her children: a son and a daughter in Canada and Israel, a grandson, and a daughter who is a piano teacher and a leader of the Jewish community. She speaks of her husband's grave, a memorial in Satu Mare for her parents and sister, and her father's saying on keeping a Jewish name.

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

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

Kraus recalls eating at a different family's home each day in Lekhintsa, the market town, because his family was poor, and a sister who was a tailor there. He and Grunfeld discuss the war, in which both families' relatives were deported to Auschwitz, and the border near Cluj and Turda that divided Hungarian from Romanian territory. They also tell of the killing of 120 Jews of Sharmash in the last days of the war.

Town footage leaving Mihăileni, then the team at a Jewish cemetery. Kerler and Lemster read gravestone inscriptions and Hebrew dates in Yiddish and Russian, including one mentioning deportation to Transnistria and one for a woman who gave money. They talk about the cemetery's condition and who might know its history.

Lemster asks where Chajim worked as a forced laborer. Chajim says he walked about 70 kilometers from Edineț to Bălți. He tells how the Jews of Edineț were shot and buried when Romanian forces entered Bessarabia, and says he visited the cemetery and said kaddish there. Asked about wedding songs, he says he has forgotten them and speaks of his hope to live to a hundred.

The camera films the synagogue interior while the interviewers remark on an iron ark. Grinberg compares the Rădăuți synagogue with the great synagogue of Fălticeni, with more painted decoration, and tells a legend of a ship and Emperor Franz Joseph. She asked a Suceava university historian to check the archives. She also talks about an ethnographic museum that has nothing from the Jews, and about wanting to keep the synagogue's contents there.

Grinberg describes her plan for a museum in Rădăuți about the Jews of Bukovina, gathering photographs and family items from Jews worldwide. She says the Jews deported to Transnistria took no photographs with them. She talks about her religious family, her father's prayer shawl and kittel, and her ability to blow the shofar though she cannot sing. The talk turns to the interviewers' wish to record her and to Yiddish teaching in Romania.

Grinberg talks about taking over the community and the synagogue building and having its roof rebuilt. She wants the painted interior renewed by a specialist, but the community lacks money. She describes seeking funds from the prefect, the mayor and the Ministry of Culture, since the synagogue is a protected monument, and the figures run to several hundred million lei. She mentions the days of Gura Humorului, where she brings sugar for the minorities' food gathering, a subscription to a Jewish newspaper, and a seminar in Constanța.

Finkelshteyn recalls the June 1941 Iași pogrom: he was taken from his home with his mother and siblings, men and women were separated, and he was put in a sealed train wagon with about 120 people in extreme heat without water. Many died, and at Podu Iloaiei (spelled unclearly) survivors were gathered in a synagogue where local Jews gave them water and food. He says they buried the dead themselves in pits without prayers and stayed until November. They then returned, six of the seven men having survived, and he describes his mother's grief and the court where they lived.

The team enters the former Meransky synagogue, and Rozenblat shows where the Torah scrolls stood and the women's section with its memorial name plaques. He says the synagogue closed some twenty years earlier. Rozenblat speaks of the cost of restoring it and of his wish for a Holocaust museum of Jewish life in Iași. In parallel, the team keeps talking in English with the American soldier about his service and about politics, and they exchange contact details before he leaves.

Resh describes the Jewish community of Iași today. Of tens of thousands of prewar Jews only some hundreds remain, mostly old people, and no child has been born in years. He expects Jewish life to disappear within a few decades. Answering Lemster, he says the synagogue is kept open for memorial prayers, with services three times a week and attendance at holidays and the seder. He also speaks of the two cemeteries of Iași and the thousands buried in them.

Chirilau recalls a visit from her relative Natan, who came from Israel in the 1960s. She tells how she had the Jewish graves put in order and a stone repainted and dated, and how he paid her for the work. She also discusses the word 'pares' as a word for money.

Chirilau explains that she spoke Yiddish and German at home as a child and Romanian at school, and that Romanians also spoke some Yiddish. She describes Mihăileni as a fine town and discusses the Jewish cemetery, now locked, and a family who tended it. She tells of Moshe Itsik Bernshteyn (?), who was in Transnistria with his children, and whose son Natan lives in Israel. Natan had a gravestone made for the grave of his father.

Mezei says what the husband and his friends found in Sighet on returning, the burnt Reform synagogue, and the Great Synagogue where the Jews were held before deportation. A memorial now stands there. She then recalls her father, a committed Zionist who set up a small Zionist prayer house, and her taking her grandmother to services.

Kerler asks whether a Yiddish newspaper appeared in Sighet; Mezei says she receives a Hungarian paper from Israel. She shows photographs of friends, including a man from Sighet whom everyone knows and his wife. She also recounts an interview given to students from the university in Cluj about the ghetto and Auschwitz, which lasted for hours.

Driving with Marcus, who speaks mostly English: he says Jews were about seventy percent (?) of the town's population before the war and points out Elie Wiesel's house. He says eight synagogues stood before the war and only one survived, four being destroyed during the Shoah under the Horthy regime, and explains this in English, which Kerler checks.

Asked about Transnistria, Kurtsberg first tells how Romanian television once filmed him. He describes a trip of rabbis, a rabbi's wife from the Bucharest federation and yeshiva students to Siret and Rădăuți, where they met in the big synagogue and he told the woman a few episodes. Lemster asks him to tell what he remembers.

Asked for the happiest time, Galambos says his life was hard. He had some good life before the troubles came, and he names relatives who survived, his parents and sisters. Asked how Vaja's life should be remembered, he says he cannot say much. Kerler thanks him and the formal interview ends.

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

Steiner reads from and shows pictures in a book on the Košice community, speaking of the large Orthodox and Neolog synagogues, the talmud torah, and the present excavation for a memorial on the site. He explains inscriptions in the two kinds of synagogue, the history of Košice under Hungary and its role in the 1944 deportations, the cemetery, the Star of David of the destroyed synagogue, and the museum. Kerler asks about the buildings and his own travel plans.

Borukaeva describes the war in the Balta ghetto and finds it hard to tell. She recalls a shooting, a mother and child killed in the yard, and an episode of a policeman and a staged Soviet song. She also tells of Italian and Romanian soldiers who helped, of Bessarabian Jews in the ghetto, and of liberation on 29 March 1944. After Kerler and Lemster ask, she speaks of the shootings in 1943, of a girl who was killed, and of a barn where Jews were burned. Some of the account is given in Russian.

