Soviet system

Rezmovits explains that he returned from Israel in 1953 to support his parents and younger sisters. He describes hard times under Rákosi, being refused a job at a factory because of his Israeli background, and the manual work he did, including carrying bricks. He worked as a technician and studied at night; his wife died after 21 years, leaving him with two sons, both now in Budapest, one a calculator operator and one a lawyer. He has no grandchildren. He names his mother, Tojbe, whose parents came from Máramaros and had a large onion business.

Pearl says his father kept no beard but observed the Sabbath and Jewish traditions, while his grandfathers had beards and sidelocks. He himself does not shave on the nine days. He says that in the Soviet and Communist period he never hid being Jewish, taking his tallis and tefillin with him to Russia and telling people he was a Jew, and he recounts an encounter in Kharkov or Kyiv (?) where he was still accepted.

Blobshteyn explains the word for a disturbance (krivaln?) and a story about a Jewish girl who left with a non-Jew, and talks about fire brigades and Jewish work on Saturday. He then speaks of religious life under the Soviets: synagogues taken, Yom Kippur services broken up, and fear of arrest. He says that his friend, the chief of the militia, warned him about planned antireligious actions, and that he was able to buy flats for his two children.

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

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

Smajovics recounts his postwar working life as a driver. He worked on a Moskvich car for a director and for a regional consumer union, and moved between jobs and workplaces. He describes earning extra money on the side by writing up meat deliveries and by dealing with a restaurant and a warehouse. He is then asked when he came to Budapest, and the answer is cut off.

Smajovics speaks about Yiddish reading, including Sholem Aleichem, and Soviet Yiddish press and journals, and mentions Birobidzhan newspapers. He tells of a Yiddish concert by American Jews that he attended in Beregszász (?) or a nearby town in the 1960s (?). He describes a trip to Israel and a taxi ride there. Kerler asks about Sovetish Heymland and Yiddish authors. Smajovics then talks about Russian war books on marshals Vasilevsky, Zhukov and Rokossovsky and the Stalingrad front, before Kerler thanks him.

Asked by Kerler about Jewish life after the war, Boltykh says there was little. The big prayer house was broken up in the 1960s and turned into a cultural building. A few old Jews gathered privately to pray with one man who could read.

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

Katerberg briefly says he was in the army and on the Transbaikal (Japanese) front (?). Asked about Yiddish writers from Lipcani and about Soviet Yiddish press, he and Tatyana recall little, and she says people feared keeping such a journal in the house. Kerler closes by explaining the project and its dialect research aims.

Katerberg recounts being elected kolkhoz chairman in two villages, for four years in one and sixteen in the other. He tells an anecdote about a meeting where he answered a remark that there had been no Jews at the front. He says he spoke Moldovan in the Moldovan village and Russian in the Ukrainian one, names other Jewish chairmen, and tells of seminars at which he had to tell Jewish anecdotes. The talk ends with Lemster asking about awards.

Goldberg describes the Călărași market and recalls the custom of kapores before Yom Kippur. She says her childhood and prewar and postwar life were hard, and that her best time was after her marriage when her children were born. The synagogue was closed by the Soviets, and people travelled to Chişinău to pray. At the end she says that people at first miss a place they have left, and that she has lived in Călărași all her life.

Roif speaks about Yiddish writers who visited or came from the area: Yekhiel Shraybman, Yankl Yakir, who was arrested after the war in the campaign against Jewish writers, and Vaysman. His father subscribed to Sovetish Heymland. He describes Yakir's son visiting his kolkhoz, knowing Vaysman in Israel, and the shoykhet Ari Meir.

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

Farber sings the Yiddish wedding song about the in-laws coming, with a second person present. He then speaks about taking part in Yiddish festivals abroad, about Soviet-era censorship of Yiddish songs, and about his rewriting of an old Odessa song.

Shpitalnik speaks about the prewar Yiddish press in Chișinău, including the daily 'Undzer tsayt', read by both Zionists and Communists. She says her father was somewhat left-leaning. She tells of learning Yiddish poems from a woman friend of her father's and of her father's role as a trusted mediator, and how he was broken under the Soviets.

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

Shpitalnik says the 1903 pogrom is overemphasized and that prewar Jewish Chișinău was poor, with good tailors, shoemakers and craftsmen but no rich people; she mentions about seventy synagogues. She recalls the short-lived Yiddish folk theater of the late 1960s, performances she saw, and a story involving an Ukrainian doctor friend. The passage ends with talk among the interviewers about Moyshe and arrangements.

Roif talks about her husband's twenty years as kolkhoz chairman and the apartment that the authorities gave them, which they renovated and furnished. She says her husband often spoke up for prisoners in the local court, and many were released early or sent to work elsewhere. She stresses that they only ever did good and that their faith in God is about doing good. Katz explains that she is speaking to the archive and not to the others present.

Sherman answers questions about non-Jews in the Telenești fire brigade (there was no organized brigade) and about prewar youth movements. Gordonia met in a hall for dances and heard speeches from visiting pioneers (chalutzim) from Palestine, and some friends emigrated. He also tells of clandestine communist literature smuggled in from Bucharest, in Yiddish translations, and of reading Freud.

Diner recites a Russian poem on Jewish fate, which she says she assembled from three quatrains by Gubermann. She then talks about her life today: she helps neighbours with injections and is afraid to go to the polyclinic. Kerler asks her about God, and she says there is one God and hopes for peace. She comments on contemporary politics, including Russia's relations with Iran compared with its earlier friendship with Hitler.

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

Goldman describes Sabbath in her parents' home: cholent, no fire lit, candle-blessing, and how observance and synagogue-going became forbidden under the Soviets. She mentions the synagogue and a rabbi, and a woman colleague at the printing house who emigrated to Israel with her journalist husband.

Manevich says her father read Yiddish when he had time, but her mother was unlettered in Yiddish and later learned to write Russian. Russian was the language used in the city. She names Jewish holidays she remembers (Passover, Hanukkah, Purim) and the Soviet holidays celebrated at home, such as the anniversary of the October Revolution, May Day and Constitution Day. Asked about a New Year tree, she is unsure. A discussion follows about Sholem Aleichem in Russian-letter versus Yiddish-letter editions.

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

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

Leibelman answers questions about youth organizations in Rezina, such as Zionists and Communists who were arrested, and about the Yiddish library there, where she borrowed books. She recalls reading Romanian books and Turgenev. She recites the words of a Romanian soldiers' song and a Russian ghetto song about buying cigarettes, saying she remembers no Yiddish songs.

Leibelman recites a humorous parody of the Four Questions ('why' questions about a goat, a pot and a candle). Asked about life after the war, she says it was Soviet and that she learned to write without Yiddish school. She says that she moved to Dubăsari in 1956 and that few Jews remain, many with a non-Jewish parent, with no synagogue.

Kleyman talks about a holy rebbe in Stefanesti and another in Boyan, where people still go and light candles. She recalls a childhood game in Yiddish, then an encounter after the war in Ukraine with her father's former boss at a kolkhoz, who wept when she said she was his daughter. She returns to the rebbe and the grandmother who had been to America. She then tells the story of eight thousand Jews in Stryy, killed by the Germans, and of a holy man who spoke before being shot.

