Occupations, crafts, artisans, factories, the occupational structure of the town, working life.
700 passages on 387 tapes, 277 speakers · most often in Chișinău (79), Budapest (53), Kolomyya (35), L'viv (32), Tul'chyn (25), Khmel'nyts'kyy (24)
Rezmovits speaks about his life after the war. He made aliyah and returned to help out his family in 1953. Rezmovits served in the Israeli army and then worked as brick layer in Israel. Rezmovits speaks about his work as laborer and antisemitism he encountered. He then worked as technician until his retirement. Rezmovits raised two sons.
Rezmovits speaks about his life in Israel after the war. He continues to share episodes from his military service and mentions wartime comrades. Rezmovits then addresses his work as brick layer and other construction tasks.
Galambos speaks about prewar Jewish life Vaja, including institutions. He then talks about his yeshiva education. Galambos explains that he spent the first three semesters in Kisvárda, where he studied with a khazer-bokher (repeater). Galambos explains that one semester included four months. In 1938, Galambos returned home and worked as carpenter until 1941. His father took him on as apprentice. Galambos continues that he was drafted into the army and was stationed in Košice, Slovakia, for two months.
Galambos describes his father's work as carpenter and explains occupations of family members.
Galambos talks about his life during World War II. He worked as carpenter in the labor division of the army. Galambos then addresses his life after the war. He returned to Vaja in 1945 and lived there until 1950. Before moving to Budapest in 1974, Galambos lived in Üröm from 1958 to 1959 and then Debrecen. He then speaks about his family and their fate durin World War II, as well as addresses the languages (Hungarian and Yiddish) spoken at home. Galambos has relatives in America and Canada. Galambos attended his grandnephew's bar mitzvah.
Galambos speaks about the contemporary community, before addressing his life after World War II, particularly in Debrecen. 48 30 places lived and work. Galambos then talks about contemporary religious life.
Galambos speaks about prewar Jewish life, including occupations, in Vaja. He points out that the prayer shawls were in the synagogue and not at home.
Smajovics speaks about his before World War II. He attended a Czech school and then began his blacksmith apprenticeship under Hungarian occupation in 1939. When Smajovics's apprenticeship ended in 1942 he moved to Budapest to work in his profession. Smajovics continues that he was "drafted" into the forced labor battalion of the Hungarian army in 1943.
Smajovics speaks about his life during the war in the forced labor battalion of the Hungarian army, stationed in Pest, and then under German occupation in 1944. He states that he worked as locksmith for the Germans, before being deported to Ercsi, Hungary. In Ercsi, Smajovics worked for the Germans during the day and in the evenings he would go around as peddler. He then shares an episode about an encounter with a Czech-speaking German soldier. Smajovics then speaks about his liberation by the Red Army December 1944.
Smajovics speaks about his life after the war and return to his hometown in Transcarpathia with his two brothers. He also shares episodes about the encounter with Red Army soldiers. Smajovics recalls how siblings returned. He continued to work in his profession as blacksmith, before working at a factory in 1947. It was the time of the kolkhozy, he explains. Shortly thereafter, Smajovics moved to Vynohradiv, where he lived until 1978. In Vynohradiv, Smajovics worked as locksmith at a factory between 1949 and 1952. In 1952, Smajovics began working at a small furniture factory, where he worked for one and a half years. He then switched jobs again in 1954, when Smajovics worked at a warehouse for nine years. He then addresses the socio-political conditions in the 1960s. Smajovics was also the head of a parking lot and worked as chauffeur. He moved to Budapest in 1978.
Smajovics addresses prewar Jewish life in Velyka Kopanya. According to him, sixty families lived in his hometown. He then speaks about his life in the late 1930s. Smajovics worked odd jobs, including coach man and field worker.
Smajovics addresses his education, particularly the Czech school. He studied at the secondary school until 1936 and religious school until 1938. In 1938, Smajovics worked in the fields and then started his blacksmith apprenticeship.
Smajovics answers dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish linguistic questionnaire. He then addresses his life in Budapest before and after the war in the late 1970s. He worked there for nine months.
Herbst talks about his life during World War II. He worked as lumberjack and shares his work experiences in different places. In one episode, Herbst describes how he encountered a bear. He also mentions how he saw wolves during his childhood.
Herbst speaks about his work as lumberjack, before speaking about his brothers. Herbst learned to be become a cobbler.
Herbst speaks about the contemporary community. He then addresses his life after the war. Herbst worked as nuclear technician at an institute of physics for forty years. He then talks about contemporary friends and shows newspaper articles.
Gotlieb discusses her family. She also addresses her work after the war. Gotlieb helped out her father after school. After the war, she managed her own business of leather supplying in Sátoraljaújhely, until the expropriation of her business by the Soviet government. Gotlieb then recalls her childhood memories and her mother's observance.
Gotlieb talks about Jewish life before the war, including occupational structure. She also briefly touches upon school performances.
Rezmovits speaks about his life in Debrecen after the war. He worked in the metal business. He then shares an episode when he encountered a Yiddish-speaking Polish family.
Rezmovits discusses Jewish poets and his work as translator into Hungarian.
Herbst speaks about his life after the war. He worked as nuclear technician at an institute of physics. Herbst was married in 1961 and he raised a son. He then provides personal information and speaks about his hometown Bornobash (Yiddish: Berlabashe).
Herbst speaks about his work at a lumbermill between 1938 and 1941. He then addresses his life after the war. He was hospitalized between 1945 and 1951.
Herbst talks about his life and work after the war.
Herbst addresses prewar life in Bornobash. He specifically mentions a non-Jewish friend who substituted for him at work on Sabbath.
Herbst speaks about his life before the war. After his bar mitzvah, he began to work at a lumbermill. He then turns to his life after the war and also mentions his friend Anton Revis, a painter.
Deutsch sings a Purim shpiel in Hungarian about the ghetto. He then speaks about his work after the war. Deutsch was a factory worker for 45 years. After his retirement, he began to teach.
Pearl speaks about his work related to building buses in Russia after the war.
Pearl addresses his liberation. He recalls the moment when the Russian and the German front met. Pearl then speaks about his life after the war and return home via Romania. He moved from Tállya to Budapest and became an engineer.
Pearl again talks about the return of the Mukachever Rebbe and Belzer Rebbe to Budapest in 1942. During that time, Pearl worked at a military factory. He also mentions that he met the Belzer Rebbe again in the Bor forced labor camp, where they held services together.
Pearl talks about his family. His father was also born in Tállya and owned a shop. He then addresses antisemitism in 1938. Pearl explains how his father had to close down his shop and bred rabbits. Pearl sold rabbit hair in the market in Budapest. Pearl's mother was also born in Tállya.
Pearl speaks about his life and education after World War II. Pearl studied at a university and then worked at a patent office. He then speaks about postwar religious life. Pearl's children attended Hebrew School. Pearl then shares an episode when the Party checked upon his family.
Pearl speaks about his life during World War II, specifically his escape from Tállya to Budapest, via Rátka by train in 1941. In Budapest, Pearl worked with machines at a military factory. Pearl then describes his life in Budapest.
Pearl describes his work at a factory in Budapest during the war. Pearl maintains that he never denied his Jewish identity. He then shows family photographs and speaks about his family. Pearl has relatives in America. Pearl also mentions his travels to Austria and Germany.
Gotlieb speaks about her life before the war. She left her hometown in 1934 to find work in Budapest. She then speaks about her family. Gotlieb grew up with three brothers and a sister.
Gotlieb speaks about her life after the war. She lived in Sátoraljaújhely until 1987 and then moved to Budapest, where she worked in the community kitchen. At the age of eigteen, Gotlieb worked at a factory in Budapest.
Gotlieb addresses prewar life in Sátoraljaújhely. In particular, she remembers a visiting priest, who spoke Yiddish. She also addresses the Jewish occupational structure and institutions in town. Gotlieb then describes the local bath house.
Gotlieb speaks about her and her family's life before World War II. She worked at a broom factory in Budapest at the age of eighteen.
Blobshteyn provides personal information and addresses his childhood education. Blobshteyn attended a religious school (cheder) until the age of fourteen. He then did an apprenticeship in a clothing shop from 1937 to 1944.
Blobshteyn speaks about his life after the war. When he returned, he began working as kosher butcher and stayed in this profession for fifty years. He moved to Budapest in 1992. Blobshteyn then addresses his childhood memories, including poverty and relations among Jews and non-Jews.
Blobshteyn describes the work of kosher butchers in town. He then speaks about Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira, who was his mohel, as well as prewar religious life. Blobshteyn describes collective matzo baking in town. He then speaks about contemporary religious life.
Blobshteyn speaks about his life and work after the war. He then speaks about a fellow kosher butcher, who was persecuted and imprisoned for his work.
Blobshteyn shares an episode from his work as kosher butcher after the war. He then talks about his family, who lived in Mukacheve after the war.
Smajovics speaks about his life during World War II. He was sent to a Hungarian forced work camp ("Munka Tabor") within the labor battalion of the Hungarian army, where he reunited with this brother in 1942. Smajovics worked in his profession as blacksmith. He then addresses the reunion with his brother in Israel in 1982, as well as speaks about his family in America and Israel. Smajovics then speaks about his visit to Israel and meeting his family.
Smajovics speaks about his life shortly before the outbreak of World War II. He did a blacksmith apprenticeship and then worked as locksmith in his hometown until 1942. He then speaks about the beginning of World War II and recalls Polish refugees requesting repairs for their wagons. Smajovics also mentions that he studied at a professional school, where he learned Hungarian poems.
Smajovics speaks about his life during the war. He moved to Budapest in 1942 and worked as carpenter, putting in windows. Smajovics explains that he had to return home due to an injury in mid-1943 and after his return, he was deported to Vác. In Vác, Smajovics stayed for three weeks, where he was allotted a forced labor group. Smajovics continues that he worked in oat production.
Smajovics talks about his life before the war and mentions languages spoken at home. He then continues to speak about his life during the war. Smajovics was sent from Vác to the Esztergom forced labor camp. He then describes the living conditions in the camp, where he stayed until the German invasion in March 1944. Smajovics continues that the camp prisoners were led to the local synagogue, where Passover service took place. Under the Germans, Smajovics worked as locksmith in Esztergom and then Budapest. The prisoners were then sent further, he explains, to Ercsi to work at a sugar factory. Smajovics continued to work in his profession as blacksmith. He then addresses fightings between the Red Army and Germans, during which the prisoners were sent to a farmstead in the direction of Budapest.
Smajovics speaks about his liberation by the Red Army and encounters with Jewish soldiers. Smajovics returned home approximately two weeks later. He then speaks about his return and living conditions in 1944. Smajovics worked at a mill. Smajovics then speaks about the return of his family.
Smajovics speaks about his life after the war. He established his own workshop and was married in 1946. Smajovics he raised two daughters. In the 1950s, Smajovics moved to Vynohradiv and worked as locksmith and clerk in a warehouse. He also mentions that he was imprisoned in Uzhhorod for two and half years.
Smajovics speaks about his life after the war, when he was released from prison. He worked as the head of a mechanic team for cars in Vynohradiv.
Smajovics speaks about his life and work after the war. He also worked as chauffeur. He then speaks about daily life in in the 1960s and mentions opportunities to make extra money. Smajovics moved to Budapest in 1978.
Smajovics addresses his best moments in life and work during the Soviet period. He also speaks about his family. Smajovics continued to work for six and a half years after his retirement.
Herbst discusses his childhood memories, including education and work. He shares an episode from his work at a lumbermill.
Herbst speaks about his work as cobbler, before the German occupation in 1944. He then returns to childhood memories and answers questions about cultural terminology.
Reti addresses food custom, in particular gefilte fish. He recalls the "fish yid" who sold fish every week in the surrounding villages.
Reti speaks about prewar Jewish life in the region. In particular, he describes cities he visited before the war, including Nyíregyháza, Debrecen and Kisvárda. Reti also addresses peddlers.
Reti speaks about his life after the war in Debrecen. He moved in with his two brothers. Reti was a businessman for the government. He then recalls how is father passed away in 1939.
Samadi speaks about his life today. He then continues to talk about his education and life before the war. After Samadi attended a Talmud Torah school, he studied at a yeshiva in Tiszaeszlár 47:19 for five semesters. After his yeshiva education, Samadi became a baker and locksmith. After the war, he was a merchant and then worked at a sanatorium.
Samadi speaks about his life during the war. He states that he was not recognized as Jewish by German soldiers when he worked at a hotel.
Samadi speaks about his life and work before the war in Nyírkáta (Yiddish: Gobe) 59:07 and Bököny as baker.
Goronvalgy provides personal information. He then talks about life before the war. Goronvalgy lived in Budapest and Hajdúbagos 41:29, where he started working as tailor apprentice at fourteen. Goronvalgy left for Budapest at 18, where he was drafted for his military service. He explains that after two years of service, he returned home and continued his work as tailor. Goronvalgy lived in Israel for one year in 1948 and built roads.
Reti speaks about his life and work after the war. He returned to his hometown Rohod. He recalls how his non-Jewish boss allowed him to observe Sabbath.
Galambos addresses prewar occupational structure in Jewish Vaja. He also mentions the local wine production, before talking about prewar Shavuot and Sabbath food customs.
Galambos chants the prayer for blessing of the new month. He also addresses other prayers and speaks about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure. Galambos maintains that there were no wealthy Jews in town.
The second part of the recording is a formal interview with Malka Zelikovna Altman, nee Bluvshteyn, recorded in Bălți. She was born 1921 in Bălți. Altman provides personal information and talks about Jewish life before the war in Pervomaiscoe, Moldova. She recalls the kosher butcher and Avreymele, the mohel, the local fur factory, and Lipson’s mill.
Altman briefly addresses her life during the war, before she talks about her family. She raised two children. On the way to evacuation, she was thrown off the train and lost one ear. She then recalls life during the Soviet period. Before the war, Altman learned with a tailor. She and mother worked at the fur factory after the war.
Mundrian recalls an antisemitic agitation in form of posters in churches in 1939. The community, however, was not harmed and they celebrated a happy Purim. Dzigifker worked in a factory as a service desk employee before the war.
Bukshpun discusses prewar holiday celebrations, in particular Sabbath and Passover. He then talks about Jewish occupations. His uncle was a tailor and Bukshpun remembers how his uncle worked on sewing machines.
Bukshpun answers questions about cultural terminology. He then talks about his family and their life after the war, before he discusses life today. He lost ten family members. Bukshpun received a medal for his work as a veteran 38:15. After the war, Bukshpun worked odd jobs, such as foreman for four years, for a supplier, and chauffeur (38:30). Bukshpun raised four children. His son lives in Israel and his daughters, who married non-Jews, live in Ukraine. He met his wife in the concentration camp and got married in 1948.
Reizman talks about her life before the war. She worked in a sewing factory. Reizman then talks about games, she played as a child, before she addresses prewar Jewish life, in particular Sabbath celebrations.
Reizman remembers non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, before she discusses Jewish occupations and culture before the war. Reizman recalls a wedding and aspects of prewar religious life. She then answers a number of questions about cultural terminology.
Reizman talks about her life during World War II. She first evacuated to Tiraspol, Moldova, where she stayed with fellow Jews for a month. She then evacuated further to a town eighteen kilometers from Rostov, Russia, and stayed there for two months. Reizman continues that as the front drew closer and she reached Rostov, her family could not find transportation. They had to evacuate further on foot and walked eighteen kilometers to the next train station, where they got on a train to Makhachkala, Russia. Reizman describes her family’s journey. Her family stayed there for one month, until sent further to work on a kolkhoz. Reizman describes their home on the kolkhoz. They lived there during the winter. The following summer, her family evacuated further to Buynaksk, Russia. In Buynaksk, they worked in a canned food factory until the end of the war. She then returned to Tighina with her older sister.
The tape is a continuation of formal interview with Beila Naftulevna Reizman. Reizman talks about her life after the war, after she returned to Tighina. Three of her brothers died at the front. She explains that her home was destroyed and non-Jews stole her family’s possessions. Reizman rented out a place from her neighbor for two years. When Reizman began working at the 2:09, her and her sister were given an apartment.
The tape is a formal interview with Meyer Khaimovich Furman, born 1925 in Bălți, and his wife Tsipora Yankelevna Furman, born 1934 in Serbeshty. Meyer provides personal information and talks about his family. His father Chaim was born in Yarmolyntsi*, Ukraine and worked as a contract laborer for leather workers. Meyer grew up with one brother and a sister. After the war, Meyer was a leather worker.
Meyer talks about prewar Jewish life and occupations, as well as mentions non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. Meyer then discusses his profession as a leather worker. He learned and worked with his father before the war. Meyer describes how he made a cap with ear flaps. Meyer briefly addresses prewar cultural and Hasidic life, before he talks about how people went to see the rebbe of Stefanesti with a coachman. Meyer went to see the rebbe of Rîbnita Chaim Zanvil (ben Mosha) Abramowitz after the war. He also remembers postwar Yiddish theater.
Tsipora talks about her education. She only attended a Romanian/Russian school for two years before the war. After the war, Tsipora completed ten years of schooling and worked as a librarian 7:03. Tsipora discusses her childhood memories and holiday celebrations, in particular Sabbath and Chanukah. Tsipora then recalls Passover celebrations when she danced on the street with the religious teacher (melamed) Berl. Her brother studied with Berl in religious school (cheder). Tsipora maintains that studying with melamed Berl was more expensive than with melamed Hershl.
Semyon talks about his work before the war. After graduating from school, Semyon worked at a mill until 1940. He then worked for the Executive Committee of the District Soviet of People's Deputies in Lipcani until 1941.
Semyon talks about his work as president of two kolkhozy (for four and sixteen years) after the war. Specifically, he addresses how he was accepted as a Jew and antisemitic stereotypes during the war.
Semyon lists his military decorations. He states that the received sixteen different medals. He then talks more about his work on the kolkhoz. He graduated from an economic institute.
Tatyana briefly speaks about her life during the war. She evacuated with her mother. They then speak about Jewish life before the war, in particular occupational structure.
Kalussky speaks about the local fire department. He then speaks about his life after the war. He was a merchant. He then addresses prewar Ukrainian Jewish history. In particular, Kalussky talks about the assassination of Symon Petliura by Sholom Schwartzbard.
Goldberg talks about her family and prewar Jewish life in Călărași. Her mother worked odd jobs to support the family after her father died. Golderg states that she began working at the age of eleven.
Goldberg speaks about prewar Jewish life and her childhood memories. She then talks about her life after the war. She got married in 1949. She explains how she met her husband. During the war, Goldberg had medical trainding with the Red Cross and then worked in a hospital during and after the war.
Goldberg speaks about her life during the war. Her family evacuated on foot from her hometown to Orhiv. Goldberg continues that they crossed the Dniester river and worked on a state farm (sovkhoz) in Ukraine. According to Goldberg, as soon as the Germans drew closer, they evacuated further to the Stalingrad region, where they stayed for ten months. In Stalingrad, her family worked at a military factory. She continues that as soon as Stalingrad was bombed, her family evacuated further to the east 41:49. Goldberg and her mother worked in a hospital. Her sister died in evacuation.
Goldberg discusses her family's observance and prewar occupational structure. She then speaks about life today.
Goldberg speaks about her work after the war. After the war, she took classes in Bălți for four years to become a medical assistant. In this profession, she worked for forty-five years in a hospital. Goldberg then speaks about her family.
Roif talks about contemporary Jewish life and financial support. He also addresses his work in community service and the relationship between the community and the Romanian state.
Roif discusses his childhood memories. He explains how his father arranged transportation to the neighboring village, where Shraybman lived, to invite him for Sabbath celebrations at Roif's home. He then addresses his father's financial support of the local community and describes prewar Jewish life and occupational structure in Duruitoarea.
Roif discusses his life and work after the war. He ran a kolkhoz in Duruitoarea for twenty years, where he built a chicken factory. He talks about the workers and describes his achievements. Roif left the kolkhoz in 1976.
Farber speaks about his work as performer.
Shmid speaks about her life after the war, after she returned to Chişinău. Shmid worked at a hat factory. Shmid's parents died in evacuation and her siblings returned from evacuation. One of her brothers immigrated to America before the war.
Shpitalnik addresses her childhood memories and education. She attended a Romanian school at the age of six and took private French lessons. Her family evacuated to Bukhara, Uzbekistan. She then addresses her life after the war. Shpitalnik studied French philology at the Chernivtsi university and she was married in 1951. After Shpitalnik graduated from university, she worked at a village school, teaching English and French for five years. She then found a job in Chişinău as translator at the library of the Medical Institute, where she worked for 34 years. Shpitalnik then became the head of a department, where she published journals. In the last fifteen years, Shpitalnik has worked in the local Jewish library of the Kultur-lige. She has published several books on Jewish Moldova, as well as a calendar.
Shpitalnik speaks about her life and work after World War II, as well as her return to Chişinău. She moved to Chernivtsi for university studies soon after her return. Shpitalnik then speaks about her husband's work.
Shpitalnik talks about postwar religious life. She states that the only synagogue was closed down in the 1960s. She also addresses traditional weddings with performers. Shpitalnik then speaks about prewar Jewish occupational structure in Chişinău, particularly doctors and teachers.
Shpitalnik speaks about contemporary Yiddish cultural life and her work. She then speaks about her life today.
Mester addresses prewar Passover celebrations and describes how she stole the afikoman. She then speaks about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure, in her home village. According to Mester, seven families lived in Stolniceni.
Tkach speaks about her studies and work. She graduated from the Musicology Department of the Chişinău Conservatory in composition in 1952 and then pursued graduate studies in Moscow. She then returned to Chişinău to teach at the Conservatory. Tkatch then discusses her childhood memories of Lozova, as well as her family.
Tkach speaks about her family and how her father taught her how to play fiddle and piano. She then speaks about her life and education after the war. Tkach also speaks about her work and Soviet Jewish colleagues. She states that she began composing Jewish music in 1989 and has written more than forty pieces of different genres.
Bengelsdorf addresses the postwar Stalinist terror in the late 1940s. He recalls the burning of Yiddish books in 1949. Bengelsdorf then addresses his work after graduation from the conservatory. In Chişinău, he worked as pianist and concertmaster at the theater/ opera house. He then worked a instructor at the Chişinău music institute until 1991. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Bengelsdorf began his activities in the advancement of Yiddish culture, together with Boris Sandler and Moisei Lemster.
Bengelsdorf addresses his childhood and friends in Birobidzhan. He recalls spending time at the Yiddish theater. Bengelsdorf then talks about his contemporary work and performances. He also discusses Jewish and Russian composers. Bengelsdorf also addresses Tkach's compositions.
Lipovetskiy provides personal information and speaks about his work. He is a trained chauffeur, locksmith and teacher. He taught physical education at a Moldovan school. He then addresses his life and education before the war. Lipovetskiy attended a Yiddish school and religious school (talmud torah). He then speaks about his life today and family. Lipovetskiy's children live in Israel.
The camera cuts to the formal interview with Rabbi Abelsky. He discusses his contemporary work, as well as contemporary Hasidic groups. Abelsky owns a newspaper.
Abelsky provides personal information and addresses his life during World War II. He evacuated to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. Abelsky then studied at an underground yeshiva in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. He then talks about his life after the war. Abelsky explains how he escaped from Samarkand in 1946 to Munich, Germany, where he continued his yeshiva studies for one year. Abelsky was then sent to Romania, where he lived for three years. He then speaks about his teachings and work in Israel after the war. Abelsky moved to Chişinău in 1989.
Abelsky provides personal information and addreses his position as rabbi in Moldova. He then speaks about his work, Hasidic religious discourse and contemporary Chabad-Lubavitch figures.
Abelsky speaks about his and his grandfather's work, as well as shares episodes about advice-seeking people.
Lipovetskiy speaks about his life and work as school teacher after the war. He then discusses contemporary religious life and his family, before talking about his life today.
Lipovetskiy speaks about childhood games. He then sings a Yiddish song about a tailor's work, before turning to Jewish occupations before the war.
The formal interview with Kishlyansky begins. He provides personal information and talks about his family. His father was a leather worker. Kishlyansky grew up with one sister and one brother. He worked as commodity deliverer.
Kishlyansky addresses prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure, in Briceni. He then sings a Yiddish song about a kosher butcher. He then speaks about cultural life and recalls performances by Sidi Tal and Anna Gintsburg, before addressing Hasidic life.
Kishlyansky talks about his life and work after the war. He was married in 1946. He also speaks about his family. Kishlyansky's son lives in Canada. Kishlyansky then addresses his life today.
Roif speaks about her life and work after the war. She worked as mathematics teacher. She then speaks about her family. Roif's half-brother lives in Israel.
Roif addresses prewar Hasidism. She remembers stories from her mother-in-law. She then speaks about her life during World War II, imprisoned in the Dubyna forced labor camp. Roif mentions that her husband would frequently leave the camp, whereas she stayed inside. Roif also addresses her husband's business travels.
Gordin speaks about his life before the war and remembers attending traditional weddings and funerals. He then speaks about the prewar Jewish occupational structure of Florești.
Gordin addresses his return to Floresti after the liberation by the Red Army. His father was drafted into the Red Army for the second time an died at the front in 1944. He then speaks about his life after the war and recalls the Hunger of 1946. Gordin continues his education at a Russian school and then joined the Red Army for three years, serving in the Russian Far East. Gordin then studied chemistry at the Vladivostok University until 1963. He then worked as chemstry and physics teacher at a village school for one year, before moving to Chi?inau for graduate studies. After his graduation, Gordin worked as chemist at a furniture factory for two years. Gordin also worked at a trade institute, a mirror factory, as well as a window and door factory.
Gordin speaks about his work at a mirror factory and describes how to build a mirror.
Gordin speaks about his life and livlihood today. He also speaks about his family and contemporary Jewish life, including local institutions.
