Poverty and economic conditions

Rezmovits speaks about his father's side, where his grandfather Avrom was a poor teacher (melamed), and about visiting his maternal grandparents at about age four. He recalls a cousin, Sara, who turned up in 1945 as the only survivor of her family, then married a ritual slaughterer and went to Manchester. He names his three sisters and brothers and says four of the six siblings are alive; his brother in Debrecen is ill. Kerler then asks about his childhood memories of Debrecen.

Rezmovits answers Kerler's questions about how to say 'sick' and 'holy place' in his Yiddish. He then talks about his mother, who could read Hebrew and ate pork when it was necessary to stay alive, and about his father, a poor ritual slaughterer. He mentions Romanian Yiddish theater from Bucharest.

Smajovics talks about a rabbinical court case in his hometown against two men, and about the hardship for their wives and children. He recalls Red Cross parcels, and that the Czech teacher decided which children received clothing and books. He tells how the boys gave concerts and recitations to raise money and went on a trip to the forest paid for from the funds, with milk brought for poor children.

Herbst describes the tiny Jewish community of Berlabash, which had a minyan and about ten to twelve families, and his own family of eight children. He tells how his sisters sewed and knitted for local women, how his father worked as a small-time local judge who travelled on foot over the mountains, and how the family ran a small shop. He names his grandfathers, and two brothers learned trades in Brno and Rakhiv.

Herbst describes Sabbath in his parents' home before the war: his mother baking challah and bread in the early morning, cholent and kugel baked in the oven, and thin flat breads. Meat was not always affordable and there was no fish, so mock fish was made, with farfel as a side. He recalls a neighbour, a butcher, who survived the camps and now lives in Brooklyn.

Herbst recites a rabbinic saying about honouring the place, and Kerler asks about the sense of 'makom' as God. Herbst describes a Yiddish club in Budapest and how he speaks Yiddish words to Jews he meets in the street. He recalls the prewar poverty in which his father still invited passing guests to eat while going without himself, and says he now offers food to anyone who comes. Kerler also talks about making a copy of the recording for him, and finally asks about Purim.

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

Rezmovits talks about prewar Debrecen and his Jewish community, including an episode of his mother and the ritual slaughterer. He describes his mother's humor and patience, and how she managed six children while his father was in forced labor. The family lived in a long courtyard on a street in Debrecen. He and Kerler discuss the word for a snack (a Hungarian-Yiddish word, "yaznt").

Herbst describes Berlebash as tiny, with barely a minyan and boys without tallit until marriage. The wealthiest family kept an inn that obtained grapes for Rosh Hashanah wine, which was distributed to each family. A wealthy Jew from Rakhiv with a sawmill, Abish (?), gave out kosher wine before Passover, and raisin wine was otherwise made at home.

Herbst says his father kept a small grocery shop largely on credit, while four sisters did handwork and sewing for the local Ukrainians, paid in food. He grew up with four sisters and several brothers, one of whom studied tailoring. The sisters went to Auschwitz with their children and did not return, the youngest brother was lost before the war, and another brother survived Mauthausen and was liberated in 1945. He also mentions living in a sukkah-like hut in the mountains.

Herbst answers questions on what Yiddish speakers called forest workers and peasants, and on how the word 'goy' was used. He then describes childhood games, including sledding and a ball game with homemade equipment. He recalls how one big loaf of bread, baked by his mother, had to last a week, and what he took to work. He mentions wild berries and fruit picked in the woods. Towards the end Herbst turns to his plot in the cemetery and the stone on which he wrote his ancestors' names. Kerler discusses function words such as 'oder' and 'ober' and mentions a scholarship at Bloomington.

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.

Gotlieb tells, partly via Hungarian and S2's summary, about her childhood illness and the healing customs used: coals in water and the amulet. She recalls an operation after eating hot cracklings. The group then discusses distances between towns, a cemetery, and a Hasidic businessman, Berkovits, and his factory moving to Romania. Hasidic life today and the High Holiday prayers are also mentioned.

Gotlieb recites the Purim shpiel verses that children sang in her home town, and answers questions about when and how it was performed, with children going from house to house. She and S2 also describe prewar Passover and Purim customs of charitable collections, such as for a poor bride's dowry, and getting new clothes for Passover.

Gotlieb tells, mainly in Hungarian and then summarised in Yiddish by S2, about her family's hardship in the early 1930s. Her father, a hide dealer, lost his goods in the cartel period and the family was evicted and lived in a broom factory, where her brother was born. Her pious mother urged him to buy a horse and cart, which brought him success. Kerler then asks about her mother's Sabbath observance.

Blobshteyn tells how his father, in Czechoslovak times, avoided army service because Sabbath would conflict with carrying arms, and how a friend who worked on Sabbath was in trouble. He recalls the Hungarian entry into Mukacheve and his father's call-up to a labour service in the 1940s. Blobshteyn mentions his own Russian, and Kerler and he discuss the Kleinbart family of Mukacheve and its members in America.

Blobshteyn discusses Jews in surrounding villages (including the paternal village Siltse). His mother baked bread and cake for Sabbath and made plum pastries on Friday; the family ate meat in the week thanks to the father's trade and their own hens and cows. Kerler asks about dairy food, sour cream (smeyte), fish and herring, and Blobshteyn describes live carp from tanks and gefilte pike, and a Friday fish seller.

Blobshteyn explains the name of a bread, apparently of Hungarian origin, and a dish eaten with it, with milk or fried onion, as food of the poor. Kerler asks about Hanukkah foods, and Blobshteyn names fried doughnut-like pancakes with jam, calling them by a name he says is Hungarian and Russian rather than Yiddish. They discuss whether the word has a k or a g. He says that turkey was eaten only at Purim.

Blobshteyn describes Purim in his town: wealthier Jews went around with two Roma musicians and Purim players to collect money for matzo for the poor, while children went around with Purim plays and received small coins and sweets. He tells a story from his childhood about his mother hiding honey cakes and his taking the key. Kerler also asks about Purim plays, and Blobshteyn recalls the sung greetings and rewards.

Blobshteyn explains wedding customs: rich families held the wedding on Sunday, with a separate table for the poor and a jester (badkhn, 'gramer'). Two Roma musicians played at the chuppah. He then describes preparing for Passover: sewing and cleaning, making beet borscht in a large barrel, the matzo baking and cooking, and eggs. He mentions egg dishes, pickles and the Yiddish word for them.

Blobshteyn talks about working as a kosher butcher after the war. He bought meat from a slaughterhouse chief who paid in a share, and he split it with two partners. He recalls another Jew who bought a calf and brought a shoykhet, was caught and sentenced to prison, and speaks about a Jewish family who lived opposite and later emigrated to Los Angeles.

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

Smajovics describes his work after release from prison. He obtained a certificate and found work at a motor transport depot, first as a fitter and then as head of a mechanics' column for vehicles in Vynohradiv. He talks about the pressures of the job, such as giving money to workers and the demands of the production plan.

Herbst speaks about his father, who was old, how he prayed and said Psalms, and how he shared his last bit of food with others. He recalls the family's food, with meat at most once a week and false fish on Sabbath, and the geese and chickens they kept. He also describes how little news reached them.

Herbst answers Kerler's question about the best childhood memories: Sabbath afternoons with a simple meal, berries gathered in the forest, and his mother's not reading to the children. He names himself as the youngest of eight children and describes how his sisters learned to sew and what they were paid in. He also mentions his older brother, a carpenter who trained in Brno, and a second brother who trained as a tailor in Rakhiv.

Herbst talks about working to support his parents before the war and giving all his wages to the family. In answer to Kerler's questions, he says he was a good child and discusses words for a non-Jewish cemetery, mentioning the Jewish and reformed cemeteries in his town. He says the Jews lived among the non-Jews.

Herbst answers Kerler's questions about Purim in Berlabashe: children went around from synagogue to synagogue performing a Purim shpiel and asking for money. He recites some lines and discusses how much a coin was worth and what a day's wages bought. He then talks about how the family could not afford meat.

Kerler asks Galambos about his yeshiva years. Galambos recites a Yiddish song about the hardships of being a yeshiva student. He describes eating each day with a different family and the daily round of study, prayer and meals. He studied in Kisvárda and Putnok in the mid-1930s.

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

Galambos describes how hard yeshiva life was, with much study and poor students depending on a different Jewish household for meals each day. A song about yeshiva students is introduced here but is not clearly audible in the transcript.

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.

Altman talks about her poor childhood and her father, a baker who worked nights for an employer. She grew up with three siblings and never attended school. She names her siblings and her parents, Zelik and Feyge, and says the family came from Bălți. She describes games played in Yiddish with friends, a blind-man's-buff or hide-and-seek game with counting to ten, and chasing games.

Altman speaks briefly about her two children. She compares life under Romania and under Soviet rule, and finds the Soviet period better. She says she learned from a tailor, then worked at the mechanical plant, as did her husband. She gives prices of bread and sour cream from Soviet times and says she and her husband lived on one wage. She also mentions her neighbours and her dislike of quarrelling.

Altman answers Kerler's questions about travelling theater troupes that played in Russian, and about the Yiddish theater in Beltz. She saw the play Tevye the Milkman there after the war, because before the war she had no money for the theater. She then talks about her earnings and sewing a dress for herself, and about her father's low wages and the hard life.

Dzigifker describes her father's wealthy Goldenfeld-related family, with a distillery, mill and estate, and her father's trading business. She says robbers' gangs threatened Jews in the district, and her father was warned that his name was on a list, so the family left for Mărculești. She tells of the father's illness, a treatment in Czernowitz, and his contribution to the first kibbutz in Israel, which put him in the Golden Book. Mundrian adds memories of a 1930s antisemitic scare and of the family later living in Căprești.

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

Reizman recounts the war: with her parents she was evacuated from Tighina to Tiraspol and then further as the front approached, and when no transport was provided they walked to a station. She describes her sister's small children and a Christian woman's help. They reached Makhachkala, where they ate fish heads and were sent to a poor kolkhoz with a mud-floored room. She then worked at a canning factory until the war ended. Her parents died of hunger in Makhachkala, and she returned with her older sister. The Russian and Yiddish words for a rack or cart are discussed.

Reizman recalls the time after the war. Three of her brothers fell at the front, and nothing remained of the family home, since non-Jewish Moldovan neighbours had carried off the belongings. A neighbour rented the family a small room for a year or two, after which Reizman worked at a workplace (name unclear) and she and her sister were given an apartment. She comments that Jewish life continued but was not what it had been before.

Furman recalls evacuation to the Rostov region and then Kazakhstan, and the return after the war. The family lived four years in her grandmother's house in the village. She and her sister worked for non-Jewish neighbors for pay and food; the family had had eleven hectares before the war, but took only two afterwards. Lemster asks for the Yiddish and Romanian words for vineyard and grapes. She says the father did not return. She also mentions relatives and a pharmacist in Capresti, and that they moved to Bălți in 1949 to her mother's brother, staying three months before buying and extending a small house.

Boltykh talks about his elderly mother's present illness and about a relative from America who wrote down the family tree and her whole story in Yiddish. He offers to send Kerler the manuscript. He also complains that life today is not good and everything is expensive.

Boltykh compares Soviet times with today: shortage and affordability then, high prices and small pensions now, and a house that is cold in winter. He says about ten camp survivors remain in town. He recalls a man who prayed at home and organised yortsayt prayers, mentions that Berts has a Jewish community without a rabbi, and answers Kerler's questions about his Yiddish and the languages of his home.

Kalussky discusses Yiddish books and learning, and mentions a clever man called Tuvye (?). He then speaks about Jews in his town after the civil-war period of the 1920s–30s. He tells an anecdote about a poor tailor who writes a letter to God asking for money for Passover. The letter is opened by the police and the postal clerks, and the tailor is beaten in the end.

Lemster asks Kalussky for curses and sayings and he gives a few. He then talks about a poor Jewish street in the town, near the tanneries, and the rough and merry behavior of the poor Jews there. He talks about folk remedies against the evil eye, such as a red ribbon and cut potatoes.

Faiershtein tells how as a nine-year-old child in the camp she was given a dead woman's coat and beaten by a Romanian guard; she hid in a pit in the sandy ground. She recited the poem about this in Briceni two years ago and met people who had carried her. Her mother got a pot with brown sugar from a Ukrainian woman. Her family of thirteen left Moldova and only three returned. Lemster asks about songs from Soroca; she says she sings Russian songs.

Goldberg describes her family as religious and honest and says her father was very honest. She says there was one synagogue in Călărași, which stands today but is closed for repair and has no minyan. After her father died when she was about five, her mother, widowed at thirty with four children, worked in the hospital, and Goldberg herself began working at about eleven. She mentions the arrival of Soviet rule in 1940, after Romanian rule.

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.

Goldberg says that after the war she studied for four years in Bălți to become a medical assistant and worked as a nurse for forty-five years in a hospital. She talks about her pension and what she wants her grandchildren to know. Kerler and Lemster talk about her grandson's knowledge of Jewish history, the Rojtman family and Purim plays.

Roif describes the arrival of the Romanians and how a priest rescued the family from a gendarme, then a camp near Rîșcani, the Transnistria cowsheds, and forced labour on the Dubyna state farm. A good gendarme chief who shared out food is mentioned, as are looting and the harsh winter, disease and death in the cowshed. He also speaks about hunger on the farm, Antonescu's order of 1943 to count the Jews, and the Jews who survived.

Roif says his wife and parents were in the same camp, with his wife's mother ill. His strong father crawled under the wire at night to find work in the village and bring food, and the family counted bones before eating them.

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

Roif talks about the years after the war, when he ran a kolkhoz for over twenty years. He describes choosing his own specialists, the workers' trust in him, building a processing and drying factory with technology he learned of in Bulgaria, and the profits and orders he received. He also recalls buying timber in Russia, the old Soviet prices, and how hard conditions are for farmers today.

Roif describes the strong sense of community among Jews in prewar Bessarabia, contrasting it with Ukraine. He says that rich and poor met as equals at festivals and in the synagogue, and that a Jew was simply a Jew whatever his clothes or work. Lemster recalls a childless man from the village.

Shpitalnik describes the districts of prewar Chișinău, including the poor lower town and the Old Bridge area, and the richer upper parts. She talks about the Teater Ekspres, the Auerbach family and two Jewish dancers named Seltser, who performed Yiddish theater and European dances.

Shpitalnik recalls that life in Chișinău after the war was very hard, with houses destroyed and the family home gone, so she left to study in Chernivtsi; she mentions the ration system. She then tells how her husband, a well-known agronomist who lacked a medal, was denied an award, and that he worked with tobacco and died of liver illness.

Lipovetskiy says he worked as a driver, a locksmith and then a teacher of physical education after university, in a school. He recalls prewar schooling in a Yiddish school and a talmud torah in Chișinău, with the names of streets, and a general killed by a bomb. He discusses the difficult economic situation today, his small pension, and living alone, and that his children live abroad.