Miaskovskaia says Balta was largely Jewish before the war and mentions the ghetto. She talks briefly about childhood games with Jewish children, then recites a long Russian poem about the war dead and an eternal flame.

Vaynman recounts what her mother told her of her own family. Her grandfather returned from war on one leg and died, and her mother was the youngest of seven children, born after his death. She went to a Yiddish school and a Yiddish college. Her mother's brothers were all killed in the war, in a forest near Lviv, where a memorial stone was later put up. She names her grandmother and grandfather and recalls her grandmother's synagogue-going before the war.

Zhovtis says he attended a Ukrainian school, and recalls childhood friends and speaking Yiddish before the war. He says he came to Bar in the 1960s (?) and talks about a club where Yiddish is spoken and a visit to a memorial to Holocaust victims in Israel. Kerler asks about the interviewee's life, including how the Sabbath was kept.

Sonya and Berman talk about the closing of the synagogue, which Sonya places on Yom Kippur in the 1950s (the exact year is unclear). A militia truck came and the prayer books were taken. They also speak of the Jewish cemetery memorial to murdered Jews. Then Katz and Kerler ask for their address and telephone number, and Berman gives his street, Pobedy boulevard, and flat number.

Berman describes what he wants to show the team in Bila Tserkva: the house where Sholem Aleichem lived and its memorial plaque, the former great synagogue that he is trying to have returned, and the Sakhrishe (?) synagogue, built by the philanthropist Brodsky (?), later a yeshiva and gymnasium. He says there is a minyan today under a Lubavitcher rabbi, with thirty to forty people on Sabbath, and mentions Peretz Street, the name used until the war.

Skobilitskii says his wife Rive, born in Berdychiv, died in Germany at 54 and is buried in Berdychiv, where he made her a large monument paid for by their son. He then describes his artillery duties: calculating fire, using a map and compass, and correcting aim. Kerler asks about a Russian word for a compass, and then starts further word questions.

Skobilitskii describes his part in the rebuilding of the tsadik's site, a small wall. At a factory, he used a bucket and wooden sticks to hammer out the letters on the fence. He then says he liked physics and history best in the Yiddish school.

Tour of Berdychiv by van with Skobilitskii: Makhlevka (now Sverdlov street), signs in English and Hebrew, a hotel building bought by Menlovich (?) for visitors from America, Chabad and its relations with the Skver rebbe, a monastery, and the ghetto monument. Jewish houses and the Lubavitch house are pointed out, and the group says it will return to see the synagogue of Feygele Magazanik (?).

Vainshelboim speaks of his wife making fish and baking bread, and invites the interviewers to visit again. Kerler and he exchange remarks about where they live and about the need to leave for Kyiv, so they cannot stay now. Vainshelboim then mentions a German photographer or artist who wrote a history of how he survived. He says he took the man to the place where Jews were shot and where he jumped down from the bank (details unclear).

At the former camp, now a sanatorium, the guides explain in mostly Russian where the gate and guard towers stood. They describe the memorial plaque, changed after Ukraine's independence, and how the Germans selected victims. They say prisoners were harnessed to sleds to haul corpses to burial pits in the forest, and that anyone going to the river for water was shot. Kerler checks whether the interviewee understands Yiddish. They discuss the barbed-wire fence and begging at the gate, and the group then debates driving the car into the forest.

The group reaches the forest where the mass graves lie and looks at the memorials, including a monument of a grieving Jewish mother, erected soon after the war (about 1949 or 1950, as the speaker estimates it). Kerler and the guides identify graves, partly of children and of people from Tulchyn and Mohyliv, and read the Hebrew and Russian inscriptions. They ask why the graves lie so far from the camp and discuss whether candles and mowing are kept up at the site.

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

Mikhail encourages Burmenko to talk, while she says she does not want to talk much about the war and cannot speak of it. She mentions that a film was made about her, with a cassette, for America, and that others should know what happened.

Vainshelboim guides the team through Berdychiv and tells of the German occupation and the roundups and killings of Jews. He tells of the murder of 960 young men, the grave pits, and his own escape when his father was shot. His mother, sisters and brother lie in the mass grave. He also mentions a brick factory and a pit for hiding Jews, the Soviet memorials, the erection of the Star of David, and gold-seekers digging up bones.

In the synagogue courtyard the team chats with a few people. They discuss the digging up of graves for gold, whether to tell the militia, and a coin.

Gvinter describes Pechera after her first account: the camp passed from Romanian to German control, two pits were shot out, and she lay among the buried but survived. Her mother, who washed the dead to find food, hid her. Kerler checks who was responsible for the killings. She mentions her war medal and lists local partisans, including Yashe Talis, and talks about people from the partisan list. She says she tells this so that children should know what she endured.

Gvinter sings a song about winter days and a camp, repeating the first part at Kerler's request. She says it matters that children and grandchildren know about the pits, the forced labor carrying stones, and the starvation. Kerler asks about partisan detachments in the area. Gvinter names Yashe Talis as the leader, and a woman in the room mentions the ghetto.

Listengurt says her family returned to Odesa right after its liberation. An unnamed woman joins and, mostly in Russian, explains that she is trying to document the story of her family, who saved people during the war. She tells how two men escaped a death march and were hidden by a German farmer. Kerler asks for names and suggests contacting an association.

Kupershmidt describes seeing thousands of naked Jewish prisoners kept under German guard, and says memory of this must be passed on. He says his father was killed by the Germans in Bratslav, while his mother was evacuated and sent to the Pechera camp, where he says Romanians rather than Germans were in charge. He describes Germans taking young people to be shot and sons forced to load their parents onto trucks. Kerler then asks how he saved himself in Zhytomyr.

She recalls the arrival of the Germans, who collected money, gold and clothing from Jewish homes, and then the Romanians, who fenced off a square by the school as a ghetto, six years long. She describes a woman accused of being a partisan because of a grenade and shot, and the memorial later built on the square from the bones.