Sharhorodskij says he cannot recall the rebbe's melodies. He asks about Kerler's residence and discusses America and politics, comparing the American slogan to the German one. He says the Jewish situation in Moldova is painful because few Jews remain. He says that belief in liberation helped him survive the ghetto, and describes working in a German hospital, where he met a Hamburg field-feldwebel who read the paper and said Germany had lost after Stalingrad. A political argument with Kerler follows over fascists in Russia and democracy.

Kerler asks about her life after the war, and Boiarskaia says she worked in a printing house in Rîbniţa as a typesetter. The work was for a Moldovan-language newspaper, and the interviewers confirm the Yiddish word for typesetter.

Nusbrokh and Lemster discuss the synagogue in Soviet times, when people rented an apartment for services, and the Jews of Soroca today, about forty with some children. Nusbrokh also tells of a friend, a Hasid from Zguriţa, who died, and the troubles of his widow over a house.

Dunaevskij says observant Jews remained after the war and prayed in a synagogue until it was closed in the 1950s. After that they prayed in privately rented rooms, where the authorities criticised them. He calls it a hard life.

Luminskaia recalls a chuppah held secretly at home in Soviet times, with the groom and bride brought separately and glasses broken. Lemster presses on the difference between Jewish and Moldovan weddings. Goldshteyn recalls musicians, including Gypsies, who played Yiddish music at weddings. Luminskaia describes a wedding, mentioning the klezmer instruments and the seating. Goldshteyn speaks of wine rather than brandy in Moldova.

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

Cohn speaks about the great hunger in Romania just after the war and the Joint, which ran soup kitchens in the Jewish towns. He describes life under Ceaușescu as very bad, with Jews fared worse. He moved to Botoșani in 1941, a few days before the war, because Jews were no longer allowed to live in the royal towns. Houses were set on fire. After the war he worked as a metalworker and glazier, and is asked for the word for window glass.

Grunfeld says he is now a pensioner and describes his postwar career as a technician in cellulose and paper, trained at a technical school. He was head of a section with a large workforce under Ceaușescu and worked at the factory for thirty-five years.

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

Hershkovich speaks about postwar Jewish life, noting that many did not return and that Jews left after the communists came. He mentions prewar Zionist organisations such as Mizrachi and Hashomer Hatzair. He says he lived in Israel in the late 1980s, where his daughter works as a doctor, and why he came back, citing the heat; he also mentions relatives in America, and Kerler then asks about weddings in Dej.

Freundlich mentions her son as a singer who performed at the Metropolitan, and a radio interview with her. Kerler asks about Jewish weddings. She talks about her son's circumcision in 1956, which was held at home with a rabbi because few Jews were left. She also mentions his bar mitzvah meal, to which the non-Jewish officials did not come.

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.

Chajim talks about having been a foreman in Hîrlău under the Communists, and about problems with payment. He then speaks of a visit to Israel, where he stayed with a Polish Jew and bathed in Bat Yam, and of a brother in Israel. Lemster asks how he met his wife, but he answers about speaking with Jews from Edineț.

Finkelshteyn says Yiddish was the only language at home and that his father wrote and read it. He talks about cheder, praying and synagogue attendance, which working Jews could not manage, and mentions the Iași pogrom as something too terrible to tell. He explains how he worked as a carpenter until his pension, mostly in a state factory in Soviet times, and how Jews were expected not to work manual jobs. He describes his apprenticeship with another carpenter and the market in Iași.

Finkelshteyn calls the best time of his life the Soviet-style socialist period (he is probably speaking of postwar Romania), when he felt respected as a good worker in a collective. He speaks warmly of his wife and of never quarreling with his brothers and sisters. He has visited Israel a few times. He says he knows no songs, and that his wife's mother, from Bessarabia, sang well.

Freund talks about the Jewish community today: 765 registered members but only about 300 real Jews, many of mixed marriage. He answers Lemster that many left for Israel after the war, mainly because of the communist and socialist regime, whereas few emigrated before the war. He then says he has to leave.

Freundlich tells of becoming a Communist and being imprisoned. He then describes the end of the war: Horthy's proclamation, escaping with a friend, walking home through the mountains, and meeting a man who warned them the Germans were near. He and others were gathered by the Russians as prisoners and taken by train through Baia Mare. Kerler asks whether he hid in the mountains.

Talks about Suceava as a "crazy" town whose people were always drunk and quarrelsome. He then discusses the current mayor and a teacher, a professor who also served as community president. He also describes a former Securitate officer, a Communist party member who had changed his family name. He begins to speak about his own father, a butcher, and says he does not want some of this recorded.

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

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

Chaimovic and Kerler discuss the term for a Wirtshaus (inn) in German and Slovak, and a joke figure, Soldier Schweik. Chaimovic then recalls working 32 years (?) in a shop with a hundred twenty employees, where he was the only Jew, and the antisemitism he met. He says he was jailed for two weeks after a false accusation and made Kiddush at home on his release.

Borukaeva talks about her postwar working life, including night work and a photographer's job, and how she met her husband on a train from Odessa; he spoke pure Russian. She then speaks about her cousin Vadim Mulerman, a singer who performed Yiddish songs and was reportedly forbidden to sing for about twenty years, and who later visited Balta and her home. She also mentions his Yiddish, his brother and the family burial in Kharkiv. Her own singing is brought up.

Berman recounts postwar work: a post as district health head in the Bila Tserkva region and suspicion over his Jewish colleagues, then return to Bila Tserkva as a famous doctor. He describes writing in Yiddish for Birobidzhaner Shtern and Sovetish Heymland, and his article on Ehrenburg's unpublished letters. Kerler and Berman compare their debuts in print around 1958. They also discuss a folklorist friend, Shlomo (?) Kuper (?), Berman's patient, with whom he corresponded.

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

Berman explains the origin of his name Khariton: after finishing medical institute in Kyiv he was nominated head of a health department in a large district in the Kirovohrad region in 1949. Officials told him to change his Jewish-sounding name Khaske to a more neutral one, and the matter surprised them given the antisemitism of the time. He mentions that at home he was called by a pet name and that he was named for his grandfather.

Isaak Vaisman recalls his religious mother, who took him to synagogue on holidays; he says Kaddish for his father on the yortsayt. Asked about Berdychiv's synagogues, they name several. He attended a Yiddish school until the Yiddish schools were closed in 1938, after which pupils were moved to a Russian school, and the couple note that schools now teach in Ukrainian.

Skobilitskii recalls anti-religious propaganda that called religion an opiate, and that school subjects were taught in Yiddish. He remembers mocking plays about Jews staged at school, with Yiddish songs. He also mentions a Jewish theatre troupe that performed Sholem Aleichem, cantors in the Koch shul, and the Jewish owner of the fire brigade with white horses.

Soyfer speaks about army service, which began in about 1950 (?), where Jews were mocked but not beaten. He was a Communist for thirty years and worked for thirty-five years. His family's apartment was taken, and he has one daughter.

The interviewee tells of being in the Pioneers and Komsomol in his youth and what they were told.

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

Vainshelboim describes weddings where a local fiddler (name unclear) played and sang Yiddish songs. Asked for Jewish anecdotes, he says he no longer remembers them. He reflects that he survived by belief in God and by escaping three times, and says believers fared better under the Soviets, who promoted atheism.

They describe Berdychiv before the war as a Jewish town of over thirty thousand Jews, with many synagogues and prayer in private houses. Under Soviet pressure Komsomol members could not enter the synagogue. After the war some returned from evacuation. They also say how the couple met, that they lived in the same courtyard, and that her father died in 1928.

