Religious education

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.

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.

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.

Gotlieb speaks about Sabbath-ending prayers and the greeting "a gute vokh" with its replies, then the prayers she learned as a child. She recites the morning prayer "Modeh Ani" and other prayer texts, though the transcript is largely garbled here.

Rezmovits tells stories about Froim der ganeydiker (a trickster figure told by his mother), including a restaurant episode and a contract with a priest. He then discusses prewar Debrecen, with antisemitism and fights with non-Jewish boys when leaving cheder, and the large Jewish gymnasium and a famed Jewish athlete from Debrecen. Kerler asks him to write the stories down.

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

Deutsch explains how Torah verses were learned and translated in Budapest in his school days, giving the opening words of Genesis in that traditional manner. He and Kerler discuss the different terms for God. The passage ends with Kerler stating the date and the setting, the Jewish Theological Seminary in Budapest.

Deutsch describes himself as a teacher of Torah to children, following the weekly portion. He discusses Hebrew pronunciation in different Hungarian regions, naming Ungvár, Mezőkövesd(?), Munkács and Budapest, and compares how a holiday is named in each place. Kerler's questions about the Sukkot term prompt part of the discussion.

Deutsch speaks about his education in Budapest, mentioning a school in a street whose name is unclear and the absence of a yeshiva in Budapest. He then says that his parents died in the war and that three brothers were left.

Deutsch tells of living in Budapest with his brothers and grandmother, and of his time from 1946 to 1951 in a children's home, apparently one run near Mezőkövesd(?) and Makó. The Yiddish-speaking and non-Yiddish-speaking children were taught separately, and most pupils learned the Bible without understanding it. He says that he finished eight classes and then had to work in a factory in Budapest, and he talks about his later studies.

Deutsch is asked about a Hungarian Hasidic melody but says he cannot recall it. He explains that he knew little German, that his grandmother knew it, and that his parents spoke it to keep things from the children. He describes four years of cheder, where prayers were learned without translation and Bible stories about Saul, David and Goliath were told, and a children's illustrated book.

Deutsch tries to recite a Purim play piece, with Kerler asking him to repeat it. He says that he worked in a factory for forty-five years in chemical engineering and, after retirement, began to teach, apparently after a professor who knew of his children's home background approached him. Kerler adds that he is learning Hungarian, counting to three.

Kerler asks about stories of a Jewish folk character and Pearl instead speaks about the old Rabbi Rosenbaum, whose table was reused after his death, and about his own cheder years. He says he attended a few Jewish weddings before the war and compares them with later ones. He also mentions the extra payments his father made to the rabbi and the shochet at holidays. Kerler then thanks him and wraps up.

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

Gotlieb speaks of praying to the Yismach Moshe and recalls her mother reading the Tsene-rene in Yiddish to the children on Sabbath. Her brother went to Uzhhorod for further yeshiva study, and she has some memories of going there and having a bicycle taken, in parts mixed with Hungarian. She mentions a nephew from Uzhhorod called Weinberger, whom she describes as a Jewish priest (?), and a relative who studied in Prague.

Gotlieb says Jewish history was taught at school by a woman teacher, but in Hungarian, not in Yiddish. Her mother taught her to read, and Gotlieb says she was unwilling. She says her father's mother sang with the family on Sabbath and mentions Sabbath songs, and Kerler asks about a song about the Messiah. She says her mother spoke with the Polish rebbe, whose Yiddish she could not follow, and she was angry at him for a remark about her mother.

Blobshteyn describes the kosher butchers' courtyard with thirteen Jewish butchers under supervision, and Mukacheve's matzo baking in a dozen or so places with no machine matzo. He mentions the Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, his funds for the yeshiva, and a dispute over exemption of yeshiva students from military service, as well as contemporary religious life and the "Erlekh" fund (?). The English-language line and a loop at about 40:03 are recogniser noise.

Blobshteyn names the one yeshiva of Chaim Elazar (Spira) in Mukacheve, and bigger cheders, talmud torahs and a beis medrash, noting his late brother Wolf studied. He recalls the rebbe's son's wedding, when gendarmes beat him with rubber truncheons as he tried to run past. Kerler and he discuss Spira's family, including a daughter's daughter born on a ship, and grandchildren in Brooklyn and Williamsburg.

Opens with an exchange about Hungarian and Yiddish words, such as a term for the TV or a kind of drink (?), and the blessing after a meal. Blobshteyn then describes Hanukkah at home: goose, card games including twenty-one, dreidels, and gambling for money. He explains that children's study was forbidden on Hanukkah and on one other day of the year. Kerler's question about folk protection against the evil eye ends the passage.

Blobshteyn describes taking a live turkey with his brother to the rabbi to be blessed at Purim, and how his mother sold the turkeys after the holiday to buy shirts for the children. His mother sewed all the children's clothes on an old Singer machine. He describes Sabbath afternoons, when old women sat on benches in the street and talked, and says that girls also went to a special cheder taught by pious women. He recalls the decorative papercut (mizrekh) on the wall.

Blobshteyn lists Sabbath foods, such as cholent with stuffed stomach kugel, and explains where cholent was kept at the baker's. He describes the Jewish street where he lived and typical foods, including fish, cholent, kugel, a dish called refenik (?) and plain dumplings. He tells how the religious tutor ate with his family on certain days of the week, and discusses brandy and a Passover drink called slivovitz and its kashrut. He mentions wine at Passover.

Blobshteyn recalls a rebbe in a village called Keretski (?) near Svalyava, to whom they took a sick boy, a cousin of his, along with his father and uncle. The rebbe had the child stand up and walk and, after three weeks, cut his hair so that he could go to cheder. He then describes Svalyava, where a cemetery lies on a hill and almost no Jews remain; two were left, one of whom died and the other left for Israel. Kerler asks for a further story or a song, and Blobshteyn says he remembers nothing and gives a brief remark on Hasidim and the rebbe.

Kerler and Doman briefly discuss the state of Yiddish and Jewish life in Russia, including a rise in antisemitism there, in eastern Europe and in western Europe. Kerler then outlines the interview plan, asking about the difference between Yiddish and the German used in the yeshiva and about Yiddish in Budapest. Doman says he studied in four yeshivas, naming Verpelét, Dorog (?) and Galánta, the last now in Slovakia.

Samadi starts a Hungarian song, and then several people sing a Yiddish song about not wanting to be a yeshiva student any more. Gurshteyn chants Shoshanat Yaakov at length. Samadi then sings a humorous Yiddish song about a woman out with a veil in a Budapest newspaper story, which he learned from his father. Kerler asks whether it was a theater song and whether his mother sang too.

Reti says he studied in a yeshiva in a town named Berkan(?) with a rabbi whose family of many children is mentioned. He describes the village Purim figure who made a straw belt and announced the festivities. He recites parts of the Joseph play, in which the brothers sell Joseph, and Kerler asks about the troupe: over twenty young men who performed whole plays around Purim in ten to fifteen villages.

Reti recalls going to the mikveh as a boy and his time in the yeshiva, and Kerler asks about the upsherin, the first haircut at age three. Reti says it was held in the prayer house with the whole community and that boys wore short trousers until thirteen. He also says the prayer house served as the cheder and that his mother carried him there on her back. At the end he tells a story involving a rabbi and telling the truth.

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

Galambos and Kerler talk about stale noodles, then about America and Canada, democracy and Israel, and how the United States has helped Israel. They go on to talk about the Jews of Debrecen, Romania, and Galambos's learning of Hungarian. Galambos says he spoke only Hungarian at school and Yiddish at cheder.

Galambos says his mother read the Tsene-rene at home, for his sisters and the neighbors, and Kerler asks when this was. He answers questions about the term baal shem and a "good Jew". He then reflects on the state of the world and prays for Eretz Yisrael, before starting to talk about the hardships of a yeshiva student.

Katerberg says there was no doctor in the village, and the mohel and ritual slaughterer came from Cotiujeni. Their son's circumcision was done in Chernivtsi in the Soviet period, followed by a small celebration at home. Kerler asks about libraries and books at home; Tatyana says her teacher taught her at home from Yiddish primers and recalls a Russian rhyme.

Answers questions from Kerler and Lemster about the meaning of terms: a 'good Jew' (a rabbi who judged disputes and gave blessings), hasidim, a holy Jew, giving a pidyon, a dibbuk, a Litvak and a golem. He mentions the yeshiva in Chișinău and the shoykhet who slaughtered only chickens. He also describes how a rabbi ruled on questions about doubtful chickens, depending on whether the asker was poor or rich.

Shpitalnik says she learned Hebrew letters in courses about fifteen years ago, with thoughts of going to Israel. She then returns to her paternal grandfather Meir, who refused to leave and was killed, and to her grandmothers: one wore a wig and prayed in the Russian theatre building. Her maternal grandmother died in evacuation. She describes visits to Dumbrăveni as a child, travelling by horse from Bălți.

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

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

Abelsky talks about sending his students to a yeshiva in Jerusalem and about a report in which one of the great Hasidim used a Yiddish expression. Kerler and Katz help with a Yiddish word that Abelsky does not catch at first. The passage is partly unclear.

Asked by Kerler for a tale about his grandfather, Abelsky describes a childhood episode near their Moscow home and a tram accident. He then tells how his grandfather was reputed for learning, how Mitnagdim feared him and how he sent emissaries to Ukrainian yeshivas. He also tells an anecdote about a melamed and sour cream, and recalls growing up in a Hasidic atmosphere.

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.

