Personal information

Gross names a man from Maramureș who lives in Budapest, then describes postwar life: in Vaja until 1950, later in several places including Nyíregyháza and Eger, and sixteen years in Debrecen. He says the Jews of Debrecen have no rabbi or shoykhet, and he describes the Budapest rabbis and the Orthodox and Neolog communities.

Kerler asks why Galambos moved between different yeshivas. Galambos says he himself decided to go, having heard about another yeshiva at home, and that a brother also studied in several. He and Kerler discuss how yeshiva study worked: study with a partner, lectures by the head of the yeshiva, the difference from the talmud torah, and the move from partner study to attending lectures.

Smajovics answers questions about his parents. His father was a field worker and his mother was Golde, and both were from Velyka Kopanya. He names his father's birth year as 1897, his sister Beyle in Brooklyn, and his paternal grandparents Moshe and Motl. His grandmother Motl was deported to Auschwitz and came from Oylak (?), 25 km away.

Smajovics answers a question about the word for 'sick' and then describes his time in Budapest, where before the war he worked for nine months in 1942 (?) and lodged with an old Carpathian Jew who spoke Yiddish. He says that he settled in Budapest in 1978, with his daughter having come earlier, that the move was difficult, and that he met a friend from cheder again.

Dof says he worked here after the war and stayed beside his ill mother for years; he is called a devoted son. He and Kerler exchange names, and Kerler gives his card and says he lives in America. Dof explains that his name is Yitshak Dof, not Imre (the Hungarian form), and mentions his mother's brother Bernstein in America, a confectioner. He then recalls the Purim play only dimly and says his wife also speaks some Yiddish.

Gotlieb names her siblings, two brothers and two sisters, including David and Meir. The youngest sister is named Gedole and is eleven or twelve years old. She says David studied to become a rabbi in a town about eighty kilometres away, where he lived with a relative.

Rezmovits and Kerler discuss Yiddish poets (Mangar, Latshteyn, Sutskever and others) and Rezmovits's reading of their poems. He says he began writing his Yiddish poems late, after his wife died, when he was anxious about the responsibility for his two children and could not sleep. He adds that he can write better in Hungarian.

Herbst says he worked at a sawmill and then after the war lay in hospital for several years from 1945 (?). Kerler asks whether he had been to Budapest before the war. Herbst says he knew it only from a picture and had stayed in Berlebash until 1944.

Herbst recounts that he travelled once to Romania, to a married sister in Vişeu de Sus (Oyber Visheve), where her husband was a melamed and he stayed a year before the war. He describes the border crossing with a one-month passport and how people advised him to buy a half-price train ticket. Kerler then asks when the war began.

Herbst recounts how a physicist invited him to work at a physics institute, with a trial month, and how a doctor friend had helped him find work and a post. He says it was hard because the others were highly educated, and mentions kosher supervision.

Pearl explains that he once spoke Russian better but has forgotten much of it. He says he worked in Hungary on buses with automatic hydraulic servo systems that were supplied to Russia, and that he visited there as a Hungarian specialist rather than working or studying. Kerler admires his skullcap, and Pearl says he designed and built something himself and has pictures of it.

Pearl says he was freed by partisans and spent weeks in the forest. From there he watched the German soldiers retreating from the Balkans and the Russian army waiting beyond them. He returned via Romania, went home to Tállya and found his brother, then went back to Budapest, continued his studies and became an engineer. He says he survived the camp because he was young and healthy.

Pearl says his family spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. His father, a shopkeeper, was born in Tállya in 1883 and his father's family came from Sighet. His grandfather and great-grandfather are named, and Pearl says he was named for his mother's father and has a son Shlomo in Syracuse. Because of the antisemitic laws of 1938 shops had to close, and the family kept animals and raised rabbits for wool. He sold the wool and fur goods, which his mother and sister made, in Budapest. Kerler and S2 try to find the Yiddish word for rabbit. Pearl gives his mother as Berta Rosenberg, born in Tállya, says he visits the family graves each year and describes how the Jewish community sold the synagogue, mikveh and rabbi's house.

Pearl tells how he left Tállya in 1941 for Budapest, travelling from nearby Rátka by train after a local incident involving the postman, the police and the rabbi (the details are unclear). In Budapest he worked repairing and installing machines and motors in a military-supervised factory. He says he knew from refugees arriving from Poland and Slovakia what the Germans intended. Kerler's questions fix the date as 1941.

Doman says he entered the yeshiva at age thirteen, after his bar mitzvah, in 1937, and stayed until he was eighteen. He had learned German at school but no Yiddish. His first yeshiva was in Verpelét, his mother's birthplace; he then went to Bicske (?) and to a yeshiva in western Hungary whose name is unclear. The passage ends as the interviewers bring up his book about the yeshiva world.

Gotlieb says she came to Budapest to work at eighteen, when young people were taken away for labor; the year is unclear (Kerler says 1934, but 1943 is also heard). She recalls her mother's advice about Sabbath, then says she was one of seven children, a brother and a sister died, and a brother named David studied at a yeshiva in Uzhhorod while the others worked with her father. Kerler asks about her learning to read Hebrew letters.

Gotlieb talks about her work in Budapest and her return home. She worked in a kosher community kitchen and went back and forth to her home town. She says she returned to live in Budapest in 1987 after her son died. At eighteen she worked in a factory, not in the kitchen.

Blobshteyn lists his siblings and their names and fates: seven children in the family, five of whom came home, two died in Auschwitz. Besides Feige (alive in America) there are brothers Wolf (Willy, died in America) and Naftali (died in Israel), and a sister Tsipre, who died in Mukacheve. The youngest brother was Berl, and another brother's Yiddish name he cannot recall. Kerler and Blobshteyn also discuss his own Hungarian and Hebrew names and double names.

Blobshteyn says his father David was a kosher butcher from Siltse, near Mukacheve, and his mother Sara Rivka a native of Mukacheve. His maternal grandfather came from Poland. He tells how his mother, in an earlier cholera outbreak, was said to have been hidden in an attic and sick people were burned alive, and how this gave her second name. He adds that his father, as a kosher butcher, depended on the rabbi, and that the family was large.

Smajovics tells of his move to Budapest in 1942 and of work in a carpentry or window-making shop paid by the hour. He went home in mid-1943 to prepare winter wood and was then called up to a labor service group with about two hundred men, in which he worked as a smith, tending horses among other tasks. He recalls praying secretly and being nicknamed "the little Russian" or "little partisan" because he was from the Carpathians. Kerler then asks about the languages of his childhood: Yiddish, Ukrainian and Czech, with only Yiddish at home.

Asked about the best time of his life, Smajovics says he became a driver after returning from prison (his own word), then a locksmith and truck driver. After moving to Budapest, he continued working as a pipe fitter with a master after retirement for six and a half years. He speaks about his two daughters, one in Budapest and one in America, and about his son-in-law, a businessman in the U.S. with homes in Queens and Miami.

Herbst recalls friends and acquaintances after the war, including a pianist whose name is given as Becker (?) and whose concerts he attended. He also recalls receiving clothing sent by the JDC and having trouble with influence and connections. He complains that the Carpathian Jews were sent in the first transport to Auschwitz.