Kerler asks about Passover after the war. They say matzo was baked in the synagogue, with the dough carried in large baskets to a big oven. They describe the German destruction of the synagogue and its repair by the Jews, and that Pioneers and Komsomol members could not enter. They also say there were many prayer houses of trades before the war.

Vainshelboim speaks about prewar religious life and Soviet persecution: the Bolsheviks said there was no God and turned the soup-kitchen synagogue into a club. He says few Jews remain, perhaps five hundred, and the community is small. He speaks about the Chabad rabbi Moyshe, who helps bury the dead, and about the other rabbi, Shloyme.

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

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

Kerler asks Shor about terminology from the Soviet period (the words kulak and kolkhoz), and about what he read in the Yiddish school. He asks whether a line of a Yiddish poem sounds familiar, and the answers are unclear.

Vygodner discusses the history of the synagogue: its closure and reopening, the Jewish community in wartime Romanian rule (?), and the Soviet authorities' wish to close it. He recalls his grandfather and the ten men needed for a minyan, and mentions a book on the shtetls of the Khmelnytskyi region which says the building is about two hundred years old.

Gvinter recalls his army service from October 1955 to 1958, including training in a regimental school in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, and a long train journey home on leave. He says his future wife waited for him through his service, and he mentions Party membership. He then talks about visits to Israel, his younger son's wedding in September, and the taxi crash on the way there, followed by anxious phone calls. Kerler ends by asking a Yiddish word.

Feldman recalls how matzo was baked in Bershad' in an oven, with women rolling the dough, and says that matzo also came from Israel. She describes the custom of bringing money to the synagogue before Yom Kippur and fasting, and says she did not go to work on Yom Kippur, including in the Soviet period. They discuss who blew the shofar after the old rabbi died and whether the synagogue stayed open.

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

Teitel talks about a distant relative of her mother-in-law and about her own family, her husband's death and her grief, and holidays kept only while the older generation lived. She tells of antisemitism in Sarata and why the family did not speak Yiddish, and says her husband praised Soviet power and asked for a Russian burial. She talks about Israel and the Jewish wife's role, and about her own long work life. Near the end Kerler and Milevskaya discuss matzo, the unwillingness of older people to pass Yiddish on, and the postwar atmosphere.

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

Khavin recounts the postwar prayer house in Chernihiv, bought by returnees from the army and evacuation with money collected around the town. After a story about the closing of the synagogue under Khrushchev in 1956, when the police threw out the prayer books and the matzah machine, he says the churches were closed soon afterwards. Private minyanim followed, until the last Torah reader died in 1989.

Lifshitz says he had no schooling. Asked about Soviet hostility to religion, he gives a hard-to-follow answer about suffering and about non-Jews. Katz then turns to Hanukkah.

Bielaia says little was sung or spoken in Yiddish because of politics, and people were afraid to be known as Jews. She contrasts this with today, with the Hesed and synagogue.

Bielaia says her father Motl, a shoemaker with eight children, prayed in the synagogue. She finished the seven-year Yiddish school in Nezhe, where all subjects but Russian and German were taught in Yiddish, and there was a drama circle. Religion was not taught, and she worked in a Yiddish kindergarten in Chernihiv until the war. She says her parents did not survive the war. She also mentions carrying a bench for her mother to the synagogue.

At a memorial Kerler and Khavin read the inscription asking passers-by to stop and bow to the memory of fellow citizens. Khavin says that 7,500 people are commemorated, but that the plaque says only Soviet citizens and does not name the Jews; he says the authorities did not want to show this. Kerler asks whether a new plaque is possible now, and Khavin says it needs to be redone. As they get back into the van he points out his technical school.

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.

Prompted by Kerler to discuss the Soviet period, Burg says he came to the Soviet Union already a writer. In evacuation in Chelyabinsk he wrote an article on Jews in industry, which he sent to Eynikayt, and he met its editor in Moscow in 1945. He learned from a reply that his mother and sister had been deported to Vinnytsia oblast and shot, so he did not return to Chernivtsi; he was sent to the pedagogical institute in Ivanovo, where Levin was prorector and he befriended a docent connected to Dovid Hofshteyn.

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

Burg answers dialectological questions from Kerler, about words for 'back' and 'ten people at the table' and the use of terms for Hebrew and the holy tongue. He answers that Bund and Zionists in Chernivtsi were not hostile and that much of the Jewish youth was communist; his brother fell in Spain. They look at a photograph of his daughter and discuss his granddaughter, who writes in Russian. Kerler then asks him to read another short story.

Hesed staff speak with Kerler about his Yiddish project of interviewing elderly speakers and about Kerler's background, partly in Russian. They discuss Yiddish in Chernivtsi after the war, including the writer Moyshe Altman, the Soviet-era pressure on him to sign a statement, and the fading of Yiddish. They talk about the hesed's newspaper and Joint support, and about attitudes toward Yiddish, Chabad and Israel, and the project's aim of studying prewar Yiddish speech, not the Holocaust.

Gammer says the Jews kept the holidays before the war and that there were two or three ritual slaughterers in town. She notes the Soviet bans on religion and recalls a Yiddish theatre in Khmil'nyk, where traveling troupes also came. She mentions the actress Klara Young, and the theatre director's family being killed by the Germans. After the war there were only concerts with Yiddish songs and dances. Gammer says she herself does not know Yiddish songs.

Bukshtein describes his return to Siberia after army service in 1947 and his move to Ivano-Frankivs'k in the early 1950s to join his mother and sister. They left for Poland, and he explains that he feared writing to relatives abroad because of his daughter's studies. After perestroika his sister wrote to him, and he visited Brazil via Frankfurt, seeing his sister after 32 years, and an aunt in São Paulo who was over a hundred years old. He recalls Jews gathering to sing Yiddish songs and the relatives' children speaking Yiddish and Portuguese.

Katz confirms that his parents and siblings were killed, and Kerler lists their names. He then describes life in Soviet Stanislav (later Ivano-Frankivs'k) after the war: no synagogues, private prayer in homes, a closed city. He says he has no relatives abroad but had friends in Israel from the Hashomer movement. Kerler ends by announcing a set of words to translate.

Kerler asks Fishman about Yiddish songs and Jewish weddings, which he does not remember in detail. Fishman says his father was a Communist, and that religion was persecuted but old Jews gathered in a house. He says they marked Passover and that his father secretly sent food. Kerler asks how the prayer shawl was called.

Fishman is asked what people knew in the Soviet years about the Six-Day War and emigration to Israel, and says very little. He recalls that television reached Chudniv in 1964. He says no old synagogue or Jewish school survives in Chudniv, and the interviewers thank him and take their leave.

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

Vertman names the Jewish professions of prewar Izyaslav (tailor, hairdresser, teacher, doctor, typesetter, carter, baker) and says there were no Jews in the fire brigade. He says there was no antireligious agitation in his school, and counts seven synagogues, all wooden, in the old town and the new town, plus the Maidan district. He says the synagogues were broken up around 1930 and Jews prayed at home, and he mentions the Komsomol, a public library and Yiddish books.

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

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

Answering Kerler's questions about police work, Geller says he dealt with ordinary crimes such as murder, rape, theft and robbery, not with war criminals or Communists, which were left to the KGB. Asked for an interesting case, he says only that he caught many criminals.