Diner speaks about the shtetl's madman, a character called Khantse (?), who shouted in the streets. She names well-off local Jews, among them Sara Fuks's family with a mill, and a dealer in karakul and furs, and says Fălești had three Jewish pharmacies and many doctors. She says Jewish boys went to the cheder and had bar mitzvahs, and discusses circumcision at home. The interviewers ask about girls' observances and other customs.

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

Muchnik tells how her elder brother acted in a Yiddish theatre, taking the role of Death, and forgot to remove his wristwatch, so that he was nicknamed after it. Lemster and Kerler ask what plays were staged and whether they were in Yiddish. She recalls a symposium of Hebrew specialists where her brother, a carpenter, corrected a professor, and talks of her brother's love of Hebrew and Yiddish and of cheder.

Abelsky describes underground Chabad yeshivas in the Soviet Union, where he studied in Moscow before the war, with hundreds of students. He speaks of the wartime flight to Uzbekistan and studying in Samarkand, and of the postwar escape from Russia in 1946. He explains how a committee funded and forged papers to get Jews out via Lemberg and Chernivtsi, and mentions people who were caught, including a Matskin (?). He ends with a letter exchange with a Chabad contact abroad.

Dajch says she did not attend a Yiddish school, though her brother went to cheder. She tells of lectures by Jewish students under a cultural league, which promoted emigration to Palestine, and of the books read. She describes her sister and brother-in-law's time with the halutsim. She then recounts how she and her husband returned to the village and opened a small shop.

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

Rojtman says she attended a Romanian school for four years, then the gymnasium in Cuhureşti (?), and under the Soviets studied in Rezina. She had been taught Yiddish letters and used to write letters in Yiddish to her grandfather in Buenos Aires, but remembers nothing of it now. She tries to recite a poem, mostly Romanian, with Kerler asking about it. Kerler then turns to her childhood games.

Lemster asks Shmid about a Yiddish word and about the 'good Jews', wonder-working rabbis who visited the village and whom people travelled to see. Kerler asks whether her father taught her Yiddish or prayer. She says no; she learned in Chișinău at her sister's, at a vocational school where Yiddish was taught but not Hebrew. Kerler then starts a question about a remedy against the evil eye.

Kleyman talks about Jewish life in her childhood village. About forty Jewish families lived among some four hundred people; services were held in the house of her aunt (Khantse), where Jews from Belts and Chisinau sometimes came. She describes her mother lighting Sabbath candles, her limited Jewish schooling, speaking Yiddish with Jewish children and Moldovan with Christians. She tells of a Jewish mother and a Ukrainian father whose children did not learn Yiddish. She also tells of a trip to the rebbe in Chernivtsi at Sukkot and a conversation with Christians about guilt for the death of Jesus.

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

Sharhorodskij says he studied seven classes at the Yiddish school, which was closed in 1936–37 because few Jews were sending their children, and became a Russian school. He talks about the teachers' retraining, the fate of the literature teacher Markus, who he says went to the war and did not return, and the Jewish history lessons (Egypt, Mesopotamia). He also recalls how holidays were described in class.

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

Rolshut describes prewar Soroca's Jewish occupations: Jewish shops, butchers, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths and food merchants. She mentions three Jewish cafés and a restaurant, where youth gathered, along with the cinema and park concerts by non-Jewish military musicians. She speaks of Zionists, Maccabi, the Yiddish talmud-torah, and the Hebrew Tarbut lyceum, which gave Hebrew and Romanian diplomas. There were Jewish lawyers and doctors, but no Jews in the police, fire brigade or courts.

Dunaevskij describes keeping the holidays at home, with his father conducting the Passover seder. He recalls cheder in Ştefăneşti followed by Feinstein's school. After the war he worked as a builder, then studied in Moscow and qualified at a technological institute, and was chief engineer at the factory in Bender until today.

Dunaevskij answers questions about Sukkot, saying the family built a booth, ate there and sometimes slept there, and about the cheder teacher, whose name he forgot. On Hanukkah he recalls Hanukkah money, fruit and sweets, doughnuts (pontshkes) and potato latkes. Kerler asks about the custom of throwing things at Tishah be-Av, which he only vaguely remembers. Kerler then asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish in Ştefăneşti.

Klichinskaia says she attended a Romanian school for four years. Her brothers went to the talmud torah while the girls did not, and her father spoke Yiddish at home. She and Kerler then discuss the meaning of a line of the song she has just sung, which she describes as a humorous song.

Finkel says Sulita had one Jewish school and she learned from the prayer book, and later from a tutor who came to her house. Lemster asks how Passover was kept. She says she did not know where matzo was baked in Botoșani and that the matzo was brought from there, and she does not recall the food. The passage ends with Kerler asking the name of her best friend.

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.

Grunfeld talks about learning to read Yiddish at home as a child, including the Pentateuch, and about Jewish cultural circles and conferences. Writers named include Isaac Bashevis Singer and Itzik Feffer (?), along with Romanian and European authors. He says there was no Jewish library but families kept religious books, and that Jewish schooling was in Romanian. A discussion of the golem, dybbuk and the word 'golem' follows.

Hershkovich says he went to the yeshiva in Dej alone after four classes in the village, staying about seven or eight years, while the family remained at home. He says Dej had a large Jewish community of perhaps two thousand and gives his impressions of Jewish life there in the 1930s. He laments that Jewish life has gone, and also speaks about the situation in Cluj today, saying a few hundred Jews remain and they gather mainly for aid packages.

Hershkovich speaks about the religious make-up of Dej and Cluj: Dej was largely Hasidic with a few families, and Cluj had a Neolog community and synagogue. He recalls two shops that opened on Sabbath afternoons, causing a stir. He discusses the language of the Neolog Jews and how children learned Hebrew in cheder from age four or five, and why many cannot read with understanding today.

Hershkovich speaks about prewar culture and reading. As a yeshiva student he did not go to the theater. He read religious texts and stories of tsadikim in Hebrew, though he spoke and wrote letters in Yiddish. He says there are different Yiddish dialects, and that his own is closest to Polish Yiddish. He is asked about Litvaks, whom he describes as learned people.

Kraus names meat eaten at Purim, then recites the morning prayer modeh ani learned as a boy. Kerler asks about yeshivas in the surrounding area, and Kraus names Satu Mare and Sighet and Maramureș with many Jews, and says he heard of a Vizhnitser rebbe but never met him. His family did not travel to rebbes.

Hershkovich names family members and shows photographs: his sister Sheyndl and brother Yisroel were deported and did not return, and his mother's name was Blime. His father Aaron, son of David (?), came from Budapest, worked as a clerk and then as a melamed in various communities, and his grandparents are buried in Jerusalem. He also speaks of his teacher at the Dej yeshiva and of being the middle child of five.

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.

Freundlich describes her father's religious life in Satu Mare: the seats he held in the Hasidic and other prayer houses, the garden he donated for the Bixad rebbe's beis midrash, and his daily attendance at prayer and study. She talks about the Talmud volumes in leather bindings in the family library, and about the dowry gifts he gave his four daughters. Kerler asks about who studied with whom, and the passage ends with a Hungarian aside.

Kerler asks about yeshiva terms such as hoyz bokher and khazer bokher, and Freundlich explains them. Hungarian discussion about community leaders and visits follows. Freundlich states that in Timișoara, Oradea, Cluj and Bistrița people did not speak Yiddish, unlike Satmar, and Kerler discusses sending a recording by post and planning a further session.

Grunfeld describes Jewish life in the area before and just after the Second World War, with some thousands of Jews in Dej (name unclear in the transcript), a yeshiva, and a comparison with Cluj and Oradea. He says Oradea was about a third Jewish, and mentions Satu Mare. Kerler then asks what he heard about Jews while at Bender.

Miller says his father, a Vizhnitz hasid, came from a village near Uzhhorod and moved to Cluj. He grew up in a thoroughly Jewish home with three sisters and three brothers (the count is as heard) in a poor household. He reflects at length on what real Jewish feeling means, learned at home, from washing hands and blessings at the table to the father asking the children about cheder.

Meir says he remembers nothing of Burdusani. His father was a shoemaker without a livelihood and moved to the village of Dumbrăveni, where three of his brothers had small shops and the father opened one too. At about five Meir was sent to live with a maternal aunt in Dorohoi and attended cheder. Asked about Yiddish, he says only Yiddish was spoken in Dorohoi, and he states the town's Jewish population before deportation.

Isidor says his early childhood years, up to age four, were spent in Transnistria. His mother, Khale, was older than his father and died a natural death. He was an only child and does not remember his grandparents. After the war he was a student and became a Romanian teacher. He had a melamed at home but studied alone, and he now studies Shulkhan Arukh.

Grimberg answers questions about folk beliefs and healing, in particular a remedy against the evil eye that she learned from her mother. It involves three women sitting on a stone and a charm repeated three times, and she describes burning sulfur and sprinkling water. She mentions a prayer said when a mother takes a child to cheder for the first time.

Lipovici says the sheep belonged to the family, who had four brothers working with them. Lemster asks which language he used with the sheep, Yiddish or Romanian. Lipovici says he knows some French, learned at school. He says he did not study at a Jewish school, but remembers a Jewish teacher. He repeats the story of gluing the melamed's beard in cheder and Kerler asks about the burrs thrown at Tisha b'Av. He also says he does not remember his grandparents.

Lipovici answers questions about his prayer and where he learned to pray, the cheder, and the fact that there are no children to send to cheder now. Kerler says when he himself goes to synagogue, on Purim, the High Holidays and Simchat Torah. Lipovici also gives an answer to the question of the best time in his life, which is hard to follow.