Doman says that Orthodox and Neolog Jews observed the commandments alike and differed mainly in dress, the Orthodox wearing black beaver hats and white stockings. He talks about his father, Ernst Doman, who was a rabbi for some fifty years and Orthodox, and gives his own Jewish name. He says Hungarian Orthodox Jews spoke Yiddish-German rather than true Yiddish, and he mixes some of it with English.

Kerler asks about customs at the birth of a girl. Reti says the name was given in the synagogue and the father gave a Kiddush. The talk then breaks off because Reti has to leave and the team agrees to resume later.

Galambos shows family photographs of his siblings, his parents and the Jews of the village driven into the ghetto. He was liberated from Majdanek. As the interview begins he gives the place of his birth, and the interviewers discuss the Yiddish word he uses for it.

Samadi recalls attending cheder from the age of three until eleven and then a talmud torah in Újfehértó (Yiddish Ratsfelt), which he places a short distance from Debrecen. He names the rebbe there and his gabbai. He says his mother wanted him to learn Yiddish well so he could talk to Jews everywhere, and a later visit to Florida shows this.

Samadi talks about working as a baker in Nyírkáta (Gobe) before the war, and about his call-up to labor service. He says the village notary could have exempted him but did not. Much of the passage is in Hungarian and garbled.

Gurshteyn recites a Hungarian Purim play from memory, a comic monologue about an assimilated Jew who is not a good Jew, and then a scene with a cholent pot and friends. He says it was performed in his shtetl, the Hajdúbagos area (?), by three players including himself at twelve. Kerler asks about the date and about his Hungarian name and its Yiddish equivalent. Kerler ends by asking for a short Yiddish song and arranges to continue.

Kerler asks what her parents called her in Yiddish and who her grandfather was. Stern says in Hungarian that she had no trade and, after moving to Debrecen, worked in a cooperative making plastic children's toys. The conversation also covers the words for city and village, an American Yiddish speaker, and her husband's job as chief bookkeeper on a state farm. She says they wanted to emigrate but were refused. The tape ends with some talk about travelling on to Oradea and about a woman from Mukachevo who lives in the building.

David says her father was a shoemaker and her mother Sara a housewife, and that there were two children. Her brother was killed in Birkenau, apparently of illness and burned. They discuss the names in the family, Jewish versus Hungarian. Talk then turns to a rabbi from Israel who speaks Yiddish and to rabbis in Hungary and elsewhere who do not, and she mentions acquaintances in Vienna.

Opening exchange about the recording. Altman says she knows Yiddish as well as Russian, and Kerler compliments her Yiddish and asks what she remembers. She starts to say that her wartime evacuation experiences cannot be written down, and that she lost the sight of an eye. The transcript here does not clearly show dialectological questions.

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

Katerberg says he remembers his grandmother, his mother's mother, who lived with them, but not his grandfathers; his father's parents were in Yenovits. He names his paternal grandfather Manes and maternal grandfather Aron. Their son, named for the father, lives in Stanislav.

Kalussky recalls the start of the war. Lipcani Jews fled to Briceni, local Jews welcomed the Romanian soldiers with bread and salt, and local Christians looted Jewish homes. Two months later Jews were ordered to assemble and were driven to the Dniester, where documents were taken in a school. Lemster then questions him about the year and his age, which he gives as 13 in 1941.

Goldberg says her wedding was traditional, with a chuppah and klezmer musicians playing Yiddish and other songs, although the family had very little after the war. Kerler then asks about a family of comb or kimel makers, and Lemster mentions someone named Kilimann (?) from Israel.

Roif first mentions planned commemorative events, then answers questions about his family. His father Avrom worked in America for six years on a dairy farm outside New York and returned in 1929. His grandfather Khayim was a rabbi in the area of Briceni (Britshan) and Lipcani (Lipkan), and his mother Rive came from Duruitoarea. The family was wealthy from the father's American earnings and kept land, livestock and servants.

Shpitalnik talks about her childhood and schooling. Yiddish and Russian were spoken at home; she began a Romanian school at six and took private French lessons. The family was evacuated to Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and she began working at fourteen. She studied French at Chernivtsi, married in 1951, taught French and English in a village for five years, then translated medical literature at the Medical Institute library for 34 years. For fifteen years she has worked at the Yiddish library, publishing books and a yearly calendar of Jewish personalities.

Bengelsdorf says his parents both spoke literary Yiddish at home, which his father had learned in Mikhoels's theatrical school. His mother came from Sławatycze on the Polish–Belarusian border near the Bug and his father from Łomża. His father went to Argentina, worked as a tailor and joined a Yiddish drama circle, then went to Birobidzhan in the 1930s and was sent to Moscow to train for the Birobidzhan theater. His mother had worked in a hospital in Jerusalem, was expelled by the British, and studied at the Jewish workers' faculty in Moscow, where she met his father. Both came to Birobidzhan in 1934, and Bengelsdorf was born in 1937.

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 speaks about his work writing articles and publishing in a Chabad newspaper and on the internet. He discusses at length the messianic controversy within Chabad about the Lubavitcher Rebbe and says he was among the first to write about it. He mentions disagreements with other Chabad figures and gives his name to Kerler. He also begins to say he was born in Moscow and evacuated during the war.

Abelsky answers Katz and Kerler's questions about contact with Yiddish writers and Communist Jews in Moscow. He says his maternal grandfather, named Yeshaye Zusya Shub (?), was the chief Hasidic rabbi of Moscow and was called the Buder rabbi after a town in Ukraine. His father was born in Vitebsk and his mother in Sredina Buda (?), and Kerler locates the town in northern Ukraine.

Lipovetskiy talks about his family and the street in Chișinău where they lived before the war. His father had horses and a wagon and then worked at a factory (name unclear). He names his mother and her father, a rabbi, and recalls a great-uncle who went to Eretz Yisrael in the 1880s (?) and died there, and his grandmother, who sent him to talmud torah.

Roif tells how she became a teacher of mathematics after the war and gives the family structure. She was the eldest born before the war, and a half-sister (called Sima) was born in 1946 and a half-brother in 1950. The half-brother's wife and daughter live in Israel.

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 speaks about life today: he married in 1965 and has a son who has lived in Israel since a date he gives. His wife, a biologist and chemist, died sixteen years ago, and he lives with her mother. He has visited Israel five times, most recently for a bar mitzvah. His two older brothers also live in Israel. He answers Katz's questions about his pension and compares pensions in Israel, the US, Ukraine and Poland.

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

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.

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

Asked about life today, Sherman describes working and retiring with his wife, the collapse of savings after the Soviet era, and a pension that rose over time, with support from Hesed and the Jewish cultural center. He gives pension amounts and talks about the hard years of his youth, when he tutored mathematics in Orhei to support himself in school and then went to Chişinău for his baccalaureate with money his mother raised by selling silver spoons.

Diner talks about her mother's cooking, including gefilte fish on Sabbath, kugel, tarts and bagels, and says she moved to Chișinău in 1965. She recalls her sister and brother coming home in the summers from the conservatory in Bucharest with their friends to play and sing operetta and opera. Her father wanted her to become a doctor, which is why she later could not study in Siberia.

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

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.