Sherman speaks about his family. His grandmother owned a hardware shop. He then speaks about his life during World War II. Sherman describes his family's evacuation on a cart to Sineşti in 1941. They continued their journey on foot to the Grigoriopol district. Sherman explains that they crossed the Dniester river with the help of a Christian carter on a boot in order to get to Grigoriopol. Sherman eventually reached Stalingrad and evacuated further on a barge across to the Caspian Sea to Fort-Shevchenko, Kazakhstan. In Fort-Shevchenko, Sherman worked at a fish factory, before being drafted for his military service. In the Red Army, he moved to Almaty, Kazakhstan, where he repaired train cars. Sherman then moved from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, to Moscow, where he helped building a bridge. He then describes his daily life and work. From Moscow, Sherman moved to the Sverdlovsk district and then Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine. In both places, he was working in bridge construction.
Sherman speaks about his life after the war. He moved from Dnepropetrovsk to Bălţi, Moldova, where he worked as teacher. His family then moved to Chernivtsi and worked as chief accountant. In 1956, Sherman was married and moved to Chişinău. In Chişinău, he worked as chief accountant and then contract engineer. Sherman then speaks about his education. After graduation from high school, Sherman completed accountant courses and then studied at an institute in Moscow.
Sherman speaks about his life after the war and today. He also mentions his work as private mathematics tutor during his secondary education in Orhei.
Sherman answers dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish linguistic questionnaire. He then addresses prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure. Sherman then describes how locals traveled to Chişinău with Christian coachmen.
Diner briefly sings "Itsik hot shoyn khasene gehat" (Itzik already got married). She then speaks about prewar Jewish life in Fălești, including occupational structure, drinking customs and religious institutions. Diner also recalls a Russian doctor who treated patients for free.
Diner speaks about her life after the war, following her release from prison. She married a non-Jewish man and worked at 32:38 as engineer 32:53. Diner does not have children.
Mitlaeva talks about local Jewish schools before the war. She then speaks about her childhood home and describes locals. Mitlaeva remembers how neighboring boys sang Hebrew and Yiddish songs in a choir. Mitlaeva was a French-language teacher.
Mitlaeva speaks about her life after the war. She taught at a school in Chudei, Ukraine, for ten years. She recalls Baptist locals. Mitlaeva worked in Varenikovsky, Kuban region, and then received a work assignment for Velikaya, Russia. She was married to a non-Jew.
Mitlaeva talks about her family. She then addresses her educaton and work before the war. Mitlaeva was trained as language teacher for Russian, Romanian, French and German at the local French lyceum. She also recalls a Latin proverb. Mitlaeva taught Romanian at a private Yiddish school, owned by the Vakhman family.
Mitlaeva recalls the beginning of the war, including bombing, in Chişinău in 1941. Mitlaeva describes in Russian her evacuation, via Dnipropetrovsk and Varenikovsky, Kuban region. She then talks about her work as teacher in Varenikovsky.
Mitlaeva addresses her life and work after the war. Among other places, Mitlaeva taught at a school in Străşeni for approximately thirty years. She then mentions Jewish locals in Străşeni.
Mitlaeva speaks about her family. She then talks about her work as teacher after the war and discusses languages.
Muchnik talks about her life, including education, before the war. She went to a Yiddish kindergarten at the age of three and then attended a Hebrew tarbut school for four years. Afterward, Muchnik studied at a Romanian secondary school and graduated in 1940. She worked as primary school teacher in Molovata between 1940 and 1941.
Muchnik addresses her education and work after World War II. She studied at a technical school and worked as financial consultant for thirty years. She then speaks about her family.
Muchnik speaks about her life before the war, specifically sharing an episode about her work as school teacher. Muchnik also her addresses her book collection.
Abelsky speaks about his work, before discussing historiography with historical examples. He also addresses the difference between Hassidic and secular historical studies.
Abelsky talks about his work and letter exchanges today. He then returns to Hasidic life during the postwar Soviet period.
Goldman speaks about his life before the war. He worked in a textile shop. During his adolescence, Goldman attended meetings of the youth Zionist organization Gordonia. He explains how he prepared for his aliya to Eretz Yisrael in 1939, but was asked by his parents to stay for another year. He then addresses his education before the war. Goldman studied with a private religious tutor for four years.
Goldman speaks about her family. Her paternal uncle moved to Israel. She also touches upon her life before the war. After graduating from professional school in 1938, Goldman lived in Bukarest, Romania, to find work and stayed two years.
Goldman speaks about her return to Chişinău in 1944 and life after the war. She recalls the living conditions in town and also provides information about her work at a printing press.
Goldman talks about her life before the war and mentions the streets she lived on. Goldberg worked in Bukarest, Romania, as tailor for two years, until 1940. She then describes her life in Bukarest. Goldman raised a son.
Goldman addresses contemporary religious life, before she talks about her work as tailor. Goldman's brother published a book.
Benderskij addresses prewar Jewish life in Nisporeni. According to him there were two synagogues and approximately four hundred people lived there. Benderskij also addresses his grandfather's observance. Benderskij worked as economist and Benderskaia was an accountant.
Benderskij and Benderskaia speak about Jewish life before the war, including drinking customs, occupational structure and family dishes. Benderskaia's mother was a tailor.
Dajch discusses childhood memories of her grandparents. She also speaks about her life after her father passed away. Dajch's step-father owned a grocery shop, where she helped out.
Dajch speaks about her life before the war. She attended a middle school and also worked for a tailor. Dajch then worked different jobs, including at a bank (at the age of thirteen), law office, the city hall and in Iași from 1931 until 1936. Dajch then describes her return home, to Nisporeni, to work in her sister's shop. Among otherh things, Dajch sewed clothes. Her sister was married to a chalutz and they earned money to make aliyah.
Dajch talks about prewar celebrations of Yom Kippur. She describes how her mother practiced the ceremony for repentance ("shlogn kapores"). She then speaks about her life, including work in the city hall, before the war.
Dajch speaks about her life before the war and describes how she met her husband, who spent a year in prison in 1940. She then recalls her first visit to Chișinău. Dajch also lived in Hînceştii before the war. After the war, she worked as accountant in Nisporeni and moved to Chișinău in 1957.
Dajch talks about prewar Jewish life in Nisporeni, including synagogue structure. She also addresses holiday celebration, occupational structure, locals and activities of the youth.
Dajch speaks about her life and work as tailor before the war. She then sings "A sikele, a kleyne" (a small sukka), written by Avrom Reyzen.
Dajch addresses wedding customs. She then speaks about her life during World War II, which she spent in evacuation in the Caucasus and Chortoq, Uzbekistan from 1942 through 1945. Dajch was an accountant on a kolkhoz. Dajch also mentions the cities she visited after the war.
Dajch answers dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish linguistic questionnaire. She also addresses prewar Jewish occupations in Nisporeni (29:40).
Rotner speaks about her life before the war. She worked as operator at a train station. Rotner then addresses prewar Jewish life in Chiperceni. According to her, approximately four hundred families lived there.
Rotner talks about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure. Rotner's father owned a vineyeard and she recalls harvesting grapes in the summer time. Rotner remembers young chalutzim in town. Rotner then talks about her family and briefly addresses her leisure activities.
Rotner talks about her life during World War II. She describes the evacuation journey from Balta, Ukraine to Rostov, Russia. Rotner worked on a kolkhoz in Rostov for one year. They then evacuated further, Rotner explains, to Kazakhstan. Rotner worked odd jobs including loading train cars, and was able to continue her education in Kazakhstan and Volgograd province, Russia. In Russia, Rotner worked in a clinic, after taking courses with the Red Cross.
Rotner speaks about her return home and life after the war. She moved to Chișinău in 1945, after staying in her home village for two days. She also addresses her family's fate during the war and mentions how Rotner's father gave her grandfather a proper burial in Orhei. Rotner's family moved in with an acquaintance for one year. Rotner also addresses her work during evacuation.
Manevich talks about her life after the war. She worked as accountant. She then addresses prewar Purim celebrations. She also mentions the Yiddish school with a library, where she studied for seven years. Manevich finished her secondary education at a Russian school.
Manevich talks about her education, including teachers, at the Yiddish school. She then addresses prewar Jewish life in Tiraspol, including occupational structure. Manevich also recalls childhood friends and describes how she met her husband. She then remembers her wedding.
Fershtman talks about his life in prewar Odesa. He worked at a 44:44 factory. Fershtman then talks about his life during World War II. He evacuated to Central Asia in 1941.
Fershtman talks about his life during the war in Khujand (formerly: Leninabad, Tajikistan). He worked as electrician at a theater until his military draft in December 1942. Fershtman was trained as tanker until 1944 and went with a tank battalion to the front in 1945. He then describes his battles and mentions his military awards. Fershtman finished the war in Kumbino.
Fershtman talks about his life after the war. He continued his military training in Odesa and Floreşti. Fershtman moved to Chișinău in 1956 after his military service. He then worked at a factory from 1958 until his retirement in 1991. Fershtman also mentions traveling abroad.
Rojtman speaks about her life after World War II. She is physician. Rojtman then talks about her family and prewar Jewish life. Rojtman also describes her father's work as merchant.
Rojtman speaks about her life after the war. She arrived in Chișinău in January 1945. She then speaks about her traditional wedding in 1946. Rojtman also speaks about her family. Rojtman worked as medical doctor for forty-two years.
Yaruskaya sings a Yiddish song about the tailor's work. She then addresses her encounter with Polish Jews, before talking about her return to Hâncești after World War II. She describes how returnees buried the corpses and mentions that non-Jewish locals pointed out the mass graves.
Yaruskaya speaks about her life after the war. Her family moved to Türkmenbaşy, where they worked at a factory. She left the city in 1949 and moved to Chișinău.
Yaruskaya speaks about her life after the war. She was trained as motor-mechanic, but worked as conductor and dispatcher in a bus terminal for thirty-six years. She then talks about her family and contemporary religious customs.
Shmid talks about her education and work. After the war, she worked at a sewing factory. Shmid also talks about her family.
Gordin speaks about his life after the war. He states that his mother died during the Hunger of 1946/47. He graduated from school in 1955 and then joined the Red Army. Gordin studied chemistry in Vladivostok, Russia, and then Chișinău. He worked as chemical engineer at a furniture factory.
Leibelman talks about her family and life after the war. She had to take care of her mother after the war for twenty-three years. Leibelman worked as an assistant to the director at a draft office in Dubăsari. Leibelman and her husband moved to Dubăsari in 1956. She explains how her husband could not continue working at a school in Rezina due to flooding.
The team speaks with Moysh Bludoy and discusses Yiddish songs. Kaplan then sings a Yiddish song about a tailor.
Kleyman talks about prewar Jewish life, in particular occupations. She talks about Jews who worked the field and answers questions about cultural terminology. Leibovna Kleyman.
Raisa talks about how she met Iosif, before he mentions his work as a sausage maker for forty years. He then talks about Jewish life after the war. Iosif recalls religious services and his traditional wedding in 1949.
Iosif talks about his traditional wedding and his work as a sausage maker. (41:00) He describes how he made “Jewish sausages.” Raisa then talks about their family and life today. They raised a son and a daughter. Their granddaughter lives in Israel.
The formal interview with Raisa begins. She talks about her family during the war. She grew up with three sisters and brother. She lost family members in the Bershad ghetto and stayed on a pig farm in Obodovka beforehand. Raisa then talks about her life after the war. After her return to Lipcani, she worked as a cleaner until she got married at 17. She then describes Iosif’s work as a sausage maker.
The second part of the tape is a formal interview with Elena (Leyke) Haimovna Akkerman, recorded in Edinet. Akkerman, nee Fuks, provides personal information and talks about her family. She was born 1918 in Edinet in the same house the interview takes place. Akkerman was the only child. Her father owned a shop and traded in different wares. She explains that one of his brothers was a wealthy man. She then talks about her life during the war. She evacuated with her husband, who worked as an accountant for a Ukrainian kolkhoz. The president of this kolkhoz helped the couple to evacuate. They evacuated to the Caucasus via Soroca. Akkerman and her husband stayed in Andijan, Caucasus, for half a year until the German front moved closer. The president of the kolkhoz sent a car, so the Akkermans could evacuate further. The car took them to the nearest train station, where the couple took a train to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The Akkermans worked in a factory for military goods.
Akkerman answers a series of dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish linguistic questionnaire. She also addresses her husband’s work as an accountant in a factory for military goods in Uzbekistan (17:27). Before her husband was promoted, he worked in the lithic department together with Akkerman.
Mundrian talks about her life after the war. She studied to become a wet nurse between 1953 and 1956 in Orhei and then worked as a nurse in a hospital. Mundrian then talks about prewar Jewish life and her family in Susleny.
Mundrian talks about prewar Jewish life in Susleny, in particular occupations. She also talks about life after the war.
Kigel talks about prewar Jewish life and occupations in Orhei. She recalls non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. Kigel then talks about Passover celebrations and remembers parts of the Four Questions, before discussing Sabbath celebrations and food customs.
Kigel talks about life after the war, after she returned to Orhei in 1944. She and sisters returned from evacuation without their parents. In the immediate postwar period, Kigel worked in construction, carrying bricks, to build the bread factory. Following the construction work, Kigel worked as cashier and then forwarding agent.
Rapoport talks about religious life post-Soviet Moldova. Then the camera collects footage of the synagogue. Outside, Rapoport gives a tour of the former Jewish neighborhood. Rapoport worked as a regional economic planner. The team then concludes the interview and the camera collects outside footage of the synagogue.
Grinshpun, nee Prosianoj, tells anecdotes from her work as a teacher.
Grinshpun talks about her family and provides personal information. She then talks about life today. Grinshpun worked as a high school teacher for Romanian and French languages for 42 years.
Sharhorodskij speaks about his life during World War II. He was confined to the Rîbniţa ghetto in 1941. Sharhorodskij recalls how the Germans opened up a hospital outside the ghetto in 1943. Sharhorodskij explains how he worked at the hospital as trained carpenter for eight months. He also worked as translator for the Germans.
Sharhorodskij speaks about his family's life in the Rîbnita ghetto. In particular, he describes how his father went to the market twice a week and received help from his former business partners. Sharhorodskij also speaks about his sister's career. She lived in Israel.
Sharhorodskij speaks about his work and life after the war. He was trained as carpenter at the Ulmu state farm. Sharhorodskij served in the Red Army between 1944 and 1947. He then worked as tradesman for 45 years.
Sharhorodskij returns to his life during the war and work at the Ulmu state farm at a carpentry, where he joined a Christian, who was a wheel repair specialist. Sharhorodskij explains how he worked there for one month and then moved back to Rîbniţa, where Jews were confined to a ghetto. He then describes his family's life, including forced labor and evading mass execution, in the ghetto for two years and eight months. Sharhorodskij also describes the situation in the ghetto two months before liberation, as well as gatherings of young people.
Kotliar provides personal information and talks about her family. Her mother was born in Raşcov. Her father, who owned a shop, was born in Vadul-Raşcov. Kotliar grew up with a brother and a sister, who survived the war. Kotliar worked at a library after the war.
Kotliar speaks about prewar religious life and then the her mother-in-law's encounter with the Rîbniţa rebbe. Kotliar then speaks about the Rîbniţa rebbe, including his bathing during winter in the nearby town Rezina; where she worked after the war. She also recalls the rebbe's work as kosher butcher.
Boiarskaia mentions how she met her husband during the war. She then addresses occupational structure and political organizations in prewar Ţîbuleuca. Boiarskaia maintains that the family's cow saved them from hunger before the war. Boiarskaia then talks about the relationship between Jews and non-Jews before the war.
Boiarskaia speaks about her life after the war. She was a typesetter for a Moldovan newspaper.
Magetman talks about German compensation and life today. She worked as a chemistry and biology teacher for 43 years. Magetman then talks about prewar Jewish life, before she returns to discussing life today. She briefly attended the religious school (cheder).
Magetman talks about her life after the war. She returned from the Chechelnyk ghetto with her sister and brother-in-law. She lived with her relatives until her wedding in 1953. She then talks about her family, in particular her husband, as well as life after the war. She raised two sons and worked as a teacher for 38 years in Soroca and additional years in surrounding towns.
Plotnik, nee Vereta, provides personal information and talks about her family. Her father was also born in Dumbraveno and owned land and an inn. Her mother helped out with the inn in Dumbraveno. Plotnik grew up with one sister. Plotnik worked as a telephone operator.
Plotnik talks about her life during World War II. She recalls the beginnings of German occupation, when she and her mother were forced out of their home into the Rublenita ghetto. The Yiddish school in Soroca, her sister attended, was evacuated to Uzbekistan. Plotnik states that before her sister evacuated, she went home to ask her mother to join. Plotnik continues that her mother refused because she rather wanted to stay home than being a servant. Plotnik then talks about their forced marching through the village Rublenita, for ten days, the Bălți prison, for one night, and Vertiujeni for ten days. Plotnik adds that her grandmother lived in the village Lublin, nearby Vertiujeni. Plotnik then talks about the horrendous journey from Vertiujeni to Cosauti (by the Dniester River). On the way, her mother died and was thrown into a ravine, according to Plotnik. In Cosauti, Plotnik stayed for one night and then crossed over to Transnistria, toward Zugovka (Berezovka?) 34:50. She recalls shootings and the killing of a child, as well as remembers how she was received with food by the Jewish community of Zugovka. On the way to the ghetto Bershad, Plotnik joined a family, Friedman, from Dumbraveno. Before Plotnik reached Bershad, she stayed in a village of a former kolkhoz. She then talks about life in the Bershad ghetto, where she lived with locals, as well as the family from Dumbraveno. Plotnik maintains that she left the ghetto to beg for food for one year, before she worked at a liquor factor near Bershad. In order to get access to the factory, Plotnik dressed as a Christian. Plotnik recalls how the family's mother attempted suicide, while she went to get water for potatoes. Plotnik explains how she took care of a child.
Plotnik talks about her life after the war. She worked as a chief telephone operator for forty-five years. She then talks about her family's life before the war, in particular her grandmother.
Rolshut talks about prewar life in Soroca, in particular Jewish occupations. She then remembers the activities of the youth. She then mentions political organizations, including Bundist and Zionist. Rolshut also talks about the Tarbut school.
Rolshut talks about traditional weddings until 1940, as well as life before the war in general. She recalls the local water carrier and the execution of Jewish communists.
Rolshut talks about her life today and her American friends. She worked as a laboratory assistant.
Mirenburg, nee Grinman, provides personal information and talks about her return home to Sguritzy from the ghetto and life after World War II. Mirenburg finished her school education after seven grades and then moved to Soroca to become a nurse.
Mirenburg talks about prewar Jewish life and occupations. She remembers taking food, her mother prepared for Sabbath, to a less well-off family.
Nusbrokh talks about his life after the war. He reunited with his sister and mother Zguriţa and worked there until 1948. He then talks about his life in Soroca, where he met his wife and worked as the chief accountant at a Soroca brewery. He and his wife raised two daugthers. At the beginning of this career, Nusbrokh studied at the 14:34 institute in Moscow, before returning to Soroca to continue his work at the brewery.
Nusbrokh addresses Jewish life and occupations before the war. He then briefly describes how his mother baked challah, before discussing prewar cultural life, in particular theater productions. Nusbrokh then recalls a wealthy community, Shloyme Gotlbert, member and his work.
Milevskaya provides personal information and speaks about her life after the war. She was a midwife. Milevskaya also speaks about her family. Her father was the director of a beer factory in Pervomayskoye and her mother was a German-language teacher. Milevskaya states that she only spoke Yiddish with her grandparents.
Milevskaya talks about community members and life today. She also recalls former members of the community and talks about the beer factory her father worked at.
Dunaevskij discusses holiday celebration at home and his life after the war. Dunaevskij worked in construction after the war, before studied at a technological institute. He works as the chief engineer at the state-owned shoe factory in Tighina.
Dunaevskij talks about prewar political and social life, including Zionist groups. He then addresses Jewish occupations and a Yiddish library in prewar Ştefăneşti.
Klichinskaia talks about her family and holiday celebration, in particular Passover. She also addresses prewar religious life and occupational structure in Tighina.
Klichinskaia briefly talks about her life during the war in evacuation. She then addresses her life after the war. She was trained as a tailor. She also recalls a tuberculosis outbreak at a Prague hospital in 1946, where she worked as a nurse.
Luminskaia talks about her life during the war. She worked in Biysk, Russia, at a sewing factory during evacuation. She then talks about her life after the war. After her family returned to Chipovich, Luminskaia finished her school education and had to discontinue her studies at an institute after one semester due to illness. She found work as the driver 16:13 for a library.
Goldshteyn provides personal information and talks about his family. He grew up as an only child. His father was a merchant. After the war, Goldshteyn graduated from a technical institute and then became a medical assistant at a hospital.
Goldshteyn and Luminskaia address mixed marriages and interaction between Jews and non-Jews. They then mention Jewish occupational structure and professional life before the war.
Goldshteyn addresses prewar Jewish life and halutzim. He recalls his uncle who prepared for aliyah. He then discusses the different occuaptional structure between Jews and Christians.
Grinberg talks about her life after the war. She worked at the State Bank.
Butorski provides personal information and talks about his family. His father was a painter and then owned a hotel, because his vision began to fade before the war. Butorski grew up with a brother, who lives in Israel. Butorski mentions that he lived in Israel for nine years. After the war, he attended a hairdresser vocational school and then learned to be a cutter at a supplier. He worked there until 1967. Before his retirement, he worked at a 5:36 technicum.
Butorski talks about his life after the war. Instead of finishing his school education, Butorski was an apprentice at a hairdresser artel for five/six months and then learned to be a cutter at a shoe factory in 1946. Butorski served in the military between 1950 and 1953. After his military service, Butorski joined the shoe factory 40:33 again and worked there until 1976. Until his retirement, he worked as a 40:40 technician. He moved to Israel in 1995, where he and his wife lived for nine years. Butorski then explains why he returned to Moldova. He raised three sons; two live in Israel and one lives in Canada.
Moisei talks about his family. His father was a carpenter. Moisei worked in a leather factory in 1936.
Moisei talks about his life after the war. He worked in a canning factory in Astrakhan, Russia, during his military service. After he was demobilized in 1947, Moisei returned to Chişinău. He then describes the living conditions in his hometown. He moved in with his brother and mother at first. Moisei then worked in 29:40 as forwarding agent.
Elizaveta discusses her childhood memories and talks about prewar Jewish life in Chimishliye. She worked as a seamstress before and as crane-operator immediately after the war. Until her retirement, Elizaveta worked as a milliner. She returns to her life before the war.
The official interview with Meir begins. He provides personal information and talks about his family. His father was a shop owner and born in Bistrita. His mother was born in Risculita. Meir grew up with a sister. After the war, Meir worked as a turner.
Meir discusses Jewish occupations before the war and prewar organizations, such as Betar, Hashomer Hatzair and Maccabi.
David talks about prewar Jewish life in Botoșani. He then speaks about his work as a basketball coach and his contemporary activities as the head of the community, as well as contemporary Jewish life.
Finkel talks about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure. She also remembers traditional weddings. Finkel moved to Botoșani in 1951.
Brief speaks about his life after the war. He worked as dental technician for 45 years. He then talks about traditional weddings and recalls his father singing. He then talks alcohol consuming.
Cohn addresses the prewar occupational structure of Suliţa, before talking about prewar print media. He recalls Zionist newspapers and theater performances.
Cohn speaks about his life after the war. He remembers the hunger and the support of the Joint Distribution Committee in the immediate postwar period. Cohn moved to Botoșani in 1941 and continues that he was sent away from his hometown due to fire. Cohn was trained as carpenter and glazier.
Kurtsberg talks about his life after the war. He worked in Rădăuţi in 1953. He recalls his co-workers.
Grunfeld talks about his work. He worked as a chief trained cellulose insulation technician at a factory for 35 years during the postwar Soviet period.
Grunfeld speaks about life today. He then turns to prewar Jewish life in Zău and occupational structure.
Hershkovich talks prewar religious life. He recalls how people from the surrounding communities came together for services in Bogota de Sus. He also describes professional life.
Hershkovich speaks about Jewish life in the immediate postwar period. He turns to prewar political organizations, including Mizrahi, Hashomer Hatzair. He then speaks about his life in Israel, where he lived between 1985 and 1989 and worked at a hospital. Hershkovich has relatives in America.
Hershkovich speaks about his life during World War II. He served in the army and worked in construction between 1942 and 1944. He then talks about his family's fate during the war and shows family photographs. He also shares photographs of the Dej synagogue and the head of the yeshiva.
Kraus speaks about prewar Jewish life in Zorein and Cîmpia Turzii. He then addresses his childhood memories. He attended a religious school (cheder). Kraus completed an apprenticeship between the age of 14 and 18 in Cîmpia Turzii.
Kraus speaks about his work. He worked in the plastic processing industry for thirty years. He then talks about his yeshiva education.
Freundlich speaks about her family. Her sister owned a print shop and book store. According to her, her sister printed journals with Hebrew letters. Freundlich then addresses books she read.
Hershkovich talks about Jewish life after World War II, as well as contemporary Jewish life. Hershkovich then talks about his life today and after the war. Hershkovich moved to Cluj-Napoca in 1969. He worked as revenue officer. According to Hershkovich, there were three active synagogues in town and traditional weddings taking place in the immediate postwar period.
Freundlich talks about her sister's printing press, including local books and journals.
Meir discusses his childhood memories of Dorohoi. He attended a religious school (cheder) for two years and then a Jewish school for four years, before starting an apprenticeship as dyer and launder. He worked in this profession for eight years. Meir recalls how he sang Hebrew songs at the Romanian Jewish school.