Answers Kerler's questions about his Yiddish school, which is called Vaysman after its director. Instruction was in Yiddish apart from one lesson in Romanian. The school and the talmud torah gave meals, kosher and paid by rich people. He explains the Romanian-derived word for money and its Hebrew equivalent, and cannot recall the poems studied.

Lipovetskiy says he became a physical-education teacher after the war. He talks about prayer, noting that he attends the synagogue daily, that few Jews come, and about his health. He mentions that his children live in Israel, his pension, and the cost of housing and heating today.

Lipovetskiy recalls prewar Jewish life in Chișinău: shops and factories, rich Jews helping the poor, and the institutions of a burial society, a mikveh and the large synagogue. He describes the Joint-supported Jewish hospital and clinic. He then talks about postwar shortages and rationing, and about where he lives now and the young people's lack of work.

Lipovetskiy remarks that today's Jews in the community do not know Yiddish. He describes prewar relations with non-Jews, with Romanians calling Jews by a Romanian word and not allowed into the synagogue. He then speaks of postwar hunger, Stalin's rationing and cards, and the cosmonaut Gagarin.

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

Gordin talks about attending a wedding and the funeral of an aunt, and how the burial was done in a Jewish way. He then lists the Jewish trades and the rich and poor in the small town, and recalls a visiting circus and the burial of a clown. He adds that children studied in cheder and that he was too young to attend.

Gordin tells of the war: his father was called into the Red Army, and the mother and children set out on foot via Vertiujeni and Camenca across the Dniester to his grandfathers' village in Ukraine. They went on to Kryzhopil and Zhabokrych, where his father worked in a German bakery and Jews were shot in a cellar. They were then held in a ghetto in a village whose name is unclear (Mierskivka (?)), where his father also worked at an oil press and on road building. The family bought its way out of the deportation of Bessarabian Jews to Kryzhopil. Gordin recalls hunger, disease and Red Cross clothing, and that they stayed there until 1944.

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.

Gordin gives the size of his pension and of his mother-in-law's, compares their incomes and says they are small. He talks about German compensation, which ghetto survivors do not receive in Moldova, and about the Hesed and Joint food parcels and canteen for poor elderly Jews. He explains that he pays part of the cost, and that the Hesed could not transport his elderly mother-in-law.

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.

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.

After a question on the word for flowers in Telenești, Sherman describes the hard prewar life of Jewish shopkeepers and traders, who waited a season for peasants to buy. He explains how people went to Chişinău and Iași, with a Christian coachman and horses, to buy goods, and mentions his father traveling this way. Kerler then returns to the questionnaire.

Asked by Kerler about life for Jews in Chișinău, Abelsky describes hardship: old people with tiny pensions, the young leaving for America, and elderly parents left behind. He criticizes wealthy Jewish businessmen who give little to charity and need to be educated, and talks with Kerler about the role of the Joint and of Jewish aid organizations and the difficulties he meets from the authorities.

Goldman talks about her life today and her earlier work buying and selling goods to support her son, daughter-in-law and grandchild. She notes how few Jews remain in Chișinău. Kerler then begins the formal interview, giving the date and introducing her.

Goldman describes returning to Chișinău after the war, with no Jews, no water and hard living conditions. She tells of getting work at a printing house, rising to a planning post, receiving a medal for labor and the question of work-record months, and carrying stones to rebuild. Parts of the transcript are garbled or hallucinated.

Benderskij describes how, before the holidays, he and his grandfather carried food and bread to poor people. A man nicknamed Yosele the Little and local assimilation are discussed, including a Jewish family whose son converted for a Christian woman. Lemster asks about poor and rich families, and about Christians converting to Judaism.

Dajch recalls her mother's family, orphaned young and poor. Her mother kept a small shop in a house outside the village, and the children helped with small trade. She tells of a sister who worked for a tailor and of another sister's marriage to a brother of a relative. She herself attended a school and the family faced school fees.

Dajch says she started a Romanian school at six, without any Yiddish lessons. She recalls her mother's religious instruction at home and her mother's payment of dues to a committee of wealthy men, to avoid seeming poor. Kerler asks about the mother's prayers, such as modeh ani; Dajch recalls them only partly and says the mother taught in Yiddish and Hebrew.

Dajch recalls the preparation for Yom Kippur, in particular the custom of swinging a chicken (kapores) which her mother performed with poor means. She describes children helping wash and dry walnuts for sale to visiting Americans. She then talks about working in an office and a fixed-price task connected with a textile firm and checks.

Dajch tells how she apprenticed with a dressmaker, who sewed only for non-Jews, and was fed a snack after school. Asked for songs sung by seamstresses, she says she does not remember, then recites and repeats a song about a small sukkah, which Kerler identifies as by Avrom Reyzen. Lemster discusses the song's sadness and poverty, and asks for further songs about marriage.

Rotner describes the return home in 1945: the house was gone and nothing remained. Her grandfather had been killed by neighbours the day after they left, and her father found the grave, reburied him in Orhei and visited every year. The family went straight to Chișinău, rented lodging and stayed with an acquaintance from the evacuation for a year before starting work and rebuilding their lives. She also recalls the hard work on the kolkhoz.

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

Answering Lemster, Manevich says she had relatives, rich people whose property was taken by the Soviets, apparently in Bender. She says there was no contact across the border, which was closed, until after the war when they visited Bender and found them. She says she lived in Tiraspol and recalls the years in the 1960s, adding that before the war the family did not travel, though Lemster asks about going to the sea.

Kerler asks whether Manevich remembers the NEP, which she identifies as Lenin's new economic policy, but she says she does not remember it. She says there were no merchants or wealthy Jews in prewar Tiraspol and that people worked in factories. Life before the war was ordinary Soviet life, she says, with few good things to recall. She describes the war years as bad, and the postwar years as hard.

Asked about her work after the war, Rojtman says she was a physician. She then talks about her grandfather Itsik, whose photograph she did not bring and who had a vineyard in Stukney (?), a poor householder. She says he later did some trade in the area, and Lemster identifies the place from the Russian side. She describes local goods and merchants and says workers were hired.

Yaruskaya recalls the family's poverty, including buying wood for winter. She says she finished six classes in a Romanian school, where pupils were beaten, and that street signs were in Romanian. She says her father was something of a communist who was once arrested and bought out, and who distributed leaflets at night.

Yaruskaya recalls the arrival of the Soviets and the outbreak of war. The family fled, walking for months to Rostov and passing Dubăsari. Local Ukrainians gave them bread and food, and the children briefly lost their parents. From Rostov they went by train to Makhachkala and then by steamer across the Caspian Sea in a storm, in which many people were lost. They lived on the street in Krasnovodsk, then in a camp-like settlement outside, where the parents worked and the mother was weak.

Leibelman talks about a book on ghettos by an author from America who interviewed her in Russian, and Kerler records the date. She gives her official name, patronymic, married and maiden names, and says she is from Libshen in the Rezina district, where her grandfather Hershl held the quarries. Her mother Rachel came from the Yampol region in Ukraine and fled to Bessarabia in the revolution, marrying her father, a widower with two children. Her father was killed by the Germans in 1942 and had leased land; she remembers great poverty.

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.

Kleyman discusses her monthly pension in dollars and what she can buy with it, and answers a short question about a word for an enemy and the number two. Katz then asks whether she remembers a Yiddish song.

Kleyman says she remembers no songs, discusses how much money is needed to live decently today and compares it with her pension. Asked by Lemster about prayer in the camp, she recounts how her very ill mother was taken to Briceni, how the family waited three days in the Kasarulitser woods, and how only those able to walk could cross the bridge to Ukraine while the weak were shot. She tells of her grandmother Feyge's dream, which advised her mother on what to eat to survive, and of the cheap food they made.

Kleyman explains that her grandmother used to lead the women's prayers and read from a women's Bible. She talks about her husband, a disabled veteran, and the children she raised, two sons and a daughter, and about her pension and loneliness today. She tells how after the war her mother-in-law reclaimed the family's Jewish house from the authorities after returning from the camp.

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

Raisa talks about life today: money lost in the currency changes, pensions, the children, and her son, a gynecologist, who runs a minibus business. Lemster then asks about Jewish holidays.

Raisa speaks about her mother and prewar home life; her blind grandmother Rivke was burned with other elderly people in the woods near the ghetto. She explains how to make gefilte fish (skinning, grinding with matzo meal, cooking two hours), cholent-like dishes and tzimmes with beans, and how Russian-speaking local intelligentsia came to eat at her home. She then talks about prices, pensions and the support she and Iosif receive from Hesed today.

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

Akkerman answers questions about the languages of instruction in the Romanian school, where nothing was taught in Yiddish, and about reading Yiddish books. She talks about life after the war: she did not work but helped lodgers, while her husband was a bookkeeper. She kept two pigs for around ten years and describes how she fattened and sold them.

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

Mundrian talks about prewar Jewish occupations in Susleny, naming shoemakers, tailors and craftsmen. She says it was a large, rich village before the war, and tells how her mother rose early to work for non-Jews. She also speaks of her aunt's life in Zhukovsky and the postwar synagogue, which was still open with few members. She tells of attending funerals and says she herself will find no one to accompany her.

Kigel says she returned to Orhei in 1944 with her sisters and without her parents. They found no one, and the house was destroyed. She carried bricks on construction for the bread factory, and later worked as a cashier and as a forwarding agent. She says it was hard to be left without parents.

Sharhorodskij describes ghetto life: Jews could leave for the market for an hour on two days a week, and his father met old business acquaintances who helped. His sister, whose name appears as Perele, quietly brought food to their mother, and she graduated from an institute in 1944 as the top student. He mentions letters exchanged with her in Israel, her language ability and her schooling, and Kerler asks where she lives.

Kotliar talks about holidays at home before the war, including Passover. Her father prayed in a tallis and was quite religious, and he taught the children how to behave at the table. She describes the family's food, including noodle soup, chickens and two cows but no pigs, and says they ate well but lacked money for furniture or new things.

Kotliar describes the street in Rîbniţa where poor Jews lived, among them shoemakers and tailors. She says the family first lived in the village Vărăncău for a few years(?) before buying a house, with neighbors, a Moldovan woman living nearby, and a large Jewish population. She is asked about numbers of Jews, which she cannot state.

Kotliar tells about the war years. The family was evacuated to Kokand, Uzbekistan, where her father worked at a phosphate factory and her mother made sour cream and curd. She describes bread rations and hunger, her younger sister's seven months in hospital, and a difficult journey during which a bombing separated them.

Boiarskaia says her father was born in the village and, after the Soviets came, was given land and kept a horse, cow, geese and ducks. She describes the home as one large and two small rooms, poor but with enough food. Her parents stopped eating meat once the synagogues were broken up and there was no slaughterer. A year before the war she moved her parents to Rîbniţa. She mentions the visiting nephew from Israel, whose father was shot in 1938.

Magetman says she receives German compensation, amounting to little, and no pension, since she worked for 43 years as a chemistry teacher. She mentions briefly attending a cheder as a child, remembering nothing of prayer, and compares what she receives with sums paid elsewhere and the cost of living.

Asked by Lemster how she lives today, Rolshut says she has a pension, including a German pension. Lemster then asks about Yiddish curses and blessings, and she repeats a few formulas she does not know well. Lemster thanks her and closes the interview.

Plotnik recalls begging for food in the Bershad ghetto, and how her mother had sent poor guests to the house on Sabbath before the war. Kerler asks about songs of the ghetto and the camp at Balanivka (?), and he mentions a computer. She does not remember them, but sings a song about papers.

Asked about prewar occupations, Nusbrokh names trading, tailors, shoemakers and a Jewish bakery, and says Romanians were not tailors. Asked about Sabbath challah, a Yiddish theater visiting, and Hasidim, he remembers little. He talks at length about a rich shopkeeper (Gotlberg?), a landowner in the Soroca area, and his dealings and horses.

Nusbrokh recalls that the family lived well while his father, a cattle dealer who traded to Romania, was alive; the father died before the war. After the army he was called to the party district office and given work in communal services, though he was not a Party member. He also mentions Jewish girls after his return and the languages spoken with his mother at home.

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.

Speaking Russian, Klichinskaia says she worked as a nurse in Vienna for two more years. Her mother and sister came back, her father having been buried in evacuation. She returned to Bender, where times were hard and there was no work, and she had her mother admitted to hospital. Her mother lived another forty years.

Kerler asks what she wants remembered about Bender. Klichinskaia says there were many poor people under the Romanians, and things were better under Soviet rule. Her father worked in a cooperative whose owner was Jewish, so he did not work on Saturday. Her grandfather died in June.

Goldshteyn and Luminskaia answer Lemster's questions on mixed marriages, saying there were none before the war, and on the word meshumed. They then describe Jewish occupations before the war: tailors, shoemakers, tinsmiths and grain dealers who sold on credit. A break is called to change the cassette.

The formal interview with Grinberg begins with Lemster giving the date and place. Grinberg says she lived with her parents in Talmaz until the war and gives her father's name. He was poor and worked for a rich man in the cabbage trade, and buyers came from Romania. She speaks of her mother's name and dates, her gymnasium schooling and piety, and her grandparents, whom she does not remember. She has one sister, who lives in Australia.

Elizaveta recalls holidays in poverty, including Passover, burning the chametz and Purim baking, and says there were no Purim players in the town. She says her mother did not make gefilte fish; she learned it herself. She describes buying on credit from a wealthy employer, the Sabbath hen and cholent, and how the family kept house after her mother's death.

Moisei says he attended cheder, and when his father could not pay he took a private tutor who came to the house. Lemster asks about Yiddish theatre from Iaşi and Bucharest, the tea-house where his father went, and Yiddish songs and storytelling. He says little about the Jews of Arivë (?) and their business.

Kerler asks David about his childhood before and during the war. He recalls first and second grade, his father's forced labor digging trenches, the closing of schools, and the deportation train from Iași, and tells of hunger and shortages, shopping for food in a market square near the family's home, and non-Jewish neighbors. He also describes heating with wood and the restrictions of the Ceaușescu years.

Finkel says she held a bar mitzvah for her son, prepared by a rabbi who had come from Israel. She cannot recall Yiddish songs or stories. Asked about theatre in Botoșani, she says she went and that Christians came too, and that the audience came from Iași. The interviewers compare Iași and Botoșani and the livelihood there, and the interview ends with thanks.

Asked whether songs about the troubles were sung in the ghetto, Brief recalls a song about trading rags and currency in the ghetto and repeats it at Kerler's request. Kerler and Lemster stress the importance of recording it, and Kerler recites a ghetto song. Brief ends by speaking about American aid to Jews.

Cohn recalls a hard, poor childhood in Sulița. He attended the Jewish school from 1936 to 1940 and names his teachers, from Bessarabia. He read Mendele and Sholem Aleichem and lists the Zionist movements, saying he was active in Drakh Habonim.