Muchnik recounts her schooling before the war. She attended a Yiddish kindergarten, then a Hebrew Tarbut school where she learned to read and write Hebrew but never Yiddish. She went on to a Romanian gymnasium, finishing in 1940, and then taught young children in the village of Molovata (?) until the war.

Goldman says he was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where he was mobilised and served until 1946, and recalls serving officers up to colonel and living better than before. He says he married in 1928 (?), a date that conflicts with his birth year, and met his wife in Chișinău. Before the war they lived in Ialoveni, and afterwards in Chișinău. He does not recall Jewish weddings in his childhood.

Goldman describes her paternal relatives: her grandfather Nahum, grandmother Gitl, and the father's brothers, one who fled to Paris, a wealthy one in Bucharest with a factory, and one who moved to Palestine/Israel. She tells of working as a tailor in Bucharest for two years after the Yiddish professional school, and of her mother's relatives, including a family of Portuguese origin. She says her relatives mostly remained and were killed.

Goldman names the streets on which her family lived and notes the changes in their names. She worked as a tailor in Bucharest until 1940, recalls fear of violence against Jews there, and a Romanian landlord who protected them. She says she always preferred Chișinău.

Manevich says she lived in Tiraspol until the war and names the district where her family lived, near the militia building on Rosa Luxemburg Street. She gives her parents' and grandparents' names (the father Hershl, the mother Ite, the maternal grandparents Shmuel and Malke) and says all were born in Tiraspol. Her father worked at a mechanical plant (a locksmith or turner, she is unsure) and her mother and grandmother were housewives. She remembers her grandfather with a white beard driving a horse carriage and her grandparents going to synagogue.

Kerler introduces Shmid and checks her address in Chișinău and the name on her documents (Khaye, Peisekhovna). The interview formally starts.

Leibelman says she could not have children because her mother lay paralyzed for twenty-three years. After the war she worked as an assistant to the head of a department at a draft office, a good job because she was allowed to go to her mother. She and her husband moved to Dubăsari in 1956 from Rezina after the school where he worked was flooded.

Mundrian gives her name and birth year and talks about her parents and grandparents in Susleny: her father's origin, farming, her mother Khane and her grandfather Moshe. The transcript in this stretch does not contain the catalogue's remarks about Susleny as a wealthy Jewish town or her mother's hospital work; the Susleny question comes later (s0004).

Grinshpun remembers her father praying and singing and making the seder. She recalls her mother's tkhines, and the shroud he left for burial. She says she has lived in Peresecina since 1962, where her son was born. She tells of a relative returning from Argentina and her mother-in-law's family.

Boiarskaia speaks about the great famine of 1933. Young people left the village to look for work, while her parents stayed until the war. She says she was herself in a labor camp far from Donetsk.

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.

Mirenburg describes her family. Her father, from Sguritzy as were his father and grandfather, traded in grain and the family owned about six hectares of field. Her mother had two names and kept a small shop. She says three cousins live in Israel, and that people in the family speak a mixture of languages rather than Yiddish. She recalls her two grandmothers, Rokhl and Etl, and how Rokhl's will left her a pair of gold earrings. She later bought similar earrings and gave them to a grandchild as a keepsake.

Plotnik gives her parents' names. Her family had a field worked by hired labourers and an inn. Her paternal grandfather was named Pesach, and the family came from Dumbraveni. Her maiden surname is heard as Vereta (?), which her granddaughter has taken.

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.

Klichinskaia recalls her grandfather's stories and the Passover table, where the children said the four questions. She mentions holiday food and going to synagogue at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. She describes the many prayer houses in Bender and the poor and the rich in town. She mentions a charitable society and names her siblings and the origin of their names. She says there were five children.

Moisei explains how he met his wife through a relative of hers, and why they settled in Bender: her friends had moved there after the evacuation, then left for Israel. He says he has lived in Bender for eighty-three years (?), apparently a slip for his age.

Asked about Chimishliye, Elizaveta says her father Nusn was a merchant dealing in dairy products and grain for an employer. Her mother died when she was thirteen and her father did not remarry. She names her siblings: three sisters (Sheyndl, Rayele, Risl) and two brothers, one called Shuke, and Kerler asks about Yiddish names for Grisha. Yiddish was the home language.

David talks about his family. His father David was a kosher butcher and his mother a tailor, and he had two brothers who live in Israel. He names his grandfather, a shoemaker, and his grandmother, and remarks that his father was observant. Kerler and Lemster ask about names and relatives.

Brief names Jewish performers and composers and recites a Russian song about the broad country. He says he was a Pioneer and a Komsomol member in Chernivtsi, and that in 1945 the Russians came again.

The speaker says he learned Yiddish at home. He learned to read Torah and to pray at the talmud-torah in Botoșani, with a teacher who knew the whole Torah and the cantillation. He describes this teacher's skill in Hebrew reading and in Rashi, and says he himself knows only a little. Kerler and Lemster ask who the teachers were and what he studied.

Kerler sets up the interview with Burekh Cohn, who comes from Sulița, 25 km from Botoșani. Cohn says he spent the war in Tiraspol (?), and Kerler states the date and place for the recording.

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

Grunfeld names his siblings: three brothers and three sisters in all, with birth years given for some, and one who died at thirteen after his bar mitzvah. One sister has died and one brother lives in Israel (?).

Hershkovich names his mother Blime and his siblings: sisters Rachel and Sheindl and brothers David and Yisroel, with himself named after his grandfather; he explains his home name and his Torah-call name. He talks about Friday baking of challah and a cheese pastry called dalke (?), and about kolach. He describes his paternal grandfather Chaim Hershkovich, a shopkeeper and landowner in Bogata, who was deported in 1944.

Kraus says that he worked for thirty years in plastics processing, and retired as a technician. Questions about his yeshiva schooling follow: he was not a yeshiva student but learned a trade near the yeshiva in Cîmpia Turzii, and had been to cheder in Zorein until about age fourteen. The segment ends with a short exchange about the name Blackman.

Freundlich says she is from Satu Mare and describes her father as a merchant with a shop there who did not want his children to eat Communist bread. She names her daughter and her son, a doctor with a music diploma who performs internationally. She mentions her husband, her siblings in America and her father's standing in Cluj after the war.

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.

Opens with a short exchange on Hebrew versus the holy tongue and the Judaic studies department. Freundlich gives her Yiddish name and talks about her father's family: her father was a merchant with a shop in Satu Mare and had studied in Pressburg (Bratislava) with his brothers. She recalls in detail her grandfather's death on a Friday in Hanukkah (a year in the 1920s is heard) and his funeral. She mentions the rabbinic Weisz/Welz family connections and her grandfathers donating a Torah scroll.

Miller chants Sabbath tunes and hymns in the Vizhnitz style, including a piece sung before the blessing after meals. Kerler asks if he recalls a Vizhnitz melody without words. Miller says he is over 86 and mentions Rabbi Halberstam, the rabbi of the Orthodox community in Cluj.

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

The speaker tells of prewar Dorohoi: a rabbi chosen at 21, mostly mocked by older rabbis. He describes the Jewish town with 24 synagogues organised by trade, and recalls their closing or becoming a museum. The rest is practical talk about visiting relatives in Cluj and Săveni, a Yiddish-speaking couple, a telephone, and being called Tuvye.