Kupershmidt shows photographs, mainly of his son Naftali (Tolya), newspaper clippings and letters from abroad, and a self-published book about the Pechera camp. Kerler and he discuss its title and how to find it. Russian and garbled stretches mean much of the detail is unclear.

Footage of the old Bratslav Jewish cemetery. Kerler reads Hebrew gravestone inscriptions aloud, works out dates from the letters, and speculates about a woman's grave and about a rabbi's daughter or saintly woman. He mentions names including Yisroel Meir, Menachem Mendel and a Rabbi Mordechai. Other voices comment briefly.

The cemetery caretaker, speaking Russian, shows the team around and gives information about local graves. He mentions a mill owner named Soliterman (?) who was shot, the graves of Nathan and Nachman's Bratslav disciples, and the tourists and Hasidim who come, including large crowds at Rosh Hashanah on the way to Uman and Mezhybizh. He also points out the grave of Kupershmid (?) and his family, a man who saved Jews in the war, vandals taking bricks from graves, and the few Jews still in Bratslav, including an old man David Geller (?) and a woman Kelmenson, whom he suggests the team visit.

Burg shows and discusses several of his books, including a Polish edition and a recent volume, and a street in Vyzhnytsya that now bears his name. He mentions a collection of articles about him and press coverage in the United States, Israel, Germany and Ukraine. He also mentions the former synagogue that now houses a culture house, a New York Times article about him, and his wish to be remembered as the last Yiddish writer.

Burg gives his parents' names and the name of his grandfather, which he gives with a double name, as called to the Torah. He says he was born in Vyzhnytsia in 1912, and Kerler notes the date of this first interview in Chernivtsi (16 May 2003). Burg then shows his decorations: the Austrian and German orders presented by ambassadors, the Cross of Merit, and a Star of David medal from the Ukrainian Jewish Congress. Certificates and the languages they are written in (German, Russian, Ukrainian) are discussed, and Kerler asks if he could travel to Vyzhnytsia.

Burg speaks about the graves of three generations of the Vyzhnytsya rebbe's dynasty in the cemetery. He describes how the old Jewish cemetery was turned into a sports ground and the gravestones reused for Soviet monuments. He recalls the First World War, when Cossacks killed two of his aunts in Vyzhnytsya; a Ukrainian carpenter buried them and a gravestone was later set up. He then speaks of Austrian-era tolerance in Bukovina, which in his view persists in Chernivtsi today, contrasted with antisemitic newspapers in Galicia and with Romanian rule between the wars.

Burg reads aloud his own short Yiddish story "Eykho", about a train journey on which the narrator meets a Warsaw ghetto survivor who fought as a partisan. The reading turns to memories of the Warsaw ghetto uprising on the first day of Passover.

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

Gimelbrandt recalls the end of the Slidy ghetto. Partisans killed two camp overseers, whose names are given as Valentin and Stefan. Children then danced in joy and a song was composed, which she gives in part. After the Red Army came in 1944, survivors were freed and many Chernivtsi people went to Mohyliv. She tells of a non-Jewish man who killed Jewish children who ran out begging for food, and of a monument placed at the camp. Kerler asks whether he was tried.

Shternberg talks about a video interview made for a Ukrainian project, in which she sang two camp songs, and mentions Spielberg. She and Kerler look at a newspaper clipping about her late husband, a cantor at the synagogue, and about the Hesed. She then sings a song about childhood years and the house where she was born, and Lemster asks about the camp songs again.

Burg speaks of his health and the official visit the previous day by the governor, the mayor and others, which tired him. Kerler and Lemster talk with him about Yiddish writers and other contacts: an Austrian writer, Kerler's book of poems, Moyshe Leyb (?), Felix Mitterer (?) and the Vienna conference, and Kleiman (?) as the one person who reads to him. They discuss the death at 103 of an old writer, a phone call to Itche Goldberg in New York, and Burg's illness and the cost of medicine and doctors. A phone call in German interrupts, and Burg says he cannot give a long interview.

Kerler asks whether Gammer and her daughter can direct them to the forest killing site by car, and they discuss how far away it is and giving Russian directions. They also discuss a woman, Masha (?), who may speak Yiddish and be interviewed. They briefly mention a coming holiday visit.

Srulova describes the family's poverty in a one-room house, evacuation to Tataria, and the older brothers going to the front. She says that many non-Jews in Zvil spoke Yiddish, including her father's colleagues. She came to Chortkiv in 1953 and describes Jewish sites there: the former synagogue, the old cemetery, a tsadik's grave and the mass graves in the forest.

Weiss speaks mostly Russian, partly garbled in the transcript, about the history and sites of Jewish Drohobych: the old Jewish district, the destroyed Jewish cemetery whose tombstones were reused, the synagogue, a Jewish orphanage and a hospital. He also mentions the oil-field history of nearby Boryslav and the Pushkin monument. Kerler thanks him at the end.

Schreier talks about Jewish streets and houses and the languages of his home, where Polish was spoken, his father knew Yiddish well and his mother did not; he describes his bar mitzvah in his uncle's small synagogue. He then speaks at length about Bruno Schulz: his walks in the poor Jewish quarter, his teaching of drawing and carpentry without a formal permit until 1936, his family, translations of his work and Schulz festivals in Drohobych. He then describes the German occupation, the 'Black Thursday' shooting, the Gestapo officers Landau and Günther, and Schulz's murder.

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

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

Kopyt talks about her aunts, who sang, and about neighbours during the war: the Grossman family, whose children were hidden by Russians. She says that her grandmother's home housed many families. She tells of being pressed to testify that people were Jewish, and she talks about Jewish writers from Fastiv such as Khashevatskaia (?) and Khentin. She says she gets no Yiddish newspapers, only Sovetish Heymland, and that she has helped make a museum in Korsun with artifacts.

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

Geller tells of his 2005 trip to Pyatka with a grandchild (the catalogue says great-grandchild) to visit the Jewish cemetery. A hundred or so gravestones remain. He describes the killing of Jews buried there and the survival of a boy and a girl who later lived in Berdychiv and emigrated to Israel. Kerler asks how many Jews lived in Pyatka, and the passage ends with a Jewish man with a surname like Pastovsky (?) who was killed by a car.

