Soviet repression and famine

Rezmovit talks about how well he felt in Israel and why he returned home to Hungary. His father was ill with cancer, and the three brothers could not decide who should go back to help their parents. He mentions a man named Friedman who called them returnees, and his sister Rivka, who was imprisoned. A photograph of his bearded father may have saved her, and she has since died.

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

Sherman quotes a saying he attributes to the poet Rivkin (?), a former colleague of an acquaintance, and describes how that man's wife visited after he was taken away. Lemster and Kerler ask whether he knows songs by Zelik Bardichever and other poets, and ask about a formula said after mentioning the dead.

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.

Abelsky speaks of his childhood in Moscow, where he studied a little with a teacher and played in the synagogue. His father was a shoykhet and his grandfather the Hasidic rabbi of Moscow. He describes prayer rooms and Purim pranks on misnagdim, and notes that slaughter was illegal. He also recounts the Soviet persecution of Chabad followers, an NKVD expert on religion, the Memorial group, and the fate of the wives and of a woman called Aunt Sarah. He ends with a Russian military-style song.

Dajch tells how she met her husband: he was a communist who had been in prison, and she was in Iași from 1931 to 1936. He was then drafted and they later registered their marriage without a wedding. She recalls her first visit to Chișinău, where he bought her a record and a red scarf. In 1940 he was held for about a year. After the war she worked as a bookkeeper and came to Chișinău in 1957 (heard in Russian).

Boiarskaia speaks about Jewish life in the townlet near Dobasari with a fine synagogue, rabbi and shoykhet, and about the rebbe Khaim Zanvl, who studied with the Stefaneşti rabbi and died in America at a great age. She says Jewish boys were no longer circumcised publicly out of fear; a mohel was still present in 1928. She says the synagogue was closed in 1938 or so, its warden shot, and the community's children went to the Russian school.

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

Rolshut says Jewish weddings with a chuppah and a rabbi were held in Soroca until 1940; she attended friends' weddings but cannot recall the songs or dances. She and Lemster discuss whether the town had a madman, klezmers and the water carrier she remembers filling a vat in her parents' kitchen. They touch on handsome young men and women of the town and Jewish communists. She recalls a group of Jewish communists shot on the Dniester bank after a non-Jewish guide betrayed them. Lemster mentions the poet Yasik Baltsan(?).

Hirsch speaks of being held in various camps in Romania from 1941 until the Soviet army liberated the area in 1944. He says his parents and sister left for Israel in 1960. He had a brother who was imprisoned as a political prisoner and died in August 1944, apparently of lung problems. He then begins to give his own name and the family name Hirsch.

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

Freundlich speaks about the war years, when his part of the country belonged to Hungary and he was taken to the border area. He describes working in villages between Hungary and Moldavia on the Carpathian side, being interned as a Communist in a ruined building at Garan (?), and his luck in not being deported or seeing the dead.

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

Angelova says that about fifteen Jewish families lived in Topole and describes collectivization. The family's cows and horses were taken, her father resisted and the family worked on the kolkhoz. She grew up with four siblings. They moved to Kotovsk, where her parents worked in shops.

Kerler begins an informal interview with Fania in Yiddish. She is a native of Berdychiv and speaks Yiddish at home. Her father was imprisoned under Stalin, in the 1930s (?), leaving her mother with four children. She says non-Jews, including a friend whose father was also imprisoned, spoke Yiddish before the war, and that Jews did not marry non-Jews. Her husband is an invalid.

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

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.

Soyfer says he does not remember Yiddish Soviet writers and read in Russian. He had heard of Polyanker, and states that the Jewish Antifascist Committee members were shot in the late 1940s.

Soyfer speaks about antisemitism in the army. Jews were mocked but not beaten, and he was asked about what Jews had done, probably the Doctors' Plot. A Belarusian colonel asked about it and he said he was glad the Jews had been released. Lemster asks about his youth, and he mentions his mother's death in Zhytomyr four days before Hanukkah.