Lipovici gives his birth year as 1921 and says he studied in cheder. He remembers the bearded melamed and a prank in which the boys glued his beard while he slept. Kerler and Lipovici also exchange some chat about where Kerler was born, and Lemster joins in.

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

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

Hirsch says he settled in Dej in 1960 and speaks about his brother Iosif Hirsch, who was a radio technician. The brother was arrested as a political prisoner for building an illegal radio station with two Romanian colleagues and was sentenced to twelve years of hard labor. He was beaten, lost his health and returned home sick with tuberculosis, and died soon after. Hirsch also says Dej had about 4,000 Jews before the war and about a thousand at most afterward.

Hirsch speaks about prewar Luduș, including non-Jewish workers whose parents spoke Yiddish, and about holidays. He recalls the matzo factory and new clothes at Passover, the closed shops at Yom Kippur, and being taken by his father to the early-morning selihot services. He then discusses the Yiddish word for the Mureș river, the changing of Jewish family names, and a saying about birth and loss. He finally describes the seder, where he asked the four questions, the afikoman, and the Hebrew reading of the Haggadah.

Chajim talks about his great age and says he is nearly a hundred. His daughter wanted to take him to Iași, and he recalls saying grace after meals at his father's prompting. Kerler asks about his surname and then asks him to tell about the Passover seder.

Chajim explains that he was a Communist because they gave him bread, and speaks of escaping from a camp. His father died in Israel, and he mentions sitting shiva for his wife. He names his mother, remembers her cooking (kugel, fish, gefilte fish on Sabbath eve) and her candle-lighting. He had six brothers and two sisters, and all the brothers are dead. His father and grandfather were tailors. He was also a tailor and president of a cooperative. Lemster asks about Yiddish theatre, which he does not remember.

Abramovich gives the prewar Jewish population of Hîrlău as over a thousand families (about three thousand Jews), and says he spent three years in a camp or ghetto in Transnistria while the town's Jews were deported. Kerler then asks about his childhood: a Jewish town of merchants and craftsmen where making a living was hard. His father was Baruch Abramovich and both parents were born in Hîrlău. A closing remark about a bundle and a coat is unclear.

Grinberg says schools in Romania, perhaps in Bucharest, teach Yiddish to children. She recalls that in the fifth class at her Romanian school there were mother-tongue Yiddish lessons with a teacher called Mara (?), but she learned little because the school had taught her a different Yiddish from the one she spoke at home. She and Kerler compare Yiddish terms for family members and mention the schoolteacher and the community.

Hoyshe talks about his family: his father was a baker and he had one brother, Leybele. He studied medicine in Iași, and served in the Romanian military after the war. A community member says his son is a Romanian ambassador in Vienna.

Rozenblat shows a songbook with Hanukkah and other song texts, and says he copied the songs from a Yiddish composer, Emil Sekulets (spelling unsure), who died in Israel and whose family were musicians. He says he played violin in the philharmonic for twelve years and describes his large music library and old records. Kerler asks about the sources of the songs and the dates of the records.

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

Chirilau describes folk cures: quenching coals in water against the evil eye, wrapping an inflamed spot, and cupping glasses. She then tells of the barber shop of a neighbour's father, and the visit of his son from Canada, whom she met on the road, who kissed her father in bed. She explains that she is known locally as Mika and officially as Maria.

Leichtner says all the Jews in the village had a livelihood: tailors, carpenters, shoemakers. He then names his siblings: three sisters who did not return, including an eldest who was married with three children, and brothers in America and Israel (Bnei Brak). The transcript is unclear on which brother was killed. He explains that names were given after relatives. A grandson filming and his daughter are mentioned, and his first wife Miriam died of cancer. The passage ends with a question about the cheder teacher.

Freundlich lists his work: before the war an employee of a merchant, after the war a partner in a factory until nationalisation, secretary of the Jewish cultural association, and an oil factory worker. He then describes his yeshiva study up to age fifteen in three small yeshivot and with a rabbi in town, and recalls a teacher named Polak.

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.

Opening of the interview: Kerler gives the date and purpose. Macarie gives her Romanian name Macarie and Yiddish name Khaye Rivke, and says she was born in 1925 in Sighet. She grew up in a village about three kilometres away, where only Jews lived, with one Hasidic synagogue. Her father, Yosl, wore a beard, sidelocks and a shtreimel, and was about sixty-five when the family was deported to Germany. Lemster closes by asking his occupation.

Kerler notes the date and their arrival in Oradea. Freundlich states he was born in 1921 in Baia Mare and that the town had no separate Yiddish name. He gives a number of Jewish families that is unclear in the transcript. He lived there until about seventeen or eighteen, in a family of seven children. His father, a Torah scholar who had studied in Vienna, could not earn a living. Freundlich studied in yeshiva until about fifteen and then went to work, because the family was poor.

Shwartz says he lived in his hometown (given as Valumihei, Hungarian before and Romanian after) until the war and worked there as a tombstone engraver. He married in 1930 (?) and had a child, left the town in 1942 (?), and returned after the war in 1945 to work in the same trade.

Shwartz recounts how, on doctors' orders, he gave up heavy work, left his town in 1966 (?) and began working in Oradea. He recalls attending the local yeshiva until about sixteen and eating at his mother's table, and says he did various jobs, including making kosher wine at a vineyard. He mentions that he had six sisters and a brother.

Grinberg talks about prewar religious life and charity in Fălticeni: collecting donations for the needy, and the two rabbinical families, including the Rozen family. She says a Rozen rabbi gave her father the name at her naming and names the role of the marriage helpers, with Kerler and Lemster asking about naming customs for girls and the term for the person who gives the name.

Grinberg briefly states her education: school and lyceum in Fălticeni, then the faculty in Iași, where she took her doctorate in mathematics. The interviewers then arrange to go to the club for lunch and afterwards to her mother.

Grinberg talks about her good parents and being an only child. She says her father, a pious man, led the prayers, and recalls Sabbath at home. She tells how he founded a prayer house next to their home and brought food to a poor old neighbor. She also talks about the name Borukh being shared by father and husband, and Kerler's Yiddish.

Marcus answers questions about his son and about his own emigration to Israel and return to Săveni. His son was born in the 1980s (the year is unclear) and was circumcised in Săveni, and the family returned in 2004. The passage is hard to follow, with the interviewers asking repeatedly for clarification, and the dates of emigration are unclear.

Salamon recalls her childhood and says she was born in this house, as was her mother. She gives her mother's name Beyle and her father's name Ezra Malik, her names Golda and her husband's name, and her birth in 1926. She had seven siblings (four brothers and three sisters); she alone survived and returned after the ghetto and Birkenau.

Salamon recalls how, at about sixteen, she and around a dozen girls learned the Hebrew alphabet and months from a young tutor, since the boys attended cheder. She explains that her father examined the boys on Sabbath, and that there was a talmud torah but no yeshiva in Sighet. She speaks of her grandmother's wish for her granddaughter's wedding and of her older siblings, and names her brothers and her youngest sister. She also describes her parents' appearance in a photograph.