Lys tells of the town's synagogues and says Jews prayed secretly in his father's house after the war. The synagogue buildings became an evening school, a music school and a factory. He describes celebrating Victory Day with Jewish veterans, the many Jews in professional and official posts after the war, and later emigration to Israel, America and Germany. He mentions a letter from a former teacher abroad, and Kerler ends with a Yiddish phrase question.

Geller says each person observes as he wishes, and recounts the visit the day before with his wife to the village of Klymbovka, where her parents and a sister are buried. He tells, mostly in Russian, of a church caretaker and a priest, and of his own challenge to belief in God. He recalls a local female healer. Kerler asks about spells against the evil eye, wishes for the dead, the custom of visiting graves and leaving food, and the words for 'field' and a holy place. They discuss visiting graves before the New Year and saying Kaddish.

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

Yarmolnik says her husband came from Medzhibozh, home of the Besht (the Baal Shem Tov). She says one Jew lived there recently, now dead, and that a street was named for Sholem Aleichem, with a hotel and a rebuilt synagogue. Her husband once took her to the Besht's grave.

Kaviner says the Volodarka(?) rebbe's grave is in a small house that survived the Germans, and people still send notes there. He then starts a tale of the Baal Shem Tov and his coachman Aleksei, in which the Besht has a dead girl buried with a golem to test whether she is revived.

Opening at a memorial site near Khmil'nyk; the speech is largely garbled, with a Russian remark about burial places and an unclear exchange about the Nazi period and evacuation.

Kaviner recites an epitaph from a Yiddish humorist's gravestone about hiding grief behind laughter, and tells an anecdote about Sholem Aleichem's first meeting with Gorky. He recalls reading Bialik in the 1950s and visiting Shmuel Halkin in Moscow, where Halkin told him to learn from Bialik. With Kerler's prompting he recalls fragments of a poem by Halkin, and then of Yiddish poetry he learned by heart.

Kaviner shows photographs, including a trip to Medzhibozh to the Baal Shem Tov's grave with a rabbi and a community chairman, and a visit to a museum. In others he appears with his grandson, who received a medal and is shown at his graduation. Kerler gives him a Hanukkah gift and they say goodbye.

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

A man introduces a film about his family. He remembers his mother as a poor, pious widow with ten children and his brother Shmuel, who used the name Artur and was a Bund leader in Warsaw. Artur organized the underground, spoke against the ghetto, escaped through Belgium and France, and represented Polish Jews in the Polish government in London. He took his own life in protest in 1943 (?), and the film, in Polish with English subtitles, is about him. Part of the talk is translated into Russian by another speaker.

Kipnis speaks about the commemoration of her father, Itsik Kipnis, as a Yiddish writer, including a prize and media coverage. She recalls that after he came to Kyiv in 1944 (?), he went on the second day on foot to Babyn Yar. Kerler then sets up the microphone and explains the archive project at Indiana for recording spoken Yiddish, culture and literature. He says that they live near Chicago.

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

Kerler asks about synagogues in Skvire, and Torchinsky names a prayer house kept by a yeast maker and cantor. He describes a recent visit with American rabbis and Hasidim to Skvire, where he said Kaddish at the site of his father's grave and found nothing left of the cemetery. Kerler asks for Yiddish terms for the cemetery, such as holy place and good place, and explains their meaning. He answers whether the tutor taught him the morning prayer Modeh ani, and comments in Russian.

Torchinsky reads his poem about the Warsaw ghetto, dated 1992. It describes the German conquest, deportation, killings, burning of victims, and the uprising and the hope of liberation. Kerler then says he has a few questions and asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish.

Asked about the ghetto, Khandros says he was in the ghetto and in the Pechera camp and escaped from it, and that he was shot at and wounded. He refers to his published book for the full story. He speaks of five people who saved him at different times and are honoured at Yad Vashem, whom he regards as his own family, and offers to show photographs.

Khandros recalls his service as a commissar in a cavalry regiment, quartered in the park of an estate at Bialy Wody in summer 1945. He describes the ruined town of Grabovets, where pavements were laid with Jewish gravestones, and a local priest who told him the history. He tells how he found a cellar with Jewish belongings and the names of an owner, his wife and two children, shot for hiding Jewish families. The Ukrainian police were alerted by a neighbour. Kerler establishes that this was summer 1945.

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

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

Derbaremdiker speaks about his published folklore series and the translation work he did for the son of a Yiddish writer. He recites at length his poem dedicated to the memory of Dovid Hofshteyn, about Russian fields. He then answers Kerler's questions about Yiddish readers and discusses writers such as Peretz, Markish and Gildin, reciting lines from a poem he learned in school.

Kerler explains the AHEYM project to Rusakovskaia as an archive of interviews that will be used for books and for Jewish readers. The project will have centres in Vilnius and in America holding the same materials. He says a colleague will join the team the next day, and that they will travel together as far as Lviv and perhaps into the Carpathians.

Kerler thanks Katsman and concludes the formal interview. Katsman mentions a Kyiv rabbi and then says in Russian that he served as chief doctor of a partisan brigade and has been photographed for a Holocaust museum in Los Angeles. Kerler asks him to say it in Yiddish.

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

Town footage of Korsun. A woman (S3) speaks with Kerler about the Jewish cemetery. Two large gravestones were to be taken back there, with money from a man now living in America. In the end Kerler states the date and introduces the interview with Groysman.

Obodovskii recalls his school years in Siberia during the war and a class excursion to the Kotovsky mausoleum in Kotovs'k, describing the body displayed under a glass lid with his decorations and a sabre. He tells how the mausoleum was damaged in the German occupation and later restored, and that it is now closed. He then speaks of Polish neighbors, two brothers, one of whom was a lieutenant at the front and the other who gave away partisans to the Germans. Asked by Lemster, he says antisemitism existed in Kotovs'k, though not in his construction brigade, which was international.

Setting up the interview with Gershtein. He speaks of his brother in America, who was denied a visa for a visit, and of the search for Yiddish speakers in the region. Gershtein then shows his native village Holoby on the map. He says that thousands of Jews are buried in the woods near it, that he asked authorities in Luts'k for a memorial, and that many Jews lived there. Kerler begins filling in the personal-data form.