The formal interview starts with Hirsch giving personal information. Luduș lay about forty kilometers from Târgu Mureș. In 1941 it was a small town with about 600 Jews, a synagogue, a rabbi and a Talmud Torah. No Jews remain there today, and the last one died about two years earlier. He also mentions friends who were in Transnistria and says he himself was in several camps.

Hirsch discusses antisemitism under communism and today, calling it a paradox that it exists where almost no Jews remain. He says his son lives in Israel, apparently since 1987. He explains that his mother tongue was Hungarian and Yiddish was also spoken at home, and that the town was split between Hungarian and Romanian speakers. He studied in cheder in Yiddish and recalls Jews from the villages being concentrated in a ghetto in Luduș.

Kerler asks Hirsch about his work after the war, but the answer is unclear in the transcript, apart from Hungarian remarks about Romanian business. Kerler then asks what he remembers from cheder, prayers and melodies, and Hirsch speaks of a Modzhitz-style melody (?), the cantor and the shoykhet. He says the synagogue stayed open after the war, while Communist Party members opposed it and came to the services at Rosh Hashanah.

Hirsch reflects on the future of Jewish life in Romania, in Yiddish with Hungarian asides, then describes Luduș before the war. He lists Jewish shoemakers, tailors and bakers, says there was much poverty and many children, and names a wealthy wine dealer, Heller Moshe, along with Aron Moritz. He speaks of Jewish pubs and drinking at the seder, and of poor Jews in the villages. He also mentions bochers from villages being fed in Jewish homes on assigned days, poor people eating maize porridge, and pellagra.

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

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.

Asked about his childhood, Chajim recalls cheder, work with wagons and hauling wood to Tuzac (?), and says he does not remember his grandparents. He talks about his father taking him to the synagogue on Rosh Hashanah and about prayers he still knows. Kerler asks about customs such as beating Haman during the reading of Esther (Purim) and about the Edineț bath and mikveh. He says he was in Edineț from 1941 and again mentions work in forced labor.

Rozenblat speaks briefly about his family, saying his maternal grandfather was a rabbi, and about learning Hebrew. He recites or sings a text about a teacher in a cheder, and Kerler asks for songs he remembers from his mother, after which he sings a partisan song.

Shtaigman says he studied Yiddish for four or five years after the war with a lawyer and Yiddishist teacher who had a large library and taught Yiddish literature. His religious education was minimal, with a stepfather who was somewhat communist. He says Rădăuți was multilingual (German, Romanian, Yiddish, Ukrainian, Russian) and describes the prewar population of about eight thousand, mostly Jews. Most Jews left for Israel in the later 1960s, leaving few young people.

Shvartz says he was expelled from the Romanian school, then attended the Jewish community school in Bîrlad up to the fourth grade. There he was taught Yiddish and Hebrew, mostly Yiddish, and he later forgot his Hebrew under the Communists. He says he went on to the eighth class in a Romanian school. He is asked how many Jews lived in Bîrlad; he gives only vague figures, and says Bîrlad was a small town.

Shvartz talks about his schooling and Hebrew reading, and recalls his cheder teacher who kept a goat. Asked about Jewish life in Bîrlad, he says there were eight synagogues, named by trade, and a large temple, and describes holiday attendance. Several voices then discuss Passover foods and baking and synagogue matters, but the transcript is largely unclear.

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

Kaizerman describes the Jewish quarter where he grew up, with many poor, unemployed Jews and a few bankers and doctors. He says Iași had about 80,000 people, 45,000 of them Jews. He mentions several talmud torahs, his melamed, many rabbis, and the meaning of a 'good Jew' (a wonder-working rebbe), including the Ștefănești rebbe visited for blessings and notes.

Chirilau answers questions about prewar religious life: the rabbi, a cheder teacher and the town's ritual slaughterer. She is asked what the Jews called the town and recalls the names of nearby cities, such as Seret, Iași and Rădăuți(?). She says no synagogue buildings survive and that a Jewish bathhouse also stood in the town.

Chirilau recalls her childhood schooling in the Romanian school, where Jewish children also had a couple of hours of Jewish instruction a day. She mentions the rabbi and the shoykhet, and describes how chickens were made kosher with salt on a board. She recalls that Jews, Germans and Romanians lived together peacefully, and she describes weddings and Sabbath treats for children.

Leichtner describes holidays before the war. On Yom Kippur children went to the synagogue and did not fast fully. He recalls the Purim shpiel and its rhymed lines. For Passover he talks about preparations and about the carob (boxer) pods that children used in a counting game of odd and even. He attended cheder until fifteen, then learned a trade, and was taken at eighteen to forced labor.

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

Freund responds to Kerler's request to describe prewar Jewish life in his town: it was a beautiful life in which people helped each other. He lists institutions: a synagogue, rabbi, judge, two slaughterers, a cheder with a teacher, a Talmud Torah, a mikveh with bathhouse, and no yeshiva (the nearest was in Sighet or Satu Mare). He says difficulties came with the antisemitic regulations.

Macarie continues to list siblings and their Hungarian or Romanian names. She says her parents died in Auschwitz, and that her mother came from Slatina in Czechoslovakia, née Kaufmann, while her father was born in her own village. She had four classes in a Romanian school, with Jewish learning from her father at home. She remembers the Hungarian arrival when she was eighteen and the ghetto, and some prayer lessons. After the war she trained for a few months as a technician in medicinal plants.

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 describes his yeshiva studies in several small yeshivas and a more important one in Maramureș. He explains the two terms of the year, between Passover and Sukkot and from Sukkot to Passover. In reply to Kerler, he says the term did not end with a special celebration. He describes the daily study system: the rebbe assigned pages of Gemara, and younger students needed a partner. Older students attended the rebbe's lectures.

Freundlich says again that his young years were very hard and compares the strict heder and yeshiva system with how others remember their youth. He says he studied well. He adds that other children, from somewhat richer families, were in a different position.

Freundlich describes his heder years and the rebbe, who beat the children. He says richer children paid for the talmud-torah while his family could not. He recalls the daily schedule, the long hours, and playing football with stones on the way to school. He says he was taught in Romanian at school but spoke Hungarian with his brothers and Yiddish with his mother. His father was proud of Hungarian culture. His mother was very pious, wore a head covering but no sheitl, and spoke Yiddish.

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.

Grinberg recalls playing as a child with Jewish children on her street in Fălticeni, which she calls an almost entirely Jewish town with a single Christian on the street. She describes learning at a Jewish school and at home with a private teacher who taught her to write Yiddish. She talks about her age, her health in recent years, and her only daughter. She also talks with Kerler about whether he will return to Romania.

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

The formal interview begins. Salamon says her father was a yeshiva student in Bratislava (as the transcript reads, 'Presburg'); the family spoke Yiddish, Hungarian and Romanian at home. She grew up with four brothers and three sisters.

Salamon speaks about songs at home: zemirot, and her elder sister who danced and sang; on Sabbath afternoons her father examined the boys, who went to cheder. She describes her bedridden grandmother, who read a large tkhine and predicted the deportations; Kerler asks the grandmother's name and origin. She recalls Italian then Hungarian arrival, trains with Jews passing her garden toward Galicia, and the ghetto, where several families shared a house.

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

Kurtsberg describes how his mother cured the evil eye by extinguishing coals in a glass of water, and a similar cure used by his wife. He explains the term 'geshterkt' (starched) in an anecdote about a person with a strong will, and tells a story from his father about a melamed in Strazhynits (?) who cooked his food all mixed together.

Petraru speaks about his role as community head and about contemporary religious life: the cost of coming to the synagogue by taxi, his praying at home, and the Federation in Bucharest. Lemster asks about Rabbi Moses Rosen, whom Petraru describes as a person without equal. Petraru also speaks of attending a cheder and then a Jewish school with Romanian lessons in the morning and Hebrew in the afternoon.

Galambos is asked about Sabbath table songs and recalls little. Asked about Hanukkah food, he says they made fried dough cakes and fish on Sabbath, and mentions gefilte fish prepared with sugar once in Klausenburg(?). He says his cheder songs are forgotten and doubts that anyone is interested in such memories.

Galambos reads from the prayer book and says the verses recall Auschwitz, where children were thrown into the fire. He contrasts prewar life, when Jews lived peacefully with their neighbors, went to synagogue and cheder and walked freely day and night, with today.

Outside, Galambos talks with the team and says he has found it hard to recall old things. He recalls that his family came to Vaja when he was three. He mentions cheder and games with other children, and the group discusses the number of streets in Vaja. Hungarian chat with others and a gift of apples follow, then a song and warm farewells.

Chaimovic gives personal information and talks about his family. His father was an entrepreneur who dealt in timber from the forests and ran a sawmill. There were six sons and one daughter, and he names the brothers and his mother Hanna. He gives his birth year as 1922 and the years of his parents' birth. He tells how his father lost a hand while fishing, and says the sons were taught to pray and read the Torah. His parents came from places in what is now Ukraine near Khust, which he names as Shandorova and a town that seems to be Monastyrets (?).

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.

Steiner discusses Hasidic life in the Košice region before the war. He says there were few Hasidim and few tsadikim, speaks about Orthodox and Neolog Jews in the city, a Sephardic claim, old gravestones, and the religious scholar Akiva Yosef Schlesinger. He mentions the prewar yeshiva in Košice, a rabbi who died in 1943, and societies of pious Jews. Kerler asks about Hasidim, Sephardim, yeshivas and Prešov.