Kurtsberg talks about his family before the war. His family left Piatra Neamț for Chernivtsi, where his father's relatives lived. His father worked as a butcher for a large firm. His mother, Matilda (Malke), was born in a village near Piatra Neamț (the name is garbled, Bălțătești per the catalogue) and worked as a tailor. His grandfather Shloyme worked in a boards factory in Storozhynets, whose boards were taken by wagon to markets. His younger sister died in Bershad in Transnistria.

Kerler and Lemster talk with Petraru inside the great synagogue, while the camera films it, including its paintings. Petraru explains that the family name Petrarlu/Petraru comes from his great-grandfather's trade as a builder or mason, and speaks of a woman who restored the paintings and what the work cost. They discuss the women's section and who prays there; he prays at home and the synagogue meets mainly on Sabbath and holidays.

Mehler says she lived in Iași until 1955 and briefly recalls the war years, including the bombardment and wearing the yellow star. She names the contemporary Iași community and a doctor who works there as a volunteer. She also recalls an excursion with a young group from the community.

Bercovici says she was deported to Transnistria, to Mohyliv. She was born in this house and still lives in it. Her husband returned with her, and she gives her ages and the death years of her family: her mother Zonia Shtern in 1969, her husband, and her father David Shtern, an engineer, who died in Mohyliv in 1944. The interviewers introduce their colleague, and Bercovici mentions a friend in New York and her own age.

Weinberger recalls carrying kosher milk to Jewish homes in the early morning as a boy for his uncle's cows. The date of the interview is stated as 18 December 2006, in Kislev, during Hanukkah, and there is a place-name exchange mentioning Mukachevo. He then begins his personal information: his name, father Leyzer, mother Gitl, sister Leah and brother Shmuel.

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

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

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 has a cousin in America and others in Israel. She says she was born in Balta on Rosh Hashanah in 1918 (?), and her father was named Zelik, with grandfathers Yosef and Luzer. She tells of her grandmother Reyze, a women's prayer leader who died in the ghetto, and says her mother Gitl died in 1929 leaving six children. She names her siblings: three sisters and three brothers. She was evacuated to Sakhalin, one brother died on the front, others went to Central Asia and the Far East. She mentions relatives abroad, and Kerler asks about prewar life in Balta, which she says was hard for her without a mother.

Khotenko says she was born and lived in Balta until the war, when the family was evacuated. She describes her street and the Jews who once lived there. Her father, a baker, came from a village called Nestoyita (?), and her mother sewed. She names her grandparents and a maternal uncle in Odessa, and recounts the killing of the paternal grandparents on a forced march and the evacuation by her uncle. She also mentions her son in Tiraspol, her seven siblings and her surviving sister.

Gorberg gives her name and her family's names: her mother Esther, her father Bentsik (Benyamin), and her married name Gorberg. She speaks of her two sons, her father the tailor born in Kodyma (?), her mother from Balta, and her mother's later life in Rîbnița. She attended a Yiddish school for two years and worked on the Chervona Zirka kolkhoz. In June 1941 the family left by cart with the cows; two young men helped them, and bombing left them covered in earth and washed with milk.

Gorberg talks about her mother in Rîbnița and says she had a traditional wedding with a huppah in 1951; she recalls few details of the wedding. She discusses her two years at a Yiddish school, her later Ukrainian schooling, and her birth date. She mentions her father's tallis and his prayer, and says that the family's Sabbath observance has faded, though she herself lights candles. Kerler steers her back to the past after she begins describing her present reading.

Lerner says her father was arrested in 1936 under Stalin and died in a camp. She was raised by her mother's sister. She describes her good schooling and her studies in mathematics at a pedagogical institute in Odesa. After graduating with distinction she was assigned to teach in a village school for three years, in a district now part of Balta district. At the end an interviewer asks where and in what year she was born.

Angelova gives the names of her grandfathers and grandmothers, and says one grandfather was a kulak who kept pigs. Lemster and Kerler also ask about the date of collectivization and about her grandfather's origin in the Rashkov area.

Outside another building, the team talks in Russian with two women about a possible interview. They understand Yiddish but no longer speak it. One gives her Russian name Zoya and her Yiddish name Zlote, and Kerler wishes her good health.

Vaynman says that her family lived in Lviv, that they moved there before the war, and that she was evacuated to the Urals. Her father Boris Aronovich (Borekh in Yiddish) was killed in the war. She is Khayke at home and Klara in Russian documents. She was only a few months old when they moved and remembers nothing of Lviv.

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

Kerler opens the interview with Zhovtis, a native of Khmilnyk, asking about his name and his childhood. Zhovtis gives his parents' names and says they were from Khmilnyk. He mentions a brother, a sister, and a grandfather with relatives in America, and that he finished seven classes.

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

Kerler asks about family. Zhovtis says his mother was a dressmaker and his father worked in a factory. He also names his paternal grandfather as Yankl and his maternal grandmother as Sara. Details of the household furnishings are unclear.

Berman gives his birth date as 7 November 1923, and the interview pauses while he looks for something among his materials. Kerler then asks his wife for her maiden name from home, which she gives as Pritske.

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.

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 says she and her husband were sent in 1948 on a work assignment to Bila Tserkva and that she was married for 55 years. She speaks about her children: a daughter who is a surgeon in the local hospital and a son who stayed in Russia near Moscow, and a granddaughter who is a doctor. She mentions the son's yearly visits.

Bublitskaia talks about her housing, exchanging a large apartment for a smaller one, and says she lives alone. She says she turns eighty in August, on the 24th, and mentions that her husband died. Kerler then asks about the Yiddish theater.

A man in the room says there is an older Yiddish speaker in the area, over eighty and born in Orhei (?) or nearby. Shor says he was born in 1925 and that man is a year older.

A man in the room mentions an older Yiddish speaker in the area, over eighty, and Shor gives his own birth year as 1925, a year younger than that man. The transcript is partly garbled.

Skobilitskii names his mother as Khane, daughter of Nakhmen, and speaks of the Kalushner rebbe in Chervone, where there was a sugar factory. His father came from Poland near Warsaw and was a metalworker. His mother did not work and there were five sons, whose names he gives; the youngest, Motele, was killed by the Germans.

The Vaismans talk about life today in Berdychiv. They mention the few remaining Jews and the neighbours' attitude toward them. One of them sells soda water at the market, and there is talk of working despite age and poor health. Kerler comments on their names.

Fania speaks about Israel and the Arab conflict, then gives personal information. Kerler asks for her name and the names of her parents (father Hershl, mother Hinde). She was named Feyge Leye and her documents were altered.

Skobilitskii speaks about his schooling before the war, including Polish and Russian schools. He then describes serving as an officer from 1939 for ten years, the whole war, from Stalingrad to Berlin. He was an artillery battery commander whose division helped liberate Berlin, Austria, Hungary and Czechoslovakia. He gives his surname for the record.

Skobilitskii recounts his ten years of army service. He finished an artillery officers' school, fought at Stalingrad, and was wounded in 1942, spending two months in hospital in Saratov. He went back to his division and entered Bryansk, where he received decorations. His route took him through Sandomierz, Austria, Hungary and Germany to Berlin. He then served as commandant of a town named Tiefenbach (?) on the Austrian border, where his wife joined him for two years. He mentions Jewish colleagues in the unit.