Dorfman recalls the outbreak of the war on June 22: he had finished his third year at the technical college and was living in Bessarabia, and the Soviet army was unprepared. He tells of two articles he published on Polish Jews, one of them an officer who posed as a Ukrainian. He then talks about his work documenting rescuers of Jews for Yad Vashem, including a woman rescued as a child and the Polish antisemitism she knew.

Khonigsman shows his published works, in particular a book translated into German by a German university team who worked with him in L'viv. He gives its price and says it also sells in America and Germany. He describes his work on Jewish topics since 1993, including a study of the Janowska camp. He also mentions a work on two vanished Jewish communities in the L'viv region and his photographs of the last Jew of one town. Much of this is in Russian.

Dorfman explains that the old Jewish cemetery was cleared and moved, and that the Jewish and Christian burial grounds were joined after the synagogue was closed, in 1962. He begins to tell how a small monument was put up in Soviet times, although forbidden, with money collected by Jews who had come from Poland and Bessarabia.

On the way, Dorfman describes the Kleparov railway station, from where Jews from Lviv, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary were sent on to Belzec; he gives the figure of half a million and the memorial there. He tells of a man who escaped from a wagon as a boy and later became a professor in Melbourne. He then begins to talk about the Janowska camp.

At the great synagogue, Dorfman explains that it survived the Holocaust because the Germans used it as a stable, and that after its closing in 1962 it became a sports club. He describes the present cultural centre with its library, Sunday school, Yiddish theatre studio, ulpan and veterans' section, and shows photographs of events. He mentions the opening of the memorial with Israeli and American representatives and the donors from Vienna, Tel Aviv and London.

Kerler asks about Jewish life in Peremyshlyany. Brandler discusses the postwar Jewish presence there and how he and the partisan commander Shimon Zisser saved the cemetery and the small hall holding the tsadik's grave. He names the tsadik as Reb Meir (?) and compares him to the Belzer rebbe. He tells of Zisser's wartime partisan unit, and of a survivor named Kirzhner who escaped a shooting, along with other friends, and of Jewish police betraying people in hiding.

Brandler recalls going as a boy to a Zionist summer camp in Krościenko in Poland, where they studied, lived in a village and sang. He recalls Hatikvah and sings some of it, then says it is sung somewhat differently in Israel. He also mentions a group visiting Peremyshlyany to whom he showed the Holocaust grave. Kerler then moves on to libraries.

Brandler answers questions about the meanings of the words dybbuk and golem, calling the first a bad person and the second a legend of a robot made in Prague. He gives terms for a non-Jewish and a Jewish cemetery. He then explains that after demobilization he found gravestones used as paving stones in Mostiska, and notes how few remain.

Kerler chats with a community member about whether his parents spoke Yiddish, and S2 says he has studied Yiddish for three years. S2 then continues the tour, phones a colleague, and shows the social commission room and a book of registered Jews, in the community centre. A commemorative stone is mentioned.

Shoikhetman says the story of Derazhnya would fill a whole scroll. Thousands of its Jews were shot, and it took years to get a monument with three graves from the Soviet authorities. Kerler asks his year of birth, which is given as 1935, and then what his father was called.

Outside the building, Shoikhetman and the others talk about the surrounding structures, once Jewish, now a repair workshop and car showroom. They also mention the charity administration (UEV) and the writer Dina Rubina. He says he worked in archives drawing plans of these buildings, and he speaks of mass graves, one without a marker and another with one, and of a possible visit to the cemetery area.

The drive continues past street names, former Jewish buildings and the castle synagogue, now apparently a dental clinic, of which nothing remains. Shoikhetman talks about Jewish schools in the town, some teaching in Yiddish and others in Polish. He also tells of a woman survivor who was denied compensation because her village had no ghetto, and mentions the Spielberg interviews and a woman who had been in the ghetto.

Driving with Kaplan toward the Jewish cemetery, Kerler asks about the prewar Jewish streets and the transit camp and concentration camp sites. Kaplan, mostly in Russian, points out the Jewish street, where Jews have always lived, and the apartment building where Tsilia Borisovna Khaiut lives, discussing whether to visit her. They then drive along the road to the cemetery, and Kerler asks the local Yiddish word for the cemetery.

At the Jewish cemetery, Kaplan and Kerler look for the oldest section and look at gravestones, noting that the grounds are cleaned by hired workers from May to October. Kerler reads inscriptions and points out the stone of a man who opened a synagogue in his house after the war. Kaplan explains that the nearby building is the meyloyl, where the dead are prepared, and gives its date. Kaplan also points out the new section of the cemetery.

Driving through the newer part of the cemetery, Kaplan and Kerler compare the old gravestones with the granite ones of the new section. Kaplan says that visitors come to graves from all over the world and support the cleaning of the cemetery, and that the oldest stones are some 400 years old. The cemetery is large, in four sections.

Kaplan and Kerler walk to the oldest part of the cemetery, which Kaplan says is not cleaned. They look at very old stones; the transcript is garbled and little is clear.

Driving back to town, Kaplan points out sites: cleaned and tended cemeteries, a street whose pavement slabs were made from gravestones, the meyloyl building (Kerler asks again for its name), the part of town with vineyards where officials live, and the military commissariat. The Yiddish is largely garbled and the passage rests on Russian lines.

Fiksler's son Yakov arrives and speaks Yiddish with Kerler and Katz, who say they want to learn the proper local Yiddish. He mentions his birthplace (garbled in the transcript), his mother's teaching of Yiddish to the children, and his young daughter who speaks Yiddish well. He recalls a trip to Crimea. He compares credit and investment conditions in America and Ukraine and says life is hard for business. They discuss a roadside Jewish memorial seen on the way and plan a further visit, with Munkács as a destination.

On the walk toward a former synagogue, Vider points out former Jewish buildings, among them an orphanage with a menorah facade from the 1920s. He says the old Jewish cemetery has been built over and gravestones were stolen. Fragments of stones were walled in, and Americans paid to protect the site. He mentions the grave of Rabbi Chaim Elazar Shapira and rebbes' graves. Interspersed are a pharmacy aside and talk about Hungarian and Romanian words.

Endelshtein gives personal information: name Meyer (Russian name Miron Yakovlevich), the street in Mykolayiv, and birth in the 1920s in Bolgrad, near Akkerman and in Bessarabia, then ruled by Romania. He describes the Jewish population, now only about twenty people, and the killing of Jews in the synagogue, including children thrown into a pit. He says the building is now a church and that he installed a memorial plaque there, and he mentions the prewar Jewish population of about five thousand.