Meir talks about his work before and after the war. Meir became the director of a Dorhoi syndicate in 1948. He worked 46 years before retirement. Meir states that he frequently attended religious services after the war, but stopped as soon as he joined the Party; and continued after his retirement.
Meir talks about his work and boss Horovitz before the war. He then addresses prewar Jewish life, as well as contemporary Jewish life.
Isidor talks about business in the early 1970s.
Shaia talks about his school education and work. He attended a Romanian school until tenth grade and was then trained as hatter. He then talks about his family, particularly his sons.
Grimberg provides personal information and talks about her education. She graduated from a pedagogical institute in Dorohoi and worked as teacher. Grimberg attended a Romanian Jewish school for two years before the war.
Gimberg speaks about postwar religious life. She explains how she attended services at her grandfather's synagogue up to the 1960s. She also talks about her work as teacher.
Lipovici talks about his work as shepherd, which he began in 1949. Currently, he owns two sheep.
Lipovici talks about his work as shepherd with his four brothers. He then addresses contemporary Jewish education.
Lipovici talks about his work as shepherd. He then talks about his family. One sister lives in Israel.
Lipovici talks about his work as shepherd and life during the postwar Soviet period. He also addresses Jewish life in the region during the war.
Lipovici explains part of his work as shepherd. He also describes how to get Passover milk.
Isidor talks about his education. He studied at the Pedagogical Institute in Iaşi, before studying at the University of Bukarest. He addresses Jewish student life in Iaşi. He was a teacher for thirty-seven years.
Hirsch speaks about contemporary Jewish life. He worked as secretary for the communities of Dej and and Bistriţa for fifteen years.
Hirsch briefly mentions his work after the war as economist and then talks about prayers.
Hirsch talks about his family. His father studied at a yeshiva in Oradea. Hirsch also worked as a German translator.
Hirsch addresses contemporary Jewish life. He then speaks about prewar Jewish life in Luduș, including occupational structure and wealthy people.
Chajim speaks about his life and work during the postwar Soviet period. He then addresses his visit to Israel.
Chajim speaks about his life under Soviet rule and his family. His father moved to Israel. Chajim then remembers his mother's cooking. He grew up with six brothers and two sisters. His father was a tailor 13:27. Chajim also worked as tailor and was president of a cooperative.
Abramovich briefly speaks about Jewish life before the war, including occupational structure. He also mentions that people would visit rebbes in Belceşti 11:45, Pașcani, Satu Mare and Ştefăneşti. Abramovich then recalls how he visited the Ştefăneşti rebbe as child.
Finkelshteyn discusses his childhood memories and recalls poverty. He also lists foods his mother would preserve for the winter. Finkelshteyn attended a Romanian school for four years. He explains that he learned a trade when he was eleven years old. Finkelshteyn learned with another carpenter, before joining his father's business. Finkelshteyn worked in this profession until his retirement.
Finkelshteyn speaks about his family. He also mentions his education at a religious school (Talmud Torah) and describes his daily working routine as carpenter. In the postwar Soviet times, Finkelshteyn worked at a factory.
Finkelshteyn talks about prewar life, including market life. He then addresses prewar Jewish occupations and his childhood memories.
Finkelshteyn speaks about his life during World War II. He was a forced laborer in the Romanian army from May 1942 through 1944 and worked in quarry. Finkelshteyn then speaks about his return and work after the war. He states that he did not work on Sabbath.
Finkelshteyn speaks about his life in Podu Iloaiei, where he was confined to work until November 1941. He shares information about his daily work routine at a carpentry.
Finkelshteyn speaks about his life after the war. He worked for the railway. Finkelshteyn then speaks about religiosity and shares an episode from his journey to Podu Iloaiei.
Finkelshteyn speaks about his family, particularly his father's values and teachings. He also speaks about his work.
Finkelshteyn answers questions about cultural terminology. He also describes the local well and explains carpenter terminology.
Finkelshteyn tells a joke about a pregnant woman, who consulted the rebbe. He then speaks about locals and business in prewar Iaşi.
The team and Finkelshteyn stop at another memorial, which is located at the site of the former Jewish hospital, commemorating the murder of local Jews during the Iaşi pogrom. He then speaks about the former hospital, as well as orphanage, and answers questions about cultural terminology. Finkelshteyn explains that he completed jobs at the hospital during his carpenter apprenticeship.
Karuel speaks about his life during and after the war. He worked as salesman during and as cashier and then engineer at a factory after the war.
Pnina provides personal information and talks about her family. Her father was a teacher and was born in Frumușiţa. Pnina is a pediatrician and grew up with a brother. Pnina then speaks about her father's arrest. Ruti and Iakob also share information about their family, specifically their father. They then address weddings.
Rozenblat shows songtexts by Emil Sekulets, whom Rozenblat personally knew. Rozenblat then talks about his own work as musician. He played in the local philharmonic orchestra for twelve years.
Resh speaks about his life after the war. He was drafted into the Red Army during the war and was demobilized in 1946. Resh explains that he left the Soviet Union and immigrated with his family to Iaşi after his military service. After the war, Resh worked in the local meat industry for thirty-nine years as director.
Resh talks about his life during World War II. He was confined to the Mohyliv-Podilskyy (Yiddish: Mohlev Podolsk) ghetto. He then speaks about his life and work after the war, before addressing postwar Jewish life in Iaşi. In particular, Resh describes his oldest sister's difficult journey to Palestine in 1948.
Resh addresses prewar occupational structure among Chernivtsi Jews. According to him, there was a high number of administrators and merchants. Resh then answers questions about cultural terminology.
The formal interview with Abraham Shtaigman at the community center begins. He provides personal information and talks about his life after World War II. His family was deported to Transnistria in 1941 and returned to Rădăuţi in 1944. Shtaigman also speaks about his education. He attended a religious school (cheder), Romanian school and then studied in Bucharest for three years, before continuing in Iaşi for another two years. Shtaigman got married in 1966 and raised two daughters. Shtaigman worked as accountant at a local furniture factory for thirty years. For the past nine months, Shtaigman works as accountant for the community.
Shtaigman speaks about his life and work in Iaşi. He maintains that out of 24 functionaries in the furniture factory, 23 were Jewish. Shtaigman then addresses postwar emigration.
The formal interview with Shvartz begins. He provides personal information and talks about his family. Shvartz grew up with three sisters and three brothers. His parents were also born in Bîrlad (Yiddish: Berlad). Shvartz's father was a glazier. Shvartz moved to Iaşi in 1987. Shvartz worked as tailor at a factory in Bîrlad.
Kaizerman speaks about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure and Zionist organizations. He lists Hashomer Hatzair, Dror and Gordonia. Kaizerman also recalls activities of the Maccabi sport club and talks about local cultural life.
Chirilau discusses her childhood memories and games. She attended a Romanian school. Chirilau maintains that she only communicated with her friends in Yiddish. She then addresses the occupational structure among Jews.
Chirilau talks about her family. Her father was a coachman. She then addresses prewar occupational structure and mentions a Jewish family Regenshtrayf who owned a factory.
Chirilau speaks about her work after the war. She is a tailor and worked the fields. She then provides personal information and addresses prewar Jewish life.
Leichtner speaks about his family's life during the war. His father and two brothers returned from Auschwitz. Both of Leichtner's brothers emigrated; one moved to Israel and the other to America. He then speaks about Jewish life before the war, including occupational structure, as well as about his family.
Leichtner speaks about his life and work after the war. He worked in an agricultural cooperative and provided building material. He then speaks about prewar Jewish life.
Leichtner addresses prewar Jewish life in Ocna Şugatag, including occupational structure. He then speaks about his family.
Leichtner talks about his education and work as kosher butcher. He then talks about traditional weddings and religious customs before the war.
Leichtner speaks about his life today. He worked as cattle dealer. He then addresses food customs.
Shwartz provides personal information and talks about his life before the war. He lived in Valumihei until 1960 and worked as tombstone engraver.
Shwartz talks about prewar Jewish life, in particular prayer houses and occupational structure, in Valumihei. According to Shwartz, approximately two thousand Jews lived there. He then talks about the Kaliver rebbe.
Shwartz speaks about his work as ovenman on Passover when he was seventeen years old. Beforehand, Shwartz explains, he worked as matzo carrier.
Shwartz speaks about his life in the 1970s and encounter with a priest before the war. He explains how he organized his visit of his brother in Canada. Shwartz then talks about his work as tombstone engraver. He learned the profession from his uncle.
Freundlich speaks about his life before the war. He was an employed merchant. Freundlich worked at an egg factory after the war, after he moved to Oradea. He also worked as secretary for the local Jewish cultural organization. Freundlich then speaks about his yeshiva education until he was fifteen years old. He attended three yeshivot in Şomcuta Mare, Tîrgu Lăpuş and Copalnic-Mănăştur. He also studied with a rabbi in Baia Mare.
Freundlich talks about his work as merchant and then speaks about prewar Jewish life in Baia Mare. According to him, eight hundred Jews lived there. Freundlich also recalls enmity between Hasidim and Ashkenazim. He then talks about his father and different Yiddish dialects.
Freund briefly speaks about his life after the war. He worked as an accountant. He also answers questions about cultural terminology.
Freund briefly speaks about his life after the war. He worked as an accountant. He also answers questions about cultural terminology.
Macarie talks about her work after the war as pharmaceutical technician.
Shwartz talks about his life before the war. He got married for the first time in 1930 and left his hometown Valumihei in 1942. Shwartz explains that he returned to Valumihei in 1945 and continued in his profession as tombstone engraver.
Shwartz speaks about his after the World War II. He moved from Valumihei to Oreada in 1966. He then discusses his childhood memories, education at a yeshiva until the age of sixteen and work before the war. Shwartz worked odd jobs, including ovenman and winemaker.
Shwartz speaks about his life, after he moved to Oradea in 1966. He visited Israel and America in the 1970s. He then speaks about his work as tombstone engraver with orders from America and Israel.
Grinberg speaks about her family life in prewar Fălticeni. She descends from a family of cantors and hasidim. She then addresses her childhood memories and work as synagogue caretaker.
Grinberg speaks about her life in Rădăuţi, where she moved to Rădăuţi in 1971 and received a work assignment for a nearby-village. She earned her doctorate in mathematics. Grinberg worked in the village from 1971 to 1992 and then took on work in the community.
Cojocaru answers questions about cultural terminology. She then addresses prewar life, including non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. She then speaks about her life today and her husband's family. She also addresses her family's occupations before the war.
Marcus speaks about the occupational structure in Săveni, including prewar synagogues. Marcus also addresses postware religious life and food customs and recalls Jewish drunks and someone who collaborated with the Germans during the war.
Kurtsberg speaks about contemporary Jewish life and his work. He worked in Rădăuţi (Yiddish: Radevits) in 1953.
Kurtsberg speaks about his work as cinema technician, which he began during his school education at sixteen and continued full time after graduation until today.
Kurtsberg speaks about occupations, including tailor, barber, carpenter, dentist, doctor, in the Bershad ghetto. He then speaks about Sabbath celebrations, including food customs, at home. Kurtsberg also recalls how people went to the kosher butcher and describes how to kosher meat.
Kurtsberg speaks about prewar Jewish life in Siret, in particular episodes about the daily business routine. According to him, thirty-eight percent of the population was Jewish. Kurtsberg also touches upon prewar Jewish life in Mihăileni and shares episodes about locals' business life.
Bercovici discusses her childhood memories and prewar Jewish life in Vatra Dornei. According to Bercovici, four thousand Jews lived in Vatra Dornei. She attended a Romanian school. After the war, Bercovici was a physics and chemistry teacher at a high school.
Bercovici addresses folk and religious customs and talks about her education. She attended a Romanian secondary school in Chernivtsi and the pedogagical institute at the Iaşi university. Bercovici worked as high school teacher for seventeen years and then at a local bank until retirement.
Galambos talks about the Vaja synagogue. He then talks about his life after World War II, before addressing prewar Jewish life in Vaja. Galambos returned with a sister and two brothers. Galambos recalls book peddlers.
Weinberger shows a book about the Stropkov Jewish community. He remembers several of the photographed people, including the local tailor. Weinberger maintains that he was a forced laborer near Sered' during his military service.
Weinberger talks about his life after the war. He worked in Presov for ten years and visited Israel for one week in 1969. Weinberger also addresses the contemporary Jewish community of the region and emigres in Israel.
Weinberger speaks about prewar Jewish life in Stropkov, including occupational structure. He recalls great poverty.
Chaimović speaks about his travels in Transcarpathia after the war. He then addresses prewar occupational structure and the sport club Maccabi in Prešov. Chaimović then lists prewar youth organizations, including Betar, Shomrim, Mizrachi and Agude. He states that he was a member of the Mizrachi organization.
Chaimović answers questions about cultural terminology, before he addresses his life during the Soviet period. He worked in a store of 120 employees for 32 years and recalls antisemitism. Chaimović was imprisoned for two weeks, he explains.
Klimenko discusses her childhood memories and talks about her family. Her father worked at the sewing factory in Balta. Klimenko, who did not go through formal schooling, worked as a cleaner for twenty-eight years. She then talks about prewar Jewish life, when she attended the synagogue with her parents regularly. Klimenko raised a son, who lives in the Odesa region.
Klimenko talks about holiday celebration, in particular Passover. She then talks about life today and during the war. She remembers how she begged for food and got beaten. Klimenko describes how since she had no passport after the war, she had to work in a school as a cleaner in the poor part of town. She worked there for ten years.
Milchenko talks about her life after World War II. She mopped floors and carried water in exchange for food. Milchenko explains that her brother enlisted in Horlivka and their mother moved with him, but she stayed in Balta and finished seven years of school. Milchenko continues that she was too young to work, but was able to help out at the orphanage. At the age of 17, she began working at the sewing factory and worked there for forty years.
Milchenko talks about life today and her family. Her brother lives in Balta. She raised two children. Her mother worked as a cleaner in a store after the war. She then talks about life during the war in the Balta ghetto, where thirty families were confined. She remembers that when the Germans came back near the end of the war, they executed twenty-seven of the families that had been confined in the ghetto; only three survived. Her mother told her about how when she was a child, the family managed to flee the massacre. She also remembers the story of how the Jewish men in town were gathered into a barn near the railway station and burned to death. She says that the blood of Jewish children was used for the German hospital.
Lokteva and the team enter her childhood home, in which her sister Yulia Davidovna Mogilevskaia now lives. Lokteva provides a tour of the house and provides personal information about her sister. Mogilevskaia worked in the sewing factory after the war. Lokteva then discusses food customs.
Pivnik discusses prewar Jewish life in Balta. She addresses the negative relationship to her neighbors before the war and the positive ones today. Pivnik remembers the beautiful voice of the cantor Slivke and his family. Slivke would put on concerts after the service in the synagogue. Pivnik addresses prewar Jewish occupations.
Pivnik talks about her life before the war. She lived in the Jewish autonomous region Birobidzhan in 1938 and 1939, working as school inspector (?). She lived with her sister, who moved to the region after it was founded in 1938. Pivka then talks about Jewish culture life before the war. She remembers a performance by Clara Young.
Pivnik talks about her life before the war. She studied to be a flour miller in Odesa at a technical school. She was in the Komsomol. After the war, she worked as a cleaner. Pivnik then talks about her family, before she talks about life today. Pivnik lived in Israel for eight years.
Pivnik addresses life before the war. She does not recall antisemitism. She then talks about life after the war and housing, before Pivnik addresses her life in evacuation. She worked in a sugar shop. Pivnik then talks about her husband, who was an actor. She got married in 1942. Her daughter Ala Pivnik joins the conversation and explains how she learned to speak Yiddish from her aunts. Ala came to Balta at the age of three, when Pivnik moved back from Birodbidzhan.
Khotenko talks about life after the war, when she returned to Balta from evacuation. Khotenko worked as a dishwasher in a kitchen at a military hospital. She then provides information about the lives of her relatives after the war. In particular, Khotenko mentions the hunger of 1947. She then recalls how a neighbor, medical doctor Iosip Viner, was unjustly imprisoned before the war in the late 1930s. Khotenko explains that Viner healed her from scarlet fever.
Gorberg discusses her return to Balta in 1945 and her life after the war. When her family returned, they did not have a place to live and moved in with her brother in Odesa. In Odesa, Gorberg learned to become a confectioner, to help out her brother, who was a war invalid. According to Gorberg, the job prospects for confectionary work were more promising in Rîbnita, Moldova, where her paternal uncle lived. In Rîbnita, her father recommended that she become an accountant as a specialized profession. Gorberg was trained in Chişinău for one year. After Gorberg graduated, she was sent to a kolkhoz in the region of Rîbnita as part of a working assignment and worked there for two years. After Gorberg got married, they moved to Balta in 1951. In Balta, she established herself as a planner and then an accountant. She worked in export for forty-four years.
Epelman provides personal information and talks about his family. He grew up with a twin Brane, four more brothers and four more sisters. Brane moved to Israel. His father, born in Balta, was a coachman. After the war, Epelman worked a stoker.
Epelman talks about life after the war. He started working at a coal factory at 13. He explains how he had to support his big family, despite his young age. Epelman was then trained as a stoker and worked with coal. At the age of 19, Epelman started his military service and returned from Moscow to Balta in 1960. He addresses antisemitism in the army and explains how he was sent to a different unit to be separated from a fellow Jew.
Epelman talks about life after his military service. He recalls stories from friends and Jewish occupations.
Epelman talks about his siblings’ life after the war. They live in Israel, America, and Kryvyy Rih. Epelman has been married to a non-Jewish woman for fifty years. He then talks about Jewish occupations, in particular the fate of a violin maker during World War II.
Borukaeva discusses life after the war. She worked in the Balta sewing factory working with computers, before her husband arranged work for her as a photographer. She addresses the hard work at night and later on a kolkhoz. Borukaeva then talks about her family and how she met her husband, originally from the Caucasus, on a train. Borukaeva recalls her cousin Vadim Mulerman, who professionally sang Yiddish songs. Borukaeva also used to sing.
Lerner talks about her family, particularly her father. She was raised by a aunt. Lerner also addresses her education and work. Lerner explains that she studied mathematics at an institute in Odesa and worked as high school teacher.
Lerner speaks about her work and colleagues after the war. She then speaks about her family and mentions her relatives, who made aliyah in 1928.
Miaskovskaia talks about the house she lives in. She then speaks about her family. Miaskovskaia then describes her work as teacher at a Russian school in Balta and mentions how people made fun of her patronymic.
Angelova speaks about her family's life at the beginning of World War II. Her parents owned a shop and sold their produce. She then continues to provide personal information and speaks about her family. Angelova's father was born in the Raşcov province and her mother also in Topole. Her parents owned land, as well as kept cows and pigs. She then describes her family home. Angelova then describes how her mother joined a kolkhoz in the 1920s.
Angelova talks about prewar Jewish life in Topole. According to her, approximately fifteen families lived there. She then addresses the period of collectivization in the 1930s when the state expropriated her parents. Angelova then speaks about her family. Her father worked at a manufactory and Angelova on a kolkhoz during this period. Angelova grew up with four siblings. They moved to Kotovsk in 1939, where her parents worked in shops.
Life after the war. After the war, Guzman worked as an accountant. The Jews of Tomashpil were still practicing after the war, and the synagogue was rebuilt some time in the 1940s (?),
The conversation turns to life after the war. Due to his achievements as a cardiologist in Rivne, he was made honorary citizen as the only Jew among eight honorary citizens of the city . He still works as the chief cardiologist in Bila Tserkva. The camera briefly cuts to his wife Sonya, who was born in Bila Tserkva, and they discuss Yiddish dialects.
The interview is briefly interrupted by his daughter-in-law's arrival. Like many others in his family, she works as a doctor.
Bublitskaia talks about postwar life. She moved to Kyiv and studied an institute, before moving to Bila Tserkva, where she worked in a shoe factory for forty years.
She talks about life during the war. In 1940 she evacuated to Siberia with her parents and brother. They worked hard for years and she remembers how ten people had to share one bucket of potatoes. Her brother married the daughter of the chief engineer of the factory her family worked at. They left Siberia for Kyiv in 1943. In 1945 her brother wrote Bublitskaia a letter to invite her to study at an institute in Kyiv. It was there that Bublitskaia met her husband in 1948.
Bella speaks about prewar occupations, particularly coachmen.
Skobilitskii discusses his cheder education, before he talks about his life and work after the war. Skobilitskii was an agronomist and worked at a warehouse for thirty-five years. He was demobilized in 1949 and return to his hometown Berdychiv.
Bella and Isaak speak their life today and relations to their non-Jewish neighbors. According to them, they lived in a Jewish apartment complex after the war. Isaak sells soda water on the market during the day, which he began after his retirement.
The team then visits the town market in Berdychiv with Rabbi Shlomo Breuer in order to film Isaak Iosipovich Vaisman selling seltzer water. They also discuss the contemporary community.
Skobilitskii talks about his life after the war and his family. He then addresses his life today. Skobilitskii worked at a tranfer station for land farms (kolkhozi and zavkhozi).
Skobilitskii addresses prewar Jewish life, including occupations and alcohol consumption. He then recalls prewar Purim celebrations and cultural life. Skobilitskii also describes a Yiddish singer from Kyiv in postwar Berdychiv. He then returns to prewar Jewish life and recalls Polish Jewish migrants.
Work and education before the war
His work
Work and education before the war (00:46:30)
Vainshelboim speaks about prewar Jewish life, including the synagogue structure and occupations. He explains how his father was a prisoner of war during World War I. Vainshelboim then talks about his family.
Vainshelboim speaks about his encounter with Ukrainian policemen, which resulted in his third escape. He then describes his escape toward Tsherekhovoy (30:17), as well as the help he received. After staying in Tsherekhovoy for one year, he moved on to Petrivka (30:47). He then continues to talk about his odd jobs there and then fourth escape to the Ruzhyn region. There he worked on a collective farm for one year until December 1943 and then escaped again with a horse and wagon to Pohrebyshche and further. Vainshelboim explains how he worked at a mill from 1944, for six years.
Vainshelboim talks about his life after the war. He was drafted for his military service in 1950 and served for four and a half years. He worked at a mill for twenty-five years and then at a beer factory for five years. Vainshelboim states that he was the only from his family who survived the war. He then returns to his life during the war, especially addressing the massacre.
Vanshelboim talks about interviews and German restitution. He then speaks about the remaining years of the war, during which he worked odd jobs. He also briefly addresses his school education, before he describes how he got caught by the Ukrainian police and his subsequent escape in August 1942. He then received help by Ukrainian peasants in a village, before he continued his way back to the peasants' house. On the way, he received help and worked as hireling for a Ukrainian peasant, Petrivskii.
Vanshelboim speaks about Ukrainian and German attitudes during World War II. He states that Ukrainian neighbors robbed Jewish homes. He then returns to his life when working as hireling in 1942. Upon the advice of neighbors and fearing that his boss may report him, Vanshelboim traveled to the Rozhys'k region (Ternopil province) and worked on a state farm among prisoners for one year, until March 1944, after the arrival of the Red Army.
Vanshelboim speaks about his journey home in April 1944 and his work as a loader at a mill in Berdychiv before his military draft. He then talks about his liberation on December 31, 1943.
Vanshelboim speaks about his military service in Latvia for four and a half years. After his military service, Vanshelboim continued to work at a mill for 25 years, before working at a brewery for five years. He then addresses his life today and mentions how he bakes kosher bread every Friday in memory of his mother. Vainshelboim then talks about the Jewish baker Yoyne in the postwar period.
Vanshelboim speaks about his army service, which he left with the rank of first sergeant. He worked as aeroplane mechanical engineer. He then remembers how he met his wife when he lived with her family after the war for six years. They were married after his military discharge in 1954.
Life after army service. He discusses his life after his military service. He worked odd jobs, such as ironing for a tailor and helping out at an electricity factory.
Visitors from America and life today. After the war, a lot of visitors came to Berehove, especially from America. After his military service, he met an old friend from Vynohradiv, who offered him to sell ice-cream. Hodinger and his wife sold ice-cream for thirty years.
Prewar and postwar Jewish Berehove. Between two and three thousand Jews returned after the war, but the majority of those who returned then left for Israel and America. There was still an active Jewish community in Berehove after the war, including a kosher butcher, and a number a Jewish businesses.
Prewar occupations
Berkovich's family and potential interviewees. Berkovich lived in America for thirty-five years. His son lives there. He returned to Berehove because his wife fell ill three years ago. In America, he worked as a carpenter. They also discuss potential interviewees, and potential Yiddish-speakers in the region.
Murovanaia addresses her childhood memories of Haysyn. She finished seven grades at a Russian school, before her evacuation to Central Asia. She then addresses her return to Haysyn in 1944, when she worked as statistician. Murovanaia continues that she studied pharmacy between 1945 and 1947 and became an assistant pharmacist. She worked in the same pharmacy for fourty-five years. Murovanaia's daughter also worked in the same pharmacy, before her immigration to Germany.
Bershadskaya addresses prewar Jewish life in Bershad and also talks about her family. She raised a son. She then speaks about her education and work. Bershadskaya attended a Russian secondary school and worked as teacher at a Ukrainian school. She also speaks about her life before the war.
Bershadskaya addresses her childhood memories of Chernyatka, including occupational structure. She then addresses prewar religious life in the village.
Bershadskaya talks about her liberation and remembers bombing of Bershad. She then talks about her life after the war. Her family returned to her house, which was occupied by Christian neighbors during the war. Bershadskaya studied at a teaching college. She describes how her family fixed up the house and sold soap in the market.
Gvinter's husband Yuzek describes a local synagogue in Bershad. She then explains how she and Yuzek met. Yuzek was a tailor and she was a seamstress.
Gvinter shows a photograph of herself in war military regalia. She then speaks about her life after the war, when she lived underneath the synagogue. Gvinter worked in an artel and her mother was a pastry cook.