Cohn describes visiting Suliţa now, where the Jewish cemetery remains but no Jews live, though relatives come from Israel. He recalls prewar life there as hard and the winters as a disaster, with a lack of firewood. A relief committee gave wood to the poor. Some Jews farmed their own fields. The town had a Jewish doctor named Gras (?) but no lawyer.

Grunfeld says he has one daughter, who lives in Cluj. His father and sister emigrated to Israel in 1950; he was on the list too but was not allowed to leave because he was a specialist. Lemster asks why so many Romanian Jews emigrated, and Grunfeld cites economic and social change, the socialization of trades and professions, and the loss of a future, since Jewish life as it had been before the war was ended.

Hershkovich talks about his time in the yeshiva in Dej: the tractates he studied, his attendance at the rabbi's lectures, and how he ate at the yeshiva's refectory and at other people's homes because his father could not pay. Kerler asks to see the photograph of the rabbi.

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

Hershkovich recalls what happened when the family came home from synagogue on Friday night, and Kerler asks for songs. They discuss a song or rhyme about the days of the week and a song about how hard it is to be a yeshiva student. Asked about the best time in his life, Hershkovich says life was hard, but the holidays were a joy, when children got new clothes.

Miller says his poor family never went hungry because his father was a prayer leader and shammes, and distributed Sabbath portions and tutored the children of wealthy families. Kerler asks about a Yiddish song his father sang. Another voice sings a short song about the collection box. Miller mentions songs sung at Simchat Torah and Purim.

Miller explains that his father, a prayer leader, used his earnings to buy firewood, and in good years took the sons to the Vizhnitz rebbe's family in Grosswardein (Oradea, as heard) for the High Holidays. Kerler then asks the interviewee to talk with the research secretary, who speaks Hungarian. Miller begins to chant the Vizhnitz melody.

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.

Chirilau talks about pensions and the hard lives of the poor today. She answers Kerler and Lemster's questions on how Yiddish speakers named Romanian towns and places, such as Rădăuți, Dorohoi, Siret, Hârlău, Botoșani, Iași and Seghet. She also mentions Hungarians and Poles in some of them. The team chats about sending photographs, a daughter who also speaks with the team, and the last Jew in Siret. The interview ends with farewells.

A business story about a Jew named Mikhail, a fur dealer, and Tuvye's dealings with him, in which a non-Jewish buyer takes many furs. The dispute is settled on Sabbath in the synagogue courtyard, with the culprit made to pay and give kiddush for four Sabbaths. It ends with a question about what year this was, answered as early 1970s (?), when several synagogues still stood.

Informal conversation with two local men, partly in Romanian, about money, currency terms and how they are said in Yiddish. They also discuss pensions, hospital care and bribes for doctors in Romania compared with Israel, and the Joint's support for the elderly. The talk turns to sanatoria and spas (kurort), and then to arranging to meet Grimberg.

Lipovici talks about earlier times, apparently family and a brother-in-law, and about the present: health, relatives abroad and the lack of a pension. Kerler asks about a Yiddish theater before the war. The interviewers ask for an address to send material.

Isidor recalls the war years: crowded quarters, the dead carried out each morning in Mohyliv and Sharhorod, and his mother working in a canteen where staff could take nothing home. Asked about Yiddish, he says he learned it over time among Jewish children at school. He tells of a Passover when he and other boys drank water from a barrel, and of the rabbi's penalty for it. He then talks about kashrut, the need for a Jew to be present at milking, and his present household.

Hirsch talks about the years after the war: Jews returning to Luduș and settling in Turda, Cluj and elsewhere, and the 23 August 1944 armistice. He recalls that many Jews emigrated to Israel and that his parents left in 1960, and talks about Romania being neither communist nor capitalist, with poor people and the postwar growth of industry. Kerler then asks about his family's religiosity, and Hirsch answers that his father was religious but modern, not Hasidic.

Asked about Yiddish songs, Chajim says he remembers only verses he composed himself, about the old prices compared with today and about workers' hardship. He speaks of his age (nearly 100) and good health, and of his father's sayings about what to keep silent. He mentions his late wife and again recites cheder letter lessons.

Chajim says he used to sing while sewing. He recalls that his mother did not sew but cooked, including Passover food. He says he still gets matzo each year, sent by the Bucharest rabbi, and mentions his small pension. He recalls working during the war in several Bessarabian towns and a cemetery, and speaks of Jews from Edineț, whom he can still talk with.

Abramovich describes Jewish Hîrlău before the war: tailors, shoemakers and other craftsmen, only a few rich men, seven synagogues including a tailors' synagogue, a Jewish street, and several rabbis and shochtim. The synagogue was spared when the town was bombed. People travelled to rebbes in Belcești, Pașcani, Satu Mare, Transylvania and Ștefănești; as a child he went to the Ștefănești rebbe with his mother, who asked for blessings for livelihood and health. Iași, with some sixty thousand Jews, and a question about burial customs are also touched on.

Kerler greets Chajim, who says he is almost a hundred (a few months short). He sets up the interview with talk of his operation and memory, and compares prices and shopping now with long ago. Chajim says he was born in Podu Iloaiei and learns Kerler is from Israel, born in Moscow. He recalls helping a Jewish friend (Shmuel, whose parents were sent to Auschwitz) and mentions a cemetery near Bat Yam; Kerler asks the Yiddish word for cemetery, and Chajim recalls being shut in train wagons.

Asked for a Yiddish song, Chajim says he remembers only verses he composed himself, comparing earlier times with the present, as he did earlier. He repeats that he lacks five months to reach a hundred, says he knows no Purim play, and recalls a saying from his father about not taking back what one spits out and keeping silent about what one gives.

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 cheder teacher with his whip and the pranks the children played on him. He then describes the talmud torah and says he did not study further because he had to work. He speaks about his mother's hard work for the household of eleven to thirteen people, including an aunt's two children.

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

Finkelshteyn says that about half of Iași's population was Jewish and that Jews lived in Jewish quarters, though not in a closed ghetto. He recalls childhood games with nuts, rag balls, and shoes his mother made from rags. He built sleighs for all the children of the street. He also describes making ice skates from iron window frames.

Finkelshteyn speaks about his family: an uncle in America, Aunt Sara (?), sent food parcels soon after the war, and the father wrote to his brother in thanks. The uncle replied that American Jews owe help to European Jews because of Hitler.

Karuel recalls the war years in Iași with his parents, when food was scarce. His father was taken for forced labor. He attended Romanian lyceum in Iași and learned Yiddish and prayer-book reading from a private teacher at home. He mentions childhood games and holiday customs.

Asked about Purim after the war, the speakers recall hard times and hunger in 1945–46, with Purim treats made at home but no old-style Jewish life. At Kerler's request Iakob tells a story about his parents in Iași. They were given a flat in a block where all the doors looked alike, and his mother once tried the wrong door and met a neighbor. A passage on the word for a stove tile or similar (kakvele) also occurs. The story then turns to his mother's sister in Palestine.

Shtaigman describes the night-time expulsion of the Jews of Rădăuți and the march to the Dniester, where a gendarme struck his father over a cap. They were held in Mohyliv-Podilskyi, then briefly in a former kolkhoz and in the town of Dzhurin. There the family lodged with a Jewish tinsmith for over three years, all ill with typhus, and his father's heart was affected. They survived by selling gold teeth for food until the Russians arrived in 1944.

Shtaigman describes daily life in the Transnistrian ghetto: obtaining food, buying from nearby villages, bread made from flour, potatoes, and aid sent from Bucharest through a woman named Albrecht (?). His father was sent for forced labor to Sharhorod for two years until a Romanian sergeant from Rădăuți sent him back ill. He says Jews and non-Jews in Rădăuți got on very well, and a neighbor who was a police officer warned them two days before the deportation.

Chirilau recalls the war years and the deportation of the town's Jews to Transnistria, and the return after the war. She tells about a neighbour who came back with four children after his wife died there, and about their poverty and illness. Two of the children went to Israel, one to Canada, and the interviewee remembers a visit from the Canada relative.

Chirilau talks about her father, an honest coachman who transported wine for Jewish tavern keepers, and about her mother, who worked the field and garden. She says few Jews worked the land, and names the Regenshtrayf pottery factory, with about sixty workers, and other rich Jewish families. She also mentions a workshop making kerchiefs and the word for them.

Chirilau describes today's Mihăileni: few Jewish families remain, most people came from villages, and the town was once fine. Kerler shows her the photographs and addresses that he sent. They talk about a man from Chicago who wrote about her, about a very old émigré, and about her pension in old and new lei. Kerler then asks about Purim plays in the Carpathians.

Freundlich talks about his father, who was deported at about sixty-four, was strong despite a First World War injury, and was always an unsuccessful businessman. He tells how his father took the money he earned as a teenage employee, and recalls a confrontation with him.

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.

Freundlich describes how his mother baked for a family of seven children: the dough, about six kilograms, was prepared at the end of Sabbath and carried to the baker, and he as a boy carried it there and back. He explains the weekly rhythm of bread, mamaliga and the large challah made on Thursday for Friday night, which the children kept eating; the family had no oven at home. Lemster asks about how challah was baked.

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.

Freundlich continues on yeshiva life, saying he could not pay for a study partner and so asked others for help. He reflects that his youth consisted mainly of hardship. He recalls being taken out of study before Passover to help in a matzo factory, carrying matzo to the oven. He also mentions work around Sukkot and Purim.

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

Freundlich recalls his years at yeshiva, living in poverty with an aunt and eating each day at a different Jewish home. He describes the weekly round of meals, including Sunday leftovers from the Sabbath, a rich friend's home, a widower's home with small children, and a Sabbath at a monastery-side village with a minyan. He contrasts the black bread there with the white challah at home.

Prompted by Kerler, Kurtsberg describes prewar Jewish life in Siret. He says Jews were a large share of the population (a figure around thirty-eight percent is given), lived above their shops in the center, and sold to peasants on credit. He contrasts this with Mihăileni, where Jews were an overwhelming majority. He ends with a long humorous story, heard from his father, about cavalry horses quartered at an estate near Mihăileni and an officer whose horse grew horns. Kerler thanks him at the close.

Saldinger says she had a good childhood in Chernivtsi until the deportation to Transnistria, where she was in Murafa, with hunger and disease and everything lost on the way. She had one sibling. Her father, Yosl Krenter, was a flour merchant, her mother was Regina (Rivke), and her maternal grandfather administered an estate. Kerler explains the purpose of the archive interviews.

Bercovici speaks about Transnistria: they did nothing there; her sister worked, with a daily bread ration, and her father starved to death in 1944, two weeks before liberation. She says her friends in Vatra Dornei spoke German and Romanian, that she went to a Romanian school, and that she read German books. She also mentions her visit to Israel in 1973 and friends there.

Galambos argues angrily about the Americans' failure to bomb the camps and save Hungarian Jews. He claims that Americans took a train of Jewish gold, for which Hungary later received compensation, and speaks about restitution. He says he gets a lifelong pension from Germany. Kerler then asks about yeshivas in the area.

In answer to Kerler's questions, Weinberger recalls Purim in Stropkov. The mailman dressed up, he himself delivered shalachmones to the rebbe, and he tells a matchmaking anecdote about a rebbe's payments and a groom who would not work. Kerler also asks about the Purim greeting, and Weinberger repeats it and tells jokes about a Purim rabbi's rulings. He says that about ten percent of the town's Jews were rich and many were poor.

Weinberger describes visiting Yiddish performers in Stropkov, among them singers with a harmonica and a Russian-Yiddish singer whose photograph he holds. He names the happiest time as Sabbath and holidays with his family, and describes walking to a mikveh and minyan from his uncle's village. He describes Sabbath and festival food, including fish, cholent and kishke, and says that a drink of schnapps and honey cake was a delight. He also mentions drinking and the preparation of schnapps.

Steiner describes the present Košice community: its members and those outside it, Communist-era informers in the community, a plan to liquidate it, and how he met the community on arriving. He describes the prayer house, the club and his teaching, funerals and the burial society, and the economic situation of Slovakia. He lists Jewish communities in the region (Bratislava, Banská Bystrica, Nitra, Komárno and others), tells of small towns and cemeteries, and discusses whether anyone still speaks Yiddish, including a Slovak folk story about Finland.

Chaimovic recalls the Russians' arrival at Terezín, his escape over a wall and journey home with horses. Only his mother and some brothers returned; others stayed lost. The family had lost everything and began working again. Kerler asks for the best time he remembers; he names the time before 1938, with the Mizrachi.

Milchenko remembers that after the war people sat outside in the evenings, singing and dancing, in the 1950s. She says those years were better than today. She describes the beatings and the Balta ghetto: her mother was sent to work and her brother slipped out to beg bread and was beaten. She names her parents, her father from Orël, her mother from Rezina, and says they spoke Yiddish.

Lokteva says her father did not return from the war, and her mother cooked and sold borscht to support the family. She is asked about Purim and recalls a short Purim song only partly. She recalls her mother baking matzo at home and answers questions about a shoykhet, weddings and a Yiddish theater before the war. She tells how a visitor photographed the house, and names her mother's siblings and her relatives in America and Israel.

Lokteva answers questions about the ghetto period: the house was large, and only her mother and two sisters lived there with her. She says she was very young. Asked about the best time of her life, she says it was her childhood. She says she married at eighteen, married twice, and her first husband Kleynburt (?) died; she tells of her two Jewish sons' wives and of the money lent at interest for the wedding. She also talks about Jewish holidays and a Yiddish school.

Khotenko describes the famine in which her sister died and the years of hunger, then says she heard Anna Guzik in postwar concerts. She recites part of a song about a girl with geese in the woods and discusses prewar Jewish weddings, with a canopy and big halls, and the custom of carrying a 'makeh' cake. She also answers questions on Sukkot and Purim before the war.

Khotenko describes her return from evacuation: she worked in a kitchen, her sister lived elsewhere with her husband, and her mother worked at a pig farm and later with the harvest. She mentions a relative hanged in Odessa and the hunger of 1947. She then recalls a neighbouring Jewish doctor named Viner (Iosif), arrested before the war in the late 1930s (the year is uncertain); he had cured her of scarlet fever. She also describes shortages and fear of arrests, and Lemster asks whether there was antisemitism.

Katz asks how Guzman lives today; she describes her pension and her modest circumstances. Asked what she would say to Jews in America, she mentions her father's relatives in America who wrote to the family regularly after the war and are no longer alive. She also mentions her mother's brothers in Odessa and a two-year stay in a place whose name is unclear in the transcript.

Vaynman describes the hardships of evacuation to the Urals. Her mother, Rivke Abramovna, had taught at a Yiddish college or institute in Lviv, in Yiddish and Russian, and worked there with children from Poland. They lived in a dugout, and many Polish Jews died of hunger and cold. Her father was a director at a manufacturing base and was killed on the first day of the war. She also recounts the journey in cattle trucks via Kyiv to Kuibyshev, and says her mother was born in Liber (probably Lyubar).