Endelshtein recalls Yiddish children's songs and the old and new synagogues in Bolgrad. He shows a picture of the synagogue, and says a Jewish newspaper piece he wrote describes it; about a thousand people were killed there and it is now a church. He describes children putting on tefillin before school in the small prayer room.

The team goes to the grave (ohel) of the Mitteler Rebbe, with a local guide. Katz explains that he is named Dovber after the rebbe of Lubavitch. There is a prayer or chant at the grave and talk about leaving a note.

Asked about the term for a 'good Jew', Vainbrand says the town had one, the tsadik, to whom Jews came every year, once even from America. Kerler tells him the grave in Valedniki now has a fine building and that Hasidim still go there. They discuss Rabbi Zev Shpunt, who led the team there, and which synagogue Vainbrand attends: the large city synagogue, since he can no longer walk. He says he is about ninety.

Brodsky remembers Budapest and Hungary at the end of the war and a landlady there who spoke of a Jew. He answers questions about words (dybbuk, golem), and says there were many Jews in the Red Army and no antisemitism there. Postwar antisemitism and Jews in Odesa during the war are discussed: evacuation was not total, and there were ghettos and camps. He says a non-Jewish friend (Yanya Manevich or Maniovich, now in Israel) was among those who rescued Jews, and mentions a memorial with trees.

Lerner speaks in Russian, with Yiddish interjections, about prewar Jewish Ostroh. Wealthy Jews lived in the center and the poor on the outskirts, working as porters, shoemakers and tailors. There were several synagogues, including a women's one; the main one survives, and he mentions photographs and a chandelier given from America, now in the museum. He then talks about Yiddish books and ritual objects in the museum and the Jewish calendar he owns. He also says the Jews were shot nearby and he can show the graves. Lemster and Kerler ask about Slavuta and Zaslav, and about distances.

At the old synagogue Lerner gives Kerler and Lemster a tour in Russian. He says it was damaged in the war by the Nazis and Banderites, and an inscription dates it to the sixteenth or seventeenth century (?). He points out a cannonball (Crimean War?), the women's balcony, and the museum with a chandelier given from America. He recalls being brought here by his father, a rich man throwing apples from the balcony at Hanukkah, and a visit by Piłsudski. He returned in 1946 and later saw it used as a Soviet storehouse. He also says a famous rabbi is buried in the Jewish cemetery.

Turovskaia identifies people in family photographs for Kerler and Lemster: her parents, her brother Itsikl, her sister Esther and sister's husband, her grandparents, and pictures from the cemetery. She dates some to after the war, her father's return in 1946, and mentions a relative in St. Petersburg. Much of the passage mixes Yiddish and Russian.

Bentsianov explains Markish's career in Moscow and his standing in Jewish literature. He lists his books, plays and translations into several languages, including Hebrew, English and Chuvash. He tells how he collected materials from many countries and how the Soviet-era ban on Markish's books affected Polonne. He describes the 1965 jubilee and the renaming of a street after Markish, with letters from writers, and shows the porcelain-factory items made for the museum. Kerler and Bentsianov discuss the postwar memorial to Jews killed in the war and the Polonne ghetto, and Bentsianov proposes to play a recording.

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

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

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

Krasner shows family photographs: her mother Khaike, an aunt Mindl who lived with the family, and cousins. She points out a picture at Pechera, saying the window there was theirs, and tells in Yiddish and Russian of Germans loading people onto a truck, with prayers and cries in the camp. Kerler asks whether her written memoirs are in Yiddish (they are in Russian), and she comments on Romanians who were good to people. She ends with a story of a girl needing a match, a childhood photograph, and a brief exchange about Rosh Hashanah.

At the grave, Shvartsburg explains how he secured the site with a gate and how it was remembered by non-Jews. The old Jewish cemetery was destroyed during the war and its gravestones used by non-Jews. A brickworks now stands on the land. Kerler asks what is on the site of the old cemetery.

At the site, Shvartsburg and others talk about the memory that elderly non-Jews kept of Rebbe Itsik Twersky and his two children, a boy and a girl, who are buried there. Water and the buried children are mentioned. Kerler asks whether his grandparents told him anything about this.

Vainshelboim describes the recently discovered mass grave of about sixty Jewish victims near Ostroh. A man buying a plot on the road out of town to build a house began digging and found a pit 26 metres long and 6 metres wide. The dead had Polish documents and are to be reburied in the Jewish cemetery. Kerler and Vainshelboim discuss informing the rabbi and a memorial along the road.

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.

Klein speaks with Kerler about the project: he explains the team has visited over sixty towns and collected memories. Klein mentions a book of testimonies from 6,000 people compiled for Yad Vashem and people searching for relatives. Kerler assures her that her recollections are valued.

Klein and Kerler speak briefly about the Jews who perished in the war: six million overall and, as people say, around twenty thousand from Starokostyantyniv. She mentions mass graves, some of which are still unknown today. Kerler then turns to ask about gefilte fish.

Bivson regrets that so many people were killed and speaks of the son she lost, a physics and mathematics teacher who had finished an institute. She mentions a holy place and a monument, which she says are worth visiting. Lemster then turns to weddings.

Bivson and Kerler discuss her late son's presence on the Internet, with a portrait by an artist, Vilen Abramovich Kurman. Kerler notes visitors come from various countries, and Bivson closes with wishes for peace, health and not being forgotten. Kerler thanks her, in Yiddish and Russian.

Klein says she has a sister and a niece, and tells of the niece's trip to Yad Vashem, and of a dream. Kerler compares it to experiences of his own generation. They talk about making the recording into a booklet.

The team drives around Teplyk with a Russian-speaking guide, probably the community director, who points out a cellar where more than a thousand people were shot on 27 May 1942 and where captives were held afterwards. He shows the sites of former synagogues, now a bathhouse and a dry cleaner, and the Jewish school of 1928. He discusses the old Jewish cemetery with its eighteenth- and nineteenth-century graves, the history of Jews in Teplyk, the Potocki castle, and a former Jewish mill. From about 35:30 a woman begins an interview in Yiddish and Ukrainian, with a dialect question about "hayssn" versus "gayssn" and the Tisha b'Av bur-throwing custom.