Geller sings a Yiddish criminal song about a girl named Khaske (?) in a factory. Kerler identifies it as a criminal song in mixed language. Asked about the best period of his life, Geller says it was better under Soviet rule and that he is now materially content on his pension. He says he keeps no livestock now but kept chickens and rabbits before.

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.

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

Kraidman recalls the journal Sovetish Heymland and says its editor Arn Vergelis was in the same school class in Lyubar as her husband. She says he befriended a Ukrainian writer, apparently Yevtushenko. She has not read Polyanker, recalls buying Yiddish newspapers at a kiosk, and has heard of Birobidzhan, where Jews went and later left.

Kaviner and the interviewers discuss whether Itsik Manger was part of Soviet Yiddish literature in the 1930s. Kaviner says writers who left wrote simply about Jewish life, and that is why they were published then.

Kaviner says he read the complete works of Yekhiel Shraybman and discusses other postwar Soviet Yiddish writers and the journal Sovetish Heymland and its editors, including Arn Vergelis. He met Khayim Beyder several times, thinks little of his poetry, and knew his family. He served in the army from 1939, met Shmuel Halkin after the war, and recites lines about mass graves.

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

Kaviner says antisemitism existed, exists and will exist, and gives an example from his working life under an antisemitic director. He describes the postwar Jewish population of Khmel'nyts'kyy, made up of evacuees and Jews from nearby towns, who later dispersed to Chernivtsi, Moscow, Leningrad and elsewhere, and then emigrated to Israel, America and Canada. Kerler asks about postwar Poland and about a synagogue, and Kaviner begins to speak about the town's prayer houses.

Asked by Kerler about the Bratslav rebbe, Kaviner calls Nakhman a great theoretician and optimist who left a large body of writing and died young. He distinguishes the rebbe's teachings from stories about the Baal Shem Tov, which he says the Besht never wrote down. He says he read Yiddish writers such as Bashevis Singer in the Soviet period only in handwritten copies, since the Soviet press did not print them.

Vaisblai names his family at Kerler's request: his grandmother Pesye-Rokhl (a grandfather named Biumen (?)), his mother Nunye (?), his father Avrum, his sister Gitl and his brother Berish. He explains that his sister registered him with the patronymic Aronovich under Soviet rule. He then describes the Jewish kolkhoz in Chemerivtsi, where non-Jews were also taken on, and how he and his uncle took the horses out to pasture at night.

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

Vaisblai describes his postwar working life as a storekeeper and restaurant worker, and a job buying plums. He also tells of running into trouble with the militia and of building a house in Horodok. He then explains that he moved to Khmel'nyts'kyy and worked as a restaurant director. He says he spoke Yiddish with his wife throughout. The wife came from Zin'kov (the transcript is unclear). His children live in Israel and Germany. Much of this part is in Russian.

Kaviner names Yiddish theater troupes that visited before the war (Federovsky, Segalovsky, Bugova, with the names uncertain). He speaks about Avrom Goldfaden as founder of the Yiddish theater, said to be from Starokostyantyniv. He then turns to Khayim Beyder, who was from Kupel and worked in Moscow, and to other Soviet Yiddish writers such as Itsik Fefer, Dovid Hofshteyn, Oyzer Varshavsky and Vegelis (?).

Snook recites the prayer 'God of Abraham' for the end of the Sabbath at Kerler's request, and she remarks on Kerler's colleague as a young man who can write Yiddish. Kerler compares life in America and under the Soviets. They discuss whether the synagogue in Khust stayed open under communism and Sabbath observance. Kerler then asks about Purim performances after the war and Passover songs, and she mentions children noisemaking on Purim.

Katz explains that he moved to Khust in 1954, found the synagogue closed to him as a Soviet worker, and describes how Khust's eleven synagogues were reduced to one. He tells how old women at night resisted the authorities' attempts to take the building, and recalls the tax demanded of the congregation. He describes the later post-Soviet scheme to build a tavern on the synagogue's grounds near the former mikveh, an attempt involving a congregation head named Itsik Hoyfman. He is bitter that community members signed away the site, and criticizes Jews who buy bread on the Sabbath and the holiday revelry. Kerler asks the meaning of a building term he uses (a gutter or eave) and then starts asking food-term questions.

Zinger answers questions about cheder, recalling that the rebbe hit pupils with a small stick, and about the dozen-odd Jewish organizations. He mentions a payment from the rabbi for early prayer that he cannot take up because of illness. Kerler asks about the Bund and Jewish Communists; Zinger says many were communists and that a nephew went to Spain. He recalls Hashomer Hatzair and girls, cannot recall a song about the attic, and speaks briefly in Russian-flavoured chat. Katz asks about Sabbath songs and Zinger starts on a shoykhet.

Snook talks about the synagogue in Khust, which the authorities wished to close; some women protested, and people contributed money. Kerler asks about Purim plays and she recalls children going around in disguise for money. She tells about the Ukrainian winter holiday and Easter, and a word for the holiday. She also talks about her woman helper, the guests' travel plans, and a word 'tsekrishet' (?), meaning tired.

Asked by Katz about earliest memories, Smelanskii says he cannot recall them, and does not remember his grandmothers. His paternal grandmother lived in Cherkasy, and a paternal aunt's children included a son killed in the war. He says his father built a small prayer house after the war on returning from evacuation, and describes how a minyan needed official permission and a list of members. Katz asks about prayer and Russian is spoken at the end.

Shapiro says he was taken from Vinnytsya to a large factory in Kyiv, where he worked for some thirty years (?), and that a good reference praised his community work. He says he loved public work, was an idealistic communist, and was at the front during the war.

Shapiro recalls that during the war all officers were called out and told they must join the Communist Party, and he became a member. He mentions commanding a unit that built bridges and says he was given a large sum of money. He shows a small book and a document, partly read aloud in Russian by Kerler, praising him as an engineer and colleague for more than twenty years. Shapiro describes a recommendation for a better-paid post and a dispute about a trip to a place connected with Shevchenko. Kerler then asks about trades in Vinnytsya.

Braverman names her cousins in France and their ages, saying they were four children in her family, too. She recalls relatives she was not allowed to know about because of fear, matzo parcels, and the family's expectation that grandchildren would care for the old. She describes her grandfather, his quiet manner, his shop that was kept secret until 1937, when a regional newspaper wrote that she had not mentioned it on joining the Komsomol, and his cabinet of books and Talmuds. A neighbor's apple cellar and an apple drink are mentioned, and the grandfather's death in the early 1930s (?) is recalled.

Braverman recalls the closing of the Yiddish school in the mid-1930s, with a Ukrainian school taking over after four classes. She speaks of her talks in Moscow and of Yiddish used with a professor. Kerler then asks about Jewish–non-Jewish relations.

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.

Melamed outlines his plans: a book on the Jewish world of old Zhytomyr, a recent article on the early history of the Zhytomyr Jewish community, and a series of archival guides for Ukraine under Project Judaica. He explains why Jewish genealogy is difficult: lost memory under the Soviets, name and registration problems, falsified revision lists and missing records. He says his subjects are mostly the dead, known from gravestones and archives. He says the search interests him more than the results and mentions Natan Eidelman's influence. Kerler asks what drew him to genealogy.