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).

Berman explains that he learned Yiddish from newspapers, especially a Warsaw sports paper. He attended the Hebrew Tarbut gymnasium and then a Polish gymnasium, where there were few Jewish pupils, because it gave full university rights. He tells how he spoke in Polish at the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. He then describes Rivne's Jewish institutions: parties, a Hebrew and a Yiddish-Polish school, and three sports clubs. He mentions studying in a Russian school under Soviet rule and a trip to Kyiv shortly before the war.

Shor says he studied with a melamed who came to the house, because there were no Jewish schools; he went to a Moldovan school and learned to pray from the prayer book. He says the synagogue was closed in 1939 and gives the number of synagogues in Orhei as about twenty. Kerler asks about the difference between a shul, a kloyz and a beys-medresh, and Shor says he does not remember. Shor says his wife knows a lot about kashrut and holidays.

Talks about Jewish religious life under Soviet rule before the war. The parents were learned and observant but the children were afraid to study openly, the cheder was forbidden, and Jews were taught in a Yiddish school for four years and then sent to Russian schools. Katz asks how the Soviet Yiddish school differed from the earlier education, and the informants describe the generation gap and intermarriage.

Skobilitskii describes his school routine: cheder from nine to twelve, then the four-class Yiddish school from twelve to three. Some non-Jewish pupils spoke Yiddish well, and one later became a director and still spoke Yiddish with him after the war. He talks about the Yiddish alphabet and spelling and recites the letters when asked. Katz and Kerler ask about the "good and bad tsadik" letter forms, and he turns to the killing of his parents and the mass grave at the airfield.

Kerler meets Skobilitskii and chats with him informally. Skobilitskii says he is 83 and was born in Berdychiv. His father was born near Warsaw and his mother in Berdychiv. His son is an architect, and a grandchild lives in Israel. He attended cheder as a child.

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

Skobilitskii says he can read and write Yiddish and wrote to his mother in Yiddish from the army. His mother Khane was the prayer leader (zogerin) in the women's synagogue of Berdychiv, where women repeated after her. She was a rabbi's daughter and had studied in a women's yeshiva. His maternal grandfather was a rabbi in Chudniv (?). Only Yiddish was spoken at home. He says there were twenty synagogues in Berdychiv.

Skobilitskii says that the cheder was not closed. On Sabbath he went to synagogue with his father, since Sabbath was a day off from the Yiddish school and Sunday was a school day. He and Kerler discuss the schools in Berdychiv: thirteen in all, eight of them Yiddish, plus Polish, Ukrainian and Russian ones. Exams and certificates were in Russian. Kerler then announces some word questions.

Skobilitskii answers Kerler's questionnaire items, including words for a head or tumour and for a Jewish versus non-Jewish cemetery, and an illness name he links to Bila Tserkva. Katz and Kerler then ask him to recite from the prayer book. He recalls that in cheder they washed their hands and said Modeh ani.

Skobilitskii recalls his war service in an artillery unit from Stalingrad to Berlin, with the countries he passed through, and his rank as officer. Kerler asks about his cheder years in Kachynivka. He offers to take the team to the memorial for the thousands of people killed in Berdychiv and to the old synagogue buildings.

Skobilitskii says he studied before the war but worked in a museum, writing picture captions in Yiddish and Russian, and also retouched glass photographic plates. He attended cheder for about three and a half years and then Yiddish school no. 9, on a street now named after Sverdlov, formerly Makhlevka (?). He begins to speak of anti-religious agitation at factories.

Skobilitskii describes the new yeshiva building in Berdychiv, with a Jewish space and a mikveh, and says the group will drive on to show it. Kerler then asks for a Yiddish word for a clean person.

Furman remembers attending a school in a small street and the terrible famine of 1933, when people fell dead from hunger. He had to leave school to work for half a kilo of bread, and Kerler asks whether Jews also died and for the Ukrainian word for the famine. He says his father was a learned man who prayed well but taught him little. He cannot recall Jewish jokes or songs and mentions only anecdotes about Hershele.

Berzon says she did not hear of an anti-religion campaign in the Jewish school. She repeats her mother's stories that someone went to cheder, where the teacher beat unwilling children, and that he attended cheder before school. She says she knew the late Skoblitski(?), who also told of cheder.

The speakers describe Berdychiv today as a small town, with only some hundreds of Jews left, many having emigrated. Kerler asks whether they studied in cheder or Yiddish school and whether they read Yiddish books and newspapers.

They discuss the language spoken with grandchildren, who understand Yiddish, and the family in America. A grandson there is a pious Skver Hasid, and the interviewee talks about the visa and emigration difficulties and his studies there.

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 what he wants remembered about Jewish Berdychiv, Soyfer describes it as a Jewish town of honest people with Jewish trades and small prayer houses on every street, where there was no pogrom because young men defended it. He speaks of Yiddish-speaking neighbours, his grandmother in a village near Zhytomyr and the Germans' killing of Jews. Kerler thanks him and asks about his daughter's Yiddish, which Soyfer explains, and the passage ends with comments on yeshiva students and mixed Jews, and Kerler handing over project information.

Snook says her son was taught by a melamed. She herself went to a lame teacher for lessons so as to be able to pray. She did not read Yiddish newspapers, which came from Israel. The village had a library with various books, and her daughter-in-law knows Yiddish.

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.

Khavin tells of Maksim (surname not recalled), who wanted to become a Jew. He studied Torah, kept kosher and prayed with the minyan. The community sent him to learn in Moscow, but he was refused conversion by the rabbi. A neighbour called the militia, and a policeman shot him, about three years ago. The community buried him and put up a gravestone. Khavin says Krichevsky knew him well and that Krichevsky's grandson studies in a yeshiva in Bucharest (?). He then proposes to show the Jewish street and the Great Synagogue.

Burg reads aloud his own Yiddish story about the binding of Isaac, which draws on his childhood. It describes his birth on a Friday evening in May, his mother's songs, his father's tales and the cheder teacher who vividly retold the Torah. It ends with the Holocaust, in which many Isaacs were killed in gas chambers. Kerler thanks him afterwards.

Burg returns to childhood Vyzhnytsya and the Hager rebbes, naming Rebbe Israel as the fourth in the line, whose annual visits were festive occasions with torchlight processions. He tells of the local priest and the rebbe, whose mutual respect is shown by the priest throwing a cross aside to greet him. He gives the town's population and says Yiddish was the language of the town, even of Christian neighbours. He recalls his mother taking him to the rebbe for a blessing at about ten or eleven, when the rebbe said he was already blessed.

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

Burg answers Kerler's questions about holiday foods: potato cheese-pancakes (kayzlekh) for Passover and latkes for Hanukkah, with the word barbolyes (?) for potatoes and tatshn baked potato dishes. He discusses Shavuot greenery, Tisha B'Av customs, reading the Song of Songs on Passover and the haggadah at home. He recites part of the Four Questions in Hebrew and Yiddish. Kerler also asks how long he attended cheder.

Shternberg describes Khotyn as a commercial town with many Jews. She tells how the town was bombed in the war and how the Jews in prayer shawls begged the Germans not to burn it. Her father was killed. She also recalls the Romanian school, where her Yiddish teacher Yanever came twice a week while the Christian children had religion lessons with a priest. She recites the Passover and Hanukkah songs that he composed, and sings other songs, including a Shavuot song of the cheder. Kerler asks whether non-Jews became Jews in Khotyn; she says this was not known.

Ziselis briefly recounts the German entry and shootings in the streets, then answers Kerler's questions about his cheder and teacher. He tells of his father travelling with others to the Chortkov rebbe for blessings, and of his mother's reaction to the blessing. He names his siblings, including a sister Esther Beyle.

Ziselis talks about his family, in particular his sister's schooling at the gymnasium and a conflict over Sabbath work, and his father's attempts to find a match or money. Kerler asks which two rebbes had blessed the family. Ziselis says he worked with his father as a shoykhet before the war, and that his brother studied in a yeshiva and then in Belgium.

Lemster asks about prewar holidays such as Passover and Purim in Yanoshpol. Shames says all Jewish holidays were observed and the synagogue was in use, but she gives few details, and says she cannot sing. Kerler asks whether the town's name has changed and whether there was a cheder, and she is unsure.

Kerler asks about childhood friends and school. Shames says she attended a Ukrainian school and there was no Yiddish school. After finishing she stayed at home helping her mother. She recalls a teacher who taught her Hebrew as a child, and Kerler asks about Purim food.

Kerler asks whether her mother made gefilte fish and whether she could read Yiddish books. She repeats that as a child she learned Hebrew from a teacher but forgot it. Questions about whether her mother taught her candle blessing and about the arrival of Soviet rule (1919 (?)) follow. She cannot recall details of her studies in a technical school elsewhere.

Shames says her father remained a miller until he was killed. Her parents went to the synagogue on holidays and took her; as a child she could read Hebrew but now knows nothing. Kerler asks whether non-Jews in Yanoshpol spoke Yiddish, and she says no. She remarks on the synagogue's fate under Soviet rule.

Gammer talks about a rebbe in town before the war to whom boys went. Lemster and Kerler ask about visiting a good Jew (tsadik), whisperers or incantations (oyfshprekhn) and a dybbuk. She says she knows what such healing means but did not witness it.

Answers questions about her mother's education. Her mother was literate, but in Yiddish rather than Russian, and could read the prayer book; the transcript does not make clear whether she attended a private school or other school. There was no cheder at that time.