A short informal interview with Chukh. She says her husband used to pray, and mentions his age and her father's age at death. She gives her name as Rachel (?) Rozenblat, from Berdychiv, born in 1919, and says her parents were also from Berdychiv.

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

Skobilitskii gives details on his family: his father came from near Warsaw and was a rabbi in a village near Andrushivka in the Zhytomyr region. The names of his paternal grandparents, his mother and his brothers are given, and one brother was killed by the Germans. Kerler also briefly arranges a further interview in town.

Talk about Yiddish-speaking Jews in a nearby town (Mezhybizh (?)), about Jewish students at the university and a shaliach, and a donor from New York. Katz offers to telephone Breuer from Vilnius. A man from the synagogue says he was born in Moscow and has lived in Berdychiv since the war, and says Kaddish for a deceased man. Furman introduces himself and gives his age (87) and birthplace, Berdychiv.

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

Furman gives his family details. His father Zelik, from Berdychiv, was a carpenter. His mother Leike was also from Berdychiv. He had a sister and two younger brothers, Moshe and Birl, and he was the eldest, born in October. He worked as a furniture maker for forty years.

Formal introduction of Soyfer. He gives his name as David Isakovich Soyfer and says he was born in 1930. He lives in Berdychiv, on a street and in a building given in Russian (Sverdlova, apartment 4). A second person asks about transport, and Kerler arranges for him to be driven.

Soyfer recalls his childhood. His mother died when he was eight, and he lived with her sister in a village not far from Zhytomyr during the famine. He gives his mother's name as Sara (?) and says he was named after his grandfather David. He lived with relatives, and his father was a shoykhet; Kerler and Lemster question how he could work in Berdychiv as one.

Semyon Berzon gives his father's name as Leyzer, born in 1887, and his own birth year as 1923. He says he worked until 1975, among other things as retoucher and photographer, and also at a cinema and a hairdresser. His mother Khane Lipshe was a cook and later sewed at a factory. Both parents were born in Berdychiv. He says he did not go to cheder but attended a Jewish school for seven years and then a Russian one, and cannot recall songs from school.

Kogan speaks of finishing seven classes in a Yiddish school in Bershad, of his teachers, and says that neither he nor his wife is from Tulchyn; she was from Zhabokrych (?).

Kerler asks about Yiddish schooling. Those present recall the Yiddish schools that were closed in the 1930s, and one woman says she attended one briefly but now speaks no Yiddish. The interviewee then says her father, Moyshe Reinsdorf, from a Warsaw family, finished two institutes and came to Berdychiv as a refugee during the First World War.

Soyfer says his mother died before the war, in the year (as heard) before Hanukkah, and that he went to live with his grandmother Rukhl, his mother's mother. His mother was Sure and his father Yitskhak a shoykhet, born in Berdychiv, whose own father was connected with the synagogue. The family was not rich; he went to school, and when the war began he was in Kyiv.

Closing exchange of blessings and farewells between Vainshelboim and Kerler. Vainshelboim tells how visitors from England or America asked him his age, and he said that God counts the years and people need not. Kerler asks about his year of birth, which is unclear in the transcript, and then says goodbye.

Kerler announces the recording in Berdychiv on 9 June 2009. Mikhail gives his Yiddish name as Moshe, son of Aron, named after his grandfather, and the surname Vainshelboim (Weichselbaum) with some wordplay on it.

Informal conversation among Burmenko and the research team. They discuss the Americans' Yiddish and their need for interpreters. They talk about Burmenko's own Berdychiv Yiddish, her family going back generations in Berdychiv, and Kerler's own family name. Burmenko blesses the visitors with long life.

Hodinger gives information about his sister Chana, whose married name is unclear in the transcript (Isakovich?). She lives alone on the ninth floor in Haifa, in a high-rise block. She has been widowed twice, and has a son Eli, a daughter Hadina, and grandchildren. Kerler checks her details and her birth year (1924?), and offers to bring her greetings when he visits Israel.

A man in the synagogue says he lived about thirty-five years in New Jersey, where he worked as a carpenter, and has been back in Berehove for three years. He has a son in America and says his wife was ill. Kerler suggests setting up two cameras to interview each man separately. They also discuss a woman in Seliš who might be found.

Formal interview begins. Murovanaia says she can hardly speak Yiddish now for lack of people to speak it with, and that she was taught it from childhood. Her grandson introduces himself; Kerler states the date and place of the recording and begins collecting her details.

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

Bershadskaya recalls the Bershad ghetto, where it lay, and the night killings of people accused of being partisans. She describes being bombed and thrown down while running. Kerler arranges an interview with her later. She gives her name as Elizaveta Konstantinovna, with the Yiddish name Leyke.

Kerler asks about Bershadskaya's parents and siblings. Her mother was a seamstress and her father a barber who shaved and cut hair for peasant clients in the village, later working at a different job. She names her siblings and says there were four children; she moved to Bershad' at about thirteen.

Her husband (S4) and others speak about the women's synagogue and the people who lived behind it. Asked how she and her husband met, Gvinter says they were neighbours; she was a seamstress and he a shoemaker (?). She talks about sewing for others in the early years and then breaks off into her camp experience and being wounded.

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

Sklyarskiy talks about the years after the war, when he finished bookkeeping courses in Vinnytsia and worked as an accountant in several places. Kerler and Lemster also ask when he married and look for a photograph.

Sklyarskiy gives family information. His brother Mikhail, named by his son, died as a hero; his father was Moishe, so he is Moiseyevich. The cousin Yasha was Yakov Gertsovich (?) Varnavitsky (?), three months younger. He also speaks of his children, a son who lives with him and a daughter in Bershad'.

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 (?).

Kerler begins interviewing Pustilnik. She says she has a daughter and a son, who lives in Israel with five children, and names grandchildren. Her father, Moshe Vaysberg, was born in Yampil; her mother, Ester, née Pleyder, came from Yaruga, where Pustilnik says she still has a house. A half-sister, a woman who works as a kolkhoz chairwoman, is mentioned. Kerler says his wife's family is also from Yaruga.

Pustilnik tells how she met her husband, a handsome tall man from Yire (?), and gives the names of the brothers, who had the surname Volkovich. His mother had died in the ghetto, and a sister of Pustilnik who was a nurse had been his friend, after which she was matched with Pustilnik. The passage ends in the middle of the wedding story.

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.

She explains the family went to Sharhorod for Passover to celebrate with her husband's parents and brothers, and the discussion turns to the names of the grandparents, including the grandmother's Yiddish name. Kerler asks about the husband's father's name and birthplace.

Geller says he studied again at the factory school in Kyiv to be a turner, and was drafted in 1950 and sent by freight train for a month to the Primorsky region near Vladivostok.

Asked about prewar life in Bratslav, Kupershmidt says it was already bad by 1933, with bandits killing Jews, and the famine hit non-Jews harder. In 1933 he went to Odesa to earn money and was given bread rations. In 1935 he trained as a driver and in 1936 came to Vossatov (?) and became an instructor. He was already married and had a child in 1940.