Kipnis describes her Yiddish schooling in Kyiv: school no. 33 on Kuznechna Street, where Yiddish writers and her father visited, and later school no. 60, which she attended from the sixth to the tenth class. She recalls teachers including the literature teacher and director, the closing of Yiddish institutions and the school's conversion to a Russian one, and visits to the Yiddish theater.

Torchinsky describes the Yiddish school in Skvire, school number two, and his first teacher, with an excursion by the river on which he played a prank. He mentions the Yiddish wall newspaper, his learning printed lettering, and drawing banners for Soviet holidays. He names the director Fishman, a geography teacher, and a letter episode involving the director's son. He recalls Yiddish literature taught, including Mottl Peyse by Mordkhe(?) and Itsik Fefer, and recites lines of verse. He reads a poem written as a school pioneer, and notes he went to a Ukrainian technical school in the 1930s.

Torchinsky answers Kerler's questions about his mother lighting Sabbath candles, Sabbath dishes, and what was brought at Purim. He says no one else in the family blessed the candles. Asked about anti-religious campaigns at school, he recalls a printed play against Passover that the school performed. He also recalls a girl who sang and later went to Israel, and says there was no theater in Skvire, only visiting performers and a drama circle.

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.

Derbaremdiker says Passover was observed in his family despite pressure, and that groups from the school were sent to check homes, though the Jews kept silent. He describes matzo from flour, a hidden box of Passover dishes, strict kashrut kept by his mother, and his father's search for hametz. After the war the family baked matzo in Kyiv themselves, and later queued for it. He then recalls a favourite mathematics teacher whose surname was Lemberg.

Derbaremdiker talks about Mendele and Sholem Aleichem in school and at home. He describes how his father kept a collection of Yiddish periodicals from 1912 and later newspapers, and mentions his own articles and another Yiddish teacher. He then recites two of his own poems, one about the cow and the rope, answering Kerler's questions about his father's reading.

Vider answers Kerler's questions about the Yiddish books he read: Mendele's Fishke der krumer and other works, which his father also read aloud, Sholem Aleichem, Shmuel Gordon's booklets after the war, and Peretz. He says he took books to the mine, and that Sovetish Heymland came after the war. He adds that after the war he was afraid of the Communists and did not keep a siddur at home. Some details about his mother's eyes are contradicted by Kerler's question.

Vider tells how in 1940 (?) he crossed the border and in Kizel, a mining town, was left alone in the house by a woman who traveled to Belarus. A neighbor, a pharmacist, asked him to alter a coat, and in exchange taught him Russian from a primer, so that he learned to read and write. He worked for ten years in the mines, then did many jobs, including locksmith, carpenter and electrician. Kerler asks questionnaire words from this time: the word for a quilt or bedspread, Yiddish zikhl/tikhl, tvarik, and the residue left after making butter.

Vider talks about his working life: he worked about twenty-six years in a coal mine near Chervonohrad, ten of them underground, and nineteen years as a mechanic on large refrigeration units producing ice. He says he came to the Soviet Union in 1940 aged seventeen, went to the Urals for mine work, and later worked in Turkmenistan in the oil industry until 1961, when he came to Kolomyya. He says he was valued as a Communist labour model and was asked to return after retiring.

Krotsh describes being drafted and sent to Baku, where he was cured of illness and worked hard on little bread. He tells of being registered as a tailor, an argument over the order to stop working, and meeting a Jewish couple, the Levitskys, who gave him work. He also recalls a Jewish woman's home with portraits of Lenin and Stalin and says he became a well-known tailor there.

Krotsh recalls a Soviet song with a toast about the Revolution and the Constitution, and answers questions about the Birobidzhan press. He then discusses non-Jewish Romanians in Ştefăneşti who spoke Yiddish. Jewish and non-Jewish children played football and kept holidays together. He also explains the meaning of the name Maccabi.

Vider speaks about working as a tailor in the 1950s alongside others, and Kerler asks whether the others were Jewish. Before leaving, Kerler asks what more Vider wants to say about Iași, Sighet or Hîrlău, and the formal interview ends with thanks.

Skop describes his eight classes at the Yiddish school and the writers taught there, among them Sholem Aleichem, Itsik Fefer, Abraham Goldenberg and David Bergelson. He recalls Sholem Aleichem plays staged in the local Yiddish theater. The school was closed in 1937 and he moved to a Russian school, finishing ten classes with no Yiddish or Hebrew taught. He says antisemitism began to show then, and that the war began when he was fifteen or sixteen.

A man named Groysman, from Tarashcha, is introduced and speaks some Yiddish about his move to Korsun' in the 1950s (?) and later departure. The rest is a tour of the museum of the association of Jewish shtetls. A Russian-speaking guide explains exhibits: old family photographs, famous natives such as the Tverskys of the Chernobyl dynasty, writers including Ivan Kulyk, Shimen Dobin and Itsik Fefer, descendants of Mendel Beilis, and the 1919 Jewish self-defense unit of Korsun' with a saber from Kotovsky's cavalry. Other exhibits are pogrom committee papers, a 1926 Berdychiv prayer book, Yiddish-Russian documents from Jewish village soviets, a Jewish school open from 1924 to 1938, family silver, a gefilte fish mold, a clockmaker's tools, a mezuzah and handwritten calendars. The guide also describes how the museum was assembled with American help after the association was founded in 1993. Kerler asks about scanning and clock terminology, and at the end the guide shows books by Poroshenko and Malka Pen.

Groysman talks about his work after the war. He worked as a watchmaker like his father, later became a foreman, and says he never met antisemitism. He moved to Korsun in the early 1950s. After the war he took a course in massage and worked in a hospital, and he worked in his father's workshop after his father's death. He went to Tarashcha, met the girl he had known before the war, and married her.

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

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 says he studied at a Romanian gymnasium and learned his Yiddish largely from home and from Sovetish Heymland, which he distributed in L'viv. He tells of meeting the magazine's secretary Shuster and the editor Lizen (?), who urged subscribers to bring in new readers. Some people suspected him of being a spy for the KGB or Zionists. He also mentions a book by Lizen translated into German and his trips to Hamburg.

Khonigsman speaks mostly in Russian about the later stages of his career: Drohobych until 1973, the Academy of Sciences in L'viv, two years in Ternopil, and the Polytechnic Institute in L'viv from 1976. He shows his publications and explains that he was an economic historian relying on archives and avoided attacking Zionism. After the Soviet collapse he turned to Jewish history, and Kerler asks about this work.

Khonigsman talks about his friend, the Soviet writer Alexander Lizen. Lizen was a bookkeeper in the army, learned Yiddish from a dictionary and mixed Russian into his speech. He had a Ukrainian wife, and in 1949 he urged Khonigsman to write a letter offering help to Israel, which Khonigsman declined. He then recalls a later Israeli publication and compares his own Yiddish with Lizen's. He ends with remarks on Lizen's character.

Khonigsman answers Kerler's question about the difference between Polish and Soviet Jews. He says he never met a dishonest Polish Jew and gives examples of Polish-Jewish colleagues who refused bribes. He says he himself never took bribes or favours in his years at the institute and points to the Ukrainian nationalists' writings about him. Much is in Russian and Polish.

Meler talks about the prewar Jewish community in L'viv, its hospital and orphanage, and a holy site tied to a woman called the Golden Rose. He describes how Khrushchev had the old cemetery destroyed to make a market. He tells about an acquaintance who survived the war.