Gvinter talks about his work during the Soviet period. He worked in a sewing factory. He then talks about his life today and provides personal information.
Gvinter talks about his life and work during the postwar Soviet period. He served in the Red Army from 1955 through 1958. Gvinter then describes his military training in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Gvinter left the army with the rank of sergeant. Gvinter then talks about his family and visits to Israel.
Gvinter speaks about his life during World War II. He was imprisoned in the Bershad ghetto. Gvinter remembers fellow inmates and recalls his liberation. He then talks about his life after the war. Gvinter addresses his work at a sewing factory. He graduated from a Russian school after ten years.
Feldman talks about religious life during the postwar Soviet period. She explains how the local community baked matzos. She then describes postwar Yom Kippur celebrations. Feldman states that she did not work at a factory on this holiday.
Feldman talks about her contemporary relations to her neighbors. She then talks about her life after the war and today. Feldman worked as kitchen help and then at a furniture factory for thirty-five years. Feldman also talks about her family, as well as communal support. She raised two daughters by herself.
Feldman addresses contemporary religious life, before talking about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure, in Bershad.
Feldman talks about prewar Jewish life in Bershad. She recalls the local water carrier.
Sklyarskiy talks about his life and family after World War II. He returned to Lypovets and mentions that his sister, who served in the Red Army, moved to America after the war. He then returned to his hometown Zhornyshche, before moving to Proskurovka. Sklyarskiy continues that he worked there at a field hospital for three months, before moving west with a Red Army field hospital to several towns in Poland and Germany. Sklyarskiy joined his sister who had been working at the front. He states that he was rejected at a military draft in Kyiv due to his injury, whereas his brother (i.e. cousin) was accepted and fought at the front.
Sklyarskiy speaks about his life after the war. He and his sister moved to Vinnytsya, where he completed accountant courses. Sklyarskiy worked as an accountant in several towns, including Dzhulinka and Kitaygorod. He was married in Bershad in 1951.
The team meets Listengurt and informally speaks with her, before setting up the formal interview. She speaks about contemporary life and work today in Odesa.
Sklyarskiy speaks his life during World War II; in particular, about the forced gathering of the Jewish community on May 27, 1942, to be taken for mass execution in the nearby village Illintsi. He also mentions a non-Jewish childhood friend who warned Sklyarskiy beforehand and describes his escape from the gathering. Sklyarskiy maintains that a few Jewish artisans were selected to stay behind in Zhornyshche.
Sklyarskiy explains his military awards and honors, before he describes his work at a field hospital from 1944 to 1945.
Sklyarskiy speaks about his life, including work, after World War II. He took courses on accountancy in Vinnytsya for six months and worked in several towns, including Bershad.
Teitel talks about the non-existing opportunity to speak Yiddish in town after the war. She then talks about her family, in particular her children. She then discusses her work as an accountant and returns to talking about her family and their life during the war.
Teitel talks about prewar life and her cousin’s family, who worked on a kolkhoz. She shares more about her family and her husband. She then talks about postwar Jewish life and holiday celebration. Teitel then discusses antisemitism during the Soviet period and life today. She recalls her grandmother talking about the founding of Israel. Teital then talks about her work life.
Loyf speaks about life before the war and the fire in 1912. She then talks about her life and education after the war. Loyf finished her school education at a Ukrainian school. Loyf explains how she wanted to switch to another school after seventh grade when moving to Boryslav. According to her, the school in Boryslav would not accept students from her region. Loyf had to work instead and found work at a 21:30 factory until her retirement. Loyf, Polina Enikovna. Interviewed by Dov-Ber Kerler, Moisei Lemster. 6/8/2007. Ukraine, L'vivs'ka Oblast', Boryslav.
Loyf talks about her family and postwar Jewish life. She recalls Yiddish theater performances and describes Jewish occupations. Loyf, Polina Enikovna. Interviewed by Dov-Ber Kerler, Moisei Lemster. 6/8/2007. Ukraine, L'vivs'ka Oblast', Boryslav.
Berkovich talks about his life before the war. He worked as a carpenter before and after the war. He then addresses his life during World War II. Berkovich was imprisoned in several forced labor camps, in Buchenwald, Mauthausen.
Berkovich speaks about his prewar education. He attended a religious school (cheder) until his bar mitzvah. Berkovich then joined his father in the carpenter profession. Berkovich then speaks about his cheder, including the teachers. Berkovich states that he also attended a Talmud Torah school for approximately three years before his the age of thirteen.
Berkovich answers questions about cultural terminology and speaks about the local occupational structure.
Berkovich speaks about his life today and why he returned to Berehove. He also talks about his family. Berkovich then addresses his life in America, where he worked as constructor for thirty-five years.
Berkovich talks about his work after the war, including his travel to Kyiv and Moscow. He also speaks about his life today.
Pustilnik talks about her life after the war. She returned with five siblings and her mother. She explains how she and her siblings sold items to support the family. Pustilnik moved to Boryslav in 1956 and lived at her maternal uncle's home. After she graduated from a technical institute, she worked at a sewing factory. Before Pustilnik moved to Boryslav, she worked on a kolkhoz in Yire 4:50. Pustilnik, Frida Moiseyevna. Interviewed by Dov-Ber Kerler. 6/8/2007. Ukraine, L'vivs'ka Oblast', Boryslav.
Pustilnik talks about regional geography and towns she passed through on the way to the Pechera camp. She also speaks about life today and her travels to Israel. She lived there and worked as a massage therapist. Pustilnik, Frida Moiseyevna. Interviewed by Dov-Ber Kerler. 6/8/2007. Ukraine, L'vivs'ka Oblast', Boryslav.
Kupershmidt talks about his life during World War II. Before the war, Kupershmidt worked at a driving school and was then drafted as chauffeur in Finland in the early war years. He describes the situation after he returned from Finland and was caught to be executed. Kupershmidt then talks about his escape to Zhytomyr from a massacre. Kupershmidt was caught again with non-Jewish prisoners and volunteered to drive to Zhytomyr. He explains how another prisoner informed on Kupershmidt that he is Jewish. He continues to talk about his life in hiding and with non-Jewish forced labor group, as well as in a prisoner of war camp in Rivne. Kupershmidt also mentions how he dressed up as a non-Jew.
Geller talks about his life in evacuation, after his mother passed away. Geller's maternal aunt took care of his infant brother in Shymkent, Kazakhstan. Geller continues that he began a turner apprenticeship at a factory teaching facility (Fe'Ze'O - фабричное заводское обучение), before he worked a factory in Shymkent. Geller then explains that he moved to his father, who lived in Türkmenbaşy (formerly known as Krasnovodsk). Geller worked at a cafeteria there.
David speaks about the moment when he volunteered for military draft. He then describes the work tasks in the army, as well as in his profession as turner.
The interview with Kupershmidt begins. He talks about prewar Jewish life in Bratslav, including the synagogue and occupational structure. He also addresses local charity.
Kupershmidt speaks about his return after the war. His wife and child were imprisoned in the Uman ghetto during the war. He also addresses the Bratslav ghetto and its liquidation. Kupershmidt then returns to his life and work during the war. He was a chauffeur for the Germans, frequently driving to Nemyriv, for approximately one year. Kupershmidt speaks about the encounter with a benevolent German, who saved him from mass collection for forced labor in 1941.
Kupershmidt talks about local families, who perished during the war, before he continues to speak about his work during World War II. He then recalls a German officer who was married to a Jewish woman and and his interactions with him. Kupershmidt also shares an episode when he went to Mohyliv-Podilskyy to make a delivery.
Kupershmidt talks about his life and work during World War II. Kupershmidt then speaks about the moment when he was imprisoned in the Zhytomyr ghetto and picked as a driver for German officers. He also mentions that someone informed on him to the German army.
Kupershmidt talks about his imprisonment in the Zhytomyr ghetto, from where he was deported for execution. Kupershmidt also shares episodes of his time in hiding, as well as work as chauffeur.
Kupershmidt addresses Jewish life in Bratslav during the Great Hunger in 1932 and 33. Kupershmidt traveled to Odesa to earn money. In 1935, Kupershmidt explains, he practiced driving in Odesa. Kupershmidt returned to Bratslav in 1936 and worked as driving instructor. Kupershmidt states that was already married and his child was born in 1940.
Kelmenson talks about her life today. She works as Ukrainian and Russian language teacher. Kelmenson then provides personal information and speaks about her family. Her father was arrested in 1937 during the period of Stalin's persecution. Kelmenson raised two sons.
Kelmenson speaks about her life and work after the war. She also speaks about her family. Kelmenson then talks about her work, as well as the use of the school building as Yiddish school before the war.
Kelmenson remembers food customs at home. She then describes Passover celebrations at home before the war. Kelmenson then talks about her family's career and encounters of antisemitism.
Burg talks about his family and childhood memories. His father worked on a float transporting people across the Cheremosh River 52:38. Burg’s mother gave birth to five children. He grew up with Chaye, who was murdered along with their mother during the war and Binyomen, who volunteered for the Spanish Civil War and died in battle. After his bar mitzvah, encouraged by his father, Burg moved out of his parent’s house to earn his own money in Chernivtsi. He rented a room at a poor tailor’s house and studied at a school. He was supported by his well-off uncle Max. Burg then studied at the Jewish teacher’s seminary with Eliezer Steinberg to become a teacher. After graduation, Burg worked as a private tutor. He then talks about the publication of his first story in the “Czernovitzer bleter” in 1934.
Burg talks about his religious education, when he attended religious school (cheder) for seven years. Burg attended a Romanian school, before cheder every day. He then attended the Vyzhnytsya yeshiva. He then talks about Jewish life in prewar Vyzhnytsya and childhood memories of his grandfather. According to Burg, the majority of Jews were Hasidic. He recalls an episode about a Jewish barber who received non-Jewish customers on Sabbath. He covered the windows and locked the door in fear of rebuke from the Hasidic community. However, Burg stresses that the Hasidic community were moderate in his hometown. Burg remembers the time when his father told him stories about the Baal Shem Tov, when his family sat around the fire during the winter.
Burg returns to talking about his work during the Soviet period. After he graduated from the Ivanovo State Pedagogical Institute Burg in 1947, he received a working assignment to teach at the Pyatigorsk institute for four years. He then moved to the Stalingrad region to work as a teacher for another four years. He taught German literature and his wife Russian literature. He then returned to Chernivtsi. Burg then talks about his reputation as a Yiddish writer.
Kleiman talks about his life after the war. He studied mathematics at the Chernivtsi University. He taught at various schools for forty-five years in Ukraine and Moldova. He then talks about Jewish life in postwar Chernivtsi. Kleiman states that the Soviet government permitted one active synagogue.
Gimelbrandt talks about her family’s life after the liberation. Her mother lived with her children in a barn for ten days. The head of the community brought her mother a certificate to denote Chernivtsi as the family’s place of residence and served as identification; which enabled them to return. Gimelbrandt talks about her life after the war. At the age of thirteen, she was sent to work in a factory. Since Gimelbrandt was visually impaired, she was sent to a color factory in Sadgora and worked there for 42 years.
The second part of the tape is a formal interview with Roza (Reyzl) Ovsheevna Shternberg, born 1924 in Khotyn. Shternberg, nee Kerzhner, talks about her family. Her father, a merchant, was born in Khotyn. Her mother was also born in Khotyn. She explains that her parents worked for the well-off Jewish merchant Bordeynik. He had business contacts to America (also see MDV 418). Shternberg recites a Purim shpiel, she remembers from her Yiddish teacher. Shternberg then talks about life today and sings a Yiddish song about love.
Shternberg talks about life after the war and her return to Khotyn. She explains that non-Jewish neighbors took her house apart and used the land as potato fields. Her family moved into an abandoned house. She helped cleaning and restoring houses. Shternberg took care of the business, after her co-worker was drafted for military service, and never returned, and continued to work for forty-four years.
Ziselis talks about his family, in particular matchmaking for his sister. Ziselis worked as a kosher butcher together with his father before the war. His brother moved to Belgium before the war.
Ziselis talks about prewar Khotyn, as well as about his work as a kosher butcher after the war. Ziselis worked with the kosher butcher and mohel Moyshe from Berdychiva and traveled to neighboring towns. He then talks about contemporary religious life.
Professional life after the war
Weiss talks about his life before World War II, in particular his education. He attended a Polish school and studied with the Polish-Jewish writer Bruno Schulz there. Weiss studied at the polytechnic institute in Lviv in the field of manufacturing systems engineering. Weiss could not find work in his field of studies. He explains how his uncle from America came to visit him and made arrangements for Weiss to continue his studies in America. His uncle sent Weiss’ papers to the consulate in Warsaw in 1939, but the papers were lost because of the outbreak of World War II. Weiss continues that he could not leave Drohobych during the war when the town came under Soviet occupation. He worked as the assistant accountant at the regional bank until 1941.
Weiss talks about his life during the war. He was drafted into the Red Army early 1941. His parents perished in the Broniza Woods near Drohobych, along with 12,500 fellow Jews during a mass execution. Weiss’ youngest brother died in the Plaszow Concentration Camp in Poland. Weiss describes the memorialization of the mass grave in the Broniza Woods. Weiss then talks about his military service when he served in the artillery division. 38:38 – 43:00 description (moving toward Urals and worked as ?) Weiss moved with his division to the Urals and there he became sick. In his battalion, Weiss worked financial assignments and explains the difficult conditions due to great hunger. Weiss continues that the commander-in-chief allowed him to leave after a few months. Weiss then worked in a factory, which produced military goods under the leadership of a Jewish director. He worked there until 1946. He explains how difficult it was to leave his position because he knew about the internal matters of the factory.
Weiss talks about his after the war, when he returned to Drohobych in 1946. Weiss studied at the technical institute in Kyiv and worked as an engineering economist. He then worked as the deputy director of the ceramics plant in Drohobych for twenty-four years. After his retirement, Weiss worked at the truck crane (avtokran) factory as the deputy head for sales for eleven years.
Schreier describes his life after the war, after he was found by a young German and taken to a nearby village, to a courtyard where the mayor lived. Schreier was then taken to a Soviet prison camp, along with other fellow Jews. He describes his life at the camp and recalls how well he slept. Upon leaving, the Soviet soldiers wanted to take Schreier with them, but had not enough strength to stay on a horse. The local farmer took Schreier to a DP camp in the town of Dobeln, which had already surrendered. Schreier stayed in the overcrowded camp for two days and had to leave. He and other displaced persons, mainly Italians, walked to Rosswein. Schreier explains that the SS officer turned them away because the Rosswein camp was already closed down and therefore no food was available. Schreier recalls how a German woman slipped him some bread. Schreier walked another 35 kilometers to the former Freiberg concentration camp. He stayed there for three days and was liberated by the Soviets on May 7, 1945. Schreier went to the town center to find work at a department store, which was opened up for Soviet officers.
Schreier talks about his life after the war, when he went through several DP camps. Because of Schreier’s insistence, he became the assistant of the department store director and primarily worked as a translator until the end of 1945, when an order came in that all former prisoners had to return to the Soviet Union. Schreier never formally studied the German language at school. Schreier continues that he then went to Dresden with an officer friend from the Soviet Army. He stopped at Hellerau first and then moved further to Dresden Klotzsche. Schreier worked as a translator at the Soviet Trade Administration until fall 1946. Vasily Sokolovsky issued a decree of return. The former camp inmates were taken to the central Soviet military base in Teltow. A German driver took Schreier to the Red Cross in Berlin, where he reported on his relatives in Argentina. According to Schreier, the living conditions were so horrible there, so that he returned to Teltow instead of trying to figure out his relatives’ address, requiring Schreier to stay for a minimum of two months. Schreier then travelled to Grodno, Byelorussia, for seven days, where he stayed at former prisoner camp. Schreier, a professional musician, played at restaurants in exchange for food. Schreier explains that he had to stay in Grodno until all Soviet soldiers born 1922 were released from the army. Schreier received a notification early 1946 permitted to leave. He traveled to Vilnius, Lithuania, joining a fellow musician from Drohobych. They returned to Drohobych together.
Schreier talks about his life after his return to Drohobych. He found work in a dance orchestra right away, before he studied at the local music institute and then at the Lviv Conservatory. Schreier got married in 1949. Schreier finished his studies he began at the Lviv Conservatory at the music department of the Pedagogical Institute in Drohobych. Schreier continued playing in a dance orchestra and taught at the musical institute for forty-two years. Schreier then talks about his family. He was the only survivor of his family. He also recalls his uncle Rabbi Dr. Bernard Schreier who taught religious studies at the Polish Jewish school.
Schreier talks about contemporary life in Drohobych, as well as Jewish life. He then talks about the Choral (Great) Synagogue in Drohobych, which was built in 1865 and was the largest synagogue in prewar Poland. Schreier then talks about life and work during the Soviet period.
Schreier talks about his work as a musician. He plays the violin, sings, and studied conducting. He then talks about Jewish life under German occupation, in particular he addresses how the chairman of the Judenrat (Jewish Council) Dr. Izak Rozenblat successfully set up a soup kitchen for children in the Choral Synagogue. Schreier continues to tell the story, when the police barged in on the first meal organized by the soup kitchen and shot all the children.
Shekhter discusses his childhood memories and talks about his family. Shekhter grew with two brothers and one sister. He left his parents’ home at the age of 14 to earn his own money and worked in a factory in Ivano Frankivsk. Shekhter talks about how his was drafted for his military service two days before the outbreak of World War II. Shekhter served in the labor battalion until 1943. After his military service, Shekther worked in an artel (cooperative of workmen and peasants) in the Urals, in the city of Shverovsk* [00:03:51]. Shekhter also lived in Leningrad during the war, before he moved to the town of Zolotonosha in 1971, where he lived for twenty-five years, working in an artel.
Shekhter talks about his work. He worked at a factory and then as a cobbler with skills he learned from his father. His father, a shammes, and brother were also cobblers. Shekhter also discusses childhood memories and holiday celebrations, including Purim and Passover.
Shekhter talks about his life during the war, when he served in a labor battalion of the Red Army. Shekhter worked as a cobbler in the military. He was drafted in Ivano Frankivsk, then moved through and lived in a number of places, including Kyiv, Omsk, Sverdlovsk, Svorovski* (1943 – 1947), and Leningrad.
Khasidovich talks about her life during the war in the Fastiv ghetto. Khasidovich’s brother, two sisters, and parents were executed in the “mini Babi Yar” of Fastiv. Khasidovich survived the massacre. She then talks about her family. Her father worked as a tailor. Khasidovich talks about her education at the Yiddish school, where she studied for four years, before continuing her studies at Russian school. Khasidovich got married at 18 and she worked in a shop after the war.
Khasidovich talks about Yiddish culture before the war, including Yiddish theater. She then talks about a war memorial, which she attended to commemorate her husband. Khasidovich then talks about her life after the war. She was a caterer in a theater and then a sales assistant at a bakery until 1983. Khasidovich mentions her family, in particular grandchildren.
Khasidovich talks about her work at the bakery after the war and addresses postwar circumcision. She then talks about her traditional wedding.
Kopyt sings another Yiddish song about a poor tailor, she remembers from her neighbor, a tailor.
Burshtein discusses his childhood memories of Jewish Sobolivka, including occupational structure. According to him, the non-Jews lived in the countryside around town. Burshtein then speaks about Passover celebrations and describes how he carried the dough for matzo baking. He then addresses prewar religious life during the 1930s. Burshtein specifically talks about secret private services after the synagogue was closed down.
Bukshtein talks about the Sovietization of Ivano Frankivsk in 1940 and his life during this period. He worked as a tailor and was sent on a work assignment to Mykolayiv at a 51:28 construction site. Bukshtein explains how he and other tailors were called away by the Jewish director of a tailoring factory. He maintains that most workers at the factory were Jewish and the young workers were called to a meeting in 1940, held in Yiddish. Bukshtein states that his plans for returning home for vacation were interrupted as World War II broke out.
Bukshtein talks about his life during the war. His family was imprisoned in the Stanislav ghetto and Bershad ghetto. His mother, sister, and brother survived the war because they were imprisoned in the Romanian-occupied Bershad ghetto, according to him. The leadership of the tailoring factory in Mykolayiv was evacuated to Siberia. The workers were responsible for their own evacuation. Bukshtein describes how he followed with his friend the echelons with factory evacuees, including factory machinery, and traveled for one month to Novosibirsk, Russia. He further evacuated to Bolotnoye, where the tailoring factory was reestablished for the Soviet war effort. Bukshtein was drafted into the Red Army in Novosibirsk at the end of 1941. Bukshtein states that he joined his Jewish friend, who volunteered as a “westerner” and was sent to the military authority in Siberia 59:25, whereas the other draftees became soldiers. He explains how the military commander was upset about their visit because they were not allowed to serve as minors in the Red Army.
Bukshtein talks about his life after the war. After his military service in 1947, he returned to his wife to Siberia and worked there until 1953. Bukshtein and his wife moved to Ivano Frankivsk, joining his sister and mother. In 1957 his mother and sister left for Poland and due to antisemitism in Poland in 1960, they left for Brazil. Bukshtein exchanged letters with them at the beginning, but he explains how he did not want to endanger his daughter’s studies by publicizing his relatives abroad. He only received a letter from his sister after Perestroika. Bukshtein saw his sister and aunt in Brazil in 1989 for the first time in 32 years. He stayed there for three months. Bukshtein recalls the Yiddish singing with his relatives in Brazil.
Bukshtein talks about his family. His father was a saddlemaker and born in the Novoselitsa region, living in Lipcani and Edinet. Bukhstein’s paternal aunt immigrated to America in 1937. Bukshtein then discusses his work during and after the war. The director of the tailoring factory ordered Bukshtein to take classes in mechanics. After completing his courses in Moscow, Bukshtein worked in this profession at the main mechanics factory in Siberia. After the war, Bukshtein returned to the tailoring profession and worked as a tailor’s cutter.
Bukshtein talks about his work as a tailor. He moved to Chernivtsi in 1937 in order to continue his tailor apprenticeship, he started in Novoselitsa. He studied for three years and recalls his foreman singing. Bukshtein then sings a Yiddish-Russian drinking song and talks about contemporary performances.
Bukshtein discusses and sings Yiddish songs he remembers from his childhood, from his tailoring apprenticeship, and Sidi Tal. He also talks about prewar Yiddish culture. Bukshtein then sings a Yiddish song about emigration called “Papirene kinder” (children out of paper), before he sings a couple of Zionist songs in Hebrew and Yiddish, he remembers for Hashomer Hatzair.
The second part of the tape includes a formal interview with Genrikh (Hersh bereb Moyshe akoyen, Hesye) Moiseevich Katz, born 1912 in Tlumach. Katz provides personal information and talks about prewar Jewish life in Tlumach with a population of 9000. In particular, Katz recalls cattle trading and two kosher butchers. His grandfather traded in cattle. He then recites a prayer.
Katz talks about his life and education before the war. Katz attended a Polish school. He worked as a locksmith in Tlumach, after graduating from a handicraft school in Lviv for three years. Katz then discusses his childhood memories. His father was a Hasid of the Stanislav rebbe’s court and Katz talks about his father would visit the rebbe.
Katz sings a Sabbath song and talks about prewar Yiddish theater plays and Jewish professions. He then discusses religious life.
Katz discusses his childhood memories and education. He studied 31:15 at a handicraft school in Lviv and took exams in lock smithy. Katz states that he was unemployed in Tlumach until the territory was occupied by the Soviets and he found work at 32:20. Katz also mentioned his traditional wedding at the rebbe’s house. He then talks about his life during the war. He was drafted into the Red Army and served in the labor battalion. Among other places, Katz was sent to a place eighty kilometers from Stalingrad, before his battalion arrived in Stalingrad. Katz continues that he became ill and worked in a factory for military goods eighteen hours a day. He was then sent to another factory in Kirov, Russia, where he worked until 1947. That year Katz moved to Ivano Frankivsk.
Dialectology and work after the war
Kraidman moved to Khmel’nyts’kyy after the war. During the war she was evacuated to Uzbekistan, where she worked and took courses in accounting, enabling her to find work in Ukraine after the war.
Kraidman speaks about her work as an accountant and her two sons. Kraidman states that she can read and write in Yiddish fluently, but finds speaking difficult. She takes pride in the fact that she recently translated Yiddish-language archival material for a scholar from Kam’’yanets’ Podil’s’skyy for his dissertation research.
Gaiviker worked for sixty-plus years as a barber, like his father before him. He has been retired for thirty-plus years and lives with his wife Sonya Volkovna Gaiviker (née Sosne). Gaiviker received a traditional “kheyder” (religious school for boys) education, but no longer remembers how to pray properly.
In 1930, Gaiviker reports, he was a brave young man [“a smeler yot”] and wanted to move to a big city, and so he left for Moscow. He was frightened when he arrived, but he had no ticket back home, so he stayed and worked in various barbershops.
In Moscow, Gaiviker was arrested after a quarrel with his boss, but received a lighter sentence because the prison warden was also Jewish. During the famine in 1933, Gaiviker, along with other ex-convicts, were kicked out of Moscow. When Gaiviker returned to Khmel’nyts’kyy, there was no work to be found, only hunger.
The interviewee describes the streets where he lived and the typical professions held by Jews in the town. He also discusses the pogrom in the town in 1919 ("a shver shtikl tsayt") in which many of his friends and family were killed.
Gaiviker returns to the subject of prewar Khmel’nyts’kyy, describing the barbershop where he worked and the various gambling and card games he used to play.
Naum Gaiviker knew prayers and liturgy well in his youth, but also played pranks on the teacher. He further describes the town’s prewar Jewish atmosphere with its bakeries, artisans etc.
Sonya Gaiviker worked several jobs after the war, but as soon as she married she decided to stay at home.