She speaks about Jewish neighbours who were arrested and killed under Stalin, including a pious watchmaker who was sent to Siberia in 1937 and rehabilitated after his death. The passage opens with a part of Kerler's question that is lost in the transcript.

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

Kupershmidt says no Hasidim were left after the war; the last shochet was in a camp and his sons were killed. Many who returned from Russia died or emigrated, and he has not heard of mitnagdim. He then says his eldest brother was a Zionist who had Zionist friends, and that the authorities jailed Zionists.

Kelmenson confirms the surname Kelmenson and her maiden name Shtivelband, and talks about her family, including her father's family. Her grandfather had a tea plantation in Staraya Sinyava, was dispossessed, and went alone to Crimea in the 1930s, where he died. Her father was a Soviet employee. She says that during the war the family went to Tashkent, where her mother worked as an accountant.

Kelmenson talks about her father, who was in Vorkuta for sixteen years and questioned God though he was a pious man, and about her grandfathers, one of whom lost his plantation and died in the Crimea. Kerler then asks dialect questions about words such as magazine, bucket, sick, come, pious and honest. Kerler explains his own origins, and they discuss relatives in Israel, Bratslav surnames and a woman who gave a short interview, before thanks.

Khavin tells about his older sister and her husband Pinye Rozenblum, a Polish Jew and revolutionary who worked in Moscow at an institute for nationalities. Rozenblum was arrested in 1937 and exiled to Magadan for ten years, and was rehabilitated under Khrushchev. He lived in Moscow until his death, and his son emigrated to Israel. At the end Katz and Khavin discuss the Yiddish form of the town name Kozelets.

Burg addresses Jewish writers in postwar Chernivtsi and his own return from Russia, where he had spent the war. He recalls attending the funeral of Mikhoels in Moscow, the anti-Jewish campaign of 1948 and his graduate studies in Moscow. He worked at a pedagogical institute and studied with Nusinov. He mentions Moscow Yiddish writers he knew, including Markish, Bergelson and Fefer, and discusses a few present-day Yiddish writers. He ends with an account of Fefer being brought from prison to meet Paul Robeson in Moscow and not telling him what had happened.

Burg talks about the arrival of Soviet rule in 1940, which Jews welcomed as a protection against the Nazis. Persecution soon followed, and the wealthy, politicians and Zionists were deported. He recalls a night in June when half of Vyzhnytsya was taken away in trucks and many never returned. Kerler then asks him to read one of his stories.

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

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

Beigel tells of her father, who as a young man went to Odesa and worked for a landowner. He returned to Tyvriv, married her mother and bought a house, but the Soviets took it away.

Geller recalls prewar Jewish life in Pyatka. There were about five hundred Jews until the famine of 1932–33, after which artisans (carpenters, shoemakers, tailors) left for Odesa, Moscow and Kyiv. About 200 Jews remained in the mid-1930s, and 169 were drafted into the army. Relations with non-Jews were peaceful. Some non-Jews spoke Yiddish, and Jews and non-Jews lived on the same streets, with Jews mostly on one side.

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.

Gaiviker says the town was mostly Jewish and Yiddish was spoken; he describes working as a barber in the park, serving Russians and Poles. He recalls the card games he played and the 52 and 21 games; he later went to Moscow and returned in 1933.

Kaviner says he once spoke with the Yiddish writer Shmuel Halkin in Moscow, around 1948 or 1949. The meeting came through a historian and Yiddish writer from his area, whose book was never printed, and Kaviner says he helped him. The writer was a history teacher and Kaviner's wife a literature teacher.

Answering Kerler, Kaviner says there was constant anti-religious propaganda and that Jews themselves closed synagogues. His yeshiva was half legal and half illegal; the authorities knew of it, then ordered it closed in 1937–38. Lemster asks about repression of Yiddish school teachers, and Kaviner says they were mostly not repressed but went into Soviet service jobs, such as the yeshiva head becoming chief accountant at the state bank.