Asked about life in Khmelnyk before the war, Zhovtis recalls it as good and speaks of low prices. He recalls antisemitic insults, the fear he felt under the Germans and keeping quiet about being Jewish. In reply to Kerler he describes the synagogue, Sabbath and weekday prayer among older men, and not having seen a rebbe. Kerler then asks about Passover, and he describes koshering utensils with a stone and hot water, and pancakes or dumplings made of matzo meal.

Marmalevskaia recalls the famine of 1932–33: the family ate potato peelings mixed with oats, and two of her mother's sisters with their children died. Kerler then asks about her childhood, her family's one room with kitchen, her siblings' and parents' birth years, and her mother's work. She describes her mother weaving while swollen from hunger, and how her father sold his suit in Moscow and sent bread, which saved the family.

Beyle Vaisman describes her father's daily prayer with tallis, his learning, and a university degree finished the year the war began. Isaak Vaisman says Passover was kept without bread, and Kerler asks whether a mezuzah was allowed. They say they lived in the same courtyard on a street whose name is garbled in the transcript (Makhnovka(?)), and that his mother often borrowed money from her family.

The Vaismans discuss the 1930s, including the Great Hunger of 1933, which Isaak was too young to remember well; there was little bread, and many Jews and non-Jews died of hunger. They then describe the arrests of the later 1930s, when people were taken at night. Beyle Vaisman says her father kept a rucksack ready, and others in their courtyard were taken.

Speaks about Jewish life in Berdychiv today: a wasteland that has been rebuilt, the synagogue's revival with help from Americans, pensions, and the husband's service at the front at eighteen with medals. The speaker links this to Jewish revival. Katz then begins a question about the 1920s.

Furman is asked about customs. He mentions Hanukkah gelt and Purim noisemakers. He does not know the Tisha b'Av custom, and says his father was not rich. He had one aunt and one uncle, whom he visited for coins.

Soyfer speaks about Berdychiv before the war. Few people had radios or electricity, many Jews were very poor, and his father said a herring cost a groschen. He remarks that many Jews today cannot speak Yiddish.

Soyfer says his mother died in a Zhytomyr hospital when he was eight and the family grew very poor. He is asked about the Yiddish word for hospital and talks about the grave, his brother, and family members who do not look after the graves.

Soyfer talks about life today: the family's pension and income are small, he lives with his daughter, and the Joint helps them. He recalls a mother-in-law's death, lost savings, and prices, saying life was easier in the Soviet period. His daughter and wife speak some Yiddish, though at work he spoke Russian. He ends with a story about his father being questioned about the synagogue.

Berzon speaks about hardship before the war and the 1933 famine, when her father swelled with hunger and she herself fell from a third floor. She tells about the family's evacuation, hunger on the road, and her brother, a gifted student who had one weak lung and worked in evacuation. He later went to the army and disappeared, and the family learned of his fate only through a letter. She also tells how a book collection was hidden, and where the family lived in Berdychiv.

The interviewee talks about her daughter and two grandchildren in America, who are not yet able to visit. Kerler and the interviewee compare distances in America and Ukraine and discuss the poor economic situation and prices in Ukraine today.

Kerler asks about Yiddish songs from before the war. Vaisman recalls that prewar life was hard: he was a child when his father died, and his mother, with a disabled sister, worked in a factory. Another voice adds that in her own home they lived well.

The interviewee describes her prewar life as comfortable. She speaks of a relative's education, including institutes and a yeshiva in Warsaw, and says Hitler started on the Jews.

The speakers recall that they knew little of Jewishness or the Berdychiv rebbe's grave, and compare the Soviet period with today, saying clothes are plentiful but money is lacking and pensions are small. They also talk about relatives in America and Israel, dental costs and the present situation in Ukraine and Israel.

Vainshelboim speaks about his schooling, six classes before the war and evening classes after it, and about wanting to study at an institute. He says that before the war the Soviet constitution punished anti-Jewish name-calling, and he tells of a sugar-maker who hid in a cellar. He recalls the hunger of 1933, when the family shared a half loaf of black bread. He says his brother was drafted in 1941 and killed at the front.

Kerler asks about the great famine of 1933. The speakers say their family did not feel it much because the father had work, though many people died. They also recall the shortage and high price of bread in 1947 and the mother trading in the market.

They talk about life today: the possibility of travelling to their children in America, staying at home, pensions and war benefits, rising prices of medicine, and the fall of the dollar. They also speak about the Skver rebbe's family and his grandson, and the death of the rebbetsin, who left eight children.

Soyfer talks about life today: his wife was bedridden for twelve years, his daughter cared for her, and they live on his pension. He talks about hard work, lost savings, the cost of medical treatment and an operation for his daughter, and help from the Joint and Jewish donors. In answer to Kerler, he says Yiddish was spoken at home with his wife and his daughter understands it, that there was no Yiddish school, and that his father did not teach him to pray.

Asked when life became easier, Soyfer says things improved economically under Brezhnev, when he could earn enough and travel. He says he worked 35 years in one place and so had enough years of service for a pension.

Vainshelboim speaks about the claims made to Yad Vashem and for German pension compensation, and about the year he spent with his rescuers. He recalls working for a peasant as a farmhand and his four years of Jewish school, which let him pass as Ukrainian. He tells how he was caught by Ukrainian policemen, escaped by swimming a river in 1942, and was helped by villagers. He then worked for a peasant named Petrivskii, and tells of the three times he escaped death.

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.

Vainshelboim describes his prewar home: six children, father a painter with seasonal work, mother selling herring and oil at the market. He recalls the famine of 1933, with rumours of cannibalism and selling of human flesh, and shortage of food. He explains that collective farms were still weak and grain was exported, and recalls soup made from grain. Sara remarks that people in America should not know what they lived through.

Vainshelboim speaks about the postwar period: his pension, a plot of collective-farm land and growing wheat and potatoes, and grinding grain at a small mill. He describes a salad. Kerler asks about a bread called malke's bread, which is not recognised. Vainshelboim lists French rolls and prewar bread prices, says no challah was baked for Sabbath and begins speaking about the Cook's synagogue.

Hodinger describes his hard life after leaving the army: odd jobs with an electrician and at a factory. Later he and his wife bought and built a house. He mentions that his sister Chane, aged about 83, is in Israel and had heart surgery, but he cannot visit her.

Hodinger says many visitors came after the war, then discusses working years. He worked at a furniture factory for five years. An acquaintance from Selish then offered him a job selling ice-cream, which he and his wife did for thirty years. He speaks of his small pension and his health.

Hodinger discusses Selish before the war. Munkács Jews are nicknamed 'onion Jews'. Selish was a small town with five synagogues. His family was poor: his father hauled sacks at a mill, and he carried luggage for travelers at the station. His father came from Ilnytsya and his mother from Pryslip (?). The house was of earth and unlit. He also recalls hardships in the camp and a beating under Hungarian rule.

Snook says there was no Yiddish theater in the village and going to town cost money. Jews who farmed had fields, hay, a cow and sheep and made cheese. She explains how cheese was made kosher with rennet from a slaughtered calf. She says there were few Jewish shepherds.

Bershadskaya says she was not evacuated and lived with her father and younger brother until they were driven into the Bershad' ghetto, where their house burned. She describes hunger, roundups, the Jewish market and selling food, and her father's wood-sawing work. She tells of the Germans' rule, then the Romanians, and a pogrom shortly before the Germans left.

Bershadskaya recalls the liberation of Bershad', when Soviet tanks entered in March, and bombing. After the war the family returned to their house, which non-Jewish neighbors had occupied and then left. She studied at a teaching institute, the family repaired the house, and she and her brother traded soap across a river by raft to get food.

Gvinter talks about his forty years in a small sewing workshop whose staff were three Jews and two women. He mentions prices of bread and goods, and a wish for peace in Israel, America, Ukraine and every synagogue. He says he was born on 5 August (1936), with a forelock, so that his mother thought he was a girl, and begins to speak of his brother Yuzia.

Gvinter describes his mother and grandmother attending synagogue, with the women sitting upstairs. He recalls Passover bread and Sabbath meat. He then tells of a Soviet-period episode in Bershad' involving a local official who visited and checked on the household after a letter to the authorities about his brother at the front. The details are hard to follow.

They talk about the main street of Bershad' (named for Lenin). Feldman gives her name, her birth in Bershad' and her age. Her father went to the war in 1943 when she was three and was lost; her mother, a shoemaker, went blind, had cataract operations, and later carried water to earn bread. She names her mother and father (Khave and Moshe, with surname forms unclear) and mentions a phone call.

Feldman speaks of her non-Jewish neighbors, who help her when she is ill. She describes her work in a kitchen and then 35 years in a furniture factory, her pension, and her husband, who left. She raised two daughters; the younger works in Odessa and the elder has two children. She explains how the Jewish community (Hesed) helped with a stove and money.

Lemster asks why the Soviets did not close the Bershad' synagogue; Feldman does not know. Kerler asks about rich Jews, and she describes prewar occupations: water-selling, shops, shoemakers, and rich and poor. She says no Jews were in prison, and compares the old cinema and entertainment with television today.

Pustilnik says she went to a village school in winter and worked on the kolkhoz in summer. Kerler establishes that the Lenin kolkhoz in Yire (?) was Jewish, and that in Yampil the kolkhoz was named after Molotov. She says the family moved to Yampil after the war, and recalls a non-Jewish woman who spoke Yiddish well. She then describes how, on arriving in Boryslav, no one helped her and she lodged in private rooms.

Opens with chat about the distance to Chicago, America and Israel. Pustilnik answers questions about candle-blessing at home and Soviet-era restrictions on religion. She recalls the family's hardship during and after the war, when they lived in Yampil (?) and her mother went to relatives in a village. She says the kolkhoz helped with bread and other food. She then talks about a grandson and his young family who are out of work.

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

She says Yiddish was still spoken in Dzhurin after the war and life was hard; her mother was left alone with three children. Her father died at the front, and the family learned of it later; she describes the circumstances of the grave and annual visits.

Kupershmidt begins the interview by describing prewar Jewish Bratslav, including its prayer houses and the synagogue and the Hasidim there. He lists the trades (smiths, carpenters, shoemakers, tailors, hatmakers), says the Jews were poor and helped each other, and mentions the town's charity. Kerler also asks him about the Yiddish word for the pack frames used for carrying loads.

Kupershmidt talks about Sabbath preparations before the war, including how food was kept warm in the oven (the shunt, and pechor), and the poverty alongside honesty. In answer to Kerler he names the Sabbath fish as chopped fish. The passage ends with a comment on the Soviet Union and an exchange about where the team has come from.

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.

Koifman talks about life today: the hardship of life now, pensions and radiation worries. She mentions Anya (Kelmenson), who is also about eighty and still works in a school, and says she will show the team where Anya lives. She says her parents died in the war and that she has a sister in Israel, and that few Jews now live in Bratslav.

Koifman says she returned to Vapnyarka in 1946 after the evacuation. She had worked during the war, apparently in a mine. She talks about her pension, whether the Hesed helps her, heating with coal and wood, and the neighbours and sons of acquaintances nearby. Kerler asks about the number of Jews left. The team then walks through Bratslav with her toward Kelmenson's house.

Lifshitz says he lived in Snovsk until 1936, when he went to Birobidzhan. His father was a tailor who traveled to villages, and his mother helped him. His mother wanted him to go to cheder but he did not, and the family lived poorly. His father was away from home for months at a time.

Lifshitz recalls Passover as a child: his mother cooked and matzah was eaten. Jews saw to it that each family had matzah. He mentions his siblings, some of whom died, and that the family was poor. He says both parents were Jewish.

Khavin talks about the lack of work and the pain it causes him. Standing among the stones, Kerler and Khavin read gravestones, including one for Malka, and Kerler explains the formula of name and father's name. Khavin says some of those buried here did not get to live because of Hitler.

Kerler asks about Hasidic Jews in Vyzhnytsya, and Burg describes men with sidelocks and the knaplekh (?) Hasidim of Hungary. He says he knows of other Hasidic centres only in a limited way. He remembers his father telling stories about the Baal Shem Tov, and winter nights by the fire by the river in a poor household.

Shternberg recalls the Kopaihorod ghetto. She says the prisoners were driven into former military barracks by the station, where Romanians were present. She describes hunger there and her mother's trading for food. She then sings a Russian song about Jews being despised and thrown alive into pits, and a Yiddish version. She also sings a ghetto song about sitting beside her mother in rags, and a version of Tumbalalaika with riddles.

Kerler praises her Yiddish. Shames says she is the only Jew left in her village or street and a Christian neighbour helps her. She describes her pension and her 20-odd years of service in a textile factory, where she worked in the laboratory and as accountant until it closed. She tells how she and her mother bought a house that was later taken and replaced by an apartment.

Gammer says Khmil'nyk had about twelve thousand Jews and was a Jewish town. Even the Ukrainians understood Yiddish, though they could not speak it well. She names three prayer houses (the tailors', the shoemakers' and the rich men's synagogue near the sanatorium) and recalls the wealthy Jews. She recalls her father as a poor tailor who sewed for villagers. Lemster then turns to her schooling.

Gammer recalls a childhood among poor children, who did not play with the rich. She explains the geography of Khmil'nyk: the old town and the new town beyond the bridge, where the wealthy lived.

Gammer says she worked 37 years in a bread shop and now lives on a pension. Her daughter is also an invalid. She spoke Yiddish with her husband at home, and her daughter Genia learned to read Yiddish from her father. She comments on Jews who left for Israel, Germany and America, and on the town's Jewish population: about twelve or thirteen thousand before the war and five or six thousand after.

Kapustina recalls her grandparents and childhood. She tells how her grandfather's son-in-law, her uncle, who had a mill in a village (Kirilovka), disappeared during the war and was found by the riverbank, recognised by his gold rings. She tells about the search for her grandmother's grave and says that childhood was poor. Kerler then asks about synagogues.

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

Srulova answers the interviewers' dialectological questionnaire, giving how she says words and phrases in the Yiddish of Zvil. Items include words for window panes, the colour of the sky, building a house, kissing, cold, fast, near, living, ill and weak, running away from the Germans, an honest or pious person, and the second-person form 'you are right'. They continue with the bed, well, potato, shop, vodka, 'back', cross, Zvil's non-Jewish name, midwife, 'what does he want', attic, wagon, a rich man, and sudden and many guests. In between she talks about food: Passover potato puddings, the Sabbath cholent and braided challah, and the family's poverty. She also recalls a taxin (?) in Zvil where relatives in America sent dollars, and Kerler explains the purpose of the archive.

Shekhovich says the arrival of Soviet rule was good because people no longer lived in fear of being taken away, and there was work and bread. She says some Jews had hidden wealth and some were deported to Siberia. Kerler questions whether that was fair.

Shekhovich says that she and other children spoke Polish as they grew up and that all teaching was in Polish. She discusses Yiddish theatre visiting from elsewhere and recalls a relative from America. She tells how Jews were poor and rich and how life was difficult, and the postwar life in Drohobych. When asked about her siblings, she says she can say little, only that there were troubles under Hitler.