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

Dorfman tells how a monument was built over bones found during factory construction, and how the inscription was in Yiddish and Russian. He recalls the first Jewish demonstration at the time of perestroika, when a thousand people came, and the founding of the Jewish society with ten or twelve people, including the writer Alexander Lizen. He talks about the cemetery's age and lack of space, and shows two old gravestones from Polish times to Kerler.

Brandler recalls seven years at a Polish school and his father's work packing eggs for export to Germany from the Mostiska egg factory. He wanted to be a baker, was steered to cobbling, which he could not do because of a shaking hand, and trained as a tinsmith. Under the Soviets he trained as a tractor driver in the village of Pokhortsi (?) in the Sambir district and stayed on as instructor until June 1941. He also speaks of Ukrainian neighbors and good relations with them.

Brandler continues about his work among villagers, saying he never carried a gun and no one bothered him. After retiring he worked a few more years as an insurance agent. He gives an example of a life-insurance case that ended with the widow collecting the payment, and Kerler asks the terms for insurance and for a well.

Leibel addresses his observance in Soviet times, when he fasted on Yom Kippur and took off as much time from work as possible. He worked at one institution for 43 years and was kept on after reaching seventy; after retirement he went to synagogue daily. A Ukrainian friend warned him he was being watched, but Leibel regards the synagogue as a piece of the Land of Israel.

Shvardovskaia, asked by Kerler to speak of the war, describes first the Polish period, then two years of Soviet rule with closed shops, and the arrival of the Germans in 1941. Jews were confined as in a ghetto, forced to hand over valuables, and the first skilled Jewish worker was killed at once. She describes Jews thrown into pits and shot, her escape and flight into the woods, and a Ukrainian acquaintance who hid her in an attic, where her father and a sister joined her for three months. Later they hid for a year in the forest, fed at night by Ukrainians, escaped a second shooting, moved between villages, and finally joined Russian partisans. She mentions that her father and brother were killed; the details are unclear in the transcript.

Lemster asks about Jewish life in Luts'k after the war. She says Jews gathered in a private apartment on Sabbath and holidays, there was no synagogue, a man was imprisoned, and she fasted on Yom Kippur. Few knew when holidays fell; matzo came from Israel. Questions about minyans and schools follow, and Lemster asks for a Jewish story or anecdote, which she cannot recall.

Lemster and Kerler explain the project to Shoikhetman: Indiana University has been documenting Yiddish speakers for five years, and they leave him a Russian-language program sheet. The talk turns to a Yiddish book in Russian translation, probably Sholem Aleichem, and to postwar Soviet editions, including the 1947–1948 closures after the Jewish Antifascist Committee.

Kaplan argues that Jews should not be pushed to emigrate from Ukraine, Russia or Georgia, and criticizes the Joint and the Sochnut. He asks why Jewish research is left to Americans, and says that visiting leaders and Jewish organizations should come to the small towns to see the truth. He recounts conversations with Kerler about politics, communism and the Zionist aim of bringing Jews to Israel. He also complains about leaders in Kyiv and Vinnytsya who give little help, about unfair distribution of trips abroad, and about corruption in the Jewish movement. He describes the Sunday school run by a teacher from Vinnytsya who teaches Hebrew, history and tradition. He gives his parents' origins in Ozaryntsi and Slydy and says his paternal grandfather served as prayer leader and later as cantor. He mentions the burning of Jews at Ozaryntsi in the war, his twin brother, his army service from 1951 and the army service of his son and grandchildren. He recalls studying with the melamed Tseburskii for four years, and says he later forgot Yiddish in the army and relearned speaking it in the community.

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).

Vider tells Hasidic jokes about a rebbe, including the wife who complains to the rebbe about her husband, and a poor Jew who writes a letter to God asking for money for Passover. He discusses the Zionist youth movements (Mizrachi as religious, Betar mixed, Shomer Hatzair less observant), communists and Bundists in the town. Asked about Yiddish books before the war, he says there were many, including Bialik and Sholem Aleichem. He ends with another joke and a remark about his own sleeping arrangements.

Kerler asks about Jewish life in Mykolayiv in 1940, and Tzentziper says many Jews lived there, some well off with houses and animals. There were Hasidim and three synagogues, some of which were closed after the war while others remained, and the modern synagogue with its mikveh is discussed. A shoykhet also continued after the war, and S2 gives Russian comments on the date of the slaughterer. Lemster asks about writers and Kerler about a singer. Tzentziper then tells of Golda Meir's visit in 1948–49 (?), when people gathered to be sent to Israel, and she rather urged them to go to Birobidzhan (?).

Kenin estimates that about six thousand Jews lived in Nizhyn before the war, working as tailors, shoemakers, furriers and other craftsmen. He recalls amateur Yiddish theater at the club, including a Sholem Aleichem play, and puts the closing of synagogues around 1937–38, though not all were shut. He says Jews went to a Jewish bathhouse with a mikveh, which he knows of through his mother.

Listengurt compares conditions for the rich Jewish refugees with those of ordinary Jews in evacuation. A second speaker asks about the postwar period. She talks about a man named Aleksandrovich (?) who came from Romania, and about Gromyko as Stalin's foreign minister, whose wife was Jewish.

Listengurt talks about her sister, who entered the Odesa medical institute and studied there after the war; she resisted party pressure to become chief physician. She recalls evacuation to the North Caucasus, where the family used false non-Jewish names. Kerler asks about the sister's wartime service as a medical assistant, which reached Romania; the sister is no longer alive.

Cherner answers questions about family, memorial days and holidays; he says there was little Jewish observance in his home. Memorial customs, the cemetery and food are touched upon. He says Soviet policy removed Jewish culture, magazines and theaters, and that one had to join the Party to live. He recalls a Soviet Yiddish editorial office and writing in Yiddish.

Brodsky recalls sports as a boy, football and basketball, and the clubs he went to, where Russian was spoken. He knows of Zionists and Communists in Odesa, and says chess and cards were not played for money. After the war he worked for fifty years as a driver, in a taxi. Kerler and Lemster ask about synagogue-going in postwar Odesa; the passage ends in a recogniser loop.

Feldman says he studied until 1923, and that the family worked land at Yanova Rudnya. After the revolution, in 1928 (?), the landowners' land was divided among the Christians, and he was given a plot at Skrebelychi, which he worked. Later a kolkhoz was formed, which he joined for a few years, and no Jewish trade remained.

Feldman tells how he was sent from the kolkhoz for about six months to a course in Korosten (?) to train for cooperative trade, then worked as a storehouse manager and in a large purchasing office until he retired. Kerler asks whether he studied before or after the war.

Turovskaia says a sukkah was built in the corridor at her father's house, where the family ate. Answering Kerler, she says there was anti-religious propaganda in Soviet schools, even Yiddish ones, with informers, though believers kept faith. She recalls the war years in Siberia, the death of her grandmother in 1943 (?), and her trips to Mongolia (?).

Zak says her father was observant, put on tefillin and a tallit, and went to a small synagogue for workers. She names seven synagogues in the town before the war and recalls the street named for them. She says the Yiddish school closed in 1938, that the synagogues were closed earlier, and that she attended an anti-religious campaign in school (?). She answers questions put by Kerler and other speakers.

Zak recites a few lines of a Yiddish song and says she knows many and could sing until midnight. Kerler asks about Pioneer songs and she says she was a Pioneer and Komsomol member. She says there were Yiddish songs in the Yiddish school.