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

Shapiro says he wrote down in notes as a child which regime came to town, including Petliura. He says rabbis began to be shot under the first Soviet power. He recalls that his parents left Vinnytsya quietly in 1928 and went to Odesa, and he names his parents Yosef ben Yankev and Etele. He tells how his parents of ten children took in a refugee family from a pogrom in Kalinovka, since the house had five rooms. Kerler asks the names of his siblings, and he lists them: Yitskhok (Eyzik), Moyshe, Nakhmen (himself fourth), and the sisters Khaye Gitl, Leye, Rokhl, Rivke and Anele.

Braverman places the hunger in 1932–33 and speaks of her father's job as an inspector of factories and scrap metal around Vinnytsia and Haisyn, and the food he brought home. She recalls the start of the famine, swollen peasants passing the house, and her mother's help to a non-Jewish woman. Kerler then asks about the look of the town.

Braverman describes how the friends who asked to emigrate were punished with long prison terms, five to ten years. One, a man named Wolf, was blinded in the camps, now lives in Israel and sent him an account of his arrest. He served eight years, until an amnesty. Kerler then asks about Yiddish theater.

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.

Melamed describes the language shift across generations: Jews arriving from Poland spoke Yiddish, the next generation was bilingual and his own generation spoke only Russian. His grandparents used Yiddish at home. His grandmother came from a shtetl and his grandfather from Korostyshiv. He recalls a childhood visit to the surviving synagogue and being punished at kindergarten for mentioning it, and the double life of religion in the Soviet period. Later, as a historian, he found official reports on religious holidays and pilgrimages to a tsadik's grave, which the authorities suppressed.

Kipnis tells about her father's life after the war. On his return to Kyiv he found his apartment occupied by a Ukrainian writer, broke in, and the occupant left a day or two later. She describes his arrest, his imprisonment in Kyiv, his exile to Karaganda, and the censored letters he was allowed to write. After his release he returned to Kyiv and to the family home, and later he was allowed to live outside the city with his older sister Dina.

Kipnis talks about her father Itsik Kipnis after his return from imprisonment: his weak health, his arrest and interrogation, and the newspapers people came to read at his home. She describes his three libraries, his love of art albums and of Chagall, his friendships with Ukrainian, Russian and Yiddish writers, and his years in the camps, including a fellow prisoner and a small Jewish group marking holidays. She also mentions his diaries, now mostly archived in Israel, and his heart attacks.

Khandros says the fairs ended with collectivisation, then shows articles and a book on the famine by a Ukrainian writer and a Russian one, complaining that he has never been invited to conferences on the Famine because he is a Jew. He praises his father, who was so loved as a teacher that his name alone sufficed in the village. He reads, in Russian, accounts he recorded from a widow in 1988 about the village where documents survive and about a death in 1933, mentions his two films and his writings, and says most pieces are about 1933.

Pensatii explains that he worked in a factory shop with many turners in three shifts and got cheap tickets to the opera. He was called up in 1934 and sent to Kyiv, to the Ukrainian military district under Commander Yakir. A long stretch mostly in Russian recounts Yakir's arrest and the forged signatures in the Tukhachevsky affair, and Kerler steers him back to Yiddish. S2 briefly interrupts about arranging other interviews. Pensatii says he later worked at the main post office in Kyiv.

Dorfman confirms his four years at the Tarbut school, taught in Yiddish and Hebrew, and its director Slobodsky. He dates the Soviet arrival to 28 June 1940 and his parents' imprisonment in July for eleven months. He describes his parents' religious observance, including seders, with soldiers as guests, and starts to recite the Four Questions at Kerler's request.

Dorfman talks about postwar religious life in L'viv. He recalls a nationalist Jewish youth group whose papers he read in the KGB archive and the aid organisations Bricha and Chabad. He describes the postwar reopening of the synagogues, the 1945 accusation of ritual murder and closure, the synagogue's later unofficial closure and conversion into a sports hall, and the minyanim formed until perestroika. He recalls packed holiday services and the local community's way of keeping the synagogue going.