Yarmolnik begins a story she heard from her mother about a pogrom in 1921 in Khmel'nytskyy led by Petliura’s troops. Integrated into this narrative are details from her family’s experiences during the Great Patriotic War. Yarmolnik lists the deaths of numerous family members throughout her lifetime, commenting that she is now all alone. [00:08:31] During the evacuation to Uzbekistan, Yarmolnik worked in a war factory as much as eighteen hours a day.
Yarmolnik briefly discusses pre-war Khmel'nytskyy. There were Yiddish schools in the town, but they were already closed by the time Yarmolnik could attend, so she was educated in a Russian-language institution. After the war, Yarmolnik found the house she had lived in ruined. She then talks about the reparation funds she tried to receive from Switzerland. Yarmolnik worked 51 years as an economist and accountant after the war.
Kaviner describes prewar Derazhnya as a "yidishe shtut” (Jewish town) full of artisans and craftspeople. Kaviner completed a Soviet Yiddish school in 1939 just before it was closed. At the same time, he learned in a yeshiva, stating he had “no childhood” because he spent so much time studying. The yeshiva was an open secret that the authorities “pretended not to know about,” according to Kaviner. Once the yeshiva was closed down in 1934-5, it went underground and continued to function clandestinely until 1939. The director and teachers were able to receive successful employment after the school was closed because they were very intelligent, educated people. There were also semi-secret “kheyder” schools (religious schools for young children) that operated in the town until approximately 1932. After this, melamdim (religious teachers) continued to teach children in private homes. The yeshiva was Hasidic, but associated with no particular rebbe, except the Baal Shem Tov. Kaviner states that the shtetl had about 5000 Jews. He also lists all the significant rebbes that were active in the region.
After the war, Kaviner worked as a wood technician/carpenter.
Vaisblai states that there was a synagogue in his family’s home when he was growing up before the war and that he has worked as “gobe” (administrator) in Khmel'nyts'kyy’s contemporary synagogue for many years. His father Avrum (known more commonly as “Umenyu”) worked as a cap-maker who was paid in potatoes for his work. His mother Nunye worked as a housewife until her death in 1937. Vaisblai’s paternal grandparents, Pesye-Rokhl and Biumen had thirteen children.
After the war, Vaisblai returned to Chemerivtsi. With the exception of two families, none of the kolkhoz residents knew Vaisblai was in reality a Jew. Once he returned to his hometown, Vaisblai’s former neighbors allowed him to live in his grandmother’s old house. Vaisblai then describes his life in the postwar period, working various jobs in different towns.
He sings the shabes (Sabbath) song “sholem-aleykhem” and discusses his various forms of employment in the postwar period.
He expands on the latter topic, stating that his father worked on a Jewish kolkhoz; there were two kolkhozy in the town, according to Kramer, one Jewish and one Ukrainian. Kramer’s sisters also worked on the kolkhoz, and he himself worked there from the age of fourteen onwards.
Kramer describes prewar Berezdov. He mentions that his father worked in a brick factory. Describing his prewar educations, Kramer states that he finished four years in a Yiddish school before attending a Ukrainian-language institution. He describes the town’s butchers, its rabbi, and the town synagogue that operated until 1939.
In the postwar period, Kramer served in the army until 1951, moving to Khmel'nyts'kyy in 1955, while his family lived in Slavuta. Kramer worked as an engineer in a factory until 1992.
In the immediate postwar period, Kaviner returned to Derazhnya, and then soon thereafter moved to Khmel'nyts'kyy in order to find work. He describes the hardships and famine in those first postwar years, as well as his career as the head of a carpentry workshop.
Kaviner speaks about his daughter and his grandson, and their respective education and career paths.
In the immediate postwar period, Vaisblai returned to Chemerivtsi, where his neighbors returned to him his father’s pillows and allowed him to live in his grandmother’s old house. He then describes his life in subsequent years, focusing on his family and their various occupations.
This tape is a continuation of a formal interview with Semyon (Yisrul) Aronovich Vaisblai (b. 1930 in Chemerivtsi). He discusses his family life, work and education in the postwar period and shares his views on Jewish emigration to Germany.
After briefly discussing his contemporary health problems, Vaisblai shares his work history in the postwar period, consisting of many different jobs in several towns. He also explains how he met and married his first wife Fania, and how they had a wedding with klezmer musicians.
Katz provides personal information and talks about his family. He grew up with six siblings. His father was a coachman with two horses. Katz then talks about prewar Jewish life and childhood memories. He attended religious school (cheder) until his bar mitzvah. Katz then discusses his father’s work as a coachman, transporting wood. Katz supported his father’s work during vacation. In 1939, when his father was "drafted" into the Hungarian army forced labor battalion, Katz continued his father’s work with the help of an assistant. His parents received a plot of land after their marriage.
Katz discusses life during the war, after his father was drafted into the Hungarian army in 1939. Katz continued his father’s work as a coachman until 1943. He then talks about his experience delivering wood. His father returned from the army in 1943 due to health reasons and took up his previous work as a coachman. Katz then explains that his uncle and cousin were ultimately taken to the railway station in Khust by the Hungarian police in 1941. The train was headed to Ivano-Frankivsk, before moving further to Khust. Katz explains that they were deported from Khust to the Iza ghetto in 1944 and stayed there for three weeks. He recalls the hardships of acquiring food. After three weeks, Katz continues, they were sent to a brickworks in Khust, going through health check and selection for three days. Katz was then deported to Auschwitz. Katz recalls the first days of undressing/showering and selection at the concentration camp. Katz spent two days in Auschwitz and was then sent to a sub-camp of Auschwitz, Monowitz. Katz worked at a factory there.
Katz discusses his arrival in his home town, Koshelovo. He moved to Khust in 1954. Katz started an apprenticeship at a friend’s bakery for a short time. His cousin recommended learning driving, to become a chauffeur. He was trained from 1947 to 1951. Katz worked as a chauffeur for sixty years.
Katz mentions his school education at a Russian school, before he discusses his work as a chauffeur and the difference between working for Jews and non-Jews.
Zinger talks about Hasidism and Zionist organizations before the war. He remembers the rebbe of Mukacheve visiting Velykyi Bereznyi. Zinger remembers Zionist organizations who would prepare children for aliyah. Before Zinger was drafted into the Czech army in 1936, he spent two years in Hachshara (a preparatory camp for emigration to Palestine) in Czechoslovakia, where he learned Hebrew and worked in a textile factory.
Zinger discusses Jewish life before the war, in particular Jewish occupations. He recites blessings. He remembers the praying of the local shoykhet (kosher butcher).
Snook sings a Yiddish song about the bride and marriage. Snook then talks about life after the war. In particular, she addresses life during the drought in 1946 and the famine in 1947. Snook then talks about her family, in particular her husband. After the war, she and her husband worked with horses and sold different materials. Her children live in Israel.
Snook sings a Yiddish song about the pains of emigration. The next song is partially in Hungarian and Yiddish about marriage and work. She recalls several prewar Zionist organizations, after singing a Zionist song.
Education and work.
Work and friends.
His project and work.
Food customs and his work.
Talking about his work and Yiddish literature.
Postwar work.
After some audio and logistical problems, Vider continues, explaining that he moved to Russia in 1940 without knowing any Russian. At the age of eighteen, he began working in a mining town in the Urals and then worked for some time as a mechanic in the Garagum (Kara-kum) desert in Turkmenistan, where he earned a decent living, but hated living in that area. After that job, he worked in a mine in the L’viv area, staying there until the age of seventy, at which time he retired to Kolomyya, a town he had visited often as his sister lived there. Vider learned how to cook and bake a whole repertoire of traditional Jewish foods from his sister, and he shares a recipe for chicken liver.
Growing up, Vider was a khusid (Hasid, follower) of the Botoshaner Rebbe who lived in Iași. He and his family would go to the Rebbe for the high holidays. Vider studied for three years to become a tailor, but he did not enjoy the work, so he moved to the Soviet Union, where he thought he could earn a better living.
Vider tells the story of how he learned to speak Russian and, on a related note, how he became a miner in the Soviet Union, in addition tot he other jobs he held. Vider answers further questions from Professor Kerler’s sociolinguistic survey.
Grayf speaks about his education in a "kheyder” (traditional religious school for young boys) where he learned to pray, and read and write in Yiddish, although he states it is difficult for him to remember much now. Just before the war, Grayf worked on the trains before being drafted into Red Army. He describes his military service in the Far East and on the front during the war.
Grayf generally describes postwar life in Kolomyya, where he worked in a dental laboratory. He then returns to the prewar period, briefly describing his education in a Polish-language school, and in a Yiddish kheyder. Grayf comments that shabes (the Sabbath) was celebrated at home before the war, in contrast to today, when it is marked in the synagogue. He notes the same dynamic with daily morning "minyonim” (prayer groups), which his father attended regularly before the war, but that do not take place in contemporary Kolomyya.
Grayf details other holiday observances and traditional foods, and speaks about Yiddish dialects and Kolomyya’s contemporary Jewish community. He briefly returns to the subject of general prewar Jewish life, noting the different Jewish professions and many Jewish artisans in the town.
The interview moves into the interior of the Kolomyya synagogue. There, Vider shares the details of his career as a miner and refrigerator mechanic, explaining how he moved to the Soviet Union in 1940 at the age of 17.
Vider talks about how he studied to be a tailor, and shares his memories of the Botoshaner Rebbe, who lived in a neighboring courtyard from his family’s home. He also tells a joke about a man who was tricked into paying extra donations to his synagogue.
The research team begins a formal interview with Krotsh, speaking first about the interviewers and the AHEYM project in general. Krotsh shares his basic biographical information and speaks about his family life in his childhood. He also speaks about the Stefanester Rebbe, recalling how overcrowded his shtetl (town) became when people came from all over the world to attend his funeral. Krotsh discusses his many siblings and the poverty that characterized their youth. Krotsh was educated in a "kheyder” (traditional religious boys’ school), a Romanian-Modern Hebrew Jewish school, and a yeshiva, where he studied Talmud and other traditional texts. Although Krotsh was an excellent student and remembers everything he once learned in yeshiva, he also studied to be a tailor in order to make a living.
Krotsh sings another loshn-koydesh (the Hebrew-Aramaic language of traditional Jewish texts) song and describes how he learned the nign (melody) from the tailor with whom he apprenticed.
The camera cuts to a formal interview conducted in Russian with Roman Bileichuk (b. 1963 in Kolomyya), an aspiring convert to Judaism. Bileichuk shares his basic biographical information, describing his childhood without a father, and his education and early career path. After an extended period of religious exploration, Bileichuk recalls how one sleepless night after reading the Torah he somehow wandered three kilometers to Kolomyya’s synagogue, a place he was totally unfamiliar with before, and joined the Rosh Hashone (New Years) services that were then taking place. Despite conflict with his family, Biliechuk has been attending the services at the synagogue and observing Judaism for about 2.5 years, and has written to several rabbis in Kyiv about the possibility of formal conversion. Meanwhile, he states that he is trying to follow all Jewish religious laws and reads Jewish journals and traditional texts, trying, "like everybody else” to find Truth in the world.
During the war, Vider worked in the oil fields in Turkmenistan rather than serve on the front. He describes how this work in the fields and later in the mines was organized.
Krotsh details how he came to live in the Soviet Union beginning in 1940. Krotsh left Romania for the USSR in order to be with brother and other friends who were already in that country. He worked in a Moldovan village as a tailor for a year before the war broke out, and was then evacuated to the Caucasus region, working in several kolkhozes (collective farms). When the Germans took Rostov-na-Donu, he was evacuated further into Azerbaijan where he got sick with malaria while working on yet another kolkhoz.
Krotsh then discusses life on this latter kolkhoz in detail. He talks about his work in a dairy factory as well as the difficulties he and many other Jews faced in their agricultural labor.
Krotsh was drafted into the Red Army in 1942, at which time he left the kolkhoz for Baki Sähäri (Baku) where he was cured of his malaria. Krotsh talks about life and work in the city, telling stories about his initial assignment as a factory laborer and then as tailor under the direction of a Jewish couple.
Krotsh was demobilized in 1947, after which he worked two more years in Baku. After a brief stay in Chernivtsi, he was convinced to move to Kolomyya. He then shares other stories about work and life in Baku in the immediate postwar period.
When the town was liberated by the Soviets, Biter was accused of collaboration and exiled to Siberia where he labored in the city of Noril'sk from 1944 to 1952. When he returned to his native village, Biter learned that the other Jews of the town had all been killed. In the postwar period, Biter worked as an accountant on a kolkhoz (collective farm) in the surrounding five villages.
Biter speaks in greater detail about prewar family life mentioning that his father immigrated to Canada, where he lived for three years and worked on the land. His grandfather held an arrenda (leasing right) and operated a tavern. Discussing prewar religious life in his village, Biter states that there were two "minyonim” (prayer groups of ten or more adult men) in his village; as such, communal functionaries, such as a shoykhet (kosher butcher) and kheyder teacher visited regularly from nearby villages. Biter briefly describes how he was given his "lapsterdekl” (lit. "small coat,” i.e. "talis kotn,” or Jewish male ritual garment) at the age of thirteen. Biter explains that his father wanted him to be a religious Jew, but his maternal grandfather, who was a Reformist and worked as a lawyer insisted he attend the nearest gymnasium in Snyatyn. Graduating in 1938, Biter then attended an agricultural lyceum.
Krotsh speaks about his apprenticeship at a tailor's shop. He then tells a story about the encounter of the Ştefăneşti rebbe and Krotsh's master craftsman. Another story involves a military tailor who encountered the rebbe (see also MDV 535).
Krotsh speaks about his family. He then talks about his life before the war, particularly education and work. Krotsh explains that he studied at a yeshiva in the mornings and worked as an apprentice in the afternoons.
Krotsh speaks about his life during World War II. He was drafted into the Red Army and worked in military construction in Baku, Azerbaijan. Krotsh explains how he was called to work in his profession as tailor.
Krotsh discusses his childhood memories and the difficulty to study at a yeshiva and work as apprentice at the same time. Hence, Krotsh continues, he dropped out of the yeshiva. During the war, Krotsh states, his profession helped him to survive.
Krotsh sings snippets of a tailor song. He then sings a Yiddish song about growing up.
Krotsh speaks about his work before World War II. He then sings Purim songs, he remembers from his childhood. Krotsh recalls Purim celebrations, particularly he mentions that he dressed up as rich man.
Krotsh speaks about prewar religious life. He then speaks about his life and work after the war. He got married to a non-Jewish woman in 1949. Krotsh lists the places he lived after the war, including Kuban, Russia, 56:49. He moved to Kolomyya in 1949.
Krotsh speaks about Jewish life in the immediate postwar period in Kolomyya. He recalls secret services on holidays and importing matzos from Odesa and Chişinău. In Kolomyya, Krotsh worked for a military auction 59:00. He also mentions Romanian songs.
Krotsh talks about prewar Jewish life in Ştefăneşti, including the wealthy and his master craftsman. He also speaks about his education at a yeshiva and his family.
Krotsh addresses prewar Jewish life and wine production. He then sings a Yiddish song about drinking.
Vider briefly speaks about his life during the war in Russia. He then speaks about his life and friends before the war. Vider moved to Hîrlău from his birth town Sighetu Marmaţiei at the age of three. Vider lived in Hîrlău for ten years and then moved to Iaşi, where he attended a yeshiva and learned carpentry. Vider then explains how his mother convinced him to learn an easier profession and hence became a tailor.
Vider describes how he worked with Krotsh in the 1950s. The team then concludes the formal part of the interview with Vider.
Krotsh speaks about his education. He attended a religious school (cheder) until he was seven years old. He then studied at a Romanian Jewish school, before learning at a yeshiva. Krotsh recalls a rabbi's speech on Sabbath and speaks about his tailor apprenticeship.
Krotsh recalls non-Jews who spoke Yiddish and addresses prewar religious life. He also speaks about the yeshiva students and mentions story about the Ştefăneşti rebbe and a military tailor. Krotsh recalls the story from his master craftsman.
Krotsh speaks about his life during World War II, particularly the time he was drafted into the Red Army in Kirovabad (today: Ganja). Krotsh also describes the work in military construction and then as tailor. Krotsh maintains that he survived the war due to his profession.
Krotsh sings a Yiddish song about a good homemaker. He then speaks about prewar Yiddish culture, particularly theater performances. Krotsh remembers a tailor who became an actor.
Krotsh speaks about his tailor apprenticeship and his master craftsman.
Krotsh discusses Yiddish literature. He then shares a story about a traditional family and how the son became a tailor's apprentice.
Krotsh addresses his life before the war and contacts with local Communists. He then speaks about his work life after the war, particularly communicating in Yiddish in Mukachevo, Ukraine, early 1950s. Krotsh went to further training in military tailoring in Moscow in the early 1950s.
Life during the war as doctor for partisans
Belobrov talks about his life after the war. He worked as a turner at a lathe in a factory for 44 years. Belobrov then talks about his life during the war. His family evacuated three times within Russia: near Rostov, near Stalingrad, and Kemerovo. In Kemerovo, Belobrov worked in a factory for military goods at 14 until 1945.
Belobrov talks about his life and work after the war. His father was drafted into the Red Army in 1941 and returned to Korsun before his family arrived from Kemerovo.
Kislinskaia discusses her childhood memories and prewar Jewish life. She recalls the poverty in her family. She then talks about her life during the war, when her family evacuated. Kislinskaia describes how they evacuated and lived in evacuation:I was 17 years old when the war broke out. And my brother was 15 years old. When the war broke out we were walking to the train station. What could have possibly taken with us?! Nothing. To put on some clothes. We couldn't even take a pillow because it would have been too heavy to carry. It was five kilometers away. [...] We needed to walk five kilometers there. When we arrived there and the rail car was standing there, in which we should... We were sitting down and they would take us. Where to and when and with whom we didn't know. The money for the amount of work we did wouldn't be paid off. Everybody would take their own and we tried to get out. We were passing through quite a few stations and then they would take us off the train and they would take us to a canteen and gave us something to eat. This is how we traveled for I don't remember how long. It was not a passenger train, but a freight train. [...] Then they would take us off the train and would set up for us to work in a kolkhoz. They gave us a cart with two bulls and they would take us to the kolkhoz. [The kolkhoz was] in the Rostov region. This is where we worked and there was a German kolkhoz. We would understand them a little what they talked about and they would understand us a little. Yet (mayn?) we spoke in Russian and not Yiddish. Then the Germans came when we had stayed there until winter. And then we had to continue to travel. They gave us the two bulls with the cart. [...] And it was still at this kolkhoz where there was someone with five children. Her husband was drafted for the war. She was sitting with the children and we had to walk by foot after the bulls. Here we were traveling and the German came toward us. So, we had to turn around, to continue on a different side. The bulls had no more strength to lead us. But we managed to escape. We arrived in ? where were sitting and sitting. Then they would give us a ship and we would travel. And we arrived in Shkalov. There the Germans wouldn't get there. There I worked, the brother worked and my mother worked. My mother was a janitor in the factory and my brother was taught to be a locksmith. And I would not struggle (?) in the factory. I left for Shkalov where they told me. I went to work in a ? factory. When I worked at a ?, I received products. I would receive flower with a piece of bread, a piece of soap - whatever one didn't need I received. And I lived where my mother was with my brother. We were there until the war was over.
Kislinskaia talks about her life after the war and her return to Korsun. In particular, she addresses the problems of not having evidence for her work record. She then talks about her work: Here I worked in a factory, where they produced candy, treacle cakes. They would produce wine and seltzer. This is where I worked as a laborer. I worked very hard; but I had no choice. There were barely any Jews in this factory. In addition to me, there were two Jewish women. And the rest were all Russian women. They would respect me. During Passover, when my mother was still alive, there was a hole where they would bake matzo. During Passover when we would bake the matzo, I would go to work and brought matzo for them to try. They did not know what matzo was [...] This was already after the war. She then talks about life today.
Kislinskaia discusses her childhood memories. She specifically addresses the transition of artisans’ occupation, working from home to factories in the 1930s. She then talks about her family and prewar Jewish life. Her parents were born in Korsun. Her maternal grandmother worked as a shammeste (synagogue caretaker). She recalls how she went to the synagogue with her mother.
Kislinskaia talks about contemporary relations between Jews and non-Jews and her experiences at work. She also talks about life today. Kislinskaia keeps chickens and a goat.
The third part of the tape includes a formal interview with Tsadik (Tsolik) Naumovich Groysman, born 1923 in Tarashcha. Groysman provides personal information and talks about prewar Jewish life in his hometown. In particular, he recalls how he attended synagogue with his father. Groysman then talks about his family. His parents were born in Tarashcha. His father, a watchmaker, descends from a family dynasty of watchmakers. Groysman’s father had four brothers, who were also watchmakers. His sister married a watchmaker. He grew up with two sisters. He also addresses his mother’s cooking. Groysman’s wife was also born in Tarashcha and he met her there before the war.
Groysman talks about his life after the war during the Soviet period. Although Groysman began to study at a medical institute before the war, studying ENT, he joined his father’s work due to his injuries. Groysman was promoted to foreman and does not recall antisemitism. Groysman moved to Korsun in 1952. Immediately after the war, Groysman took courses for massage therapy and worked in the same hospital, he recovered in from his war injuries. Groysman then moved to Alma Ata, where he joined his uncle working as a watchmaker. Groysman’s father joined the family in Alma Ata, but worked in a different shop. Groysman continues that after his father passed away, he joined the business his father used to work at. He then returned to Tarashcha to meet his former girlfriend, whom he married in 1944.
Groysman talks about his work as a watchmaker and mentions watchmaking terms in Yiddish. He then talks about prewar Jewish life, in particular occupations and literature.
Angelova speaks about her family. She grew up three brothers and one sister. Angelova then talks about her life and evacuation during World War II. She also served in the Red Army during the war and worked as bookkeeper [in 00:04:45].
Angelova speaks about her life after the war. She also addresses postwar Jewish life in Kotovsk. She worked as bookkeeper in the Krasnoyarsky district, Russia [00:22:00]. Angelova was married in 1965, which took place in Kotovsk. She also talks about her family. Angelova raised a son and a daughter.
The team greets Obodovskii and Leiderman in their garden and sets up the interview with them. They provide personal information, before Leiderman talks about her life after the war. She lived in Pishchanka until the age of seven before her family moved to Rudnytsya. Leiderman worked as bookkeeper and Obodovskii as farmer after World War II. She spent the war years in evacuation 3:40 in Siberia and he spent the war years in evacuation in Siberia.
Leiderman talks about her family. She grew up with a brother and a sister. Leiderman then speaks about her life after the war. During the war, she worked in a military factory. Obodovskii and Leiderman then talk about how they met in 1962 and discuss the use of Yiddish at home.
Leiderman returns to talking about her family, as well as her life after the war. She worked at a bank for thirty-seven years. Obodovskii was a construction worker. They also address Jewish and non-Jewish relations.
Obodovskii speaks about prewar and postwar Jewish life in Kotovsk, as well his family. He recalls a small synagogue in 1944. They then address contemporary Jewish life and recall a kosher butcher after the war. Obodovskii also describes his work as construction worker.
Obodovskii speaks about his life and work after the war, including his relationship with non-Jews.
Obodovskii speaks about his working life after the war. Specifically, he describes his job in the fur business, as well as recalls a non-Jewish co-worker, who spoke Yiddish. Leiderman also remembers a non-Jewish woman communicating in Yiddish with her.
Education and work after war.
Pensatii discusses his life before the war in Odesa. He studied at a Jewish technicum, where the language of instruction was Yiddish. Pensatii explains that the students of the technicum were sent to learn a profession at a factory in 1928. Pensatii became a turner within six months.
Pensatii speaks about his life and also work as turner at a workshop before the war. He was drafted into the Red Army in 1934 and sent to Kyiv shortly thereafter. In Russian, Pensatii talks about military figures. After his military service, Pensatii worked at the main post office.
Pensatii speaks about his life before the war. He worked at a factory and studied at the Workers' University (Rabfak) in the evenings. Pensatii also mentions Yiddish theater and music performances.
Nisman speaks about her life before World War II. She lived in Rezina until the age of fourteen, before she attended a Jewish vocational school to learn tailoring in Chişinău for two years.
Nisman speaks about her life before the war, particularly her education. She studied at a Talmud Torah school for three years and remembers singing and dancing. Nisman states that she corresponded with her parents in Yiddish while learning in Chişinău. When Nisman finished her apprenticeship she worked as tailor in Chernivtsi.
Dorfman speaks about his life during the immediate postwar period, which he spent in Siberia. He worked as coachman. He then returned to Chişinău in 1946 and continued his studies. In 1949, Dorfman continues, did he escape to Lviv. Dorfman was the chief engineer of a factory for thirty-five years. He also worked in theaters.
Dorfman talks about his work as chief engineer at the Lviv theater after the war. He was in charge of rebuilding the theater. He then speaks about contemporary intellectual life.
Khonigsman discusses his childhood memories and education. He attended a religious school (Lublin Talmud Torah) at the age of three for four years. Khonigsman then attended the Chachmei Lublin Yeshiva and a Polish primary school. Khonigsman recalls poverty in his family. After Khonigsman graduated from school, he began an apprenticeship with a hat-maker and took evening classes at a vocational school until 1939.
Khonigsman talks about his life during World War II. He describes how he escaped with his friends toward Chełm, but had to return to Lublin, where he stayed for one month. Khonigsman continues that he escaped again and crossed the border to Russia through the river Bug. He lived in the Soviet Union from November 1939 and lived on a kolkhoz for one month and then left due to hunger. Khonigsman then passed through different places, including Kritchev, Russia, Mohyliv-Podilskyy, where he worked at a sewing factory. In Mohyliv-Podilskyy, Khonigsman also attended an institute for economics in 1941.