Zak says there were anti-religious posters and propaganda at school. In the 1930s, around 1935, there was less matzo at Passover. Kerler asks her about the library she set up after the war.

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.

Fish continues the rhymed Yiddish–Hebrew word list, naming pairs such as dove, fire, water and meat, and ends with a toast. He says he learned it from his mother, who died in the war, and that Soviet life made people forget much of what they knew. He adds that he did not feel badly under the Soviets, being a chief bookkeeper.

Fish tells of Jewish life in Rivne after liberation: few local Jews survived, and the community was made up of returnees and newcomers from small towns. A Jewish cultural organization named for Osher Shvartsman was founded in 1989, rented a room in the tailors' synagogue, and in 1991 registered a religious community and had the building returned. He was its bookkeeper and has been gabbai and cantor since the mid-1990s. He explains that younger leaders of the other Jewish organizations and the Hesed do not attend, and that only three community members are native Rivne Jews.

Fish compares prewar Jewish weddings with Soviet-era and later ones. Before the war a big wedding had hired klezmorim and cooks, someone to greet the guests, and a proper chuppah, whereas after the war weddings were held in restaurants, often in Russian. He mentions his brother's and sisters' marriages but cannot recall the title of the greeter.

Kurliandchik says Novohrad-Volyns'kyy had a large synagogue and about ten small ones, all closed in 1934. After that older men gathered for a minyan on Sabbath in a large private house, whose owner he remembers. Kerler adds that in the 1960s communities needed twenty married men to get permission to hold services. After the war a synagogue was set up again in the town.

Litvak says she was not taught prayers because her parents were afraid, and her mother covered the windows when she prayed and told the children to tell no one. Kerler links this to the Pavlik Morozov affair.

Shteingart says there were Bundists and Jewish communists in Kovel', and jokes that the Bundists wanted much the same as the communists.

She did not light Sabbath candles, since she had no opportunity: she worked on Sabbaths and holidays. She still says that a holiday is a holiday. Her mother baked with matzo meal for Passover, and her grandfather Alter used to say that whatever they are, they are Jews.

She describes the three synagogues in her town: a large one with a women's section, and two small ones that poorer people attended. She and Kerler discuss when they were closed by the Soviet authorities.

Fish tells of learning Russian and passing external exams for the tenth class. He then graduated from a Soviet institute in accounting and worked as a senior bookkeeper, finally chief accountant of a trust of canteens.

Kleiner describes the Jewish school: first lessons in a borrowed room, then the community built a floor and later a second one. The director was Jacobson, and she names teachers including Reizman, Gershman, Milshteyn, Brenner and Fok, and a German-language teacher. She lists the subjects and the language of instruction, the Yiddish literature taught, anti-religious teaching, Pioneer activities, school meals and the neighbour teacher Brenner, who taught her to read Yiddish at four.

Kleiner answers questions about a Jewish library in town and the difference between a rav and a rebbe. She discusses plurals and the terms for Litvaks, Polish Jews and Galicians, and how Jews from other regions spoke. She says that anti-religious mock trials and Komsomol checks on synagogue-going and baking were held; she says there were no Hasidim in Shepetivka. She also describes the rabbi acting as judge in a Jewish court.

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.

The second voice says Kleiner served in the Far East, returned and was called up again when war began. He is now a retired major. After the war he worked in the post office, as did his wife and daughter. He says he never joined the Party, the Komsomol or the Pioneers.

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.

Liberzon talks about the 1930s, when the campaign against religion began and her rabbi grandfather was sent away. She mentions the Polish border near Slavuta and the passports needed to reach it. He was sent to Zhytomyr, returned after the 1936 constitution, and stayed until the war.

Liberzon remembers attending the Yiddish school for five classes and being told in 1941 to buy Russian textbooks as Jewish schools were closed. She recalls anti-religious agitation: an anti-religious meeting poster on the eve of Passover, and a teacher giving her sister money to buy a roll. After evacuation to Krasnoyarsk she attended a Russian school, where a teacher made an issue of pork. Russian remarks by others interrupt.

Liberzon says that during the war the family was in Siberia while Jewish theaters and schools were closed across the country. Her father was highly respected, and the Slavuta synagogue was the only one in the country not closed, opened at the end of 1947, after the war. Kerler asks about the permit required, then turns the conversation back to her mother's side of the family.

Liberzon and Kerler discuss her uncle's Hebrew learning, which almost no one knew about until the 1980s. She says he hid it for fear of the authorities. After his wife's death he left his main work and took on school jobs. Kerler then asks about Yiddish literature teaching at school.

Liberzon recalls being a guest in Chernivtsi in the late 1940s with her father's brother. She describes the Yiddish theater that moved from Kyiv after the war and the Ukrainian artists who lodged there, with Russian talk of the closing of the Moscow Yiddish theater.

Yakuta recalls the Passover seder at home, with her father reclining on a cushion on a bed and the children asking the questions. Kerler asks about the four questions, the Haggadah and the name of the bed. She then says the Yiddish school was closed before the war and made into a Ukrainian school. According to her, Jews accepted this because their children needed to advance. The second woman adds that a Yiddish soviet existed in Teplyk in the 1920s.

Asked about Ilya Ehrenburg and Shloyme Mikhoels, Gliazer identifies Ehrenburg as a Soviet writer and Mikhoels as the Yiddish theatre director who led Jewish wartime contacts and was later killed by Stalinists. Kerler asks about Yiddish newspapers and Soviet Yiddish writers; Gliazer remembers the newspaper Der emes and the name Fefer.

Golfeld talks about religious life after the war: services held secretly in a private house for a fee, out of fear of the authorities, and matzo baked in secret. The young did not attend and the old people urged them to learn from them.

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

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

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.

Shveibush, with a second man adding comments, talks about the village of Horyshkivka and its Jewish kolkhoz named after Stalin, where his mother was a team leader with six children. Kerler asks about Jewish holidays kept quietly in secret, about food such as gefilte fish, and about his father's amateur theatre. Much of the talk concerns the village as Sholem Aleichem's Kasrilevke, the Yiddish stage production of 'Tsigele', pigs on the kolkhoz, Simchat Torah customs and kerosene lighting; the passage ends with thanks and goodbyes.

Vainer-Shpak gives personal information (born in Vinnytsya in 1921; the address of her prewar home) and names her family: her father Froyke, a Bratslav Hasid, her mother Dobtse from Pryluky, brothers, sisters and grandparents. She tells of her Jewish model school in Vinnytsya, her studies as a dental specialist and the assignment to a sugar factory village in 1940, then her journey toward Odessa on foot at the start of the war and her return, hiding and survival in Vinnytsya, with her husband. She also talks about her parents' religious life, Sabbath, Purim and Hanukkah food and customs, the synagogues of Vinnytsya, and a story about Haman and Esther.

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

Lev and Pesia discuss current Ukrainian politics and the Great Hunger of 1932–33. They argue about how the famine is described and blame the Soviet grain requisitions. Pesia also says kulaks hid grain in cellars.

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

Kerler and a local man (S3) discuss the buildings of Uman' as seen from the deck: the choral synagogue, a plant (zavod) on the site of buildings from Reb Nahman's time, and a large building opposite. They mention Gonta, Zheleznyak and Khmelnytsky. Kerler asks whether Jews went to the grave in Soviet times and is told that they did not know of it.