Dorfman points out graves and talks about people, including a teacher and school director from the Odessa region who was imprisoned in 1941 and whose brother edited a Kishinev Yiddish paper. He shows the grave of the cantor Baruch Shulman, father of the singer Zinovy Shulman, who was jailed for fifteen years. Kerler and Katz ask about dates and inscriptions, and the camera records the cemetery.

Passing the former ghetto area, Dorfman and bystanders discuss, in Russian and Yiddish, the killing of Jews by the Ukrainian police. He describes the conditions in the ghetto and the memorials: a monument unveiled in 1992, funds from Jews abroad, the Soviet-era plan for three monuments, and the sculptor and architect. He also speaks about prewar Jewish life in Lviv, the numbers in the city, the Soviet arrival and deportations, and what happened after the war, including the museum collection and the bridge known as the Gate of Death.

Brandler says nearly all communists in the town were Jews, and that they were taken to the police on Polish holidays. He lists other interwar parties and organizations, including left and right Poale Zion and a Zionist society, and says there was no Bund in the town. He then talks about reading an Israeli Bundist Yiddish journal and objects to its view of Israel as occupying territory. Kerler turns to youth movements at the end.

Endelshtein says about 80 Jews live in Voznesensk, none speaking Yiddish, and Kerler and Lemster say where they are from. He tells of a visit to the Moscow synagogue and a Jewish calendar he was given. He discusses Communism and Jewishness, saying he was a Communist and still a Jew, and that Communist ideas were good. The talk covers belief in God, a cousin who was a Communist imprisoned in Romania, and Trotskyism.

Kerler asks about the meaning of a few words, such as dybbuk and golem, and Kenin and a man present give their sense. Kenin then speaks of Rabbi Nakhum Schneersohn, who kept a synagogue and fed poor Jews and was shot around 1937. He describes the synagogue as a study house for old Jews and says Schneersohn was a friend of the Lubavitch rebbe, not a Lubavitcher himself. Kerler ends by announcing a series of Russian-prompt questions.

Lemster asks about her parents and about her Yiddish. She says they spoke it, and describes the courtyard as full of Jews with a few Christian neighbours. Her father came from Voznesensk and her mother from Lyakhova (?). They were orphans who married in the early 1920s and settled in the city, and an older sister served in the war. She was born in 1932 and says she was in evacuation. She says few people still speak Yiddish and offers to introduce two or three Jewish acquaintances. Walking through the quarter, she shows a tuberculosis institute and children's sanatorium, streets and an artists' building. She describes a school with mostly Jewish teachers, where her sister studied, and a Yiddish school that existed until the 1930s. She also tells how a sister called her a Zionist. Her uncles Misha and Rafe, tailors, met Dzerzhinsky in 1920 and were later arrested; she mentions Yezhov and Beria in this connection.

Listengurt continues on the Jewish plan for a republic in Crimea and the 1923 pogrom. She then explains Stalin's deportation of Germans and Tatars, Khrushchev's role, and the later Jewish settlement in the Birobidzhan region between two rivers. She describes a bare area and what an acquaintance said of the Crimea's beauty, then moves to the doctors' plot at Lemster's prompt.

Cherner says he moved to Odesa in 1961 and married in 1962 without a wedding. His wife, who comes from Kherson, does not speak Yiddish. He answers a question about Jewish colonies and kolkhozes: there were many rich ones and non-Jewish neighbors praised the Jews' farm work. He says Jews in America mostly do not know Yiddish, that many Jews were in the Party before the war and were shot by Stalin, and that Yiddish writers were shot. Afterward people were afraid and no longer taught or painted their children in Jewish ways.

Cherner says he moved to Odesa in 1961 and married in 1962 without a wedding. His wife, who comes from Kherson, does not speak Yiddish. He answers a question about Jewish colonies and kolkhozes: there were many rich ones and non-Jewish neighbors praised the Jews' farm work. He says Jews in America mostly do not know Yiddish, that many Jews were in the Party before the war and were shot by Stalin, and that Yiddish writers were shot. Afterward people were afraid and no longer taught or painted their children in Jewish ways.