Gliazer tells of the Jewish uprising in the Kremenets camp or ghetto, in which he says his mother's family came from; Jews attacked the guards en masse, many died and few survived. He heard of it from a participant but declines to name him, and says the uprising is recorded in the Ternopil' historical museum.

In Russian, the guide gives figures for the Jews of Kremenets' killed in the war, including immigrants from Łódź who arrived in 1939, and says the intelligentsia were killed early in the war and buried on Cross Mountain. She points out the site of the old central synagogue and old Jewish houses, and says something was burned in September 1942. As they approach the slope with the old Jewish cemetery, Kerler adds that expeditions dated gravestones to the 16th century.

The party arrives at the old Jewish cemetery. The guide says an American foundation may give a grant for its restoration, and that an American association of former Kremenets' residents, with Ronald Doctor as co-founder, is raising funds. Arrangements for the group's arrival are discussed, partly in Ukrainian, and Kerler speaks of finding his forebears' graves.

The guide leads the party up through the cemetery, describing its older sections and the many surviving gravestones. She says the Germans made ghetto Jews carry stones to pave roads and that locals took others for outbuildings. She compares the amphitheatre-like slope with a cemetery in Israel and with Mohyliv-Podil's'kyi, and says a local photographer, Valerii, photographed every stone for registration in America. The group looks at stone carving and dates, and discusses a site on the hill with 8 or 9 mass graves near a ski jump, as well as a stone with a Hebrew inscription and Ronald Doctor's reading of it. Kaddish is not clearly audible here.

Driving on, the guide says that nothing is visible at a supposed site and discusses where a trench with bodies lay. Approaching the main killing site, she says the road was used by trucks carrying victims and that Jews were piled in layers on the trucks. The site was chosen because trenches left from a regiment's firing range already existed. She says about 7,000 were killed in the field and points out a new Israeli-funded memorial before a Soviet-era one.

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).

Shveibish in Tul'chyn describes the present-day Jewish community: about 172 Jews, including children, many of them elderly, living on small pensions, with some 35 helped by Hesed and the Joint through patronage. She tells of old people and a man aged 91, and of lost state support and closed factories. She describes organising a bus trip and meeting at Pechera with former prisoners from Kyiv and a school group, with television and radio present, and how she raised money and food for it. She also speaks about relatives of acquaintances who emigrated to Israel or America, about antisemitism, distributing matzo, and says some thirty Pechera survivors remain.

Shveibish says that visitors come to Tul'chyn from America, Germany, Israel and Australia, drawn to the graves of relatives. She mentions a visiting Swiss delegation (and a man from Switzerland who comes twice a year), whom she took to Pechera, and says few people remain who can lead the prayers at the cemetery. She speaks about a visit to Germany, saying she could not bear to hear the language and would travel only to Israel. Kerler asks about Zionism, and she answers that prewar Tul'chyn was a Jewish town of many specialists, a cheerful and good place, and begins on earlier persecution.

Shveibish tells about her husband Itsik's family from Horyshkivka. His father came from Tul'chyn after the pogroms, he was a craftsman, and there were six children. She describes the Romanian-era ghetto in the village club, a sister who was shot at and traumatised, the siblings who emigrated or have died, and the parents' graves in Tomashpil. She talks about Horyshkivka as the model for Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish theatre troupe in which her husband's father acted, and pogroms in Tul'chyn and Khmelnytskyi's time. She then describes Jewish life in Tul'chyn today (the community's difficulties, no shoykhet, no minyan, a memorial, aged pensioners), and Jewish food and holiday customs, with a recipe for gefilte fish. The passage includes dialectological questions on words such as store, courtyard, well, potato dishes, thanks and please, and idioms.

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.

Kogan recites or sings the song Tsezeyt un tseshpreyt, about refugees from Bukovina, Bessarabia and Hungary driven into the Bershad ghetto, and then Aheym, briderlekh, aheym. Kerler and Lemster press him to separate texts he wrote himself from ones he copied, and he says some are his own. He recalls that a fire at his mother's house in Bershad destroyed writings and sings Dos lagerl, naming a man from the Lechetser family who collected the dead. He says he took the song "Zog nit keyn mol" from a book by a Yiddish writer, and Kerler names Sutzkever and Glik.

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

A woman, probably Shveibish, explains that Tul'chyn is marking its 400th anniversary this year and that materials on Jewish Tul'chyn will be collected for an exhibition. Lemster thanks her.

A woman speaks of her family: four children, an older sister working at sixteen, and a mother who did not work. Kerler then discusses a planned trip to Pechera and Bershad' and asks who could come along, and the group talks about the arrangements, including not travelling on the Sabbath.

Cut to the interview with Kogan. After greetings he prepares to read a text he has written. He recites a poem about the camp and ghetto during the German occupation, calling for survivors to remember and for peace, and ends with greetings in Hebrew.

Kogan recites his song 'Aheym, briderlekh, aheym', which he says was written after the war. He tells of collecting money in the Bershad' ghetto for the partisans, with the donors' names put into a bottle and later demanded by the prosecutor. He recalls the dead being moved from the pit at Komuna Voroshilov to the Jewish cemetery after the liberation, with Kerler asking about a memorial and the date.

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.

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.

Driving through Uman' toward the Jewish community center, with Russian talk about how to get into the courtyard. At the end a speaker tells of a visit by the German ambassador and his wife, who met former prisoners and went to the place where 25,000 Jews were shot.

Answers Kerler's questions about Hanukkah food in her mother's house: latkes, grated potatoes, and baked goods. Kerler describes a pastry from a woman in Bershad', and Teplitskaia recalls a teacher from Ternovka who lives there. She asks the team to be discreet about a pension matter and about aid from abroad. She then begins to speak of the pit in Ternovka where Jews were killed, a visit to it, and her relatives buried there.

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

Katz shows a Russian-language book containing his testimony, edited by Boris Zabarko; the discussion is partly in Russian, about how it was recorded and in what language. The interviewer thanks him and says the account he gave is what matters. The transcript is partly garbled and includes a recogniser loop.