Shekhter talks about Jewish books and his regret at not studying, his pension and work in a clothing combine, where there were few Jewish cobblers but many tailors. He answers questions about words for a cemetery and for a pious or honest man, and about Kaddish, the Shema and morning prayers. He names his best years (Sverdlovsk and Zolotonosha) and says he believes in God, who saved him from the war.

Khasidovich talks about the war years in Fastiv: she stayed in town with her small children and hid with them in a cellar, saying survival was a matter of fate. She mentions the killing site (garbled in the transcript, possibly Babi Yar in Kyiv), says she has no friends left from before and that her children are her only family, and describes working in the bakery at night to feed them. She says that non-Jews also helped her and that she helped others. Lemster closes by asking about Jews who visited the bakery.

Khasidovich answers questions about the prewar period. She says her family managed with what they had and were not badly hungry. Asked whether Jews died of hunger, she says it was rare, perhaps two or three. She does not remember pogroms under the Soviets, though a pogrom around 1919–20 is mentioned. She says Jews in town were craftsmen such as shoemakers and tailors, builders and other specialists, and she is unsure whether any were militiamen. She is asked to explain a proverb about many trades and few blessings, and glosses it as everyone having his own work.

Beigel talks about her childhood in Tyvriv and the family's departure in 1932. She gives her father's name and birth year and his work, her mother Esther, and her siblings and grandparents. She remembers the hard life, and that the synagogue was closed in the mid-1930s so people prayed in private houses. She also mentions praying in private houses in Hnivan' after the war.

Iuris recalls that Yiddish was spoken at home but Russian outside, with both Jewish and non-Jewish children, so as not to be laughed at. She has friends in Israel who speak Yiddish. She tells of her mother and father after the war, the death of her father's first wife and his marriage to her mother, and the poverty after the war. The family was offered a house in Chernivtsi in the former ghetto.

Katz describes Sabbath and holidays at home. His father worked at the landowner's distillery on Sabbath, supervising the animals, and Katz sometimes helped with the production figures. His father prayed with tefillin and did not eat before praying. Katz names Sabbath and holiday foods: bread, challah, cholent and potato dishes. Kerler questions him about the potato dish called mandeburchenik, and about fish, which was expensive. The owner's lake was fished out once a year, giving a festive occasion and gefilte fish. Katz also mentions Hanukkah money, the dreidel and latkes. For Purim he describes beggars going from house to house and recites their begging rhyme twice.

Fishman and the interviewers go through dialect items such as attic, cross, sick, sleep and tree. He says his father was born in Chudniv and his mother in a village nearby. He recalls that many Jews lived in Chudniv and then emigrated, and mentions his sister in America. His father held several posts, including chairman of an artisans' cooperative and factory director, and then retired on a small pension.

Geller discusses politics and the change after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He speaks of ideology, wages and prices, how people were left poor, and the Joint reviving in the early 1990s. He also speaks of growing old under the new conditions.

Vertman recites parts of the Four Questions of the Passover seder in Yiddish. He says he had a bar mitzvah in the synagogue where the rabbi read and he kissed the Torah, but that the poor family held no party, only a drink. He also talks about the drinks and the schnaps and liqueurs that Jews drank.

Lys says he finished first grade before the war. When the Germans approached in July, his mother packed and the family left by freight train. His father was drafted. After months of travel they reached a destination that sounds like Mordovia (?), where they lived about four and a half years. His mother worked and he studied, they were very hungry, and his mother wept over his swollen legs.

Geller recounts his return from the army and his search for work in Kuzmin, where he turned down low-paid jobs, including a mill job, because of his war wounds. A school friend suggested the police, and he passed the medical commission after telling the Jewish woman doctor he could manage. He then describes working his way up from district officer to chief of criminal investigation, and later head of the Izyaslav department, ending as a lieutenant colonel.

Geller speaks of a nephew in Chisinau, whose family now lives in Israel. A relative's wife and son drowned in a shipwreck, and Geller mentions a Yiddish newspaper (Yiddish 'Vek'(?)) article about a man who grew up Jewish. Kerler and Geller then read a document granting Geller a pension supplement for special service to Ukraine.

Geller says he attended a Ukrainian school and his Yiddish came from speaking at home; he taught himself to read handwritten Yiddish, but print is hard. He describes the family's life in Starokostiantyniv(?) during the hunger of 1933, and how a teacher struck his fingers with a whip when he got the letters wrong, so he hid under the bed until he learned the alphabet.

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

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

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

Asked about stories and songs from childhood, Kraidman says nobody told her any and her mother did not sing, because everyone had to work. Kerler thanks her and the exchange turns to wishes of good health, and Lemster begins asking about an article on Vergelis.

Gaiviker talks about the severity of peacetime army service in the 1930s: early rising, men who ran away or maimed themselves and were punished, and scarce food.

Sonya describes how she makes gefilte fish, removing bones, chopping and adding onion, eggs, pepper and matzo meal. Kerler asks whether the fish is sweet or salted and what it is called, and she describes meat with plums and cookies with raisins. Everyone, including her great-grandchildren and a Christian son-in-law, loves her food. She then mentions the family's hard life today, her husband's invalid pension and small payments.

Gaiviker says he no longer remembers the old songs and speaks of Yiddish theater troupes that came to the town and Yiddish theater he saw in Moscow, naming actors he admired. He recalls Polish-Jewish performers, music and dancing, and how as a poor young man he sneaked into shows without a ticket.

Yarmolnik says that the Yiddish schools were closed before she was old enough to attend, so she went to a Russian school. After the war she found the family house wrecked, and says she wrote to Switzerland about restitution money. She worked for 51 years as an economist and bookkeeper after finishing ten classes and a technical college.

Lemster and Kerler ask about Jewish types in his shtetl. Kaviner talks about the wealthy and the poor, a learned man who worked as an employee (Moyshe Zilberman, as the transcript has it), a professional actor, card players and the water carrier.

Vaisblai says he has been gabbai in the Khmel'nyts'kyy synagogue for eighteen years, and that his health keeps him home now. He gives his birthplace Chemerivtsi, his father Avrum (nicknamed Umenyu) and his mother Nunye, his Russian patronymic, and his grandmother Pesye-Rokhl and grandfather Biumen. His father reused old caps and was paid in potatoes; his mother was a housewife and died in 1937.

Vaisblai describes working in the fields and driving a horse at haymaking so that a non-Jewish farmer would feed him. Lemster asks about the kolkhoz name, which is not clear in the transcript. He says it was Jewish, with Jewish brigades and work-teams, and that non-Jews worked there too. He begins to describe the town's rich men.

Vaisblai recounts his return to Chemerivtsi and says only two families on the kolkhoz knew he was Jewish. He lived in his grandmother's old house. He then describes postwar work in several places, including a trip to Chernivtsi (?), as a shop manager and trader, and a stay in Zakupne (?), with brushes with the militia and officials over theft and goods.

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

Vaisblai talks about prewar Chemerivtsi. He says Chemerivtsi was in Bessarabia, then Ukraine, and gives its distance from Kam"yanets'-Podil's'kyy. His family was very poor, so a prayer room was kept in his father's house instead of sending him to cheder; poor rabbis came to pray there. He describes the Jewish kolkhoz, including women's field work led by a woman he calls a 'lankovoy' (?), and mentions an uncle who worked with the horses.

Vaisblai explains that his father did not work on the kolkhoz because of a leg injury and instead made and remade caps. His mother died in 1937 and was buried in Kam"yanets'-Podil's'kyy; the father cooked for the children and later remarried a woman who bore no children. He tells how his father was beaten by a Soviet militiaman and the man was later sentenced. The passage ends as the war begins and his father says they must evacuate.

After the war Vaisblai returns to Chemerivtsi and gets back two pillows left with a neighbour; he lives in his grandmother's old house. He says the family had no gold and was poor. He discusses his later life, including his sister (or aunt, as Kerler's questions clarify), who studied and a brother who taught at a university, and another brother who studied engineering. Kerler asks about the word for a woman who leads a field party.

Kerler asks what work he did in Horodok after the war, and Vaisblai tells a long story of poverty and many jobs: porter, trading in spirits from Chernivtsi, shop and warehouse work, work in a village (Zakupne), and in a store. He describes the risk of shortages and prosecution, and a clerk whose boss helped him. He also tells how he met Fania, an orphan from Zin'kov, and how Jews collected money for a wedding with klezmer musicians from Donetsk (?).

Snook describes the hardship of life after the war, working at whatever she could, and her marriage and move to Drahovo (?). She gives her son's birth year, 1946 (?). She mentions emigration to America in the 1950s, the surviving minyan in Khust and the old synagogue, which has been repaired with American help. Kerler asks about the synagogue under Soviet rule, and he asks again for songs and prayers; she recites a prayer for the parents.

Katz gives his personal details: village near Khust, 8 km away; his names in Russian, Czech and Hungarian; his father Usher; and his birth in December 1926 in Czechoslovakia. His father was a coachman with two horses. He was the eldest of seven children; his mother was a housewife with the maiden name Lazarovich. He names the cheder teachers, the grandparents and the siblings. He describes transporting timber to the Khust station for a factory in Danzig, and helping his father. His father was taken to a labor battalion in 1941 (as heard), and he carried on the work alone. His maternal grandfather Leyzer later died in the Iza ghetto. Both grandmothers were named Etie.

Katz recalls his childhood in a village of about sixty Jewish families (heard as 'sixty tallisim'), with two synagogues; Khust had eleven. He describes his daily routine of cheder in the morning and afternoon, with the state school in between, and what was taught in cheder. He answers Kerler's questions about a village wedding: the engagement, the chuppah and the dance with the kerchief. He describes Sabbath meals, cooking cholent and kugel in the clay oven, challah and candles. The passage ends as Kerler asks about the kaddish.

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

Katz describes the war years. After his father was called up, he did the coachman work himself, carrying timber and hauling boards, until his father was released ill in 1943. In 1941 Hungarian gendarmes took Jews from the village, and a train went toward Stanislav, where the Poles were said to have been killed. Katz then recalls the Iza ghetto in 1944 (about three weeks), hunger, and how he slipped home at night for food. The family was then taken to the Khust brickworks, with beatings and searches, and sent by train to Auschwitz. He describes the selection, shaving, shower and clothing, then Birkenau, where he received a number, and then Monowitz with his father and the factory work.

Snook sings a humorous Yiddish song about a bride and marriage. Kerler asks when it was told; he suggests Purim. She then tells of postwar hardship: neighbours bringing milk and cheese, her husband trading a wagon of wood for flour, the drought of 1946 and the hunger of 1947. She gives the word for potatoes, her husband's piety, and the trades she and her husband followed with horses and goods. Katz asks for another song.

Snook sings a Yiddish song of longing and lovers' letters from America. She recalls returning home from the war naked and barefoot and how her husband slowly rebuilt their life. She speaks of her children and her daughter-in-law, a teacher from Svaliava (?). Her family is abroad. She describes the life of children abroad, and says a Christian neighbour helped her with pills.

Snook talks about the drink she makes and her garden, then answers Kerler's question about cheder: she studied with other girls under a disabled man who lacked an income, until he received aid from America. She talks about her health, her trips to a mineral spring and a medical examination, then about the high status of teachers under the Czechs. Kerler asks her to turn to life before the war.

Braverman recalls poor wandering artists who came to Solkhov in winter, hungry and frozen. Her family took them in for Sabbath meals. She places this in the early 1930s, when her older siblings studied away at technical schools.

Torchinsky discusses a mischievous child, as in Sholem Aleichem, and how he too was a prankster, growing up without a father with his widowed mother and two sisters. He says his grandfather, perhaps a carpenter, gave them a small part of his house. He recalls how the relatives in America sent 25 dollars so that his mother could buy proper flour for Passover latkes, and that the flour was stolen at night, in the mid-1920s.

Khandros explains theories of the name Ozarinets, which an older teacher derived from a lake, though he now thinks it comes from the word for bazaar. He recalls the fairs held in the town until the late 1920s, twice a year, with peasants coming from many villages and separate places for selling cattle, pigs and clay pots, and Jews earning a great deal in three days. Kerler then asks him to recall his childhood between ages three and six.

Asked for memories of the Great Hunger, Khandros describes documents and a letter from Berdychiv in which a Jewish factory worker, who later died, begged for help, and he says it shows that Jews starved too, against claims that they did not. He discusses the Torgsin shops, where gold was exchanged for flour, and how his mother's gold was broken into three parts. He relates a butcher's story about gold and a hiding place, the mobility of Jews who could travel to Moscow and Leningrad, and relatives in Leningrad who sent rusks. He describes death registers from 1932–33, deaths from eating in summer 1933 and a dysentery epidemic which he survived because his uncle kept him at home instead of sending him to hospital. Kerler remarks that many informants deny Jews died, and Khandros reports letters in Russian that deny the famine.

Asked by Kerler, Khandros recalls the blacksmith Kive Roznblit, a long-armed, very poor Jew and friend of Khandros's parents. His daughters studied in Khandros's father's school. Khandros recounts Kive's sayings and his habit of raising his hands in curses and questions. He recalls Kive's last words, which became his own motto: go, stand, or die. Kive died in a ghetto, in a place the transcript renders as Dashinets (?). Khandros ends by introducing a friend he met in Kyiv on the day the American president came.

Derbaremdiker describes his secret bar mitzvah, for which he was taught by a melamed, and explains why it had to be hidden: parents risked losing the bread ration and work. He then speaks of the famine of the early 1930s, which struck the Ukrainian population and the Jews of the small towns. Jews survived by relatives sending parcels from Moscow and Leningrad. He recalls his father working as a soap boiler, a friend's tailor father who had no work, and his school friend Avrom Goldenberg, killed in the war. Kerler asks the melamed's name and which Torah portion he learned.

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

Krotsh describes a typical day in the Hebrew school in Stefanesti. Romanian subjects were taught first, then Hebrew, and Yiddish was not taught as a subject, though he knew it from home and cheder. He did not know Romanian until he attended the state school. He tells of his employer, the tailor Yude Leyb, who refused to speak Romanian with his non-Jewish clients, and of poor children being given bread and milk by the committee.

Biter describes the Polish nationalist policies before 1939 and the arrival of the Soviets in September 1939. Jews were pleased, Poles were not and Ukrainians were divided. He recalls Soviet soldiers buying up goods in the shops and the abolition of letters in the alphabet. He tells of a Snyatyn millionaire named Birnbaum who fled to Romania, after which his family was deported to Kyiv.

Krotsh answers Lemster's question on whether Jews made wine and says the rich man Leyb Gershon had his own vineyards and wine cellars. He tells a song about a drunkard coming home to his wife and children, and recalls that there were few drunks and thieves in the shtetl. Lemster and Kerler ask about water carriers and the fire brigade, which was non-Jewish, and about love songs.

Krotsh answers questions about his schooling. He attended cheder from about age three, then a Romanian school where half the day was Romanian and half Hebrew, then the yeshiva. He mentions the free bread and milk the school gave poor children and where out-of-town yeshiva boys lodged. He describes the rabbi's Sabbath speeches urging observance and the kosher food his master tailor insisted on for workers.