Kerler asks about Kupershmidt's birth year and what he remembers of prayers, and he recalls only the start of the Shema. He tells of a family dispute: his wife worked at a newspaper editorial office and he refused to have their son circumcised in 1953 (?). A circumcision took place later, in wartime, and the child was raised in Mohyliv (?). Kerler asks about the night-before-circumcision custom.

Kelmenson says Bratslav was a Jewish shtetl in 1937 but now has no one, and that Jews remained after the war until they left for Israel and America. Kerler says he has read about the town's pious Jews. She finished ten classes and went to Vinnytsia to study. Her later move away, with a mention of Kishinev, is garbled in the transcript.

Khavin describes Soviet-period private minyanim and then speaks about his family at Kerler's request: his grandfather the melamed, grandmother Kune and his learned father. He names his mother Malka Rakhel and eight children, of whom five survived, with names given, and his parents married in 1902. He mentions a sister who died in Haifa.

Bielaia says she attended the Yiddish school in Nezhe for seven years. She names a teacher and the director Rebelsky, who was a graduate of Kyiv University, and describes the subjects. Katz then asks about Hanukkah.

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

Burg talks about Vyzhnytsya, where nearly all of the roughly 6,800 inhabitants were Jewish before the war. He mentions the Vyzhnytsya Hasidic dynasty and a Jewish doctor who revived a small community there. He then discusses the Jewish population of Chernivtsi before the war, after the war and today, the census figures, and the decline in emigration-era readership of the Chernivtsi newsletter. He mentions his honors as honorary citizen of Chernivtsi and as a writer, his small pension, and his lecturing and publishing in Germany and Israel. He also mentions his visits to Israel and several recent books and friends who helped with them.

Burg tells of his family and early life. His father was a raftsman on the Cheremosh, and his book 'Oyfn Cheremosh' draws on this. Burg's maternal grandfather lived long ago; Burg was Yosef Mordkhe until the Soviet period and Yosele at home. His mother bore five children, two died, and his brother Binyamin was killed in Spain and his sister Chaye died with the mother in the war. At thirteen he left home, lodged with a poor tailor in Chernivtsi, and was helped by his rich uncle Max. He then attended Eliezer Steinberg's Jewish teachers' seminary and gave private lessons. He mentions the editor Shmuel Abba Soifer and the 1934 publication of his first story.

Burg tells how the family moved from Vyzhnytsya to Chernivtsi when he was about twelve. His father, a timber trader, continued traveling to Vyzhnytsya and lodged them in a tenement room, and died in 1938; the mother stayed on for two years until the Soviets came. He says Chernivtsi had seventy-six prayer houses before the war, and discusses the synagogues near where they lived.

Burg recalls how he began to write, going back to Steinberg's summer colony, and the discouraging response to his first poem. He printed his first story in the Czernowitzer Bleter at age twenty-two, in 1934, and he names the years of his published books. He also talks about reviews and recognition, including a German newspaper article and a Yiddish paper in New York, disagreements with a journalist, and an Austrian medal.

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.

Burg recalls leaving Ivanovo when it became dangerous and going to Moscow, then taking a posting at the Pyatigorsk institute in the Caucasus for about four years. He then spent four years in a Cossack village in the Stalingrad region, he teaching German and his wife Russian literature, before returning to Chernivtsi, where a daughter was born. He speaks of his standing as an honored figure and writer in Chernivtsi, his vice-presidency of the Israel–Ukraine association, his readings in German-speaking countries and elsewhere, and the tourists who now visit him. Kerler then asks which writers influenced him most.

Geinik describes the good life under Romanian rule and the seven classes she attended at a Romanian school. She recalls speaking Yiddish with friends, playing with dolls, her grandparents, her Yiddish name Henye-Sure, and her mother's Sabbath baking and fish. She talks about holidays at home, including Sukkot, Yom Kippur, Hanukkah, Passover and Shavuot, and the dishes made.

Kleiman talks about his family: his naming after his grandfather and sister's after his grandmother, his father David son of Yeshaye, and the story of his grandfather marrying a niece (his brother's stepdaughter), apparently after a quarrel over kashrut. He gives his mother's name Golde, her father Tevye (?), her family name Utshitel, her brother's emigration to Palestine, and her role as housewife. His father was a shopkeeper before the war and worked in a shop afterwards, and Kerler asks which words were used.

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

Gimelbrandt tells how her mother, with small children, waited in a barn after liberation. The village head brought a certificate that let the family go back to Chernivtsi. She recalls a cellar room there and a sister's later request from Israel for a copy of the paper. Half-blind after an eye injury, she could not study and began work at thirteen. She spent 42 years at a dye factory, where she later received a flat and married.

Gammer says she studied Yiddish for seven grades, reads it today, but cannot write by hand. She discusses her family. Her mother came from a rich family in Lithuania and knew prayers and Hebrew, and her grandfather Zalmen was a doctor. Her grandmother was Ite Beyle. Her paternal grandfather Shloyme was a poor tailor with six children. The matchmaking of her parents is explained by a Lithuanian typhus loss during the Petliura period. Her father, a young Komsomol member, worked for the Cheka and became a partisan.

Kapustina speaks about her family. She explains that the interviewers can have the tape sent to America, and that her brother lives in Los Angeles. She was born in Khmil'nyk; she gives her maiden name Kolomeir and her first name Sonya. Her father was a simple worker at a poultry combine, her mother was Liba. She discusses her grandfather Mordkhe, who traded in leather and built a house for his daughters, and her paternal grandfather Meyer, a leaseholder from a village near Khmil'nyk. She names her three brothers (Grisha, Avrasha, Nyoma) and talks about her second brother's illness and her own operation.

Shames confirms she is from Yanushpol, not far from Donets (?), and says she remembers little now. She was born before the war and had one sister. Her father Shleyme was killed by the Germans, and her mother was Sarah. Until the war she lived in Yanushpol. Kerler also asks whether Hesed helps her.

Schreier recalls the end of the war and the years after it. He worked as a German–Russian interpreter without ever having studied German formally, was in Freiberg until the end of 1945, then went to Dresden (Hellerau, Klotzsche) as interpreter for the Soviet trade administration. He describes being gathered at Teltow near Berlin, the Red Cross in Berlin where he asked about an aunt and uncle in Argentina, and a camp in Grodno where he played in a small orchestra, until he returned to Drohobych via Vilnius with a fellow musician.

Schreier tells of his return to Drohobych, where he quickly found work in a large dance orchestra and played for the cinema. He studied at the music lyceum and the Lviv conservatory, finished at the music department of the pedagogical institute and taught at the music lyceum for 42 years. He says he is the sole survivor of his family and had no siblings. He mentions his father's sister, wife of Rabbi Dr. Bernard Schreier, who taught Jewish religion at the Polish gymnasium. His marriage and his wife's death are mentioned but the year is unclear.

Shekhter says he left his parents' home at 14 to earn his living and that the family was poor, with three brothers and two sisters (as the transcript has it). He worked in a factory in Ivano-Frankivsk and was taken into a labor battalion at the start of the war, where he stayed until 1943. After release he worked in an artel in the Urals, and he mentions Leningrad and a long stay in Zolotonosha.

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 says he lived in Zolotonosha from 1971 to 1998. About ten Jews gathered there on Sabbath, some of them knew Yiddish, and they prayed in Yiddish. Before that he lived in a place that sounds like Artyomovsk; Kerler asks about his earlier residences.