Answering Kerler, Waldman describes Reb Nahman's grave in Soviet times and today. After the war there was a small building at the site, and she recalls tombstones and a wall. She describes the pilgrimage of Hasidim, with thousands coming each Rosh Hashanah and a new multi-storey kloyz being built. Before perestroika people came quietly, because religion was controlled. She also mentions the director of a tourist organization for Hasidim and her trips abroad.

At the closed Bershad' synagogue, the local guide explains that it is the only surviving mud-brick (clay) synagogue in the world, that it was called the grandmother's synagogue, and that Soviet authorities never closed it. He recalls a rabbi in the 1950s, perhaps named Lipman. He also describes the Jewish gymnasium building (begun 1916) and the later schools in it. He estimates that only about 30–40 real Jews remain and discusses possible Yiddish speakers. He explains his family link to the Oystrakh family and to a Gvinter woman who died in Israel. He recalls childhood Sabbath visits to the synagogue and the Jewish population in the 1979 census. Kerler asks about his birthplace.

Chirkova describes applying to a technical institute and meeting Stalin (?) or an official about it, and how gifts were given to a duty person to get things done. She says God records everything a person does, speaks of a trial of her factory director over goods sent to the front, and mentions Uzbekistan and her parents' death there. The account is difficult to follow.

Furer returns to Kryzhopil' after the war, finding his mother and one brother. As a Communist he becomes a shop director and a cooperative chairman. His wife dies, and he later moves to Vinnytsya at about 60 where he works at the railway hospital.

Furer talks about life today and about the political situation in Israel and the war there. He explains that after 1948 a sister of an acquaintance sent him invitations to emigrate from Romania, but he did not want to go, since he had been a communist and life had not been bad. He talks about a grandson who studied at a polytechnic and is not yet married.

Barshteyn describes the synagogue for Levites in Sharhorod: the shames lived on the ground floor, a cantor and a kohen were present, and the women prayed in a separate room, hearing through a window, with women's prayer readers. She says the synagogues were closed by the state after the war, in the 1950s, and that praying and Yiddish were forbidden.

Sobol says that in Soviet times people were not allowed to pray freely, while her husband came from a Bukovinian Jewish life. She talks about cooking for her husband and about ritual slaughter: there was a shoykhet even under the Soviets, but later none, and she or her husband slaughtered chickens themselves. Lemster then asks whether she has children.

Sobol speaks about her children and a son who caused her trouble, and about her husband, who spoke a different Yiddish and no Russian. In answer to Kerler she names Chernivtsi and nearby places in Bukovina as his birthplace, and says a book records it. She mentions the tsadik (a "good Jew") of that shtetl, and Lemster then asks about Yiddish theatre.

Tsodikovich recalls a tailor's son in Kopayhorod who played the accordion. He says Yiddish songs were not sung in public, only among friends at night. They discuss the town's Jews after the war, and Yarmolyntsi, where few Jews remained. He mentions a woman from Kopayhorod now in Germany and a barber who cut his hair as a child. Kerler asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish: a classmate, a neighbor named Misha, and a teacher of Ukrainian who speaks it very well. They also discuss a Jewish school director, Weinstein, and the Chabad or Skverer rabbi, then Vinnytsya today, antisemitism and politics. Part of this is in Russian.

Kerler asks why Vinnytsya needs a Jewish mayor or official. Tsodikovich answers that people chose him, that he is doing a great deal of good, and that people are ungrateful. In part he speaks Russian. They also discuss earlier Jewish figures in Vinnytsya, a former deputy, and whether the present official is Jewish. Tsodikovich and Kerler disagree about whether there is antisemitism in Vinnytsya. Tsodikovich says people feel it, while Kerler says they do not.

Khazin talks about his mother's mother, who traded in pots and fed a pig before the war and was buried alive by the Germans. He answers Lemster's question about antisemitism in the army and later, recalling being asked to join the Party in Budapest and a fight at a technical school in Chelyabinsk, after which he left. He mentions his job in industrial supply, a telephone he believes was tapped, and a daughter and a son Boris in Israel (the daughter's married name is unclear in the transcript).

Shpitz recalls how, in Soviet times, he had to hide letters to America from the neighbours because his wife's sister lived there. He says he is 87 and bears the effects of the war in his legs. Kerler asks about his front: he served on the Belorussian front and in Poland, and in a tank battalion, but cannot recall the name of a city.

Geller talks about Hanukkah goose cracklings and about those unwilling versus unable to observe, then describes baking matzo himself. He explains the roles of the rollers, the kneader, the perforator and the person who puts the matzo in the oven (the "shiber"). He distinguishes hand matzo from machine matzo, and says matzo was baked in Soviet times near an old synagogue. The passage ends with Kerler asking a few further word questions.

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

Asked whether there was electricity, Antsis recalls the great joy when it was first installed. She retells her mother's story of the local man who understood electricity and wired the town, and whom people paid with eggs and butter to repair it. She mentions he was Jewish and an early Komsomol member, with a name that sounds like Shirovski (?).

Geller says people dared not speak out against the stone-throwing. When the hunger began in 1932, the synagogue was closed.

Nibulskiy answers Kerler's questions about Purim before the war. He describes masks, gifts of food parcels (shalakhmones) and the Purim bearers who went around. A beggar and his family are mentioned, and children were given small coins. His older brother played the fiddle, and his daughter is an artist. Purim plays are discussed, and Nibulskiy says the Soviet authorities stopped them. He adds that his stories came from his grandfather and father.

Answers Kerler's questions about weddings. Nibulskiy says certain older wedding customs belonged to his parents' time, and that he remembers cookies dipped in wine at a wedding. Under Soviet rule Jewish weddings were not allowed. He recalls how matzo was baked at Passover and Kerler asks how Passover is said in his dialect.

Nibulskaia talks about Jewish life in Korosten. There were many Jews and a large Yiddish school with parallel classes, and a few Jews remain today. She describes being a pioneer and Komsomol member, and says everything at school was in Yiddish, though no Hebrew was taught.

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.

Nibulskaia recites a school song about the crayfish that refuses to pull. Kerler then asks about holidays under the Soviets, and she says they no longer celebrated them. Kerler asks about anti-clerical songs and a red seder.

Shraibman says the aunt later went to Israel and he stayed. Kerler asks his army rank, and a misunderstanding about the Russian word is cleared up. He discusses Jewish generals in the war and a book on Stalin sent by a friend, saying he does not think Stalin was an antisemite. He explains that an officer had to be a Communist and that he later left the party under Brezhnev.

Asked about the best years of his life, Sandler discusses the Soviet leaders: life was good under Brezhnev, and he also mentions Chernenko and Stalin. They discuss whether Stalin meant to send Jews away and whether things got better after he died. Kerler asks whether he has relatives in America, and he says he has not.

Margolis speaks about language and religion at home. Russian was spoken mostly, with some Yiddish words, and religion was suppressed under Soviet law. He recalls Passover matzo baking, and bringing flour to the synagogue. He then talks about his work, which ended when he became disabled in 1983 (?).

Nibulskaia says that pupils of the Yiddish school were all brought up as nonbelievers. At Passover they marched in the street singing anti-religious songs and shouting against religion, and children's rhymes mocked it. She says she no longer goes to synagogue but believes in God, and Kerler asks how it all looks to her today.