Khonigsman speaks about his life after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. He was trained as komsomol to fight off German parachutes. According to him, only 24 out of 800 survived this military action. He then evacuated by train to Chistopol, Tatarstan, from which he escaped to Kuybyshev (today: Samara, Russia). In Kuybyshev, Khonigsman worked as deliverer and completed courses at an institute for economics, before being drafted into the Red Army. He was sent to a labor battalion eastward, which he eventually led in the Karakum Desert, Turkmenistan. Khonigsman was then called to Moscow to work as translator for six month, which he left due to sickness. He then lived in Kyiv for six months, before arriving in Lviv.
Khonigsman speaks about his life in Lviv after the war. He worked odd jobs, before finding work at the Lviv Academic Library. Khonigsman then describes how he found the job at the Jewish division of the library in 1946. The library closed down in 1949 and he then worked at the Peoples Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) archive. He states that he was in constant fear of imprisonment as writer and was let go twice.
Khonigsman talks about his studies as historian of economic history. He also speaks about his life before the war, when he stopped going to the synagogue at the age of fifteen. Khonigsman returns to his life after the war. He was let go after one year of work at the archive and then wrote his dissertation about the infiltration of foreign assets from West Ukraine, supervised by Moscow State University. Khonigsman then worked as history teacher at a middle school in Kyiv. He was promoted to school principal in the 1950s, since he was a Party member and the only male teacher, as he explains. Khonigsman worked as school principal for nine years and finished his postdoc, before moving to Lviv. He eventually was assigned work in Drohobych as teacher.
Khonigsman speaks about his research interests. He worked in Drohobych until 1973, before teaching at the Lviv Academic Institute, then Ternopil for two years and Polytechnical Institute in Lviv, where he has been teaching since 1976. Khonigsman then show his publications and returns to talking about his research interests.
Khonigsman speaks about his encounters with Yiddish writers and Soviet Jewish historians. In particular, he remembers David Hofstein. The writers came to use the library Khonigsman worked at in the 1940s.
Meler provides personal information. He speaks about name changes at the beginning of the Soviet occupation in 1939. Meler then talks about his family and talks about the move from his hometown to Lviv for economic reasons. Meler grew up with three sisters. He mentions that he went into a merchant apprenticeship at the age of fifteen.
Meler addresses prewar religious life in his hometown, particularly the synagogue and the local rebbe. According to him, approximately forty Jewish families lived in Glina Navariya. Meler then speaks about prewar occupational structure. His father and grandfather were kosher butchers.
Meler speaks about his family and childhood memories, particularly education. Meler explains how his mother paid for his religious school education with food. Meler then describes his work as apprentice and remembers poverty within his family.
Meler talks about his family. His father worked odd jobs, including with sausage dealer. Meler also speaks about prewar Jewish life, including occupational structure.
Brandler speaks about his education and family. He attended a Polish school for seven years. Brandler's father worked as egg packer and traveled to Germany often. Brandler explains how he wanted to become a baker and his parents suggested cobbler instead. Brandler completed a tinsmith apprenticeship. During the prewar Soviet period, Brandler learned to be a tractor driver in the village Pokhortsi (51:43), Sambir region. Brandler worked as instructor until 1941.
Brandler speaks about prewar Jewish life and relationship with non-Jews. In particular, Brandler addresses his neighbors, before describing the town's occupational structure.
Brandler talks about his life after the war. He returned to Mostiska and then to Sudova Vyshny, joining his sister. Brandler then moved to Lviv, where he was trained at the municipal collection office. Brandler worked as supervisor in municipal offices in Peremyshlyany for thirty years. He then describes his work as tax collector during the Soviet era.
Brandler talks about his life after the war. After his retirement, Brandler worked in an insurance office. He shares episodes from his work and recalls peaceful work relationships.
Brandler speaks about his family, before addressing the occupational structure in prewar Mostiska. He also mentions a local fire, before talking about Jewish prewar press.
Leibel addresses postwar religious life and his observance. Leibel worked at a municipal office for 43 years.
Diner speaks about his adolescent years. He began an apprenticeship at a bakery and then with a cobbler. Diner worked as cobbler in Lviv, where he moved to at the age of fifteen.
Diner talks about his life after the war and return to Lviv. He explains that his sister and brother did not return home. He also mentions his work at a military factory in Moscow for two years. Diner received military awards for his service. Diner got married twice and his first wife was Christian, whereas his second wife is Jewish. He raised one daughter.
Diner addresses his life today. Diner was a shop owner.
Life today and work after the war
Jewish professions before the war
Life after the war and work as a nurse
Jewish occupations before the war and discussion of books
His father worked as a soap-maker and a cantor in one of the town’s synagogues. Kaplan relates shabes (Sabbath) customs from before and after the war, detailing, for example, how his mother sometimes employed a shabes goy. During the war, Kaplan was in different camps in Transnistria, and tells the story of how his family escaped and returned to Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy in 1942, all the time hidden and cared for by non-Jewish neighbors. Kaplan notes that many Jews collaborated with the Germans and Romanians, forming special Jewish police battalions, and relates the story of the sinking of a ship of Jewish orphans who had supposedly bought freedom off the coast of Constanta, Romania. Kaplan also speaks about contemporary war memorials and ceremonies, as well as ties to landslayt (former town residents) from abroad and the post-Soviet revival of Jewish life led by Sobol [late husband of interviewee Maria (Molke) Iosipovna Sobol (née Cioban)]. Kaplan then sings a fragment from the song "Shik mir a shtral" (Send Me a Ray (of Sunlight)). Kaplan also speaks about the different sections of the Jewish cemetery, how holidays were celebrated sometimes in secret before/after the war and answers some questions related to linguistics and Yiddish dialects. Cities and towns mentioned on this tape: Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy, Kozenits, Ozaryntsi, Pechera, Constanta, Bucharest.
Fiksler discusses the last two years of World War II. She explains that she was forced to live in a ghetto in 1944, before she was taken to Birkenau. She was then deported to Austria and worked in a factory. She was liberated by the Americans in Austria. Fiksler then talks about her life after the war, and her search for surviving family members.
Vider talks about his experience at the Vorkuta gulag. Vider worked ten to twelve hours a day of hard labor building the railroad tracks from Pechera to Vorkuta. Vider then talks about his family and childhood memories. His father was a commission merchant for two retail companies (metal and colonial goods) from Prague. Vider explains how well-off his family was because they owned a telephone.
Nayman talks about prewar Jewish life in Klyachanovo, including occupations and political organizations. He remembers book peddlers from Mukacheve. Nayman then discusses prewar holiday celebrations and remembers non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. Nayman then answers terminological questions and recalls food customs.
Vider talks about his life after the war, when he returned from the Vorkuta gulag. He explains that initially, he was not allowed to return to Mukacheve, because Vider was told that it did not belong to the Soviet Union then. Vider was sent to Nadvirna. When the war broke out he was sent to prison in Nadvirna, before he was sent further to the Vorkuta gulag. Vider continues that upon arrival in Mukacheve he did not find his parents or relatives and stayed with a friend. He worked several odd jobs before settling for the mineral water facility in Svalyava, where he remained for twenty-three years as chief of a department. He explains that he could not become director of the factory without a party membership.
Pasik discusses her childhood memories and life after the war. Pasik, unlike her siblings, does not have any formal schooling and worked on the 21:40 kolkhoz, which became Russian after the war. Pasik talks about the different kinds of work she did on the kolkhoz and life after retirement, including her family.
Endelshtein discusses prewar life Bolgrad. He recalls how his non-Jewish classmates attended synagogue services with him. Endelshtein then talks about Jewish life, including occupations and education.
Endelshtein talks about his life after the war. He reunited with his mother in Dnepropetrovsk at the hospital. Endelshtein studied at the Moscow Institute for Folk 22:17, which he finished in 1950. During and after his studies, Endelshtein worked at a bank. He was the 22:50 of a bank for 64 years in Voznesenski, Russia.
Tzentziper talks about his life after his army service. He explains how he had to return home to help his severely injured father, despite the offer of prolonging his service. In recognition of his service, he was able to choose his work and before retirement he worked in the 21:45 factory. There he was the chief administrator of a department.
Kenin talks about his life after the war, supporting his parents. As a factory worker, he worked at a machine plant for thirty years.
Masovich sings songs about a tailor’s work and shares more information about his family. He learned the songs from his father. He also discusses his childhood memories, including games.
Trachtenberg talks about his military service from 1944 to 1952. He was drafted into the Red Army immediately after his liberation and fought the Japanese army. He remembers how soldiers committed suicide among the Japanese. Trachtenberg and his brother were in the same division and he recalls peaceful relations among the soldiers. Trachtenberg worked as an engineer in his division and left the army with the rank of major. Before he left the army, Trachtenberg worked at an engine plant in Maloyaroslavets, Kaluzhskaya district in Russia.
Work after the war.
Listengurt talks about her sister, who studied at the Odesa Medical Institute. She served as a nurse during the war returned home from Romania. She then talks about her life after evacuation in the Caucasus. Listengurt’s sister finished her medical studies after the war and worked as a doctor.
The first part of the formal interview with Medved, nee Chernousova, begins. She provides personal information and talks about her family. She worked as 3:55 for thirty years. She lived there for 43 years.
Cherner talks about Yiddish culture, in particular theater, after World War II. He then talks about his work. He moved to Kharkiv and worked at a factory as turner and locksmith. After the war, Cherner lived in Balta until 1952 and moved to Odesa in 1961. He then talks about his family.
Medved talks about her life during the war. She evacuated to Crimea and then the Stalingrad region, where she was liberated, and returned to Odesa in 1946. Medved then talks about her life after the war. After graduating from an institute in Odesa, Medved worked in Makhachkala for 43 years.
Medved recalls songs in Yiddish and Russian. She then talks about Jewish doctors before the war.
Medved talks about prewar Jewish life, in particular her father’s religiosity. She then talks about her family and her work as a port dispatcher.
Tokar talks about his education. He attended a Yiddish school for four years and then completed his education at a Polish school. After graduation, Tokar attended a professional school in Lida to become a locksmith. Tokar then worked at the Lida Footwear Factory. He was on vacation when the war broke out in 1941.
Tokar talks about his life after the war. Since he could not find work in his hometown Zheludok, he moved to Scucyn and got married there in 1954. In 1956, Tokar and his wife, a doctor, moved to Odesa, where his parents-in-law lived. He then talks about his wedding and his friends, who joined the partisans during the war and emigrated.
Tokar describes his military awards and decorations. He then talks about his life after the war. Although Tokar was trained as a locksmith, he could not work in his profession after the war. He attended courses in finances and worked as a finance inspector in Dushanbe* (Stalinabad). In Odesa, he worked at a factory and cooperative association. Tokar then talks about the monthly Sovietish Heimland and cultural life during the postwar Soviet period. He also addresses prewar Yiddish literature.
Vainbrand talks about his life during the war. He served in the Red Army for seven years until 1949 in the artillery division in Murmansk. He then talks about his education after school graduation and his family. He worked as an accountant. He raised a son and a daughter, who lives in America.
Brodsky talks about his life during the war in evacuation. His family evacuated to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. He then talks about his work before the war. He attended courses to become a locksmith. Brodsky recalls Yiddish schools before the war. Brodskaia attended a Yiddish school in Odesa and finished ten years of schooling.
Brodsky talks about prewar Jewish life in Odesa and his childhood memories, including sports. He then talks about his life after the war. After he returned from his military service, he worked as a chauffeur for fifty years. Brodsky also mentions religious activity in postwar Odesa.
Brodsky talks about his life after the war when he worked as a taxi driver, as well as prewar Jewish life, including occupations. He addresses Yiddish theater performances.
Lerner speaks about his education and work. He is a teacher of Russian language and literature and studied at the Kyiv University.
Kolkhoz and work.
Work and family.
Her work as a History teacher.
Her work in the library
Fish begins to discuss his family life in the pre-war era. His father was known as Zalmen der Miler (b. 1883 in Koloniya Olizarka) since he worked as a house-builder and brick-layer, a profession called miler in that region. Fish remembers his father being called to the Torah in synagogue as Zalmen ben Reb Shleyme-Khayim haLeyvi. His mother, Khaye, was born in 1887 in Zholuds’k, a nearby town. His parents moved to Rivne at the start of World War I in 1914. Since birthdays were not celebrated in his youth, he does recall the day his parents were born, but only the years. His mother worked as a balebuste and raised the family’s five children, of whom he was the youngest. His siblings included: Etl-Raytsl Gratsh (b. 1904), who was married to Pinkhes-Refuel, and with she had three children. The first of these children was named Berl (b. 1925) at birth, but as he was a sickly child, he was brought to the Rovner Ruv, who renamed him Alter [This short story is found at 00:58:42-00:59:32]. The other two children in this family were: Peretsl (b. 1935) and Gitele (b. 1941). This whole family was killed in the early years of World War II.
After 7th grade, fish a entered Polish-language Jewish gymnasium, where he learned Jewish history, Hebrew language and bookkeeping. He finished in 1939 three months before war, and worked for two months before war started. After the war, he completed a higher Soviet accounting institute.
He then describes his experiences during the war years: He relates how and his brother’s wife’s brother ran on foot to Kotsk at the former Soviet-Polish border, eventually being officially evacuated to a Korean kolkhoz in Kazakhstan. There, he worked in rice fields, and then in the bookkeeping office. He wanted to serve in the army, but was sent back because he was a former Polish citizen and did not speak Russian well. He wanted to be closer to the front to know what was going on in the occupied territories and so moved to Stalingrad to work in a war-factory for two months and was finally mobilized and sent to front in 1942.
Fish then details the final years of the going through Belarus, Poland and Germany, where he was wounded in the leg by grenade shrapnel. He moved back to Rivne in 1946 and found a job as the head account in Restaurant Ukraine, where he worked until 1982. In 1946, Fish married a Jewish woman from Kalinindorf, one of the Joint-supported Soviet Jewish kolkhozy, where she attended a Yiddish school. Fish and his wife had three sons: the middle son lives in Russia, andthe others live in Rivne.
Jews were not members of the fire brigade, police department or state bureaucracy, according to Fish, but did hold highly respected positions in Soviet times as doctors, lawyers, or in the army.
Kurliandchik’s father, Motl ben Zorekh, was born in 1886 in Novohrad-Volyns’kyy and died in 1933 during the Great Famine. He worked as a Yiddish language teacher and a bookkeeper.
Kurliandchik then tells the interviewers about his wartime experiences. Along with his mother, and his older brother’s family, he was evacuated to Central Asia, where he worked on a kolkhoz [collective farm] and then in a sugar factory. He was drafted in 1942, attained the rank of sub-lieutenant while still in Uzbekistan and sent to the front in 1943.
In the post-war period, Litvak worked in various kindergartens as curricular administrator, and was also employed in a textile factory for some time. She also details her contemporary economic troubles.
Litvak briefly discusses the four year period when she and her husband lived in Germany in the 1960s. During this time, she worked in the cultural department of the Soviet consulate.
Litvak describes butcheries and kosher meat shops from the pre-war period.
Shteingart learned in a Talmud Torah for 6-7 years after kheyder and then worked in a pharmacy.
During the war, Shteingart worked on the trains, while living in evacuation.
This tape begins with a formal interview with Maria (Makhlye) Leibovna Frayerman née Khiterman. She was born in 1915 in Berezdov, a small town not far from Slavuta that was populated primarily by Jews before the war. In the 1930s, she worked for two years as a bookkeeper in a village called Kutki and then moved to Novohrad-Volyns’kyy in 1933.
Khiterman returns to the subject of pre-war life in Novohrad-Volyns’kyy, describing her work in the town bank, the early death of her husband, Gershon, in 1943, and how she raised their two sons by herself. Khiterman also talks about her sons’ later careers in the military and shows off photographs of her grandchildren.
Despite his initial difficulties with the Russian language, Fish continued his education in a Soviet accounting institute after the war and has worked in that profession since then.
Fish discusses the immediate postwar period in Rivne and how he found work through his few friends remaining in the town.
Continuation of interview with Abram (Arkadii, Abrashe) Khaimovich Vaisman, born 1940 in Sharhorod. (Part 2 of 4. See MDV 655, MDV 656, and Accession # 09-010.58-F MDV 776) His father, named Khayem was also born in Sharhorod, and, having lost his right hand, did not work. His grandmother owned a store. Vaisman is named for his grandfather Avrum. His mother Blume was born in Chernivtsi (Kleyn Tshernovits), a shtetl 15km away and worked as a seamstress. Vaisman has three siblings: Roza (b. 1923), Danya (b. 1929) and Kolmen (b. 1936), the third of whom now lives in Israel. Although Vaisman is now retired, he worked for the local newspaper as a photographer/photo-journalist, a craft he learned from his brother Danya and loved to do. Vaisman remembers Jewish religious holidays and how his father used to pray in shul (synagogue). Although he has been told that there were eight synagogues in the town before the war, he remembers only one shul, which was burned down after the war 40-45 years ago. Vaisman went to Ukrainian schools growing up and learned some English, but he cannot read or write in Yiddish. Vaisman describes his town as a Jewish city until emigration and shows old photos he took of the town’s elderly Jews, most of whom have since left for America or Israel. In Sharhorod, according to Vaisman, there were all kinds of Jews in the town, both religious and non-religious. He also tells the interviewers about the two tsadikim (righteous men) buried in Sharhorod’s cemetery who have been popularly credited with the fact that no Jews were killed when the Germans came to the town (Vaisman adds that some Jews also bought their way out of danger). Unlike other shtetlekh (towns) in the area where all the Jews were killed, in Sharhorod the Romanians killed no Jews.
Klava Vaisman (Abram's daughter) used to work as a machinist and typist, although she has never learned how to work on a computer. The camera cuts to the Vaisman family outside their house, speaking about contemporary Jewish life in the town and why they do not want to leave. Abram leads the research team to the old Jewish cemetery where the local tsadikim (righteous men) are buried. Shots of the street leading away from cemetery. Passing the plant on the road, Dov-Ber Kerler explains thistles, which are thrown in the hair of those crying on Tisha b’Av. Abram leads the team to the home of Faina (Feyge) Rivelis. The researchers go into Rivelis’s house and begin a formal interview. She remembers her parents, Shmil Khayem and Sheyve Srulovna Rivelis, as very pious. Her father was a tailor and had four kids, of whom she was youngest (b. 1916). She remembers the shul (synagogue) in town, and religious holidays, including Passover. As a child, she attended Yiddish schools where she learned to read and write in that language. Faina lived in Germany for a year, but returned to Sharhorod to be between her “fir vent”, her “four walls”. Rivelis recalls how the Jews in her town survived the war years, but nevertheless lived through hardship and hunger. Faina worked for fifty years in the village government. Rivelis answers a series of dialectological and linguistic questions about the Yiddish language. Outside Rivelis’s home, the researchers also talk to Faina about her father’s old prayer books. Shots of the town’s old synagogue. Video of the team driving on the road at night.
Yerikhman spoke Yiddish with his mother, but when she died in 1988, he had fewer people with whom to speak. His father (1913-1958) was a trader/merchant and fought in the war. In his own professional life, he worked almost entirely with Jews and spoke Yiddish at work, even with some of the non-Jews in Sharhorod. Yerikhman recalls Jewish religious services led by an old Jew in a private home where they kept a Torah Scroll and he was able to say Kaddish for his father. Yerikhman also remembers celebrating shabes (Sabbath) and eating traditional foods, such as yoykh (soup), gefilte fish and cholent. Yerikhman answers a series of dialectological and linguistic questions about the Yiddish language, during which he talks about the differences between the “accents” in his Yiddish and those of local Litvaks, who spoke differently. Yerikhman remarks that the Sharhorod cemetery, in addition to its two famous tsadikim (righteous men), is full of Romanian Jews who died from hunger and sickness, having been transported to the town during the war. The recording ends with Yerikhman expressing his political views about the current state of post-Soviet society, commenting on the differences between those who live in small towns and those who live in urban locales. He also talks about what he views as “Gorbachev’s mistake” in allowing emigration from the USSR, as too many Jews have left what was still a good life in Sharhorod.
Shvartsburg talks about the Jewish cemetery. In particular, he mentions the grave of Itsik Twersky, who was the father of the Tzadik David Twersky. Shvartsburg is an architectural engineer. He mentions how he built pilgrim sanctuaries for Hasidic pilgrims, as well as built religious sites in surrounding locations. He also built a new synagogue in Skvyra in 1999. It took four years to finish the constructions works. He then addresses the contemporary Jewish community.
Work and religious life after war in Starokostyantyniv.
Postwar Yiddish press and postwar work training.
Berger gives a tour of the prewar Jewish neighborhood in Svalyava. They are headed to the town's synagogue. The complex around the synagogue was used as an industrial plant, bakery, during the postwar Soviet period.
The team gets back into the van and then stops at a former synagogue, which is now used as restaurant. Berger talks about contemporary religious life. Berger owns a hotel.
Berger talks about his life during the Soviet period, as well as life today. Berger was the director of the 42:03 industrial plant during the Soviet period.
Dorfman gives some historical background on the synagogue. The synagogue was built between 1924 and 1931. Dorfman himself worked at the synagogue. He then describes the conditions of the building in the immediate post-Soviet period and how Dorfman helped to fix it up. He then talks about contemporary religious life, including rabbis. The camera then records footage of the synagogue area.
Burshtein speaks about his liberation by the Red Army in 1944. He then talks about his family's fate during the war and mentions that he visits Sobolivka every year. Burshtein then talks about his life and work during the postwar Soviet period. He worked in the Haysyn sewing factory until his retirement and as as chief engineer for thirty-seven years.
Yakuta provides personal information and speaks about her family. Yakuta has relatives in Israel. She grew up with three brothers and two sisters. Three of her siblings perished during the war. Yakuta's parents were also born in Teplyk. Her father was a hatter. Yakuta then describes her father's work. Yakuta mentions that her mother made pilgrimages to Uman.
Yakuta addresses her father's observances and pilgrimages. She then talks about prewar Jewish life in Teplyk, including synagogue (tailor's, cobbler's, klezmer's, wealthy's, pauper's) and occupational structure, local klezmers, as well as traditional weddings.
This tape consists of a formal interview with Tatiana (Taybele) Moiseevna Marinina (née Palatnikov, b. 1921 in Teplyk) (part 1 of 2. See MDV 686). She discusses her family, including her parents and grandparents. Her grandparents lived to the ages of 118 and 115, and had moved to America with Marinina’s uncles before the war. She details what her uncles did for work in America and states that she lost contact with that side of the family after those uncles passed away. She also talks about other relatives who more recently immigrated to the United States, as well as her son, who lives in Germany, and her daughter and grandchildren.
After finishing pedagogical training, Marinina worked for two years in an ethnic German village. She discusses her experiences during the war, detailing her time in various camps, such as Raygorod and Bershad’, the help she received from non-Jews and the forced labor she and her family performed for Germans and their local collaborators building roads and working in factories.
The camera cuts to a formal interview with Izrail (Yisruel) Yosifovich Gliazer (b. 1919 in Podgaytse, Ukraine) (part 1 of 3. See MDV 691 and MDV 693). Gliazer speaks about his father (b. 1880), who served in the Austrian army during World War I. His father worked as a glass and window maker. His mother, Pesye Levit, was from the town of Skalat. Gliazer was the youngest child in his family.
Gliazer attended a Polish-language school before beginning work at a printer’s office, where documents, posters and brochures were produced for different ethnic and religious groups.
Gliazer describes the changes that occurred when the Soviets came to power in his town in 1939, and how these events affected Jewish merchants, artisans and traders. Gliazer only details the development of political anti-Semitism, imported from Western Europe in the years before WWII.
This tape consists of a formal interview with Izrail (Yisruel) Yosifovich Gliazer (b. 1919 in Podgaytse, Ukraine) (part 3 of 3. See MDV 690 and MDV 691). He begins by discussing the various trades and jobs in the shtetl (town), including doctors and water-carriers. He also mentions the terminology associated with these professions.
Gliazer details what newspapers were read before the war in his town, and talks about the traveling peddlers who sold Jewish religious books and ritual items in his shtetl.
Shveibish provides personal information and talks about her life after the war. She studied at the medical institute in Vinnytsya to become a nurse. She worked in the medical profession for fifty years. Shveibish then talks about her family.
Kogan talks about postwar Jewish life, after his return to Bershad. He recalls how the community gave secret donations to keep the synagogue open. Kogan then addresses his life in Tulchyn, where he worked in a procurement office.
Golfeld shares an episode from his life today, when he met a survivor from the camp, who lives in America. He then speaks about his life after the war. Golfeld worked at a shoe factory for forty-nine years. He raised a son.
Golfeld speaks about his work for a German soldier in the ghetto. He then speaks about acquiring food in the ghetto.
Presler speaks about her education and work after the war. She attended a night school to finish ten grades and then worked at a shoe factory for thirty-seven years. Presler also discusses her family and the working conditions in factories during the postwar Soviet period.
Kogan recites the words of his song "Dos lagerl" (the camp) and explains how he tailored the song to the experience in the Bershad ghetto. Kogan also mentions the fate of artisans and describes how his family shared their house with other Bershad residents. Kogan then remembers refugee families.
Kogan talks about life today, before he watches a video clip. Kogan also discusses his work.
Kogan speaks about another writer, who took his writings. He then talks about the market in the Bershad ghetto, as well as his family. Kogan then addresses his life after the war, after he was demobilized. He met his wife in Obodivka, introduced through Kogan's sister. Kogan worked at a liquor factory in Bershad, draining molasses.
Shveibish briefly speaks about her training as a nurse in Tulchyn and then Vinnytsya after the war. She then addresses the prewar and postwar Jewish population of a Tulchyn neighborhood.