Krotsh tells of an Orthodox priest and his son, in which Romanian words insulting Jews turned up in a note. He then reflects that life under Romanian rule was very hard, though good for the rich.

Kerler opens the formal interview with the date and place, and Kislinskaia gives her official name, address and phone number. She explains her Yiddish name Tseytl, which she was given after her mother's sister who had died in America. Her mother's brothers in America helped the family until the war, and one sent a sewing machine. Her father died when she was nine, and she has a younger brother, now in Israel. The family's life was very hard on her mother's small wage. She mentions that the house is her daughter's.

Kislinskaia recalls how poor the family was in her childhood. A neighbor cooked a soup of chicken feet and head for them every Friday for the Sabbath. She attended the Yiddish school for seven years. Her brother attended only five grades there, before Jewish children moved to the Russian school and the Yiddish school closed. After finishing she worked to help her mother. Kerler then asks for her birth date.

Kislinskaia gives her birth date, 15 March 1924, and talks about life today: a grandson with a disability, medical costs, prices, pension, and help from the Cherkasy Hesed. She also tells of her mother's brothers in America and the house she lived in before the war. The old house was left unfinished, and she signed her prewar house over to her daughter. Her father David was a shoemaker and her mother Etl a housewife who later worked.

Kislinskaia describes the problem of having no papers proving her wartime work, and her postwar work in a Korsun factory making candy, treacle cakes, wine and seltzer. Only two other Jewish women worked there, and she brought matzo to her Russian co-workers at Passover. She then talks about life today: prices, utilities, fuel, and the former Jewish houses of the town. Kerler asks about the Yiddish for a building, and she says many Jews were killed there. Kerler asks her brother's name.

Kislinskaia talks about relations with non-Jewish neighbors and former colleagues, who still greet her warmly. Her non-Jewish son-in-law does not eat pork. She keeps goats and chickens, and she describes her daughter's work, her grandson, and the pension and rising prices today. Kerler then asks about relations with non-Jews before the war.

Kislinskaia compares life before and after the war. She says things were better before the war. After the war she and her family returned to a house with no windows or beds and no work. Today she is content only because of her children and grandchildren. At 81 she prays to be able to help them and complains of poor health, hearing and sight. Kerler thanks her and asks for her initials.

Obodovskii says his father died in the war as a signalman in the Red Army and is buried in a mass grave in the Luhansk region; he had five brothers, one of whom died in 1939. He grew up with two sisters. In Siberia his mother worked in the fields, and he describes prices for bread and potatoes. A neighbor gave back some belongings but made a doorway into their house; in 1959 his mother bought a house near the market. He also names his sister who died in 1955, his brother Misha in Odessa, and his nephew.

Obodovskii talks about life today: his pension, a job with cement, and his opinions about Ukrainian politicians and about Hitler and the Jewish question.

Obodovskii says that postwar Jewish holidays such as Purim and the anniversary of the Revolution were hardly marked, because food was scarce and few Jews lived in the courtyard. He says he disliked going to parades.

Gershtein recalls going from house to house in the Purim play in 1936–37, aged about ten, and earning a lot of money from the wealthy. He names the miller Matl and the miller David Katz, who each gave a coin, and describes the poor and the wealthy in town. His uncle Rakhmil Vitsnudl kept a dairy, and he remembers the wandering poor, a Sabbath meal for the poor, the Slikhes wake-up call and the slaughterers' homes.

Gershtein talks about medical care and the cost of living today, noting that as an invalid he pays nothing for the doctor. He says no Jews prayed in Holoby after the war and that it was forbidden. Kerler asks about the synagogue in Kovel' in the 1960s, and the interview is declared to be ending.

Leibel says he studied at an institute in L'viv and survived the war, and that he was born in 1921. He names grandparents on his mother's side: a carpenter grandfather and a grandmother who sold yeast to poor Jews from a small scale. He also explains what their names were and where she sat in the town. The war's start and army call-up are mentioned only briefly.

Leibel recalls Hoshana Rabbah in his home, with the synagogue attendant bringing the lulav and willow branches, and he answers Kerler's questions about it. They discuss Hanukkah food and his mother's Friday baking of challah in a big oven. They go over the shape of the challah (not braided), and the food eaten on Purim.

Leibel talks about Purim players who went door to door, and about the cost of his schooling, which was partly covered by the state and by a Jewish committee. He recalls the Passover seder and the Four Questions, Chad Gadya, and the hiding of the afikoman, and answers Kerler's questions about Shavuot greens. He says he does not remember a Hanukkah play about Joseph.

Meler says he was born in Glina Navariya, near Donets (?), and that his family moved to Lviv, where his father got a share of the family's land sale. He describes the town as poor with a stone synagogue and cemetery, and a Belz rabbi's grandson. Kerler records the interview date and Meler's name, spelled Isaak, and Meler explains how the surname Volf became Meler, and that his father was Samselik. He also mentions relatives in America and his heart problems.

Meler talks about life today, including a problem with travelling to visit, and about visa and border trouble. A daughter, said to have a non-Jewish husband, is mentioned, and he speaks of a son-in-law, money in the bank and the difficulty of the bus journey. He regrets that there is little time left.

Brandler talks about his postwar career. His sister sent him to L'viv for courses, and he trained for a post in the financial office. He then worked for about thirty years in tax offices in villages, assessing and collecting taxes. He tells how he spared a poor priest by not recording the man's horse, and describes a case involving a priest accused of taking money from the monastery. Kerler asks about words for priest and church.

Diner says he has a flat and a pension and gets by today. He says he learned a little prayer in his youth and is thinking of going to the synagogue now that he is 88. S2 adds that Diner takes part in veterans' events, that his first wife died, that he has lived with his second wife for over twenty years, and that he was a good specialist with his own business.

Shvartzbroit talks about relatives abroad and about her son's career and finances. She describes losing savings in the 1946 currency reform and her earlier trade in salt. She says a Jewish girl should marry a Jew. A second voice chimes in about luck and a spouse. At the end Kerler asks her about her childhood in her parents' home.

Asked by Kerler for memories, Shvartzbroit speaks about a rabbi's family and a soldier in Mohyliv. She tells how she came to Luts'k after her daughter left for Germany, and she recounts a story about money and a flat that she lost through a dishonest woman. Kerler then asks her to tell again about the war years. The passage is largely garbled.

She describes Purim before the war, with baked goods and children dressing up, and says Jewish life was full and no one expected to be shot. Lemster asks about rich Jews, who were tanners or leather workers. She also tells of meeting by chance on a bus a man from Trokhinbrod, apparently Meir Shvarts (Schwartz) (?), with his non-Jewish wife who had adopted Judaism.

Kaplan answers Katz's questions about the meaning of words (dibbuk, golem). He speaks briefly about postwar hardship and the poor food of the 1940s, including cornmeal dishes. He explains the difference between a rav and a rebbe, and the Jewish burial place and mass grave. He mentions a man who died the same day, and recalls the prewar amateur Yiddish theater and Chabad Hasidim. He gives the town's Jewish population today as 360 (formerly fourteen thousand), with sixty-six children, and says emigration has stopped and a few people returned from America and Israel. From about 12:00 he is asked, with Russian prompts from a second speaker and questions from Katz and Lemster, for Yiddish equivalents. These cover greetings, thanks, luck, household and food words, body parts, adjectives, converts and Christians, peasants, directions and everyday sentences, with discussion of what is said in Mohyliv.

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.

Pasik tells of the evacuation to the Saratov and Stalingrad regions and the return to the village, now called Plyushchevka. Her father fell ill and died while her brother was six months old. She says neighbors reassured the family, which stayed together. They moved to Mykolayiv later, her sister and brother married there, and her brother emigrated to Israel and the family sent money to him.

Pasik talks about her childhood after the war: she did not attend school but worked in the kolkhoz with her mother, while her brother and sister studied. The kolkhoz became Russian after the war. She describes her work and her mother's pension, her siblings Henekh and Beba, her health, and her family today. She says she spoke Yiddish before the war, only with her mother afterwards, and her friends were Russian.

Pasik talks about the move to Mykolayiv in 1965 (?) and the Jewish life she found there: speaking Yiddish, the synagogue under Soviet pressure and a relative who was a ritual slaughterer. Passover matzo and fasting days are discussed, and she tells of a blood-libel story told by her mother. She says faith is hard after the killings, names her best time as before the war, and compares prices and pension then and now.

Kenin says he returned after the war to a sick father and mother and a home with nothing in it, so he went to work to support them. He worked at one factory and then thirty years at a second one, Selmash, a machine-building plant in Nizhyn. He now has a pension as a first-group invalid.

Street footage in Nizhyn, with talk in Russian with a woman neighbor. They mention the burial place of a great rabbi and that Kenin has been interviewed and is in poor health. She speaks of her children and acquaintances in Israel, a coming trip there, and a very low pension and high prices. She says life is bad economically and morally.

Masovich talks about his grandparents, a tailor and a grandmother with ten children, and says he learned his songs from his father. He recalls Friday evening and Sabbath at home in a poor family where the father did hard work in an artel, and a chicken for the Sabbath. Kerler asks about Litvak speech and Yiddish words, and Masovich recalls the Lubavitch rebbe.

Bakmayev says that he worked as a shoemaker, in an invalids' artel after the war. He mentions his pension, and Kerler ends by asking what nationality was recorded in his passport.

Listengurt recounts the doctors' plot of 1952–53 and Stalin's last years, with Lemster correcting the years. She tells of Khrushchev, an anecdote involving Kaganovich and a newspaper, and of the threat of pogroms in the city. She recalls that as a girl of seventeen she was afraid to walk the streets, and of food shortages and hunger afterwards. She describes attending evening courses and the antisemitism in town, and Kerler asks what she worked as.

After joking about beards, Tokar talks about his health since his wife died: a doctor, prescriptions and a volunteer who comes twice a week to cook. He says there were no good times before or after the war, mentioning the crisis in Poland. After the war he studied in the evenings at a construction institute for six years. He says his wife, born in Odesa, was a district doctor, and that her relatives live in the United States.

Feldman tells about his younger brother who served in the army in the Far East, and came home with medals and crosses. His father threw the uniform into the river and the brother swam after it. He emigrated to America before a war, was drafted in World War I, wounded, and later as a veteran sent money so that their mother received 38 dollars a month. Feldman names the brother in America (Harry) and says their house was bought with that money.

Feldman says the family moved to Skrebelychi, where his grandfather had lived. When his brother in America died, the mother received a pension of 38 rubles for years (?). Using it, she bought half a flat in the 1930s. At the start of the war she stayed put, and her sisters from other towns were killed, including sixteen relatives.

Feldman says he was working in a warehouse when he was drafted in 1941. He served in an anti-aircraft unit near Voronezh (?), was wounded in the leg and hand, and became a first-group war invalid. His pension is about 246 hryvnias and he gets no more aid. Some Russian is mixed in.

Feldman says half his pension goes on medicines and utilities. Katz and Kerler ask how a friend in California could send dollars to Feldman; he answers that letters with money do not arrive, but bank transfers do. A relative in Philadelphia has sent money that way. He gives his address in Ovruch for transfers. Feldman then explains Tisha B'Av and the destruction of the Temple, and says there were opponents (mitnagdim) among the Jews, who disbelieved the Messiah's coming.

Feldman compares the economy under Tsar Nicholas, when trade was free, with Soviet times, when state trade took over; he worked in a cooperative. He cannot name a best time in his life and recalls that his father was killed and that the war started for him in 1941 (?). He says he wants to sell his house in Ovruch to move to his daughter and son in Simferopol, and discusses prices. He talks about his second wife, who went to Germany with her children, and Katz suggests another match.

Stotland says Jewish holidays were not marked in the orphanage. As a child he and others ran away to his maternal aunt and uncle in town for Passover. He recalls five synagogues in Ovruch, including a large wooden one near the orphanage, where the children went for treats. The aunt and uncle were poor, with five small children.

Stotland explains how as a child he ran from the orphanage to his poor aunt and uncle, a tailor with many children, for Sabbath and Passover. They gave him a piece of matzo. Katz moves on to the questions that follow.

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

Zak talks briefly about her pension, which is small, and Kerler asks about the word she uses for money before turning to further questions.

Zak recalls her poor, hungry childhood, going to school barefoot and ragged, without bread for years, and the famine in the early 1930s. Her sisters and brother went to work, and her brother served in the army. She says that two sisters now live abroad, in Israel and America. She names a childhood friend, Rachel, and says that she spoke Yiddish with the Jewish neighbour. She tells how the town centre was Jewish and the non-Jews lived on the other streets.

Zak says that today's Polonne has hardly any old houses; the town was rebuilt after the war. She says that non-Jewish children understood Yiddish but did not speak it, and that she played with Russian children. She goes on to tell how, at thirteen, she worked at a factory because of the family's poverty, and how her mother made her return to school so that she completed ten classes.

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

Fish speaks about his wife's illness and how he thought of emigrating to Israel with her but could not. He continues recalling his first days of work, being offered the job of bookkeeper at a restaurant, and the high food prices in the early postwar years.

Fish speaks about prewar newspapers: Jewish papers in Polish, some brought from Warsaw. He cannot recall a Rivne Yiddish paper, and he mentions the very low prices of papers and bread in Polish times.

Fish says he knew nothing of Hasidim or rebbes in Rivne. He explains a "good Jew" as someone who gives help and charity to the poor. As an example he describes a Rivne cloth shop whose owner gave small coins monthly to long lines of poor people, and he mentions that he worked briefly as a bookkeeper there after the gymnasium.

Litvak gives her name, patronymic and Rivne address and phone number, and says she was born in Zvil, which people called Novohrad-Volynskyy in speech. She recalls the river near her house, the very hard years of the 1933 famine when people died of hunger and her brother Leybl was born, and swimming in the river as children.

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

Shvartzbroit describes her family's life before the war: her father's sewing workshop with two non-Jewish servants, and her mother's weekly Sabbath help for old people whose wealthy relatives had been deported to Siberia by the Soviets. She also recalls taking in homeless people and giving her house for poor couples' weddings, and she mentions grandchildren in Germany and America.

Shvartzbroit says an aunt knew Yiddish songs. Her son made a Yiddish concert and a Yiddish film. A composer friend is named (Gershenzon?), and a cassette is now with her daughter in Germany. She talks about a son named after her father who died at about fifty, apparently killed by a non-Jew, and who gave generously to the poor. She also mentions saving a family in a later period and her sense of obligation to her children.

Fish describes his return to Rivne in February 1946 via Moscow, where he was demobilized. A school friend, Aharon Giber, recommended him to a chief accountant; he worked in canteens and as bookkeeper at the trust until 1982.