Shames says she could read Hebrew, taught by a teacher (a melamed), and that she is now alone. She says her father worked in a mill and her mother kept Sabbath and holidays as was customary, and went to synagogue. Her mother survived the war, though how is unclear. Kerler asks about Sabbath dishes and gefilte fish, and she remembers little.

Asked about nearby towns, Shames recalls little. She has not met Yiddish-speaking Christians. She says a teacher taught her Yiddish as a child and she went with her mother to synagogue, but she now remembers nothing of Yiddish and has no one to speak with. She mentions four neighbours.

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

Lys recalls studying about two months with yeshiva students from Poland in Samarkand, after which he could not read or write Yiddish. He tells how, at eight or nine, he held a neighbor's boy at his circumcision. He then speaks of Lubavitch Hasidim and a phone call from Zhytomyr about the rebbe's anniversary. He describes the minyan he organizes in the office, saying kaddish from Russian transcription, and a visiting rabbi from New York who gave him tefillin to pass on to his grandson.

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.

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

Kerler asks about non-Jews who converted to Judaism. Gelman recalls two brothers, shoemakers from the Pozamke (?) area, one of whom became a Jew and kept Jewish observance more strictly than born Jews. He then mentions villages in Russia of converts. Kerler asks about prewar Jewish sports clubs, the Kamianets yeshiva, Zionists and Hasidim, and Gelman remembers little beyond what his mother told him about Zionist meetings. He speaks about keeping yortsayt for his parents at home or in synagogue after the war, his one year in cheder, and his inability to read Yiddish letters. From about 12 minutes Kerler turns to dialectological questions. These cover the meaning of idioms, the Litvak (Lithuanian) Yiddish versus local speech, regional names for Jews, greetings and farewells, and many individual words (body, household, food, colors, adverbs, kinship, time words). The questionnaire also has sentences to translate. At the end a second person speaks Russian about a certificate, a prize and a son who is a sugar-factory director.

Gaiviker recalls the rabbi and rebbetzin, the teaching of children and the many synagogues, and also Jewish thieves and pickpockets. He says the town was a cheerful place and answers whether he lost money at cards. Kerler asks about the word dybbuk.

Kaviner says his yeshiva study partners all perished in the war and he does not know how he survived himself. After the war he had a daughter and now has a grandson who works in Hesed; the grandson was not circumcised because there was no one to do it.

Kaviner says that no writer can be compared to Bialik and mentions Bialik's translation of the Bible into Yiddish with Ravnitsky and his commentary on the Torah. Kerler asks about Bialik's poems; Kaviner finds them hard to read. They discuss Bialik's Yiddish poems, his Hebrew writing and his study at the yeshiva in Volozhin.

Kaviner says Mark Varshavski, a trained jurist, wrote "Afn pripetshik" and that Sholem Aleichem took it from him and published it. They discuss contemporary singer-songwriters such as Aleksandr Rozenbaum and Vladimir Vysotskii, whom Kaviner learned was partly Jewish and did not deny it, though not observant. Kerler then asks how long Kaviner attended the yeshiva (to age nineteen).

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.

Zinger remembers a rebbe who visited the town, possibly from Mukacheve; he is not sure. He recalls Zionist organizing of children for aliyah, where they learned dance, song and Hebrew. He did two years of Hachshara in Czechoslovakia in a tailoring factory, learning Hebrew there and serving in the Czech army. He names songs such as hora and Hatikvah. Kerler then asks about cheder.

Smelanskii greets the interviewers, then talks about Yiddish schools in Smila from the 1920s to the mid-1930s, including a Yiddish technical school. He recalls a director and devoted teachers, classes up to the seventh grade, and moving afterwards to a Ukrainian school. He also mentions his maternal grandfather, who taught the grandchildren religion, prayer and Hebrew, and the grandfather's seven children, some of whom emigrated to America.

Shapiro shows family photographs, including relatives in Tel Aviv in the 1940s (?), and says one of them, a woman, studied piano and was a fine pianist. Kerler then asks about his kheyder and its teachers. Shapiro begins to explain why he ran away from it.

Faina Braverman shows her tsene-rene, which belonged to an aunt (name uncertain) with inscriptions in Russian. She tells how she first learned Torah as a small child, starting with Leviticus, and Kerler examines a Bible translation she also owns. Semyon's father's calendar leaf and copies of the newspaper Eynikeyt are brought out. Katz and Kerler work out a date from Hebrew letters.

Katz asks in English how far Jewish religious life really survived in the early Soviet period, and Melamed answers in English and then Russian. He discusses the breakdown of the Jewish community after the revolution, early Soviet support for Yiddish culture, the 1926 rabbis' conference in Korosten and persecution of Hebrew, Zionists and underground cheders and yeshivas. He then explains that sources are mostly external, from NKVD and party files, and that he is gathering material for a book on old Zhytomyr. He mentions about 50 synagogues and prayer houses there around 1900, the rabbinical school and Haskalah figures.

Answering Kerler's questions, Torchinsky discusses the anti-religious school play about a spoiled Passover, staged for pupils at the Skvyra Yiddish school in the mid-1930s (year not clear). His family disliked it, and his grandfather wanted to take him out of school; he was a pioneer and did not ask the questions at the family seder. He describes Seder food his mother prepared (borscht, chicken soup, matzo-meal dishes) and answers questions on terms for gefilte fish and its pepper flavouring. Kerler tells an anecdote about his own father, and Torchinsky begins to announce a poem about Ukraine.

Khandros gives his birth date and those of his parents, who were both born in Ozarinets; his father was a melamed until 1922 and then became a teacher and head of a Yiddish school, where Khandros studied for four years. His mother Mintsi was his father's pupil and later a teacher too. He names his brothers (one the younger Berl, born 1926, and Hershele, now a mathematics teacher in a Ukrainian town) and a sister Sarah who died in 1988 (?), all of whom went through the ghetto.

Khandros recalls a Yiddish library at home: his grandfather's old cabinet held Talmud and other books. His father studied with his own father, knew Hebrew well, and was more devout than the grandfather, who had been a cantonist and came from Chernobyl. Kerler asks about the generations in Ozarinets.

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

Derbaremdiker recalls childhood in Berdychiv. He describes Kachanivska Street, the Carmelite monastery fortress with a museum that had rooms for Shevchenko, Sholem Aleichem and Balzac, and the church where Balzac married. At about four he was carried in his father's tallis to cheder, where he studied only a few years, as the cheders were closed in 1927. That year he entered a Yiddish school. He says he now speaks Russian most of the time and has hardly anyone to speak Yiddish with.

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.

Derbaremdiker explains the history of the synagogue. It was founded over a hundred years ago by a wealthy Jew, who built it beneath another building because synagogues could not be built openly, and it was renovated a few years ago. He mentions the yeshiva students who study there, how he travels there, and that he does not travel on the Sabbath. He then moves to the Sunday school, which starts in October.

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

Vider describes his Jewish schooling in Hîrlau, a Romanian-Jewish school where Yiddish and Hebrew were taught and the old pronunciation of Hebrew used. He studied until about age twelve, then moved to Iași. He recalls singing Hatikvah there and sings part of it for Kerler.

Start of a second interview, with Grayf, born in Kolomyya in 1922. Grayf gives his parents' names (Gershon and Etl), names the seven surviving siblings, and says that his sister and parents were deported from the ghetto and perished, while a brother died in Israel. He says that he and his brother David live in Kolomyya and have a niece in Frankivsk. He then describes how the region passed between Poland, the Ukraine and Romania and where the Bukovina border lay, and begins to answer Kerler's questions about his father's work, his mother and his schooling.

Vider names his siblings (two sisters and four brothers) and what became of them: his father and a younger brother were killed, a sister was taken to Palestine by the Red Cross, and an older brother fled Romania before the war and ended up in Palestine as a tractor driver. Kerler asks what Jewish history he learned in school, and Vider says mostly ancient history such as Samson. Vider says he remembers cantorial melodies because he sang them to himself on long cycling trips to fish, and begins to sing.

Vider recites the Four Questions and sings the Passover song about the man-made gods, and Kerler and Katz ask about a Haggadah. He tells how his father taught him a Purim play about a match between two in-laws, one rich and one poor, in Hîrlau, and he sings a Hebrew Purim song learned in the Jewish school. He recalls school festivals, a Hebrew play in which he performed, the Hebrew teachers Papelinger and Reicher, and some Shavuot verses.

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

Krotsh recalls his cheder years and school studies in Stefanesti. He was the best pupil in the four-class school and remembers what he learned. He talks of his teachers and of studying Mishnah and Gemara. Kerler and Katz ask about the Yiddish word for 'grass' and an expression about writing, and a second man tells an anecdote about writing.

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

Asked about Hanukkah, Krotsh talks about dreidels made of lead, a holiday he calls beautiful, and how Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur emptied the town streets. He sings or recites fragments of Kol nidre and High Holiday liturgy at Kerler's request. He says he learned Hebrew and could speak with visitors from Israel and America. The passage includes informal exchange with the team and a break, and ends with a High Holiday melody he begins to recall.

Bileichuk speaks about his mother's Christian confession and his own earlier interest in Sabbatarian (Subbotniki) and other Protestant groups. He says he read their literature and concluded that they take from the Torah and misuse it, including tithing, and he describes arguments with them. He mentions studying with Sasha Babichenko and Kolesnikov at the synagogue, reading the weekly Torah portion, and feeling that he as a non-Jew has no right yet to teach others. He answers Kerler's questions about the Subbotniki, the New Testament and the groups he met.