Tokar answers questions about his military decorations and says that after the war he could not work as a locksmith because of his disability. He took courses, worked as a finance inspector in Stalinabad and the district, and in Odesa worked at a factory and a cooperative. He discusses Sovetish Heymland, Soviet Yiddish writers he disliked, the rebirth of Yiddish culture after Stalin, the murder of Mikhoels and the Jewish committee, and the prewar Yiddish press and libraries.

Stotland speaks of prewar Jewish institutions in Ovruch: the rabbi, two ritual slaughterers (Shiman (?) and Kaptsan (?)), and the Yiddish periodicals Shtern and Emes that reached the school. Children borrowed Yiddish books and held discussions with teachers. The synagogues were demolished in 1937, after which Jews met in private houses. He also mentions Jews from Belarus and Moldova, and visits to Transcarpathia where the Yiddish differed.

Turovskaia asks whether Katz gave Kerler photographs of the Volednicker tzaddik. She tells how her family suffered under the Poles in 1920 and in 1937, and how her father avoided arrest. Her grandmother travelled to a good Jew for a name, and her father was named after the tzaddik Yisroel Dov. Kerler asks about names, and she gives her own Yiddish name as Rochel.

Turovskaia continues the Civil War episode. Cossacks threaten her father with a sabre, and her mother steps between them. She says bandits of every colour plundered, and that 1937 was very hard.

Turovskaia recalls 1937, when her father was taken away. She names her sister Ester and brother Fayvl, who has since died, and says another sister lives in Israel. She stresses that as a child she had to study, do housework and work, and that life was hard.

Kerler asks about the book her father wrote down; Turovskaia says he wrote the stories himself from memory and from what he heard, and used to read them to the children. She tells how he was falsely accused of a crime, and recalls his skill in judging cattle; he once wanted to become a shoykhet but his mother would not allow it.

Turovskaia explains that she knows from her parents' stories about her father's encounters before the revolution and her uncle Yakov Leyzer's actions at a funeral. She narrates her father's time in the Gulag, working at a brickyard, and being sent into the cold river, with a Russian stretch about sentence and bonus. Her mother then sent him parcels, and the family sent the girls away.

Zak says her brother worked in the town fire brigade. She describes the 1937 teacher Yosl Freylis, who taught Yiddish literature from the fifth to the tenth class and was taken away in the ninth. She recalls that Markish, Sholem Aleichem and Peretz were taught, and mentions meetings against religion at school.

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

Litvak says her father made hats and recalls that in the poor years he was paid in salt. Her mother, afraid, went alone to collect it and was told to take only what she could carry. People gave whatever they could. The family survived the famine when others died.

Kerler and Litvak discuss the journal Sovetish Heymland: she subscribed to it and later paid to subscribe for the Jewish centre in the early 1990s, but no issues arrived. Kerler explains the closure of Yiddish institutions in 1948 and the shooting of the Soviet Yiddish writers. Litvak ends by asking whether Jews in America speak Yiddish.

Khiterman says there was no antisemitism after the war. Kerler asks about Zionists in Berezhov (Berezov?), which she does not remember. She recounts being arrested in the early 1950s (?) and taken to Kyiv, apparently over a mix-up with a woman connected to a committee. She says her small child died in evacuation at Katta-Kurgan at the age of two and was named after her mother. Her relative, mostly in Russian, describes her poor health and how isolated she is.

Klein talks about Yiddish writers from the town. She names Avrom Ber Gotlober as born in Starokostyantyniv and mentions a grandson of Lenin's family named Blank (?) and another local man who died in exile. She says her books on them are unavailable and that Kerler knew some of these people.

Gliazer gives his views on Bandera and the Ukrainian nationalist organization, which he calls terrorist, and on the assassination of the Polish minister Pieracki. He says Bandera's brothers were communists who were imprisoned with his own brother and killed, probably by the Russians.