Asked about the Horovitz and Kerler families of prewar Haysyn, Murovanaia talks about a Horovitz born in the same year as her husband, a relative who writes from Brooklyn, and what she knows of the Kerler family. She then gives her husband's name, his work at a factory warehouse, his religious family and his parents' names.

Burshtein says he lived in Sobolivka with his parents until the Germans came. His father, Leyb Mendels, was born in Sobolivka and worked as a tailor, and his grandfather was also from Sobolivka. Kerler's explanations of the project and chat in Russian and English interrupt the account.

Opens with chat in Russian and Yiddish about a visiting group and a local Jewish community figure. Kerler then asks for personal data: the parents' birth years (the mother born 1901 (?) and the father in the 1890s, with some confusion), the mother as a housewife, and the siblings. Burshtein had an older sister, born 1922 (?), and a younger brother named after the grandfather, who now lives abroad (?). Kerler then moves on to ask about Sobolivka.

Introductions with Beigel. She says she lives alone, with a son and grandchildren elsewhere. Her Yiddish name is discussed, and she says few Jews are left in the town. She gives her birth year, 1924.

Beigel gives personal information. She was born in Tyvriv, once a Jewish shtetl whose Jews were killed in the war. She gives her married surname (Beigel), her maiden name (Pansky) and her patronymic. Kerler and Lemster ask about her Yiddish name and the custom of double names, and about her son's name.

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 and Kerler discuss a Yiddish blessing about long years and when it is said. She talks about studying at a technical college in Vinnytsya to be a medical assistant, and about a Jewish school in Tyvriv that she attended for a year before it closed, naming two teachers. She also mentions a fire brigade, a Georgian one (?), and the word for cotton wool, and does not remember non-Jews who spoke Yiddish.

Iuris says she moved to Kolomyya in the postwar period, where her husband came from, after her mother died and her father remarried. She describes Kolomyya's Jewish community then and now, and that her husband was transferred for work to Ivano-Frankivsk. Kerler thanks her, and she then speaks in Russian about her family's history, mentioning her grandmother's sister, relatives in Romania, food parcels, and the closing of the border.

Bukshtein recalls writing home to a non-Jewish neighbor in Novoselitsa after the liberation of the area, and learning that the family's house had burned down. He then received a letter from his sister, who had returned home, and learned that his mother, brother and younger sister had survived, while his father had been killed on deportation. In the army in Siberia he met his Jewish wife Lucye, whose family came from the Poltava region and had lived in Leningrad; he answers Kerler's questions about her.

Katz talks about his family. Both parents and most siblings were killed in the war. His father Moyshe, a distillery worker, came from Horodenka; his mother Gitl was a housewife from Tlumach, and her father was Gershon. He was named after his grandfather Hersh. He recalls his cattle-trading grandfather Gershon, helping him build the sukkah, and his grandmother's pet name for him. Kerler goes through his siblings' names (Rozia/Reyzl, Leyb, Klara, Mina/Menia, Kuba/Yankl, Nusia) and establishes that there were seven children, with Katz the eldest.

Katz talks about his schooling: seven classes at a Polish school, then three years at a trade school in Stryi, followed by a locksmith's exam in Lviv and a diploma. He was unemployed at home until the Soviet occupation, then worked in a ministry office and married at the rebbe's house in Stanislav. During the war he was in a labor battalion digging trenches near Stalingrad, fell ill with a high fever, and worked eighteen-hour days in a munitions factory. He was then sent to another factory in Kirov (?), where he stayed until moving to Ivano-Frankivs'k in 1947.

Kerler talks with several congregants about where they were born, the Yiddish they speak and the language of their region. One man from Proskurov (Khmelnytskyi) talks about the Jewish population there, the family members who perished in the war, and his Russian schooling. There are also remarks on Litvak Yiddish, on Yampil and on Jewish life in Proskurov today. Kerler explains that this is a short interview for an archive and that the recording will not be shown publicly.

Fishman talks about his family. His daughter is disabled, his son died after illness, and the Hesed in Zhytomyr helps with parcels. His sister lives in Baltimore with relatives in San Francisco, and cousins live in Israel and Canada; he gives their names, including Alla Fishman and a Feldman. He gives his name and patronymic and says he does not remember his grandparents. His grandmother died in evacuation in Kazakhstan.

Lemster asks Fishman about evacuation and then for his address. He answers with a street in Chudniv.

Geller speaks about the geography and administrative history of his hometown Pyatka, which lay in the Vinnytsia region and later in the Zhytomyr region. Kerler asks about a Jew from Poland, and the two men then go into the synagogue.

Vertman gives his address and personal data and says he speaks Yiddish. He talks about his family: his father Aren, born in Polonne, worked as a drayman for a householder; his mother Lite was born in Izyaslav and baked bread at home for sale. He names his two brothers and two sisters and their years of birth.

Lys says the town had a large Jewish majority and a Jewish street where people sat and talked. His father prayed well, and synagogues were closed in the 1930s, with four or five remaining. His mother, also from Kornitsa, prayed and women came to her at the high holidays. He gives his age as 70, born in Kornitsa and registered in Izyaslav, and says his father told of a village club play after the revolution, which leads into a song.

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.

Geller gives his birth year (1923), birthplace Kuzmin in the Krasyliv district, and his parents' and grandparents' names; both parents were from Chisinau. His father was a cobbler and his mother a seamstress who worked in a kolkhoz kindergarten; she was admitted to the Russian school because of her father's carpentry. He recounts at length episodes from his father's tsarist army service, including a conflict over spoiled meat, a fight, imprisonment, and later service with Kotovsky's army.

Kerler and Lemster recall Geller's earlier remark that his parents served with Kotovsky. Geller says his father was a strong man, and he describes his grandfather, a Kolno Hasid who prayed with two pairs of tefillin and was called to make up a minyan in Kishinev. He says he was born in Kuz'myn in Krasilov district, while both parents came from Kishinev, where relatives emigrated to Israel. There is also Russian talk with a woman about photographing a rooster.

Geller says the family returned after evacuation. His mother later died in Moscow while visiting his sister, and he put up a monument at the Russian cemetery. He names his mother as Leike (?) Markevich. He has lived in Izyaslav since 1951, and he says he worked three years in the economic crimes unit in Slavuta.

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.

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

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

Gaiviker says he knew prayers and Kaddish well in his youth, learned well, and played pranks on the teacher with his whip. He describes the town's bakeries with bread and bagels and their prices. Kerler asks Sonya about her name and her mother's name.

Sonya says she began working after the war in several places but became a housewife once they registered. Before the war she had studied at school until the war began.

Kaviner gives family details: his father David was a barrel maker (born 1889(?)), his mother Ester a housewife. He did not meet his grandfathers and remembers only one grandmother, Leye. There were three children: Milke (born 1920), Shmuel (Shmilikl), and himself as the third. He says he hardly worked before the war.

Kaviner says he printed several poems in the newspaper Shtern before the war under his family name. After the war he wrote two Yiddish novels, one on prewar Jewish life and one on life in evacuation, and burned them out of fear of arrest. Kerler offers to find his poems and they briefly discuss Russian.