Katz introduces the team and the date. Grayf gives his name and says he was born in Kolomyya, and names the street where he lived, near the town hall. He says he remembers little of childhood. He recalls a mostly Jewish town, with a Hebrew school twice a week separate from the state school. His father Gershon worked in the timber trade. He describes the many synagogues and a time when a minyan was easy to find, compared with today when ten men are hard to gather. He estimates the prewar population and the Jewish share of it.

Asked by Kerler about songs he sang earlier, Vider talks about the song about Jacob lying on the stone, which he heard from a young cantor and yeshiva student at an evening concert in Iași. He says he cannot sing it well now. He recalls his father's Torah reading and cantillation and how he himself prayed and read Torah. He mentions Romanian songs learned at school and a circle of young people dancing in Gordonia.

Biter speaks briefly about Franz Joseph and the Jewish attitude toward him, and about the one remaining Jew in Snyatyn today. Asked about his parents' home, he describes Sabbath and Passover customs and foods, then Purim masks, the Hanukkah dreidel, Sukkot, latkes and doughnuts, learning tefillin in cheder, and his later gymnasium years away from prayer. Kerler and Katz then explain to the household that they are collecting Yiddish folklore and dialect material for American and Lithuanian universities.

Krotsh names Yiddish writers whose books he read, among them Sholem Aleichem and Mendele Moykher Sforim. Lemster asks about the origin of Yakov Fikhman and Kerler about Leyb Goldin. Krotsh then recites a Hebrew school song of a holiday several times, and Kerler asks to have every word repeated so he can write it down.

Krotsh says that he learned the song in the Jewish school in Romanian, half a day in Hebrew and half in Romanian, and gives the school's name in Romanian. He recites the song again, and Kerler repeats it line by line. Lemster then asks whether Jews made their own wine.

Katsman names his parents, his father a worker, his mother a pious housewife, and his two brothers Dovid and Leybl. Leybl was a pilot killed in the war; Dovid died after it. Kerler and Katz ask what the town was called in Yiddish. He then describes his grandfather, a melamed who taught four future rabbis, and his grandfather Elye in Chopovychi, who died over a Sabbath reading, aged about eighty.

Kerler asks about Katsman's earliest memories. He tells how his grandfather took him to synagogue in a tallis at thirteen, put on tefillin and taught him Hebrew. Asked to recite his bar mitzvah portion and prayers, he says a little, mentions Kaddish, and that he prays daily with tallis and tefillin.

Kerler asks whether Katsman went to cheder. He says he attended a Russian school, and his grandfather taught him in Yiddish, including two tractates of Gemara, not cheder or yeshiva.

Skop recalls early childhood: his parents were very observant and not rich. He talks about paying for kosher meat, Sabbath and the holidays, and strangers coming. He loved going to synagogue with his father and was carried there as a small child. He did not attend cheder but a Jewish school.

Ocheretianyi answers questions about a kolkhoz office, drinking and the Yiddish word for vodka, then about the prewar synagogues, of which there were two, and a women's one. He describes childhood games with nuts and hide-and-seek, and his honest father, who collected money for the poor. He recalls how a house was bought for a prayer house after the war and how his father, a soldier, lost part of an ear and was imprisoned. A teacher named Yankl Meir taught Jewish boys, and Ocheretianyi says he cannot recall prayers. The passage closes with a Yiddish word elicitation and Kerler's remarks about an old house.

Gershtein describes his childhood in Holoby. He completed seven grades of the school and for two or three years attended cheder in the synagogue under the old teacher Berl Shuster. The teacher beat pupils, girls included, with a whip for not studying. Shuster's son Bentsiye later taught Yiddish, and Gershtein mentions Poland's rule at the time.

Kerler asks about clubs, social life and a Friday evening event, and Gershtein recalls going with his father to the synagogue for a Sabbath evening meal and prayers. He says he can read Hebrew prayers from the siddur, and Kerler asks him to read the Modeh ani and the Kiddush blessing.

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

Kerler returns to Pensatii's childhood and religious education. He says he was taught to pray, to say kaddish, and to say the memorial prayer, by Jews at the Great Synagogue on Pushkin Street, and that he has forgotten much since. He describes the cantors brought in for the High Holidays and Passover, the large fees, and their concerts. Seating by the eastern wall is also discussed.

Leibel answers Kerler's terminology questions on the difference between rav, rebbe and rabbi, tsadik, 'a good Jew', Hasid, plurals of such words, and the words for a cemetery. He then discusses the term Litvak, Galitsianer, misnagid and dybbuk. He also recalls Hasidic visitors to the Polish school and a synagogue discussion with the rabbi about Sarah's childlessness in Genesis.

The formal interview with Khonigsman begins. Kerler states the date and place of the recording, and Khonigsman gives his biography: born in Lublin on 29 December 1922 into a Jewish family. His father Shmuel was a carpenter and his mother Mindl, née Grinberg, was the daughter of the Ostrov rabbi. A half-brother, a communist, fell in Spain, and he also had a younger brother and a sister. He tells of relatives in Brooklyn, Chicago and Detroit, one of whom sent money for the holidays and wrote to him after the war, and says that most of his family was killed.

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

Brandler says he can still read Hebrew and recites the names of the letters of the alphabet as he learned them. They talk about Polish Jewish pronunciation, and Kerler asks him to read prayers from a book. Brandler reads out words and short prayer passages with some difficulty, and Kerler asks how he says a few of them.

Brandler recalls prewar holidays in Mostiska: a childhood Purim in costume, being given liquor at a brit, tashlikh on Rosh Hashanah, and the beadle whipping men symbolically before Yom Kippur. He describes the town's synagogue, two small prayer houses and study houses, a mikveh, Simchat Torah and Hanukkah candles, building the sukkah and antisemitic harassment of it. He also gives the word for the ruffians who threw things, and says he fasted on Yom Kippur and Tisha b'Av.

Leibel explains what an honest, good Jew means in his Yiddish, while Kerler adds comments on the Temple and the messiah. He recalls his grandmother Rivke and says his grandfather Avrom died earlier. He then describes Yiddish theater and films in Rivne, including a performance of The Dybbuk, two cinemas, and a film Jews boycotted, and then answers about cheder until age seven.

Answers Kerler's questions about prewar religious life: whether there were Hasidim, and yeshivas (young men studied in Rivne rather than locally). She is asked what rov, rebbe, rabiner and a 'good Jew' mean, and the term 'gut ort' for a cemetery. Her answers are brief and in places uncertain.

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

Kerler asks about her Hebrew teacher and joining Betar at ten or twelve; she recalls a shopkeeper teacher named Fishl (?). She mentions that girls learned sewing, and that young people put on their own theatre. Kerler then asks for Yiddish terms for ice cream and for breathing, and she answers.

Shoikhetman recalls the outbreak of war: a railway running by the house and a plane dropping three bombs. He speaks of the Jews of Derazhnya, with one synagogue and several small prayer rooms before the war, and says there was a cheder but no yeshiva. Kerler and Lemster press him on a yeshiva and on a man from Proskurov who studied in Derazhnya. He also quotes census-type population figures for Ukrainians, Russians and Jews, and says almost no Jews survived the occupation.

Khaiut demonstrates making gefilte fish with the knife and newspaper, then answers Kerler on prewar Jewish life: the family's rented house, candle-blessing, a separate synagogue for each trade, guest cantors, Sidi Tal' and other visiting artists such as Kobzon, and Sholem Aleichem's 200,000. Kerler asks whether the Soviet Yiddish school was hostile to religion; she denies it and says the synagogues were closed in the 1930s. She recalls food and games for Shavuot, Hanukkah, Purim, Passover and Yom Kippur. Kerler then asks about fasting, language on the street, her son, Yiddish books, folk sayings and her son's circumcision. Later come the rabbi and melamed, burial places, then her wedding with the musician Moyshele the drummer, the badkhn (Berl Sanver, name unclear) and the chuppah, ending with a long run of vocabulary questions and recipes for tsimes and flodn.

Kaplan describes his father as a soap-maker and cantor, and talks about Sabbath food and customs, a Russian neighbour lighting the stove, Hanukkah, Purim, and Hebrew lessons. He tells of the camp at Pechera, the escape of a group of Jews with a Ukrainian guard's help, the walk home along the river, and the family's hiding in the cellar of Polish neighbours (Zbigin?) until 1944. He covers the Jewish police, the drowned orphans off Constanta, commemoration work led by the late rabbi Sobol, and a ghetto song. He also tells of secret Passover matzo baking after the war, the three cemetery fields, non-Jews who speak Yiddish, the word Litvak, and the term for a 'good Jew' (rebbe or tsadik).

Nayman answers questions about his early life: cheder moved around, with a different rebbe each year, and he had brothers and sisters. His family made wine, some of it sold, and they had a vineyard. He recalls an uncle in Brooklyn and sleeping with his siblings. He recalls Passover songs and then recites prayers from the holidays, part of it garbled.

Nayman describes prewar village life: a stone synagogue, work on the land with cows and horses, two or three shoemakers and some tailors, doctors available only in Mukachevo, and a book and religious-goods peddler from Mukachevo. He also covers Zionist and other political groups, non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, and how Jews from different countries spoke. Kerler asks about terms for Hanukkah and Sabbath foods, Hebrew letters, wells, the oven, cemeteries, and the shoykhet, and Nayman recalls foods for Passover, Shavuot and before Yom Kippur.

Camera footage in Mukacheve showing the building where Vider's cheder was and the house where he was born, on the former Jewish street. Vider and Kerler talk about the age of the building and its inscription.