Asked about his friends, Kleiner says they were both Jewish and non-Jewish. He recalls growing up poor in a family of nine children, and his eldest brother who worked in the fields. He was the only one of the family to survive and served in the army. He kept the Sabbath, worked with horses, and says he was a Jew. A second voice adds that he worked in the post office and was drafted in 1939.

The second voice says that they have a son in Chernivtsi and a daughter in Shepetivka. They discuss Jewish life today in Shepetivka and Khmel'nyts'kyi. There is a Hesed, but few Jews and few speak Yiddish. People are emigrating, factories are closed and pensions are small. After the war Yiddish was not taught. Kleiner has no one to speak Yiddish with; his daughter understands but does not speak it.

Bivson says her sister Mindl had studied at a Yiddish pedagogical institute and worked as a teacher or educator before the war. She recalls the long trip to her in Birobidzhan and the hunger there: green borscht, little bread, and cards.

Bivson recounts her evacuation to Birobidzhan, where her sister lived. They travelled partly by train and partly on foot for about three months, receiving food at stopping points. She was there from 1941 to 1945 amid cold and hunger and recalls the Yiddish signs and school. She also names her sister Mindl (Mindel) and the family name Fuhrman, and describes her work as a kindergarten teacher.

S2 asks about Birobidzhan during the war and Bivson describes hunger, eating groats and leaves, her mother working in a canteen and her father's odd jobs. She says her sister later worked in a kindergarten and died five years ago in Pervomaisk, and that her sister's husband was a Russian colonel who liked Yiddish.

Tartinets speaks mostly in Russian/Ukrainian, with Yiddish fragments, about her life and about the war. She remembers neighbouring Jewish children, their prayers and the fact that she forgot songs and prayers. She recalls Jews being taken away on carts, and her being taken as a young girl to work on beets in Hungary, where food was rationed for those who would not work. She mentions that there were six children in her family.

Kerler asks about folk customs, including pouring wax, an egg for fright and prayers for the dead, which Tartinets mostly does not recall. She says the Jews in the village were poor and worked with horses and carts, and that after the war she returned at about fifteen and worked. She mentions a Jewish wedding that was beautiful, burial customs, the word for the Jewish prayer house versus the church, and an American visitor. The conversation also touches on Kerler's speaking a different kind of Yiddish.

Yakuta says religious practice was done secretly before the war, and that the change came with collectivization. She recalls the great hunger of 1933, when starving non-Jews ate the mash from the alcohol plant's pit and died, and the road was full of corpses. She mentions the common pit at the non-Jewish cemetery and says she does not remember Jews dying of hunger there, though they suffered. The Jewish cemetery is also named.

Yakuta says that after the synagogues were closed Jews gathered in private homes to pray, and that there was a Jewish militia for some years. Kerler tests a few words by having her translate from Russian. She then describes her father's brother, who kept a small kerosene shop. A chairman of the Yiddish soviet had him arrested and held for a winter when he could not produce gold, and he came out in a terrible state. The family was poor.

Kerler asks the interviewee about Tisha b'Av and the children's custom of throwing burs at the beards of adults, which she does not recall. He then asks a few vocabulary items, such as words for face and for "a lot". She describes her life today: illness, a heart operation in Vinnytsia that she could hardly pay for, her pension compared with German payments, and her great-grandson and grandson. She also mentions having been in a camp as a child and sharing a camp background with another woman. Short exchanges with other visitors follow, with Russian speech and some Hebrew.

Asked by Katz about 1939, Gliazer describes how Soviet rule hurt Jewish small merchants, artisans and traders, who could no longer earn a living. He traces antisemitism to German influence, saying it grew among Poles from the mid-1930s after Pilsudski's death, with press propaganda against Jews.

Asked about the town's synagogues and prayer houses, Gliazer distinguishes Hasidim from the less observant. He says that after 1939 the Soviets did not close the synagogues but restricted prayer to Sabbath. He then describes how the economy changed: no factories, small trade, and taxes on artisans.

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

Interview with Preger outside her home. Preger says she was born in Tomashpol' and that her parents were from there too. She calls Yiddish a jargon and says she prefers to speak Ukrainian. She describes the seven-class Yiddish school and the pedagogical technical college in Vinnytsia, where she studied for three years. She describes wartime in Tomashpol' and her work as a teacher of large classes of 45 pupils until retirement. She also covers present-day hardship, prices, health and the Joint help. She says her father was a worker, her mother a housewife who baked on Friday, and mentions the prewar synagogue.

The end of the conversation with Preger, in a mix of Yiddish and Russian-influenced speech. She talks about local non-Jews breaking into houses and stealing, about killings of Jews by Germans and nearby villagers, and about the war's end. She also addresses the emigration of Jews to America and Israel, the use of the term Erets Yisroel, and complaints about pensions, prices and politics, plus an unnamed local woman and the Jewish community in Vinnytsya. Kerler also arranges the next stops.

Formal interview with Sapozhnik, who says she is a native of Tomashpol' and speaks Yiddish with her brother in Israel. She talks about her parents Nusn and Rukhl and the kolkhoz, her siblings, the old synagogue and how women prayed, her father's siddur and her poor childhood. She recalls the war, with her brothers drafted and the killings and ghettos under Germans and Romanians. She also mentions the town's remaining Yiddish speakers, and answers Kerler's questions on Yiddish words and on fish, melay and Passover food. Katz adds a general question about the best years.

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

Gingold is greeted at her door, and Kerler explains the university project. She says she is alone, her parents and brother having died, with two cousins in Israel. She gives her names, birth year, and her father's and mother's names and occupations. She also names her grandparents. She attended three years of Yiddish school before moving to a Russian one, and says she never worked and has a small pension. She recalls Sabbath, Passover, Shavuot and Purim customs, and the Tomashpol' ghetto. The interviewers then put questionnaire items: greetings, kosher salting, foods, and Russian words rendered into Yiddish such as 'spasibo', 'mouse' and 'poceluj'.

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

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

Shusterman talks with the interviewers before leading them to another informant. She discusses relatives and neighbours who speak Yiddish, and her poor health and dizziness. She also describes high prices, pensions, a bank loan for building work, and money sent from America. She mentions a relative in Israel who has had several operations. The interviewers ask how many Jews remain in Tomashpol', and the answer is seven.

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 describes how the Joint and the Vinnytsya Hesed support the poor and camp survivors with parcels, medicine, firewood and coal, and pay people to clean and cook for the elderly. They repair the homes of the lonely, and children from a large family are sent to a summer camp near Pechera. She tells of Sabbath and holiday gatherings in the community's office, with children singing and tea and a simple table. She says the office is in the Potocki house and offers to show it. Kerler asks where the office is.

Kogan gives his Yiddish name as Yosl and his birth as 12 August 1927 in Bershad. He lived there until the war. His parents were both from Bershad. His father was a soap-maker who died of hunger. His mother, Gitl, was a candy-maker whose sweets he describes, and she died in the 1960s. He moved to Tul'chyn in 1960 and has lived there about thirty years (the figure is unclear).

Golfeld tells of washing a German soldier's vehicle in the ghetto, in return for bread and other food, until his hands froze. He says the German spoke Russian and knew he was a Jew. He talks about the constant hunger and the struggle for food.

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.

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

Presler recalls helping her mother and going to night school, then working 37 years in a shoe factory. She tells of her husband's death at the factory just before his pension, and of her own injuries and years in hospital. Her son and daughter-in-law also worked there, and she describes a sister jailed for taking bread from a bakery. Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for the Soviet system.

Kogan answers questions about the Bershad ghetto song Dos lagerl, mentioning a poor man who collected the dead on a cart. He recalls that many people died of hunger and a policeman once threatened to throw him into the river when he was seventeen. He sings Aheym, briderlekh, aheym and explains that he wrote it down on paper but hid the texts, fearing he would be accused of being a communist. He answers Kerler's and Lemster's questions about when and in what script he wrote his songs.

Kogan talks about the writer Boris Zitser (?), who is now in Israel and who took his notebook of songs when he left; Kogan met him in 1944 after demobilization. He mentions the market in the ghetto, where Bessarabian Jews traded, and answers Lemster's question about a rabbi, saying the slaughterer was killed. He speaks about his late brother and his brother's son, and says he met his wife in Obodivka through his sister who lived there.

Yurkovetskij says he worked as a driver for fifty-three years in Tul'chyn. The family lived on the barber's trade, and the eldest brother began working in a barbershop at twelve or fifteen. The grandmother took in lodgers in the large house they had on Lenin Street near the market. Lemster asks about the years before the war.

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

Yurkovetskij says his family house burned down during the war. After the war his wife and children returned from Kyrgyzstan and he began building a new home. The authorities nevertheless demanded he repay money for a house that no longer existed. Lemster asks about Jewish houses taken during the war, and Kerler asks how often he went to Bratslav.

Shveibish talks about her current living situation, including a flat and a room in Tul'chyn, and the cost of medicines and prices. She mentions how people on small pensions are helped by the community and by money and clothing sent from Vinnytsia.

Kiselman describes the Tomashpil ghetto: all Jews were driven into a single street, and non-Jews threw potatoes and bread over the fence. The women describe the hardship, including clothes sewn from sacks and coal. He was called up in 1944 and spent five years in Germany, where he spoke Yiddish with Germans and acted as an interpreter.

A woman speaks about relatives who carried out burial work, including children, during the war, and Kerler asks about a song on the gravedigger theme. Kolodenker then recites, with Kerler asking for repetition, a Yiddish song heard in the Pechera camp in which a woman who lost her six children begs for bread. She names the singer (the surname is unclear) and tells of a girl who asked for bread in Russian after her mother died of hunger.

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.

Shveibish addresses today's Jewish community in Tul'chyn. She says there are few fully Jewish families, perhaps twenty or thirty, and describes help from Hesed, former food aid, and care for elderly people living alone. She also speaks of money and gifts, such as vitamins and Hanukkah candles, sent by a woman in America, and of her own community work.

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.

Lev speaks about rich Jews in Israel and former Tul'chyn residents in Canada. The conversation turns to Rebbe Nakhman of Bratslav: visits to his resting place in Uman, and Soviet-era pilgrimages, are mentioned, followed by prices and a very old man.

Yenta recalls how late people stayed at weddings and the klezmers, including the musician Shmukhe and a man called Shoyl Tes (?), who played the clarinet. The talk then turns to present-day life and prices.

Lev speaks about his work before and after the war, thirty-five years as a shoemaker, and his later pension. He compares wages and prices with life today, including medals and pension supplements, and ends with a discussion of politics.

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

The woman tells of surviving the killings in the Bershad' ghetto, lying wounded and escaping from the pit, and wandering from town to town. She says she lived in the synagogue building, tells of a sister who fell at the front, and says her mother left the house. She now lives with her husband, a Jewish shoemaker, while her daughter lives nearby; Kerler and others discuss compensation payments from Germany.

A Rubin describes his wartime service: the officer school leaving Odessa for Moldova on the first day of the war, a first fight with a German, being encircled, then Moscow, the Volkhov, Kalinin and Smolensk fronts. At 18 he commanded forty soldiers and burned tanks with bottles. He tells of being shot and wounded on the Smolensk front, with six operations, and is now a disabled veteran, with a pension of 180 hryvnia, who attends prayer with a rabbi.

Efim recalls the famine of the early 1930s, when people ate frogs from the river and many died, though he does not remember Jews of Buki dying. He lists the town's Jewish trades, such as tailors, hatmakers, shoemakers, tinsmiths and wheelwrights, and explains the terms for those who make wheels and wagon parts. He also tells his father's story of straw roofs being burnt so that tin could be sold.

Kerler asks about her work; the answer is garbled, and she speaks of her struggle raising the children alone so that they would not become drunkards or thieves. She says a son died, that one child in Germany helps her, and that she lives on a pension. Kerler asks about a Russian-influenced expression she uses.

Teplitskaia says she was ten years old during the war. Asked by Kerler and Katz about prewar songs and people, she says that as children they worked at home after school, feeding pigs and cows, and that her father was a poor worker. There was no time for singing, and she says she began to sing Yiddish songs only after the Germans. A cousin who had been in Romania sang songs from there.

Kerler and S3 discuss a saying of Reb Nahman, then the origin of the name Uman', with a story about a woman named Manya who drank tea. Kerler says the team is going to Bershad. Asked about Buki, Rubin recalls that houses were roofed with straw, and that a man was paid to set fire to the roofs at night so that people had to buy tin from merchants.

Rubin recalls a large family (about twelve sons and eight daughters) and a relative who visited from America, who was allowed only as far as Kyiv and had to hire a taxi at night. He also speaks of an old woman, Frida or Fanya (?), who survived the war hidden among Germans, now receives money from Germany and parcels from America. He ends with his own work as a taxi driver.

Waldman talks about the poverty of Uman's Jews and about her family, many of whom were communists. Her father Avrom, an orphan from Zhytomyr, worked in a factory. She says they lived near the market and she has no photograph of him. The passage ends as she turns to the first of August, when the Germans came.

Waldman talks about the hard years of wartime evacuation, when many died of hunger and her mother worked hard for little. After the war she studied, finishing school, a pedagogical college and universities in Kyiv and Cherkasy. She also mentions a brother living in Germany.

The group meets two local men on the street; one is a former yeshiva student. They talk in Yiddish about Hungarian versus Yiddish at home and the yeshiva. Naybauer then talks about his working life: he learned tailoring with his uncle, later made suits for the intelligentsia including professors from Moscow and Budapest, and worked forty-five years. He also talks about his late wife, his children and grandchildren, a kidney operation by Professor Polansky (?) in Kyiv, and the economic hardship of pensions and rent today. He says he was in a concentration camp at the age of twenty. He ends by pointing out the site of a former Jewish mill.

Naybauer and the group approach a former synagogue building and discuss neighboring buildings, including a former large restaurant that employed many Jews, a shop owner, and a house of Dr. Neumann (?). He talks about the Jewish market and the community's size of about ten thousand. He says the Czech period was a good time, followed by Hungarian rule. He also talks about a Jewish bank director who sent money to America.

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

Shor says a Jewish kolkhoz called the Jewish Peasant was established in Kopayhorod. He describes the famine of 1932–33: his mother was a kolkhoz worker, grain was searched out and taken from peasants, the family became swollen, and many Jews and non-Jews died. Officials survived through special rations.

Questions turn to drinking and wine, which Jews did not make themselves. Grigorii and Liudmila then describe the town: the poverty, the inn yard owned by their grandfather Hershl with its shops, and the smiths, tailors, shoemakers and leather workers. Several Jews were repressed in 1928, others fled, and those who remained lost their voting rights. Kerler and the couple also discuss occupational terms such as tailor, patch-tailor and leather cutter.

Furer talks about life before the war. His father died at 43, and his mother was left with three sons. They went to work at a kolkhoz outside town for food, the father working as a tailor there.

Answering Kerler's questions about Hanukkah food, Furer recalls latkes made of potatoes and corrects himself about Purim pastries. Kerler asks about the difference between latkes and blintzes. Furer says he still makes potato latkes and baked potato cakes himself, and describes cakes made of rye flour that his grandmother baked. He describes the family as poor but cheerful.