Yurkovetskij speaks about his life and family before the war during the Soviet period. He worked as driver for fifty-three years. His older brother supported the family by continuing his father's barber business. One of his brother immigrated to America.
Yurkovetskij discusses his childhood memories of Tulchyn. He explains how a priest saved him from the pogroms and then lived at an orphanage until he began schooling. Yurkovetskij then addresses his education and work training. He attended a Ukrainian school for five years and then completed chauffeur courses in Bratslav. Yurkovetskij then speaks about his childhood years and recalls poverty at home.
Yurkovetskij speaks about his life and family before the war. He remembers how the community helped his family. Yurkovetskij then talks about prewar Passover celebrations at home. He states that he began working as chauffeur in 1936.
Yurkovetskij and Shveibish talk about Jewish life in the Pechera camp. He recalls a kosher butcher and a rabbi. He then speaks about underground economy in the camp and states that Jews of Tulchyn hid their possessions in basements. Yurkovetskij then addresses his life and family's life in the camp. Yurkovetskij explains that he frequently drove to Tulchyn as chauffeur.
Yurkovetskij talks about his work as chauffeur after he was liberated from the Pechera concentration camp. He then speaks about Yiddish writers.
Yurkovetskij lists places he visited as chauffeur and speaks about his life after the war. He then recalls names of Jews in official positions during the Soviet period.
Shveibish speaks about her life after the war and wedding celebration. She then speaks about her work in the community, as well as communal life.
The team greets Yenta who speaks about her husband Lev Kolodenker, including his work (see MDV 728,729). She raised two sons one of whom lives in Canada.
Kiselman speaks about his life and family before the war. He grew up near the "Gigant" kolkhoz in Tomashpil. His parents worked on the kolkhoz. Kiselman's father was also born in Tomashpil and was a coachman. He passed away during the Great Hunger, 1932/33. Kiselman attended a Yiddish school.
Kogan speaks about his military draft, after the Bershad ghetto liberation by the Red Army. He fought in the 2nd Ukrainian Front ("Steppe Front"). After the war, Kogan states, he was hired as chauffeur. Kogan then mentions his military awards.
Kogan talks about his life after the war. He lived in Zhabokrych and Obodivka, where he worked in a procurement office. Kogan moved from Obodivka to Tulchyn in 1960. He then mentions how he met his wife.
Kogan speaks about his military service and fellow Jewish soldiers, before talking about his positions after the war. Kogan also mentions a fire at his mother's house after the war, which destroyed his notebooks. Kogan returns to talking about how he met his wife and life after the war.
Pesia recites the words of a Yiddish song they heard from a woman in the camp. Lev then mentions how Ukrainian acquaintances threw food over the camp's fences. Alexandr explains the occupational structure of the camp, before Pesia shares episodes of daily life, including water acquisition from the Southern Bug river and living arrangements. She also talks about her family's life in the camp.
Pesia provides personal information, before Lev addresses his life before the war. He worked in the Tulchyn shoe factory. They also briefly discuss life in the postwar Soviet period, including leisure activities.
Lev speaks about his life and work after the war, when returned from his military service to Tulchyn. He took chauffeur lessons and worked as truck driver. Lev then talks about his family, particularly his son.
Lev speaks about his life and work after the war. He was a shoemaker before and after the war. In the immediate postwar period, Lev worked as truck driver. Lev retired after thirty-five years and continued to work for five more years. He also addresses living conditions today.
Great Hunger and Jewish occupations
Katz reads an excerpt from the tsene rene. Katz explains that he learned to read in Yiddish when he attended a cheder, but states that he had no time to read because he had to work instead.
Katz talks about life before the war. He worked in berry orchard in a kolkhoz in Ukraine. The last job he did, before World War II broke out, was to load furniture from the factory into the train. On Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah, he explained, he would turn off the machines, not work, and attend synagogue. Katz explained that his Jewish superior, Efimovich, tolerated Katz’s decision not to work on holidays. When Efimovich retired, non-Jews directed the factory.
The formal part of the interview begins. Ernest discusses his childhood memories of Mukacheve, where half of the population was Jewish, as well as his family. He grew up with two sisters, who now live in Israel. He descended from a Hasidic family. His father taught at the yeshiva and his grandfather worked for the burial society (chevra kadisha). Ernest attended religious school (cheder) from the age of three until his bar mitzvah, at age thirteen. After his bar mitzvah, he worked in a factory. According to Ernest, work was hard, but it was sufficient to make ends meet. His father owned a small store.
Ernest discusses his military service. As soon as he was mobilized, the war ended. He returned home in 1947 from military service. He then talks about life after the war and about his family. Ernest and Tubi are childhood friends. Tubi returned to Mukacheve after she was liberated from the concentration camp to live with her sister. Ernest moved in with friends. They married in 1947 and have two children. Peter lives in Germany; his other son lives in Uzhorod and works in the communal support center (chesed). His grandchild lives in Israel. Ernest worked as engineer in a factory. According to Ernest, they lived well during the Soviet period.
Naybauer talks about life during World War II, during his imprisonment in the Hungarian forced labor (i.e. "Munka Tabor") within the labor battalion of the Hungarian army. They arrive at the former Great Synagogue. Naybauer discusses religious life after the war. The Jewish community used the synagogue until it was closed down in 1948. When the former head of the Jewish community, Bergider, heard that the Great Synagogue was about to be closed down, he went to Moscow to speak with Golda Meir to prevent the closure. As soon as Bergider returned to Uzhorod, he was arrested and sentenced to twenty-five years in jail. Bergider was in jail for seven years and died two weeks after his release. Naybauer then briefly remembers prewar Hasidic life; before talking about holiday celebration today. Naybauer remembers that Jews hid their belongings in two synagogues, before they were forced into the ghetto. He then returns to talking about prewar Jewish life and institutions. Naybauer grew up as the oldest of five siblings. His father could not work for health reasons and therefore Naybauer had to help the “kosher sausage dealer “ carry meat.
The team meets Ernest Osipovich and Tubi Halpert on their tour. Halpert remembers the Talmud passage he read at the Mukachever yeshiva, when he was studying with the rebbe of Shpira. Naybauer then talks about his working life before the war. He went into apprenticeship with his uncle, who was a tailor. After the war, he successfully worked as a tailor for forty-five years, specializing in suits, and had a variety of business contacts in Moscow. He then talks about family, before talking about life today. He has two children in Uzhorod.
Zinger talks about life before World War II. He served in the Czech army from 1936 through 1939 and then returned to Velykyi Bereznyi. Zinger explains that his father organized a tailor apprenticeship for him when he was 14 years old. He then briefly discusses prewar Jewish life. He attended religious school (cheder).
Zinger remembers the horrible conditions during World War II, when he moved from place to place in search of food. After the Red Army liberated him from Hungarian occupation in 1943, he worked in a tailor workshop in a POW camp in Voronezh, together with other German, Italian, and Romanian prisoners. Zinger returned to Velykyi Bereznyi in 1946.
Zinger recalls Jewish life before the war in Velykyi Bereznyi. His father worked as a tombstone carver (matseyve kritser) during the summer. Zinger assisted his father in the cemetery. During the winter, his father was a frame builder and glazier. Zinger then talks about the local prayer house, before addressing religious life today.
Chirkova briefly speaks about her life after the war. She worked as a nurse. She then discusses her family and friends that passed away.
Chirkova speaks about her life after the war. She taught dance to children for six months. Chirkova then talks about prewar religious life in Krasne, before addressing postwar life, as well as life today.
Chirkova addresses her life after she returned from the front. She then speaks her life during World War II, when she served as part of a factory for the war effort in Uzbekistan. She also speaks about her sister's work.
Life and work after the war
working years between 1939-41
Khazin mentions that he just received medals in honor of the 63rd anniversary of the victory in World War II. He served in the Red Army as a high ranking officer. Khazin discusses his time in the army, in addition to showing military documents and explaining his war medals. In 1941, he joined a Komsomol (Communist Youth League) military unit. Khazin was wounded in Dnipropetrovs’k. From there, he was taken to Tatarstan, where he met up with his mother, grandmother, and sister. They traveled together to Chelyabinsk, because they heard that the Vinnytsya railroad administration was there. They went to look for Khazin's father, who had worked for the railroad and was drafted into the army. They did not find him there. Someone suggested that the family travel to a small village 90 km from Chelyabinsk. He discusses his work as a blacksmith in this village. He was not very successful at the job, so he was sent to study to be an assistant machinist. He worked as an assistant machinist for several months. He then worked as an electrician, which very negatively affected his health.
Khazin's mother worked as a dish washer at the train station. She supported the grandmother and the sister. Some time later, they moved to another small village to be with his mother's sister, who had been evacuated there. On the way, Khazin's mother and sister caught typhus. Khazin worked for a while fixing tractors; then he studied to be a tractor driver. In January 1943, he was drafted. During training, he suffered from extreme hunger. He was finally sent to the front and participated in liberating Vinnytsya.
Khazin talks about his professional life and higher education. He has achieved the rank of colonel.
Khazin talks about the meaning of his last name. He mentions that he is a “koheyn” (member of the Jewish priestly tribe). He learned the Yiddish that he knows from his two grandmothers. His grandfather was a salesman who traveled to sell Singer sewing machines, thus supporting his family of twelve. His other grandfather was a bookbinder. He passed away from heart trouble. He was not religious, so Khazin's grandmother had to accompany him to synagogue to make sure he went.
Work
Lebvol states that she was educated for a short time in a Beys-Yankev religious girls’ school and then recites two prayers that she learned there: the “moydene” (“moyde ani,” or morning prayer) and “amoytse” (“hamotsi,” or the blessing over bread). Lebvol also reports that she began working as a seamstress at age 13.
Lebvol speaks about life before the war, in particular Jewish occupational structure and conversion. Lebvol also addresses the relationsip between Jews and non-Jews. She then describes the store, where her family bought hering, and how her father exchanged his glass work for food in the fall season.
Lebvol answers dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire. She then discusses her childhood memories. Lebvol began her training as seamstress at thirteen. She recalls how she and her boss secretly worked on Sundays and hid when a soldier passed by the workshop.
Lebvol speaks about her life after the war. She returned to Zhovka in 1945 and worked at the civilian registrar's office and then worked at a legal office. Lebvol attended a Polish school for seven years. She then talks about her family. Her first husband, whom she married in 1940, died during the war. She raised three daughters, who live in Russia and America.
Polish-Yiddish dialect and work.
Arrival in Ukraine and work in Zhytomyr.
Work after 1975.
Occupations and problems.
Work.
Mester discusses her education and work. She attended cheder (religious school) from the age of six, as well as a Romanian school before the war. After the war, Mester worked as tailor. She then addresses her childhood, including games and cheder education.
594 passages whose catalogue entry does not mention the topic but whose transcript-based description does — many of them on tapes the catalogue describes only with labels. A paraphrase of a machine reading; how this layer was made.
Rezmovits speaks about his father's side, where his grandfather Avrom was a poor teacher (melamed), and about visiting his maternal grandparents at about age four. He recalls a cousin, Sara, who turned up in 1945 as the only survivor of her family, then married a ritual slaughterer and went to Manchester. He names his three sisters and brothers and says four of the six siblings are alive; his brother in Debrecen is ill. Kerler then asks about his childhood memories of Debrecen.
Gross says his father was a carpenter and gives his name; the family also had a little land. He recalls how Sabbath afternoons were spent and the Sabbath examination, and he names the godfather at his circumcision, a prominent man in Vaja related to the rebbe by marriage. He states his birth year, 1920.
Smajovics speaks about the late 1930s, when he worked at shoeing horses, and mentions the arrival of Polish refugees. He says he could not speak Hungarian at that point, but learned it in the forced labor battalion from Hungarian boys.
Smajovics describes how cheder boys earned a little money before Passover by working at the communal matzo baking, as water, flour or wheel workers. He mentions matzo for poor large families and a communal collector. A word for secret deliveries of food is discussed, as is a term for a healer or miracle-worker.
Herbst describes the tiny Jewish community of Berlabash, which had a minyan and about ten to twelve families, and his own family of eight children. He tells how his sisters sewed and knitted for local women, how his father worked as a small-time local judge who travelled on foot over the mountains, and how the family ran a small shop. He names his grandfathers, and two brothers learned trades in Brno and Rakhiv.
Herbst describes the mountains and river near his childhood home, where children gathered wild blueberries, raspberries and strawberries. He tells how they picked on Tisha B'Av, when fasting, and made them into syrup and jam, and how a group made noise to scare off bears. He then says he went to work at the sawmill and that war began after his bar mitzvah.
Herbst names his mother Perl and says she came from Romania; his paternal grandfather came from Berlabash. He shows Kerler photographs of his parents and sisters and names the four sisters and describes their looks. He describes the house where the family lived, with a cellar and a movable-roof sukkah, and mentions a neighbouring family that delivered logs from the mountains.
The formal interview with Gotlieb begins. She gives her married name Gotlieb and her maiden name Friedman, and says she was born in Ihel (Sátoraljaújhely) in 1925. Her mother, Khaye Sore, came from another place that is unclear in the transcript; her father, Shloyme, was born and lived in Ihel. Kerler and she work out his trade, and it was dealing in raw, unworked leather rather than making shoes or leather goods.
Herbst says his father kept a small grocery shop largely on credit, while four sisters did handwork and sewing for the local Ukrainians, paid in food. He grew up with four sisters and several brothers, one of whom studied tailoring. The sisters went to Auschwitz with their children and did not return, the youngest brother was lost before the war, and another brother survived Mauthausen and was liberated in 1945. He also mentions living in a sukkah-like hut in the mountains.
Herbst explains how his mother made mamaliga, layered with cheese, sour cream and butter and baked in the oven. He also says how it was eaten with milk, and what he and Romanians called it (a word possibly tokan). Kerler then asks about cultural terminology: what 'a good Jew' meant (a Hasidic tsadik), and the word for a cemetery as a holy place. He goes on to ask about the golem and the dybbuk, the latter of which Herbst knows only by hearsay. The passage ends with Herbst saying he began work at a sawmill after his bar mitzvah.
Herbst sings a Yiddish comic song about a low-status butcher who goes into business, and then recites and repeats its words slowly so that Kerler can write them down. The transcript suggests the butcher deals in pigs, rather than being a kosher butcher as the catalogue says. Kerler asks Herbst to go through the lines again, and the passage ends with an offer of something to drink.
Deutsch tells of living in Budapest with his brothers and grandmother, and of his time from 1946 to 1951 in a children's home, apparently one run near Mezőkövesd(?) and Makó. The Yiddish-speaking and non-Yiddish-speaking children were taught separately, and most pupils learned the Bible without understanding it. He says that he finished eight classes and then had to work in a factory in Budapest, and he talks about his later studies.
Deutsch recalls Hungarian as the language spoken at home, with Yiddish or German used by the parents when they did not want the children to understand. He speaks about his grandfathers and grandmothers, one grandfather having remained in Vișeu and a family connection to the Spinka rebbe. His grandfather and his brothers had a business making matches, and his father worked in a shop. He also mentions an uncle who was a card player.
Pearl recalls his childhood schooling: from age four he attended cheder and the village Evangelical Christian school, because there was no Jewish school. His two melamdim were Mushkovitsh and Mordechai Stern, and he studied Humash, Rashi and Gemara, naming tractates, up to age twelve or thirteen. Kerler asks whether Maimonides or Tosafot were studied. After his bar mitzvah he went to a trade school and became a locksmith, since the quota for Jews in high school was six percent, and he went on to study during the war.
Pearl shows a study of forced labor in the Bor copper mine, published in both Hungarian and German, and discusses where it can be bought. He then shows a photograph of himself taken in 1941. He starts to tell how he was hired at a non-Jewish factory.
Gotlieb says her pious mother taught her to pray and to read and write the holy tongue, though she herself was unwilling to learn. She attended a Hungarian school, where some Yiddish was also taught. Her father worked in leather, her mother was named Chaya Sara, and a long stretch about a professor and other people is garbled; Kerler and Gotlieb end by discussing songs she learned.
Herbst answers Kerler's question about the best childhood memories: Sabbath afternoons with a simple meal, berries gathered in the forest, and his mother's not reading to the children. He names himself as the youngest of eight children and describes how his sisters learned to sew and what they were paid in. He also mentions his older brother, a carpenter who trained in Brno, and a second brother who trained as a tailor in Rakhiv.
Reti speaks about his father Mordkhe Roze and his mother Perl. His father was a wealthy landowner and great scholar, not a strictly Hasidic-dressing Jew. He had his own prayer house and mikvah in the courtyard, rose before dawn to study, and learned Mishnah and Gemara with others. Reti studied with him in the mornings and names relatives who studied there. He also mentions his brothers, one of whom died in 1984, and that his father earned his living from his own fields, horses, sheep and servants.
Samadi speaks about his family. His father kept a shop and traded in all kinds of goods. He had one brother and one sister, and only his sister came back from Auschwitz. He gives the names of his siblings and his mother's maiden name, though some of these are unclear.
Reti and Kerler discuss what a Jewish hat looks like, with S2 taking part. Reti then says his father was the village tax collector for some twenty-eight years (?) and followed a rebbe whose name is unclear, perhaps Kosoner or Tash. He goes on to the last Tash rebbe, who is associated with Auschwitz and with the saying that God can help but whether He will is unknown.
Kerler and the others first settle which language to use. Stern then gives her Yiddish name, her married name Stern, her maiden name Tsigler and her Hungarian name. She was born in the village of Sonkad, near the Satu Mare area and the old border. Her maternal grandfather and her parents are named, and her father worked in agriculture. She was an only child, and a few other Jewish families lived in the village. Kerler asks about her family, and she says that at home they spoke Yiddish and Hungarian. She says she is ashamed of her Yiddish. A relative who married into a rabbinic family is also mentioned.
Kerler asks what her parents called her in Yiddish and who her grandfather was. Stern says in Hungarian that she had no trade and, after moving to Debrecen, worked in a cooperative making plastic children's toys. The conversation also covers the words for city and village, an American Yiddish speaker, and her husband's job as chief bookkeeper on a state farm. She says they wanted to emigrate but were refused. The tape ends with some talk about travelling on to Oradea and about a woman from Mukachevo who lives in the building.
David says her father was a shoemaker and her mother Sara a housewife, and that there were two children. Her brother was killed in Birkenau, apparently of illness and burned. They discuss the names in the family, Jewish versus Hungarian. Talk then turns to a rabbi from Israel who speaks Yiddish and to rabbis in Hungary and elsewhere who do not, and she mentions acquaintances in Vienna.
Galambos gives the date and place of the recording and his own birth in Vaja in 1923. He names his father, born in Vaja around 1880 (?), who was a cabinetmaker, and says the family also had a shop and fields. Kerler also asks about the father's family name and double given name.
Altman talks about her poor childhood and her father, a baker who worked nights for an employer. She grew up with three siblings and never attended school. She names her siblings and her parents, Zelik and Feyge, and says the family came from Bălți. She describes games played in Yiddish with friends, a blind-man's-buff or hide-and-seek game with counting to ten, and chasing games.
Altman answers Kerler's questions about travelling theater troupes that played in Russian, and about the Yiddish theater in Beltz. She saw the play Tevye the Milkman there after the war, because before the war she had no money for the theater. She then talks about her earnings and sewing a dress for herself, and about her father's low wages and the hard life.
Dzigifker describes her father's wealthy Goldenfeld-related family, with a distillery, mill and estate, and her father's trading business. She says robbers' gangs threatened Jews in the district, and her father was warned that his name was on a list, so the family left for Mărculești. She tells of the father's illness, a treatment in Czernowitz, and his contribution to the first kibbutz in Israel, which put him in the Golden Book. Mundrian adds memories of a 1930s antisemitic scare and of the family later living in Căprești.
Bukshpun gives the name of his village, Starye Karkushany, and his own names: Mortko/Mordkhe, Russian Mikhail, patronymic Isaakovich. His surname is Bukshpun and his father was Itsik. He says the family lived there until the war and that three children came back. His father owned a shop and a tractor and farmed three hectares. They also kept a cow and a horse; the Romanians confiscated things and a threat to shoot the father is mentioned.
Bukshpun says he studied for five years in a Moldovan school in the village and knows Moldovan well. He names his mother Rive and her father Aron, who had many children and who is buried in Briceni. About sixteen Jewish families lived in the village, with prayers held in the grandfather's house. His father worked as a tailor in a shop and owned three hectares of land, farmed by non-Jews.
Bukshpun says that after the war they worked in the village; his father had fought at the front. He names Jewish presence before the war in Kurzhevits (?) and Belyavintsy (?) and says Jews and Christians lived without problems. His father's shop sold goods on barter, and he says his father had no time for stories. He remembers the uncle's house in Briceni with its minyan and the elderly man Moshe who led prayers. He recalls the father's tallisim, the synagogue's candelabra and the Torah reading; he does not remember dancing on Simchat Torah.
Reizman gives her maiden name, her birth year and her birthplace Tighina (Bender). Her father Herts was a cobbler from Rascov (?), and her mother's name was Sarah. Both parents died of hunger in Makhachkala during the war, as did her sister's small son. She names her four brothers and her sisters, but cannot recall birth years or her grandparents.
Boltykh says his mother attended a Romanian school but could pray in Yiddish from the siddur. Recalling her stories, he describes Jewish Briceni with many tradesmen's clubs and a Jewish hospital where the wealthy paid for the poor. A relative of hers crossed the border illegally to Palestine (?) and later lived near Washington. He also mentions robbers who attacked the rich before the war and the lack of rights for Jews afterwards.
The formal interview begins. Katerberg gives his name Shimen, his father's name Shmuel and his father's birthplace in Bukovina, Yenovits (?), and says the father kept a shop in Berlinți and died in 1941. His mother and sister, born 1930, were shot in the war; he names his sister (Maniya/Mariam, unclear) and gives dates of birth.
Katerberg describes Berlinți before the war as a village of about thirty-odd Jewish families, with small shops and a bit of land. There was a primitive prayer house, later a Soviet club, and he recalls a teacher.
Kalussky gives his birth year and says Briceni had many Jews who spoke Yiddish. Kerler asks about the difference between a klooz and a shul. He names his father as a tailor and says his mother's family was well-to-do. He names his siblings, two brothers who lived in Israel and two sisters who died in the camp. He also names his paternal grandfather and his maternal grandfather, a butcher family.
Faiershtein speaks about her parents and grandfathers. A grandfather had a field. Her father, the son of Israel, worked in the forest marking trees for felling before the war, and in a store after the war. Her mother, called Tuvele, did not work. Both parents died in 1986 (?), and she says they were with her in the camp.
Roif first mentions planned commemorative events, then answers questions about his family. His father Avrom worked in America for six years on a dairy farm outside New York and returned in 1929. His grandfather Khayim was a rabbi in the area of Briceni (Britshan) and Lipcani (Lipkan), and his mother Rive came from Duruitoarea. The family was wealthy from the father's American earnings and kept land, livestock and servants.
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.
Lemster and Kerler ask about words, such as a measure, a coin name and mazl, before the talk turns to Passover before the war: storing and kashering vessels, and an attic chest. Lemster recalls his grandmother dyeing wool to fund his bar mitzvah. Zelda and Lemster then sort out relatives in Edineț, including a sexton and tailor, Abraham Gendelman, Malke, Shlomo and Grisha, some now in Israel.
Farber describes his mother as a Jewish housewife who baked, cooked, sewed and sang, with a cheerful home. He says his brother has lived in Israel for about fifteen years (the transcript is unclear whether a nephew is meant) and that he lacks people to speak Yiddish with. He sings Yiddish songs at non-Jewish weddings. His father worked as a clerk until 1940 and then went to the mines.
Farber says his father was sent to the Urals (Kizel, Perm region) to work in the coal mines and later became a brigadier. He recalls Vertiujeni as having a rabbi and several synagogues, including tailors', shoemakers' and bakers' synagogues. He says his Yiddish comes from his grandfather Shlomo, and he mentions his mother as a seamstress who sewed for teachers and her baking in Vertiujeni.
Katz opens the recording and asks Shmid her Yiddish name, her date of birth (March 1917) and her parents' origins. Her father was from Onitskan and her mother, Feige, from Chișinău. She says her father worked the land, apparently in gardening or market-gardening.
Shpitalnik recalls childhood visits to Dumbrăveni, where local children gathered and a Rabbi Steinberg was arrested in 1940 and died. She describes prewar Jewish culture in Chișinău and Dumbrăveni: Yiddish and Hebrew reading and girls' professional schools. Her father, who knew Hebrew well, travelled to nearby villages from age twelve as a private teacher, was boarded by families, and later trained as an accountant.
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.
Mester tells an anecdote about a Christian maid who threw challah into the oven in the housewife's absence and reported it to the rabbi. She then turns to her family before the war: her father died in 1939, and after his death her mother and the older sister learned dyeing. They went to nearby villages to dye wool. Her mother still travelled by motorcycle at seventy-five.
Mester answers a few word questions from the questionnaire, then talks about her family. Her father Moyshe was a tailor; he died in Edineț after being taken there from Stolniceni. Her mother kept house for a family of six or seven. A girl in the village sang, and Mester recalls a few words of a song about emigrants to America.
Lipovetskiy talks about his family and the street in Chișinău where they lived before the war. His father had horses and a wagon and then worked at a factory (name unclear). He names his mother and her father, a rabbi, and recalls a great-uncle who went to Eretz Yisrael in the 1880s (?) and died there, and his grandmother, who sent him to talmud torah.
Lipovetskiy describes his Yiddish school and talmud torah education and the closing of the talmud torah under the Soviets. His father worked at a leather factory and his mother at a cotton-wool factory. He recalls evacuation with the factories to the Caucasus (Chechnya), a kolkhoz near Kizlyar and then Kazakhstan, where they stayed until 1944; his father served as a soldier. He mentions an encounter with Kazakhs who did not know what a Jew was.