Answering Katz, Gliazer describes the Soviet entry in September 1939. Poor Jewish workers welcomed it, wealthy Jews and non-Jews were later deported to Siberia, and Jewish theater, schools and cultural groups were closed, with only one rabbi left open. He also discusses the Yiddish newspaper Eynikayt, which was read, and the earlier German propaganda. Much of the stretch is garbled.

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

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

Shveibish speaks about her life after the war, in hospitals in several cities, and about repression. She recalls the outbreak of the war, when the Jews were put into a former Jewish school and then sent to Pechera. She tells how her father was killed and her mother died a month later, leaving her with her brother, and recalls herself as a five-year-old girl and her doll. She describes how hard the years after the war were.

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

Kogan states that he was born in Bershad' and names his mother and father. His father died in the 1933 famine, and Kogan describes him as an honest, learned Jew who went to the synagogue. He worked at a soap factory and was known as Avrom from the soap factory. Kerler asks whether he was a Hasid.

Kogan speaks about the Yiddish school in Bershad', which still stands with three floors. He mentions a Soviet official named Kogan, a distant relative, and an episode of Jews being tried. Kerler asks the year.

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

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

Shor names his father Yosl and mother Dobresh. His father was a ritual slaughterer who also led services, officiating as a cantor after the war in a Vinnytsya synagogue. Liudmila's father Yidl sold flour in a shop; in the 1930s the family was dispossessed and expelled from their home and moved to Verkhovka, where he learned hairdressing. Shor recalls his own mother and children being evicted in the rain and the creation of a Jewish kolkhoz.

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

Poberevskii recalls visits to the Yiddish theatre in Moscow, naming Mikhoels and Zuskin, and discusses Mikhoels as an actor, including the role of Tevye. Asked about Yiddish writers visiting Zhmerynka, she does not remember any. She says she was a good pupil in the Jewish school, which was closed in 1937 when people were arrested. Kerler then asks how her parents kept the Sabbath.

Yatskova speaks about the hungry years, when she was seven, and then the occupation. She was in the ghetto, with the family driven there and kept for three years until 1944, and she is officially a ghetto prisoner. Lemster and a second voice ask where the ghetto was.

Kerler interviews Goikhman, who gives his name and birth in Pervomaysk on 1 January 1927. He tells of the 1933 hunger, his father's move to Birobidzhan, Russian schooling, factory work and mobilisation to Blagoveshchensk, and his mother's death in 1947. He came to Zhmerynka in October 1947 to his father's brother. He then recalls Pervomaysk as a large town with many Jews, synagogues drawing visiting cantors, and Yiddish-speaking Jewish and non-Jewish friends. He also recalls Sabbath, his mother's gefilte fish with sugar and pepper, Hanukkah gifts, latkes and Purim foods, and the Zhmerynka shul on Sovetskaya Street, later a children's library.

Geller describes the shtetl in the 1930s: artisans were gathered into cooperatives and many left for Kyiv, Zhytomyr and Odesa to find work. The Yiddish school closed, and he studied in a Ukrainian school. He also mentions his mother's ability to write Yiddish and his father's work in a sugar factory when the famine began.

Shraibman describes the war: they fled in the summer, were taken to Tambov and then to Uzbekistan, where hunger killed six of twelve family members. One grandmother stayed behind and was killed by the Germans together with the remaining Jews. Kerler asks for the grandmothers' names (Beyle, Gitl).

Shraibman recalls his father, who was sent to collect wheat in the 1930s, received damp grain that spoiled, and was imprisoned for three years. After his release the father worked as a bookkeeper. His mother was a housewife and a sister died in infancy; he was an only child, and he describes growing up in the household of his two grandparents.

Shraibman talks about Jews in Zhytomyr today, which has about two thousand, and about its history. He discusses an old Hebrew press, the rabbinical college in the nineteenth century, a card index of victims of the 1930s and rabbis' meetings in the 1920s. He describes working in the archive and what his late wife said of it.

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

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