Barshteyn recalls her childhood in Sharhorod: a small one-room home, three daughters, and a father who worked alone. The family was not rich but never went hungry. She briefly mentions her late husband and offers to show a photograph later, and Kerler asks about her mother's housekeeping.

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

Vaisman says his sister never married. He has two children: a daughter in America and a son nearby, and grandchildren in America and Israel, one of whom visited. Life is still hard, and he and his wife live on pensions. His wife, born in 1925 like him, lost her parents, who were killed. The passage ends with Lemster's first question about Yiddish theater.

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

Asked about the 1932–33 famine, Vaisman says only that they were always hungry and ate cornmeal porridge (?). He did not know his grandfather, who died in 1927. His mother spoke Yiddish at home but could not pay a melamed, so he had no cheder. He recalls evacuation with his mother until 1943, after which she stayed with his sister in Central Asia while he was taken into the army and was in Romania. The passage ends with Katz asking about songs.

Vaisman says there was no singing at home, since the mother could not sing and the family lacked bread. He says his unmarried sister lives with him and his wife. Katz and Kerler ask about the pension, and he and Kerler discuss how much money a person or a family needs, in hryvnias, as prices rise. Kerler thanks him at the end.

Barshteyn describes the war years in Sharhorod. The Germans were there for two weeks and took what they wanted. Romanian authorities followed, and Jews deported from Romania came into the shtetl. She says Jews could not speak Yiddish freely in public but did at home. She was twelve (?), her sister eight and there was a baby, and her mother was left alone without work. Lemster asks whether her mother sang; she says she sang only at home, in the ghetto.

Sobol recalls the great famine of 1932–33, when she was a teenager: people swelled up from hunger and there was no food, and everything cost money. Her family survived because her father worked with a horse for the militia, and they ate potatoes.

Sobol talks about her childhood while her mother was alive, a poor but quiet home, and being orphaned at fourteen. She describes Passover poverty, her father leading the seder, and a relative who asked the Four Questions. She also covers kashering the house and storing the Passover dishes in the attic. The questions turn to holiday food: Passover dumplings, Hanukkah latkes, Purim treats and the Sabbath cholent. A remedy against the evil eye (a red ribbon) is also touched on.

Katz recalls her childhood. At three she lost both parents to typhus; she describes in detail her mother's last days and the neighbors finding her dead. A relative of her mother's, apparently an uncle, took her in, and she describes her chores in his household and his work as a tinsmith. She goes on to her few years of schooling, starting work as a child, and finishing school in 1939.

Yatskova says people are leaving the area because there is no work or livelihood. Asked whether the Hesed (?) helps her, she says she receives a pension as a ghetto prisoner.

Opens briefly on holiday customs, with Kerler asking about Tisha b'Av. Poberevskii then talks about poor but gifted classmates, many of whom were killed in the war, and about her own studies in Kalinin. She says her father the rabbi did not take her or her mother to shul, and describes her brothers, one of whom studied Talmud and became a lawyer. She also answers questions about the meaning of 'a good Jew' and about her mother's brother. The rest is largely a dialectological questionnaire put by Kerler, with Katz commenting. Items include words for the cross and for converting or baptising (the difference between 'geshmad' and baptising a child), candle-blessing and Friday preparations, 'evening' and 'ear', and 'attic' and 'potatoes'. Further items cover latkes, foods for Shavuot and Hanukkah, Hanukkah games such as the dreidel, and household words. She also answers on kinship terms such as 'mekhutn', on rabbi/rebbe/rov terms and on 'almost' and 'exactly'. She says she hardly speaks Yiddish any more and describes seven years of Yiddish schooling. She speaks of severe poverty in her childhood home: her mother had eleven children and sold yeast at the market, with no pension even though three sons were in the army, and the house was cold in winter. She also says there is no rabbi or functioning synagogue in Zhmerynka now and that about 300 Jews live there.

Lebvol says she went for a year and a half to the Beys-Yankev girls' school, and recites the "moydene" prayer and the blessing over bread that she learned there. She says that boys went to cheder and that there was no money for her to stay on in school. She started at 13 with a seamstress, after seven classes, while her mother was a housewife.

Lebvol lists Zhovka's Jewish occupations: tailors, tinsmiths, butchers, glaziers and several ritual slaughterers. She says many Jews converted to Christianity and that she doesn't know of non-Jews becoming Jews, that neighbors were non-Jews with whom they got along, and that older non-Jews knew Yiddish. She describes her poor family: bread wrapped in newspaper, herring bought from a shop, and her father the glazier bartering glass for food in the villages.

Answering Kerler's questions about his childhood family, Shpitz names his siblings, six brothers and two sisters, and tells that the sisters were killed in 1941 because they could not be evacuated. He recalls his schooling in the Yiddish school no. 24 on Sadova street and the poverty that sent him to work at the Stalin factory before being drafted in 1939. He says that the language of instruction was Yiddish, and mentions a rich friend and his own studies.

Geller discusses the Joint's aid and how people get help, and compares it with the war years. He says Polish Jews fled to the Soviet Union, and mentions his invalid's pension. Kerler asks about an idiom and some Russian-influenced words. Geller then begins an anecdote about a prosecutor and a tailor.

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

He recalls childhood in Ukraine as a time of constant fear, with fear of Whites and Reds, kolkhoz, war, and price rises. He then compares life today with the Soviet period: his pension, the price of bread, and paying for medical care. He mentions the Jewish charity (Hesed) that provides meals.

Antsis talks about her family and the hunger of the early 1930s. One brother died after overeating when food finally became available, and another died during the war. Of four children two survived, and her sister emigrated to America when many people wanted to leave, then died not long afterwards. Antsis names the sister as Freydele and tries to recall her mother's name (Dania or Datshi, unclear). Her father had a small shop. Her mother later worked on a Jewish kolkhoz near Zhytomyr, while Antsis studied at a technical school.

Antsis says she does not know where her parents were born. Kerler asks her to speak Yiddish, and she says she knows Russian well. She recalls Lyubar and a girlfriend from school who was very poor, with whom she shared her bread and butter; the friend once reproached her for eating the second piece. They spoke Yiddish at school.

Kerler asks the Yiddish name of a plant, and Antsis says there is none and gives the Russian one. Kerler says he was born in Moscow and that the team is making an archive of films of elderly people who remember Yiddish. She says her own children do not speak Yiddish, but her niece does. She also complains that her pension is small, speaking of the difficulty of life and fate, and then starts recalling Lyubar with its rain and big puddles.

Skobilitskii points out the house of a wealthy local businessman (named something like Magazanik, uncertain). He ran a large farm with cattle, sent dairy products to Zhytomyr and Kyiv, and owned a leather factory that exported to Czechoslovakia. Many Jews lived in his buildings and worked for him. Skobilitskii also mentions a four-year Jewish school after the revolution, an old ornate door, and a visitor from Canada who no longer knew Yiddish.

Groisburg recalls attending an army school in Berdychiv and later working as a teacher. She tells of teaching Russian to poor Jewish children in a poor street. A Yiddish teacher came to the home at her father's wish, and she reads Yiddish only with difficulty.

She speaks about her father: a learned man who wanted her to study Hebrew, though there was no opportunity. Under pogroms and poverty he insisted his children study, if need be as external students. He was drafted into the army before the Revolution. She and her mother were left alone after his death, and she then went to work.

Groisburg says that pews at the large synagogue were costly and her religious family could not afford them. She recalls that her grandmother was at home on Sabbath, which was observed. The children worked on Sabbath, while the father went to synagogue with his tallit, in which he was later buried.

Geller talks about Pyatka before the war. Young people left the town in the 1930s for big cities, and he mentions a Jewish council (?) and Jewish craftsmen. His father Yankl worked in a factory, which closed during the hunger. Yankl went to look for work elsewhere, fell ill, returned in 1934 and died. His mother lived to 93 and kept house for four children. He then begins on his maternal grandmother, who had no child for ten years and went to a rebbe who promised her one child who would live long; the rebbe's name is not remembered.

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

Shpitz gives his surname and says he was born in Zhytomyr. He recalls going to synagogue with his father as a child. His father was a poor cobbler with eight children. He began factory work early, around the fifth grade, and the passage ends with a muddled mention of the post-war years.

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

Shpitz describes the poor Jewish life of a shoemaker with eight children. Lemster asks about Purim, Purim plays and masking, and Shpitz says little about them. He recalls Passover preparations with new dishes brought down from the attic. He says Jewish life passed quickly and thanks God for his years.

Shpitz says he left school to work in a felt-boot factory, whose director, Bukhshteyn, was Jewish. He had no chance to study because his father could not support it. He was drafted for the war in Poland in 1939. He recalls his mother coming with a letter, in a passage that is garbled and includes a Russian phrase.

Lemster puts questions about the words golem and dibbuk, and Shpitz explains a dibbuk loosely in his own terms. He talks about life today, with its pension and easier living. His children understand Yiddish, and he speaks it at home with his wife. The passage ends with a question about the theater he saw.

Sandler says his family was not rich. Kerler asks about Purim. Sandler recalls his mother baking poppy-seed hamantashen and says he was not sent with Purim gifts. He does not know the term purim-shpil. He mentions the synagogue, which functioned until the war, and his own cheder attendance. Kerler asks what challah is, and Sandler recalls his mother baking on a stove. The passage ends with Kerler asking how many years he did not speak Yiddish.

Kerler talks about memory, saying that childhood years are usually remembered best, and asks Sandler to describe his childhood, games, friends and prewar holidays. Sandler, now 81, says he forgets much. He recalls his father keeping the holidays, including Yom Kippur kapores. He says the family was poor with many children. The interview ends with thanks.

Discussion about the Jewish people and the sins attributed to them, with a story about the synagogue renovation and how the community kept faith. It turns to Ukrainian politics (the president with an American wife), inflation, and factories and bakeries closed in Zhytomyr. Kerler ends by asking Geller when he left Pyatka.

Nibulskiy describes how his grandfather Avrom kept an open Sabbath table for poor guests for eighteen years. Visitors came from nearby towns, and a cholent from the baking oven was served with kiddush, silver cups for wine or brandy, tea and lekekh. The guests told stories, which he learned from his grandfather and father. He then begins to describe poverty in the Jewish shtetl.

Nibulskiy talks about poverty in prewar Pulen, with no factories and many poor people living on credit. A man bought furs and roosters in the German colonies to resell. His grandfather collected from the rich to bring Sabbath food to families like Nokhem the shoemaker's. He then tells a story of Shmilik, a bonder from Lithuania, who consulted the Baal Shem Tov (Reb Yisroel) and found gold in his oven, which led to a furniture workshop. Kerler asks about word meanings and the man's name.

Nibulskaia describes the synagogue in Zhytomyr with its shames and gabbai, then talks about her brother David, who went to the front and had a wife and child, probably in Moldova. She gives her husband's biography: evacuated with his parents, he studied at a pedagogical technical school and an institute, and later taught drawing. They lived poorly with three children, moved to Zhytomyr in 1977, and she taught math for 39 years.

He talks about life today at 81 (?): the whole of life is problems, with the currency changes and the dollar. He recalls heating with gas and earlier going to non-Jewish villagers to buy straw for fuel, and calls life a foolish story.

Kerler states the date, 4 January 2009, and the place, Zhytomyr, and introduces Nibulskiy, who gives his name as Itsik, son of Yankl. His wife Yide is a little older than he is, and they give their birth years. Nibulskiy begins to describe prewar Pulen, with more than three hundred Jewish families, many of them hungry and poor.

Nibulskiy describes the poverty of prewar Pulen: no bread, no firewood and no pensions. Some craftsmen earned a little, and small traders bought food from German villagers and resold it in town. People had nicknames. Shopkeepers kept credit books in which customers' debts were chalked up, and Kerler asks how the system worked. He also mentions the three prayer houses, those of the shoemakers, the tailors and the merchants.

Nibulskiy tells how his grandfather Avrom, a tailor, burned a hole in a customer's garment, and the Veledniki rebbe, who happened to arrive, advised him how to repair it. He then explains the family: his great-grandfather Shimonke and grandfather Avrom Alters, who was killed by the Germans in 1941 after refusing evacuation. Avrom was a synagogue warden and supported a poor shoemaker's family on the Sabbath. Nibulskiy compares this with the complaints about aid today.

Nibulskiy says the Nibulskiys came from Lithuania. He tells about a poor family of binders, whose oven would not bake, who went for advice and returned with a pot of gold from a cracked oven. He then adds that the man opened a workshop in Pulen and became wealthy. Kerler asks about the name of the object and the term bonder, and about the rebbe's role.

Nibulskaia says her father, Meir (son of Menashe?), held a real seder every year until his death. He attended synagogue daily, in Korosten (three synagogues then, closed later) and in Zhytomyr after the war. She also mentions his work and small pension, her mother, and the hard life.

Shraibman describes the family's evacuation. They went to a village in Tambov oblast and worked in a kolkhoz without passports, then fled the approaching Germans to Fergana in Uzbekistan. Of an extended family of eleven (counts unclear), six returned and several died of hunger. Kerler asks, and Shraibman lists, who was in the family: grandparents, aunts, his mother, a sister with two children. He mentions finishing school in the town before army college.

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

Bluvshtein tells about a brother who lived and died in Moscow and a sister in Zhytomyr, and which of them was oldest. In answer to Kerler he recalls Stalingrad: hiding during the bombing, hunger, and the city destroyed and rebuilt as Volgograd.

Bluvshtein describes life after the war: bread on ration cards, then work and good earnings as a painter. Kerler asks about a ritual slaughterer in the town.

Sandler talks about food and home life. His mother was a capable housewife with eight children, and meat was affordable only once a week, for the Sabbath. He lists breakfast foods such as kasha, rice, tea and rolls. Kerler asks whether he spoke Yiddish after the war.

Margolis talks about his work and present circumstances: he once earned a living but now has no work, lives on a small disability pension, and has little to live on. Kerler asks about his grandfather, who attended synagogue, prayed and kept kosher.

Kerler asks about Yiddish poets and prose, including a work 'By the Dnieper' whose author is unclear in the transcript. Nibulskiy says he reads Yiddish periodicals every day at 83 and keeps tefillin. He recalls carrying his tailor grandfather's prayer shawl to the tailors' synagogue every Sabbath, and the few kopecks and sweets he earned. He remembers poverty, carrying Hanukkah gifts, and a childish prank in his grandfather's workshop that frightened the tailors. Kerler then asks which stories he still wants to tell.

Nibulskaia recalls the 1933 famine, when her blacksmith father had nothing to eat and the family moved to a kolkhoz near Novozlatopil (the kolkhoz's name is unclear in the transcript) with twenty-eight Jewish houses. The school there had only the lower grades, so she walked eight kilometers each way, stealing produce from the fields. In winter she lived in a cold dugout dormitory with plank beds, and she went on to a Russian school in Korosten after seventh grade. Her mother worked as a cook and kept a garden.