Barshteyn continues about the tsadikim's graves and visits to them, including Jews who went to Israel and came back. She says she travels once a year to her parents' graves, and gives the dates of her father's and mother's deaths.

Barshteyn recounts working twenty years as a telephone operator at the post office, then retiring and moving to Vinnytsya with her widowed father, after her mother's death, to be near her son. She speaks of visiting her parents' graves at Sharhorod, where there is no one to say Kaddish, since her son knows Yiddish but does not speak it. She describes the gravestones she had put up for her mother and father.

Kerler and Barshteyn discuss a possible return trip to Sharhorod the following year, with the team and with her son driving, to say Kaddish at the graves. Barshteyn thanks the team, and Kerler mentions that they are going next to Moldova and Romania.

Lemster and Kerler ask what 'Litvak' meant in Sharhorod. Barshteyn says it was not pejorative, only a person from Lithuania or Latvia. She does not recall special Jewish games, and says Romanian Jews who came during the war sang many Yiddish songs, while older local Jews no longer understood Yiddish. Interviewers and locals then discuss a Christian who still speaks Yiddish, the Bible museum and the keys, and a robbery at the synagogue. Items mentioned as stolen include a gramophone, Jewish books, candlesticks and samovars; furniture and books remained. Much of this is in Russian.

At the old cemetery, Barshteyn explains that part of it was cleared for a road in Soviet times. Her mother helped gather the bones, and the gravestones of two tsadikim were left standing. She tells of the tsadikim's legendary powers and of Jews who emigrated to Israel having the graves repaired. Katz and Kerler try to read the Hebrew inscription (Naftali Hertz) and work out dates. She then takes them to her mother Brayne's grave and says a few words there.

Yatskova describes the old Jewish cemetery, where a monument stands to a woman tsadeket called Malkele (?). Kerler asks who she was, but Yatskova does not know. She says Jews from Israel used to come, in buses, to pray there. They restored the monument the previous year, and she visits it herself although she cannot pray.

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

Dorfman points out the monument and the site of the L'viv Jewish ghetto, and says a memorial was put up in 1992 (?). He describes the crowded housing, the twenty months of the ghetto and the number of Jews who died. He also recalls a London filmmaker and a family that survived in the sewers, the Margolis (?) family. Kerler asks him to tell it in Yiddish for the others.

The drive leaves L'viv for Zhovkva. Dorfman tells how the Russian printer Ivan Fedorov took his press from the Jews of Zhovkva, and mentions the Jewish cemeteries and the visits of tourists. He also talks about the nearby border at Rava-Ruska, the rebbe of Zhidachov, the old monastery and the Jewish houses of the town. They arrive at the house of the interviewee.

S2 asks Lebvol about the memorials in town, which she attended with the opening of the memorial where Jews were murdered. Kerler then asks about prewar weddings: the chuppah, music, klezmer musicians (local ones), and a song about a fiddler and bass player.

Rabbi Wilgelm joins. Conversation about a large Jewish cemetery in a town (possibly Polonne, unclear), where old gravestones were removed by the Communists and the original ones remain inside. There is also talk of a planned trip to Pyatka after Shavuot and of a learned rabbi; much of the speech is garbled.

Mostly Russian conversation outside, about the state of Jewish cemeteries, documentation of cemeteries and mass-shooting sites, and a church being built on a cemetery. It also covers a speaker's name (Sergey, Baruch in Hebrew), a hotel, and farewells in Yiddish. The Yiddish lines are largely garbled.

Geller says the town's other inhabitants were Ukrainians with a few Polish families, and that no Jews remain. He describes a visit to Pyatka around 2005 with his daughter and grandchild, to his father's grave. The Jewish cemetery's gravestones had been gathered in one place and he could not find his father's. He also recounts the town's early history and a Jew from Berdychiv who began the settlement.

Burshtein sings Yiddish songs he composed himself, about his childhood home, about the town of Goworowo and the war, about hope, and about his mother. Kerler asks him about songs, including a coachman's song, and when and how he composed them. He says he composed the last song years ago, remembers lyrics from 1939, and has not written all of them down. A woman at the Jewish Agency office in Zhytomyr has transcribed twenty-two songs.

Geller talks about a yeshiva and a survivor of the thirteen students who studied there in 1938. This man, a rabbi's son, visited Pyatka a few years ago (2004 heard) and found only one Jewish house still standing. Kerler thanks him and they discuss the rabbi's address and directions, with a street named Dovzhenko mentioned.

Kerler asks where Chervonoarmiys'k is located, and Nibulskiy gives directions from Zhytomyr on the road towards Novohrad-Volynskyi, about forty kilometres away, then a seven-kilometre asphalt road. Three kilometres before the town is the Jewish holy place with graves of those killed in the war, where his father lies.

Nibulskiy describes the mass grave at the Jewish cemetery, with men on one side and women on the other, and says he visits to light a candle and recite a prayer. He recalls the killing of his grandfather by bandits, who cut off his beard and beat him. He mentions his brother who fell in the war and his parents, and that he himself did heavy construction work throughout the war.

The speaker says no Jews are left in Pyotke, only the cemetery, which he visits with his daughter and grandchildren; the mass graves of the murdered are there. He tells of the postwar trial of local policemen who took part in the killings, with long prison sentences and releases in the 1950s (the numbers of victims are unclear). He also mentions a list of Jewish families drawn up after the war, which he passed on to his children.

Kerler notes that the speaker was at the front for four years. He talks about the medals he received, including a later Israeli medal for Soviet veterans, which he says his children keep as a memento.

The speaker describes visiting Pyotke with Averbukh, a descendant of the town's rabbi, who lives in America. The old Jewish houses had been altered or taken over by non-Jews, and their age is discussed. He mentions that during the war this man was in Georgia.

The speaker tells of an underground yeshiva in Berdychiv and an archive of photographs of its students that was found after the war. He then recalls going to Pyotke with the rabbi's son to see his father's tombstone; he says many tombstones were removed and reused for building.

Nibulskiy shows family photographs and identifies the people in them. They include his father, who lived to about ninety-seven, his mother, and two aunts. He also shows his wife Yide, a daughter, a son-in-law, and a granddaughter who is a magazine editor. Photographs of a restored monument are also discussed, and some of the talk is in Russian.