Pasik says Yiddish theater came from Mykolayiv, with interpreters translating for the Russian-speaking audience. She tells a story from her mother about children refused entry at the river by the beadle, and discusses the cheder and rabbi. She mentions weddings before and after the war and Kerler asks about her mother's death and birth year.

Endelshtein describes how non-Jewish classmates sat in synagogue with Jewish pupils, and that few Bulgarians spoke Yiddish. He lists Jewish trades such as knife makers, tailors and shoemakers, and says Jews spoke only Yiddish at home. He explains the Talmud Torah and Romanian gymnasium education, and recalls fragments of Romanian and Yiddish songs.

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

Tzentziper sings a song about the lost years of youth. Kerler asks whether he was taught to pray, whether he had a bar mitzvah or wore tefillin, and what his father did; Tzentziper says he did not pray in synagogue and that his father wore tefillin. Kerler asks him to sing the song again for Lemster, who missed it. Asked who wrote the song, Tzentziper credits a woman teacher (a schoolteacher in Mykolayiv, origin unclear) and then sings a humorous song about a rebbe who chases a girl and is sent home by his wife. He says he learned it in Mykolayiv, around 1938 (?).

The tour continues. Listengurt names the streets in the former Jewish quarter and mentions a park and a poet, speaking about language and the shift of the word 'Jew' (zhid, Hebrew). She points to a former prerevolutionary building and the rabbi's flat (the rabbi had five or six children). She remembers going to the synagogue at Yom Tov and Yom Kippur, with two synagogues and many orphans there, taught trades. She also talks about the first rabbi who came to Odesa and who blamed the Jews themselves. The recording is interrupted by suggestions to sit somewhere quieter. A remark about the Jewish tree (?) and a request addressed to Lemster in Russian are also heard.

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

Asked about Purim, Vainbrand recalls that his mother made hamantashn, and that there was play-acting and singing. Children were dressed up by their mother, as on the Sabbath. He then describes prewar religious life in Valedniki, with two or three minyans in the kloyz and in the beys-medresh. He says the beys-medresh was large and perhaps wooden, and that he studied there in Hebrew, but he does not remember what. Kerler then brings a prayer book with the Valedniki rite.

Vainbrand says he cannot recall the Hershl Ostropoler stories and that his memory is failing. He mentions a prayer book and his poor eyesight, and reads or recites from the prayer book when Kerler asks. Kerler then asks whether the cheder teacher examined the pupils and about the term for the fee paid to the teacher, which Vainbrand's father paid.

Kipervaser describes prewar Berezdiv: everyone had a trade (shoemakers, tailors), people got along and knew each other, and the synagogue was near their home. She remembers a chuppah. Her parents kept a kosher home, and her grandmother lit Sabbath candles. Her husband, also from Berezdiv, went to cheder; they studied together at school. He was called up in 1940, served at the front and ended up in Germany, and learned German. They keep Yiddish books, observe holidays and light memorial candles. Their son speaks Yiddish and knows the holidays.

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

After the interview with Dorfman, the team greets Feldman and sets up the recording in his home. He gives his name and birth year, and says he was born in the village of Yanova Rudnya, about 20 km from Ovruch. He talks about his father, who leased a mill and farm from a landowner and was killed in 1919, and about his mother, sisters and five brothers who went to America. He tells of his melamedim and the Velednik tsadik, whom his father followed. He recalls his father's Sabbath tunes, studying and teaching at cheder in Luhyny, and recites prayers (kabbalat shabbat, kaddish, kiddush); the transcript is garbled for most of this. He also remembers Christian farmers in his village and begins to speak about Rosh Hashanah.

Feldman recalls childhood summers bathing in the river and winters skating and sledding down the hill. He says he had little pleasure because his father was killed in 1919 and he went on studying. Katz asks the distance to Lyel'chytsy, and he describes the journey by a big river. At the end the interviewers arrange to meet the next day.

Feldman names his home village, Yanova Rudnya, which had only six houses, and discusses how its name was said in Yiddish and the origin of "rudnya" (ore). After his father's death he lived in a town and worked in a shop. He describes the water mill his father leased, the fish in the river, and being taught at home by a hired teacher together with four sisters. He begins to mention the holiday songs he sang with the minyan.

Feldman says he remembers the Four Questions and the Haggadah only in part, and not Chad Gadya's melody. At Katz's request he sings a Yiddish Passover song about a grandfather who traveled to Yalta and learned what must not be told outside cheder. He then reflects that Jewish life was beautiful before the war.

Feldman says he was about ten at the start of the First World War and was still in cheder. He barely remembers the German occupation, except that they spoke German and some Yiddish. He remembers the 1917 revolution, attacks on Jews, robberies and killings, and says the Red Army defended Jews. Kerler then asks about his father's death.

Feldman starts the Friday-night Kabbalat Shabbat prayers and says he remembers only a little. He is asked about grace after meals and Sabbath songs (zmires). He says that for about fifteen years there has been no minyan and he has forgotten it. Katz asks which Talmud tractate he studied.

Feldman names the teachers (melamdim) he studied with in Veledniki, Slovechno and Luhyny, including the sons of rabbis who had studied at the Vilna yeshiva. He names Yosl the rabbi's son and a relative. He also mentions a strange man living near the village. Kerler asks whether being a melamed was honourable, and Katz asks about women healers, who whispered cures and were called babkes (?).

Kerler asks Feldman for kinship terms in Hebrew, such as father, grandfather, grandmother, uncle and aunt. Feldman also says there are many yeshivas in America and Israel. Kerler asks for a story about the Volednicker rebbe.

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

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

Shteingart says his father taught Yiddish and Hebrew in a private Yiddish school and taught him to read Yiddish at home. He describes Kovel' with its market, mixed streets of Jews and non-Jews, friendly relations and Ukrainian and Polish neighbours who spoke Yiddish, and mentions the large church destroyed by the Germans and an Orthodox church.

Kerler asks Khiterman about Jewish life in her town and what a 'good Jew' (a holy man or rebbe) meant. She answers that such men helped many poor people and that food was sent for Sabbath. A Russian exchange with a relative, probably her son, follows about whether she and others still speak Yiddish and about the language of the film. She says she once spoke Hebrew and had a teacher, but cannot remember his name.

Fish talks about his friends before the war, including a boyhood friend who was poor and did not continue his schooling, unlike Fish at the gymnasium. Lemster asks about a family of a melamed, which Fish only vaguely recalls. He briefly mentions non-religious Jews who attended the synagogue.

Kleiner explains that an aunt, who had no children, took her in at age two, and that this happened to other children in town. Her uncle was a tailor. She describes Shepetivka as a Jewish town with many trades, the closing of the cheder in the early 1930s and of the Jewish school later, the six synagogues, and Rabbi Shapiro, who was sent to Novosibirsk after the war; his son Shlomo lives in Baltimore. She also discusses a charitable society for the poor on October Street, the surviving synagogue, a Russian shoemaker's sons who attended the Jewish school, and children's games (forfeits, tag, hide-and-seek, sledding), with Kerler asking about terms.

Kleiner recalls two years in cheder and the Ukrainian school. He says he was pressed to join the Pioneers and refused. He describes the synagogue, beis medresh and kloyz of Yampil' and the cheder teacher, known by a nickname from his house. He mentions the synagogue building's later use and his own part in the prayers. Kerler also asks about dialect.

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

Vainshelboim speaks about his schooling: eight classes in a Polish school and about two and a half years at the Ostroh yeshiva. He mentions five teachers and Polish and mathematics, and that he studied Gemara tractates such as Bava Kama and Bava Metzia. He no longer prays regularly. His father's name is Mendl, and he was born in Ostroh.

Klein says her father led the seder, and that after the war Passover was kept less fully. Kerler asks who asked the four questions (the boys), then whether the school taught religion. She says math, algebra and physics were taught in Yiddish until the shift to Russian, and names several teachers and professors.

Burshtein answers further questionnaire items: words for a stone-built house, what children threw at Hanukkah, expressions for a mistake and for luck, and terms such as tsadik and the face. He explains the difference between a rov and a rebbe. Kerler tells a joke about a pious child and the rabbi, and asks him to tell about Jewish weddings.

Golfeld talks about his limited Hebrew schooling and childhood in Tul'chyn, which was happy before the war. He mentions the bandits and killings of Jews, and says Tul'chyn was somewhat better than elsewhere. Asked about the ghetto and Pechora camp, he says that rich people could buy their way out and that non-Jews saved many, expressing gratitude.

Kerler asks about the prewar Yiddish school. Kolodenker names the director and recalls teachers and lessons in Russian and Yiddish. A second woman says she learned little Yiddish writing, and they mention a singing teacher with a nickname and a teacher later in the camp. Kerler asks what Yiddish books were read; the answers are vague.

Efim says he did not attend cheder but a Yiddish school that was soon closed after four years. He learned reading and writing there and recalls the Yiddish textbooks. Kerler asks whether he remembers a poem or song.

Katz recalls his grandparents and his childhood home: there was no washing machine and the work was hard. His mother could read on Sabbath from the tsene rene, while girls did not go to cheder and only boys did. The passage ends with a first attempt to find the tsene rene, which is heard partly garbled.

Katz talks about religious life today: before there was a Sabbath and holiday minyan, now it is hard to gather a minyan, so his son arranged for men from neighboring towns to come for a yahrzeit. The tsene rene chapter is again discussed and the camera records the reading. He also describes his prayer books and a woman's Russian-language one, and what he learned in cheder.

The team meets Naybauer, who says he is the only survivor of six children. They look for a quiet place to sit and drive toward the centre, passing three former synagogues that are now a concert hall, a phone company building and a university building. Naybauer says he was born in a village near Uzhhorod where his father worked at a military horse stud, and that his father's family came from Mala Dobron (Kish Dobron), where they lived until they were taken to Auschwitz. He also mentions needing a visa to travel and recalls cheder and matzo baking in the area.

Naybauer first tells of a rich neighbor's family and a priest who was sentenced after the war. Asked by Kerler about Purim before the war, he describes Purim customs: drinking, a Purim play put on like a theater, and children going from house to house reciting the play in the morning and bringing shalakhmones in the afternoon. The play was staged in a widow's house and the children were taught by their cheder teachers. He tells a joke about a matchmaker and a rich man. He recalls the roles of Haman and Esther. He also answers questions about Purim in Uzhhorod.

Zinger describes prewar Jewish life in Velykyi Bereznyi, which he calls a large village. It had a synagogue, a study house and a few other prayer houses. His father carved gravestones in summer and Zinger painted the inscriptions and gilded the letters. His father was an honest Jew rather than a great Hasid, and taught him to lay tefillin at his bar mitzvah. He then discusses the present-day Uzhhorod synagogue, a buyer's offer for it, the rabbi Teichman, and a new mikveh and yeshiva.

Asked by Kerler about earliest memories, Furer recalls being sent to cheder at six or seven. When classmates mocked him at the Yiddish school, he ran from the melamed. He also describes the Yiddish school and the town's synagogues, one of which later became a theater.

Kerler asks about religious practice in her family. Barshteyn was not taught a morning prayer, and she recalls some blessing fragments. There were no cheders in her time, though her father told of attending one; he prayed in the synagogue with tallit and tefillin and went to a synagogue of the Levites.

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.

Yatskova confirms Murafa, in the Sharhorod district, as her birthplace, and gives her maiden name as Kremer. She says her father directed the Yiddish school in Kopayhorod, that he was a very educated man who knew Hebrew fluently, and that he had completed a yeshiva in Moldavia (?). Lemster asks when the family came to Kopayhorod.

Yatskova says her father, mother and brother were with her in the ghetto. After the war her father was director of a Ukrainian school, since there was no Yiddish school, and her mother worked as a librarian. Yiddish was spoken at home. Her parents studied at the Russian gymnasium in Zhmerynka. Her father also had a Hebrew and yeshiva education, and few in the Vinnytsia region knew Hebrew. Lemster asks about food at home.

A guide speaks Russian about the building where the shoykhet worked, the bloodletting arrangements and the slaughter procedure. He says the quarter was Jewish before the war, with a yeshiva, rabbinate, shops, lawyers and doctors. Kerler and the guide discuss how ordinary Jews read Yiddish from cheder without always understanding it, and the speaker thanks the team.

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.

Kerler asks Shpitz to describe the house where he grew up with his parents and eight children. He mentions that his older brothers went to kheyder and that he studied only two or three years and writes letters to America. He is asked how he says some phrases such as 'good people' and something written in the Torah. The passage closes as someone invites the team to eat.

The team arranges a time to meet and speaks about copying, then Kerler opens the interview with Burshtein and asks his name and date of birth. Burshtein gives his Yiddish name Lozer or Leyzer and his father's name, Yoyel, and the Russian and Polish forms. He says he was born in 1929 in Govrove and lived there until the war began in 1939. He describes his childhood: kheyder, Polish school and a father who was a tailor.

Burshtein sings a Yiddish song about a poor refugee who has lost his luck and become a street singer. He says he knows many songs from Poland, including love songs. He then describes the prewar synagogues: the shoemakers and tailors each had their own prayer house, and there was one big synagogue where the kheyder boys would go.

He talks about prayer in Zhytomyr today: how the gabbai and cantor lead the service, and the prayer book he received. An American rabbi, Samuel Plotkin(?), brought him his first tallit and prayer book in the 1990s and opened synagogues in Berdychiv and Zhytomyr. He prefers his old prayer book. Kerler asks about the phrase 'mother's prayer book' and whether women taught prayer instead of cheder.

At the start, Katz states the date and place, and Kerler gives a brief report on the expedition's progress. He mentions the many elderly Jews who have told of childhood, biography and way of life, and the new findings on dialect. Katz then questions two small boys about their cheder: their ages and names, the teacher, the weekly Torah portion and the story of Adam and Eve in Eden.

Katz and Kerler interview Goluvinskaia, who is said to have turned a hundred, with a helper explaining a Hesed video. She was born in Zhytomyr. Her father worked at a factory and died when she was a child, leaving five children, and she names her mother and some siblings. She worked in a cinema before the war and was evacuated in 1941, the place being unclear. She recalls praying, going to cheder alone, Sabbath candles and holidays, which she mostly no longer remembers. She says her grandfather was a rebbe who held gatherings at his table, and she mentions a Russian school. She then answers Russian-prompted questionnaire items (breathe, ear, attic, sky colour, mouse, deaf, pigeon), with some of her answers uncertain.

Camera and walking footage of Berdychiv streets. The guide points out the synagogue, a children's polyclinic, and an old journalists' building, and the group finds a gate closed and rings to be let in. They then reach a newly built yeshiva complex, where a mikveh is being built. Its funding is attributed to a rich man living in America, named something like Mendelevich (unclear). Much of the speech is garbled.

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

Geller discusses Yiddish today. He says a Kyiv paper has little Yiddish, and that new Jewish schools teach Hebrew rather than Yiddish or Ukrainian. He notes that the Lubavitcher rebbe on television speaks Yiddish and equates Yiddishkayt with Torah study.

Geller gives his Yiddish name as Binyomin, nicknamed Mime, and says he is nearing eighty. His father Yankl was a glazier until 1932, and his mother and her family's names are discussed, including a grandmother Etshi and another named Mintsi. His parents had no child for ten years until the rebbe promised one, and his mother lived to 93. A relative of his grandmother had 23 children. His mother was taught by a tutor, studied two gymnasium classes, and loved Pushkin and Tolstoy.

Koyfman talks about Yiddish and Jewish life in Chernyakhiv. Few children there spoke Yiddish, there were no Yiddish or Hebrew books, and her parents did not teach her. She remembers a park where old Jews spoke Yiddish, and says only about twenty elderly Jews live there now.

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.

Burshtein says he went to kheyder and recalls prewar Poland: Piłsudski's time, and the antisemitism that grew after his death. He tells how Jews hid Piłsudski in the synagogue wrapped in a tallit. He says his melamed ended badly and describes meeting the rebbetsin, who began to weep when he asked about the rebbe.

Sandler says he does not remember how many Jews lived in Starokostyantyniv. He discusses speaking Yiddish in the streets and the term for people who say "tate, mame". He recalls going to cheder, where the rebbe hit the boys, and then attending a Yiddish school for four grades until it was closed and replaced by a Russian one, probably in 1934 (?). His parents were displeased because they wanted him to speak Yiddish. He says non-Jews in town spoke only a little Yiddish and mimicked it.

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

Nibulskiy speaks about his observant father, his own cheder attendance, his wife's Jewish schooling and his self-taught Yiddish reading. He tells how the Makarover rebbe visited his great-grandmother in a nearby town, where she recovered after a fire. He describes his great-grandfather Shimunke, a farmer and crop adviser. He also tells of a Jewish lessee in Burakivka troubled by a German over hops, who went to the Makarover rebbe for help. Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for a village.

The passage begins with a man who attended cheder only twice a year, and Kerler asks how a certain word (heard as 'tshistyukhe' (?)) was used. It then shifts to the speaker's recollections of crises: his father's death, the first air-raid sirens in Zhytomyr in 1941, and the currency change. He says people come out of such problems stronger, and the passage ends in garbled talk.

Kerler asks whether the rabbi's children speak Yiddish; the two older ones study in a yeshiva in Moscow. The speakers joke about sharing money for the interview, and Kerler arranges to talk more. They end with a short question about the words for 'sick' and 'sleep' in Yiddish and German.

Nibulskiy recalls going to his grandmother for Hanukkah money, carried through the mud on a youth's shoulders. He speaks of the three small synagogues, attended daily only by the rabbi and the old believers, and of carrying his grandfather's prayer shawl to the Sabbath service. His father wanted him to learn some Yiddish, but there was no cheder in the Soviet period, and he recalls the older cheder.

A man sings a Yiddish song about a melamed who prefers to teach only rich children and takes no poor ones into his cheder. Kerler says he will look the song up.

Shraibman speaks about religious and communal life in Zhytomyr today. He helped Rabbi Shlomo when he arrived and speaks Yiddish with him. He works at a boarding school for half-orphaned children, with a Jewish gymnasium and a cheder, whose non-Jewish director has a Jewish wife. He mentions the director's daughter, who married a Jewish man from Moscow and works with the Jewish community. Kerler then asks about his childhood memories.

Sandler recalls his schooling: four years in a Yiddish school, which later became a Russian one, and kheyder in the afternoon after school, with a rebbe who punished him. Kerler asks whether he remembers songs the rebbe taught, and Sandler begins to sing one.

Mester says she remembers almost nothing of the prayers, though she recalls a blessing and that people said "Shabes". She remembers the Four Questions and the Passover seder led by her father and recites a Yiddish version. She also recalls how her mother said a prayer and how her father made kiddush on Friday night. She then mentions a Yiddish song about children in America, which she half-remembers.