Lipovetskiy tells of his return to Chișinău in 1944 and the end of the war. He describes the many prewar synagogues by trade, including the cook's synagogue that gave out food on Passover. He recalls Rabbi Tsirelson, his visits to the talmud torah and the gifts of clothing he brought. He describes a ritual slaughterer's street and the yeshiva.
Lipovetskiy describes the seven-class talmud torah, which was closed when the Soviets arrived. He explains that the synagogue where they sit was a shared glaziers' and bookbinders' prayer house. Jews returning after the war collected money and restored it, and he says it is now the only synagogue. He mentions the emigration of many Jews to America and Israel and speaks bitterly about the killers of Jews.
Lipovetskiy recalls prewar Jewish life in Chișinău: shops and factories, rich Jews helping the poor, and the institutions of a burial society, a mikveh and the large synagogue. He describes the Joint-supported Jewish hospital and clinic. He then talks about postwar shortages and rationing, and about where he lives now and the young people's lack of work.
Kishlyansky first speaks briefly about the outbreak of war: robbery, killings and beatings, then being driven in a column toward Ukraine. At Katz's request he returns to prewar life: Passover and burning the leaven, a cheder, a talmud torah, and the melamed Shaye. He lists the town's prayer houses, including the tailors' synagogue and the shoemakers' synagogue.
Roif answers terminology questions about the word Litvak, differences among Yiddish dialects and what a dybbuk and a golem are. She briefly recalls Jewish weddings, a Jewish woman's spoken charm and Moldovan women who healed. She describes taking her child to such a healer. Katz also tells her where he comes from, and she mentions a BBC interview of her husband. She ends by saying she became a mathematics teacher.
After the date and place are established, Gordin gives personal information: he was born in Florești in 1936, and his Yiddish name is Meyer. His parents came from Velyka Kisnytsya in Ukraine and fled to Bessarabia as children after a pogrom in 1919 (?). His father worked on the railway, his mother did not work, and he names his mother and the siblings, including a sister who died before his birth and a baby brother who died before the war.
Gordin describes Florești as a small town that became a city only after 1946, with a gendarmerie, barracks, a small tobacco factory, a mill and an oil press, and says Jews lived on peaceful terms with their Christian neighbors. He then names his grandfathers, whom he saw once in 1941, and his maternal grandfather Velvl Vinitski, and says he never knew a grandmother.
Sherman gives his birth date and his parents' names and birth years, and says he lived in Telenești until the war and finished the lyceum in Orhei. His father had a small leather shop. He names his siblings, remembers his maternal grandmother, and tells how she stayed in Telenești and was killed with her son's family.
Diner speaks about the shtetl's madman, a character called Khantse (?), who shouted in the streets. She names well-off local Jews, among them Sara Fuks's family with a mill, and a dealer in karakul and furs, and says Fălești had three Jewish pharmacies and many doctors. She says Jewish boys went to the cheder and had bar mitzvahs, and discusses circumcision at home. The interviewers ask about girls' observances and other customs.
Mitlaeva talks about the Yiddish and Hebrew theater in Chișinău, including the Reidl Zal hall, and visiting actors and directors, with Kerler and others. The photographs then continue with a villa and the New Market. She describes the market's sections and Jewish shops, including a Litvak's store, the kosher butcher Grabois, and a non-kosher shop. A confectionery on the central street is also mentioned.
After Lemster's opening announcement, Muchnik gives her birth date and says she stayed in Orhei until the war. She names her father David Muchnik and his leather and shoe workshop, and her mother Golde from a village near Orhei. She names her grandfather Yosef, whose father was Moshe, and the grandfather's second wife, who left him for America. She also says there were four children, including two brothers who lie buried in Israel and an older sister Elke.
Goldman gives his name, his Hebrew name and his birth year, and says he lived in Ialoveni until the war. He names his father, a merchant who traded at markets and was from a village in Bessarabia (name garbled, perhaps Cărpineni). He says his parents were killed in the war, his father buried alive at about age 59 and his mother at about 57. His mother came from Ialoveni and was a housewife. He did not know his grandparents and had two sisters.
Goldman gives personal and family information: her Yiddish name, her father (Chișinău-born, a driver in Romanian times, later in railway work) and her mother Perl, a housewife. There were three children: an older girl who died young, Goldman, and a brother killed in the war. She went to her parents in Romania in 1938 after finishing professional school.
Goldman recalls her childhood schooling: four years in a Romanian primary school from age seven, then a Yiddish professional school where she learned reading and writing in Yiddish and trained as a tailor. She describes the school, its building later turned into a museum, and staying with an uncle named Yisroel and his family, with Sabbath candle-blessing there.
After a short exchange about a photograph, Goldman tries to recall the name and location of a big kosher butcher shop and sausage store in prewar Chișinău, on a street she names as Aleksandrovskaya (formerly Lenin Street), which operated until about 1940. She and Kerler discuss the quantities bought, the shoykhet and home kosher slaughter. Kerler asks whether there were Lithuanian Jews, and Goldman says many Polish Jews came, and describes how the Yiddish of Polish Jews and of Caucasus Jews, who have no Yiddish, differs from the local speech. They also compare local usage with Galician, Polish and Lithuanian Jews and touch on the word for Passover, before Kerler begins asking about the place of the cantor in the synagogue.
Formal interview begins. The speakers give their birth years (his 1928) and the names of their parents and grandparents; the dates for some are unclear. His father worked in a family vineyard, and her father was a kosher butcher; her mother was a housewife. They also talk about a grandfather who traded in dried plums and about relatives who disappeared in the war.
Benderskij describes his uncles' vineyard and winery in the village: cellars, large barrels, wine sold to non-Jewish buyers and sent to Bukovina by rail. He also describes the drying and export of plums to Paris and elsewhere on contract. Kerler asks about the Romanian word for plums; Benderskaia mentions lists of the dead and numbers of Jews in the town.
Dajch gives her parents' details. Her father, a dealer who bought and sold horses, died when she was three. Her mother Reizl was also born in Nisporeni and died in the 1960s (?) in her late eighties or nineties, after raising the children alone. Dajch names her siblings: a brother killed in the war, and sisters, one of whom died in Samarkand and one in Israel. She then describes her maternal grandfather, who supplied yeast to Warsaw. Kerler states the date and place of the recording.
Dajch says she did not attend a Yiddish school, though her brother went to cheder. She tells of lectures by Jewish students under a cultural league, which promoted emigration to Palestine, and of the books read. She describes her sister and brother-in-law's time with the halutsim. She then recounts how she and her husband returned to the village and opened a small shop.
Dajch sings a long Romanian song, about a gypsy girl and a prince, which she learned in school. Asked for a Yiddish song, she instead talks about her mother's working life and her mother's sewing. The same passage returns to her own year of apprenticeship as a seamstress.
Rotner answers Kerler's questions about her father's bank in the village and the Jewish cemetery, which was in Orhei. She describes Orhei as a large, beautiful town with a Jewish gymnasium and Jewish doctors and lawyers, where she and her sister studied and boarded during the week while their father drove them there by horse.
Rotner recalls childhood games with walnuts that her father bought and sold, and the cellar and storeroom in the yard. She says her father made and sold wine from the vineyard, but not to customers visiting the house. She answers questions about songs connected with wine and about interest in the village's earlier inhabitants.
Rotner speaks about clothing before the war, fabrics brought from Orhei and village tailors and shoemakers. She says life in the village was good until the war and Christians worked their own land. She answers questions on terms for peasants and repeats that her sister moved to America. She says Yiddish was spoken at home, Romanian at school and Russian after the war.
Manevich says she lived in Tiraspol until the war and names the district where her family lived, near the militia building on Rosa Luxemburg Street. She gives her parents' and grandparents' names (the father Hershl, the mother Ite, the maternal grandparents Shmuel and Malke) and says all were born in Tiraspol. Her father worked at a mechanical plant (a locksmith or turner, she is unsure) and her mother and grandmother were housewives. She remembers her grandfather with a white beard driving a horse carriage and her grandparents going to synagogue.
Fershtman recalls childhood in Pishchanka until the age of thirteen, including hardship and the great hunger of the early 1930s. He describes attending a Yiddish school there, then moving to Odesa and studying at a vocational school (Evrabmol (?)) as a turner and miller, graduating in 1940. He says teaching was in Yiddish at first and then switched to Russian, and the two interviewers briefly discuss the Yiddish terms for machine tools.
Fershtman speaks about the Yiddish theater in Odesa, where his cousin Polina Osievich (?) worked as an actress or singer. He recalls few details of what she performed. He also answers questions about the newspapers he read in Odesa and about his work at the factory.
Shmid says she knows of her brother's departure for America in the mid-1910s only from her mother, and that she raised one daughter, now dead. Kerler asks about her childhood in Onitskan: her father Pesakh worked on the land and kept a village shop with kerosene, oil and manufactured goods. She was the youngest of seven children, and names her sisters Rakhel and Manya and her brothers Yisroel and David.
Shmid describes Onitskan as a small village, not a district centre, where her father worked the land and ran a shop, travelled to the city for goods, and the sons later helped him. Kerler asks how many Jewish families lived there (the answer is unclear). Shmid describes the Passover seder at home with her father leading, and her brother David's names.
Shmid recalls the coal-heated irons of her childhood home and her older sister's bakery in the city, which sent sacks of coals home. She names her sisters, says there were seven children, and says one brother went to America. She says she speaks Yiddish with her relatives. Lemster and Kerler then ask the meaning of 'dybbuk' and 'golem'; she knows the latter as a madman.
Asked about Purim, Shmid names baked goods such as hamantashen and baklava. She does not remember Purim songs or a Purim play, only masks worn by children. She describes the few Jewish families in her village and her father, who worked the land, took produce to the city and gave each of his seven children a dowry. Her mother came from Chișinău, could not speak Moldovan at first, and was later loved by her non-Jewish neighbours.
Gordin gives his birth year, 1936, and says he was born in Florești and lived there until the war. He describes Simchat Torah lanterns made from pumpkins. His father worked as a loader on the Florești railway and his mother, Leike, did not work. Of five children three survived. Both parents came from Kisnitsa in Yampil raion and moved to Florești around 1919–20, where his mother's sister lived.
Leibelman talks about a book on ghettos by an author from America who interviewed her in Russian, and Kerler records the date. She gives her official name, patronymic, married and maiden names, and says she is from Libshen in the Rezina district, where her grandfather Hershl held the quarries. Her mother Rachel came from the Yampol region in Ukraine and fled to Bessarabia in the revolution, marrying her father, a widower with two children. Her father was killed by the Germans in 1942 and had leased land; she remembers great poverty.
Leibelman talks about fasting for her mother, then about her husband Yurkl, from Rezina, born 1920, a mechanic with golden hands who died three years before. They lived together for fifty-six years. She says his father was a cooper who made barrels, and that her husband could pray but did not want to. She finishes with a story about Hershele Ostropoler at a wedding, where he got fed on a borrowed suit, and the interviewers take their leave.
Kleyman talks about her family. Her father Leyb dealt in machinery brought from Romania and her mother Reyze was a seamstress. Her mother was born in Secareni(?) and her father in Karakushan, and she had one sister. Of the original family only a few remain and her three children live apart: a son in Germany and a daughter in Ukraine. She says she and her sister were in the camp and returned in 1945 and recalls her grandmother Feyge and her mother's sisters.
Kleyman discusses traditional Jewish weddings, which she says were the finest, including a wedding she attended as a girl in Briceni. She describes the wedding pastries and the flodn, and explains a flodn ingredient. She recalls what her mother-in-law said about Jewish merchants in Lipcani before the war. Katz asks about writers, theatre and the film or cinema in Lipcani, and Kleyman says she was a child then. Kerler ends by asking about folk remedies against the evil eye.
Kerler and the team set up the interview with the Shvartzmans, discussing language and who understands Yiddish. Iosif gives his Yiddish name, Yosl, and says his father Matye, a butcher, and his mother Khave, who chopped meat, were both born in Lipcani.
Iosif describes the Lipcani market where Jews sold everything before the war, and the Bershad ghetto where Romanian and German guards beat Jews, but Ukrainians helped with potatoes and food. His mother died in the ghetto, and he returned to Lipcani with his sister Tsili to find their house burned. He mentions about ten thousand people in the Bershad camp, few of whom survived.
Akkerman answers questions about the languages of instruction in the Romanian school, where nothing was taught in Yiddish, and about reading Yiddish books. She talks about life after the war: she did not work but helped lodgers, while her husband was a bookkeeper. She kept two pigs for around ten years and describes how she fattened and sold them.
Grinshpun speaks about life today, living alone and liking young people, and about the possible need to sell her house. She names her grandfathers, one of whom had a mill, and says two of her father's sisters and his parents were killed in Lublin. Her father worked as an accountant; she describes how he trained in Chișinău and worked there.
Grinshpun says that after the war her father worked as a village accountant for four years in Kobylna, then in a district town, and later near Chișinău. He learned Russian during the war and also knew Hebrew. She then discusses her grandmothers, including a stepgrandmother, and briefly switches to English with Kerler.
Grinshpun speaks about her husband, who kept animals, especially rabbits, and sold them, and about their son who moved to Moscow. The son now works as an engineer in Korolev and sings in a restaurant. She says her husband spoke Yiddish but did not sing in it, and that she speaks it with difficulty. The talk turns to emigration and her relatives abroad.
Kotliar describes her childhood: games taught by her father, Yiddish at home and Moldovan between the parents when they did not want the children to understand. She talks about her father's love of dancing and her parents' origin in Raşcov(?), and about a relative in a large family there who was a butcher(?). Lemster returns to school games, and she mentions singing, her nickname, and her father's work with horses.
Kotliar talks about her son, with whom she speaks Yiddish at home, and says there is no one left to speak Yiddish with. Kerler asks about songs, and she recalls that her father, not her mother, sang. They return to the rebbe and his charity, and she speaks about her childhood, being the eldest and always working, her father's work as a driver with horses, and a brother's illness.
The formal interview begins with the date and her Yiddish names. She gives her birth year as 1919 and tells of her son in St Petersburg, her daughter and her grandchildren. She names her parents' eight children and her siblings: brothers Mekhl, Yidl and Yankl, and sisters Brokhe and Golde. A brother was shot in the 1937–38 repression. Her father was a village laborer, her mother a housewife, one sister lives in New York, and her paternal grandfather Sender Moyshe died aged 96. Her relatives' ages and death years are only partly clear.
The formal interview begins: Magetman gives the date and place, her birthplace Vadu-Rashkovo (forty kilometers from Soroca), her names, maiden name Lerner and Russian name Fanya, and her birth date in November 1927. She describes Vadu-Rashkovo as a Jewish shtetl, and talks about her father, who had a mill and a creamery, her mother, her grandparents (one had a creamery still operating), and her two sisters.
Mirenburg describes her family. Her father, from Sguritzy as were his father and grandfather, traded in grain and the family owned about six hectares of field. Her mother had two names and kept a small shop. She says three cousins live in Israel, and that people in the family speak a mixture of languages rather than Yiddish. She recalls her two grandmothers, Rokhl and Etl, and how Rokhl's will left her a pair of gold earrings. She later bought similar earrings and gave them to a grandchild as a keepsake.
Plotnik gives her parents' names. Her family had a field worked by hired labourers and an inn. Her paternal grandfather was named Pesach, and the family came from Dumbraveni. Her maiden surname is heard as Vereta (?), which her granddaughter has taken.
Plotnik discusses Dumbraveni, which she says had around four hundred houses (?). Hired labourers from the villages worked the family's land. She recalls neighbors in the Zionist halutz movement and how some of them went to Palestine, and Lemster and Kerler ask about the halutzim and communists. She says her father made wine from his vineyard to sell at his inn, where people sang Romanian and Yiddish songs.
She gives her name as Ruderman, Lea, and her father's name as Moshe Gluzman. She gives her parents' names and approximate birth years. The father was a tailor from Dumbrăveni, learned, and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew and Romanian; he was Sabbath-observant and prayed in the synagogue. The family moved to Soroca partly for her brother's schooling. Her sister Esther lives in Karmiel, Israel, and her mother died there.
Asked by Kerler what she would say to future viewers, she gives her memories of prewar Soroca. It was a clean small town with good doctors and skilled craftsmen, and the Jews were decent and hard-working. She stresses the values her parents taught: honesty, humanity and not slandering others. She answers questions about the meaning of an honest person and an honest Jew, and Kerler thanks her at the end.
Nusbrokh answers Lemster's questions about Zguriţa before the war: there was one synagogue, he went there daily to say kaddish after his father's death, the Jews lived on all streets and owned the shops. He says there was a culture house and calls it a fine town, and Lemster mentions a book about it published in Israel.
Nusbrokh says he does not remember attending Jewish weddings; after the war weddings were mixed. When asked about wedding songs he names "Mayn shtetele Belz". Lemster then asks about Jewish dishes (gefilte fish, Sabbath foods, tsimes, potatoes) and Nusbrokh talks about a landlord, Shloyme Roytman (?), and his buyers.
Nusbrokh recalls that the family lived well while his father, a cattle dealer who traded to Romania, was alive; the father died before the war. After the army he was called to the party district office and given work in communal services, though he was not a Party member. He also mentions Jewish girls after his return and the languages spoken with his mother at home.
Dunaevskij talks about his father's religious observance, who worked on the Sabbath out of necessity but kept to Jewishness and sent his sons to cheder. He recalls a family acquaintance, Eliyahu's father, a pious man who worked alongside his father, and Uncle Motl, who lived in Rivne (?). He explains what a Purim play is: children with masks went from house to house for small payment and sang. Kerler recites a few lines of a Purim song.
Dunaevskij tells an episode near the end of the war, when he and a comrade now in Israel came upon German soldiers near a village and a shoot-out followed, with three Germans dead. He says that every day brought a different story. After the war he returned to find the town destroyed and helped rebuild. In the 1950s he worked in the Bender shoe factory for long working days.
Klichinskaia names her father Nakhum, a cooper who was born in western Ukraine, and says the town is not clear to her. The talk turns to the Yiddish and Russian word for his trade. Her mother Brane kept house, and there were five children. She names her grandfathers Berl and Gersh and her grandmothers Khaye and Khane, and says her father and grandfather were observant, laying tefillin.
The formal interview begins with the date and place of recording (Bender, 5 June 2006). Luminskaia gives her Yiddish and maiden names and her birth year, and Goldshteyn gives his name and birth date. Luminskaia says she grew up in Chipovich and names her father, Yidl Mashkovits. He was a day laborer for an employer, then worked as a furniture maker after nationalization, and was later a department head in what became an artel. She recalls that non-Jews working there spoke Yiddish, names her mother and her maternal grandfather, a smith, and mentions relatives who left for America.
Goldshteyn recalls that many non-Jews, including Gypsies, worked for Jews and spoke Yiddish with a Jewish accent, telling anecdotes and singing Yiddish songs. Luminskaia says that in the artel everyone spoke Yiddish. Goldshteyn also recalls that at Passover and Easter, Jews and non-Jews exchanged matzo and eggs.
The formal interview with Grinberg begins with Lemster giving the date and place. Grinberg says she lived with her parents in Talmaz until the war and gives her father's name. He was poor and worked for a rich man in the cabbage trade, and buyers came from Romania. She speaks of her mother's name and dates, her gymnasium schooling and piety, and her grandparents, whom she does not remember. She has one sister, who lives in Australia.
Moisei talks about his mother, who took over her mother's trade in offal and cheap cuts of meat sold to butchers and merchants. He mentions the little shops that sold them. He names his older brother Aron, who served in the Romanian cavalry, later studied and became a geography teacher, and his sister.
Asked about Chimishliye, Elizaveta says her father Nusn was a merchant dealing in dairy products and grain for an employer. Her mother died when she was thirteen and her father did not remarry. She names her siblings: three sisters (Sheyndl, Rayele, Risl) and two brothers, one called Shuke, and Kerler asks about Yiddish names for Grisha. Yiddish was the home language.
David talks about his family. His father David was a kosher butcher and his mother a tailor, and he had two brothers who live in Israel. He names his grandfather, a shoemaker, and his grandmother, and remarks that his father was observant. Kerler and Lemster ask about names and relatives.
David states that about 19,000 Jews lived in Botoșani before the war, in whole quarters, owning the shops and working as tailors, carpenters and other craftsmen. He says about 92 Jews remain today, and Kerler and Lemster ask about conversion and mixed couples. David and Lemster then discuss Jewish youth, the Joint, camps for children and the communities in Oradea and elsewhere, partly in Romanian. Kerler ends by asking about a local bread type.
Finkel gives her parents' names: her father Mordechai (Marcu) Grinberg and her mother née Meirovich. She says her grandfather Moshe was a short man and that her father came from a family of about twelve children. Her father was a kosher butcher, and her mother kept house.
Brief recalls prewar Chernivtsi, with many Jews, a great rabbi and a large synagogue. He says he spoke Yiddish, German and Russian. His father served in the Russian army in the First World War and was a barber; his grandfathers were a stove-maker and a kvitler (?). Kerler and Lemster also ask about his grandmother's name and trade.
Grunfeld says he was born in Zău and attended school in Cluj and Bucharest before the war, and that after the war he settled in Cluj for good. Answering Lemster, he names his father, born in Ileanda (?), a merchant who later lived in Petah Tikva in Israel, and his mother Gitl, a housewife. He names his grandparents — a paternal grandfather who was a tailor, a paternal grandmother Gitl and a maternal grandfather named Rosenberg — and explains why the name Gitl occurs on both sides. A cousin in London is mentioned in connection with a family document, and Lemster and the others discuss the Yiddish term for such a relative.
Grunfeld says he married in 1949 and speaks Romanian with his wife. Answering Lemster, he says there was one synagogue in Zău but many in Cluj, including small prayer houses in each quarter, artisans' synagogues and a workers' synagogue, and he explains the word quarter (kvartir). He says about eighteen thousand Jews lived in Cluj before the war and about two thousand afterwards, and now about two hundred.
Grunfeld says he has one daughter, who lives in Cluj. His father and sister emigrated to Israel in 1950; he was on the list too but was not allowed to leave because he was a specialist. Lemster asks why so many Romanian Jews emigrated, and Grunfeld cites economic and social change, the socialization of trades and professions, and the loss of a future, since Jewish life as it had been before the war was ended.
Hershkovich talks about his father Aharon, who came from Volovets and whose parents went to Israel when he was eleven; he stayed with a brother in Pest, studied, and was then sent to the village. The father came from a Hasidic family, was a follower of the Belz Hasidim and a modern man, and later worked as a melamed in Dej. Kerler asks where Volovets lies and whether the village had a congregation; Hershkovich says about twelve families.
Kraus gives his birth in October 1923 in Zorein, a village some sixty kilometres from Bistrița (?), and says he studied in Cîmpia Turzii in 1939/40. His father Zelik was also born in Zorein and was deported; he worked the land and kept horses. His mother Golda, a seamstress, was born in nearby Feldioara. He names his grandfathers and siblings: three brothers and four sisters, with one brother killed in a labor battalion. He says that Yiddish was spoken at home and that the village had a minyan.
Freundlich says she is from Satu Mare and describes her father as a merchant with a shop there who did not want his children to eat Communist bread. She names her daughter and her son, a doctor with a music diploma who performs internationally. She mentions her husband, her siblings in America and her father's standing in Cluj after the war.
Freundlich says she lived in Satu Mare until 1944 and that no Jews remain there. She names her parents and their approximate age at death in Auschwitz. She says her mother's family came from Hungary and her maternal grandfather from Nirmada was a wealthy Belzer hasid. She also mentions that the grandfather's house carried a reminder of the Temple's destruction and describes an incident with a visiting rabbi.
Freundlich recalls a visiting rabbi who ate nothing in a Jewish home. She says she stayed at home with her children while her husband worked and shows photographs of her children and a Torah dedication in Canada. She names her grandfathers, a wine merchant and a grain merchant from Nirmada, and describes the wealth and death of her maternal grandparents. She also says she grew up with several siblings.
Freundlich says a governess taught the daughters at home, while the sons went to cheder, and that she did not read Yiddish books but read Bashevis and Holocaust literature in Hungarian. She learned German at school and mentions her sister Hinde's husband Klein, who ran a bookshop and printing press in Kisvárda (?) that printed Hebrew, Gothic and Latin letters.
Freundlich recalls prewar Jewish weddings with the 'mitzvah dance' and the hired announcer. She then talks about relatives in Várdan (?), about Jews left in Satu Mare and Cluj and the community's problems. She goes on at length, partly in Hungarian, about her husband's family (Weinstock) and their business, an uncle in Nyíregyháza who was head of the Judenrat, and a minister who helped them. Kerler also asks about a humorist who was paid to amuse guests at weddings.
Freundlich answers Kerler's terminology questions on what 'a good Jew' means, and on words for a non-Jewish cemetery, a church and Christmas. She says her maternal grandfather went to the Belz rabbi, her father was observant without Hasidic dress, and he ran a grocery and ironware shop that was closed on Sabbath and holidays. At the end she talks about Jewish studies at the university.
Kraus recalls the rivalry between children of the Romanian and Hungarian schools, such as snowball fights. He then describes his father, who owned two horses and a wagon and carried goods to the Thursday market in a nearby town, whose name is unclear in the transcript.
Miller says his poor family never went hungry because his father was a prayer leader and shammes, and distributed Sabbath portions and tutored the children of wealthy families. Kerler asks about a Yiddish song his father sang. Another voice sings a short song about the collection box. Miller mentions songs sung at Simchat Torah and Purim.
Meir says he remembers nothing of Burdusani. His father was a shoemaker without a livelihood and moved to the village of Dumbrăveni, where three of his brothers had small shops and the father opened one too. At about five Meir was sent to live with a maternal aunt in Dorohoi and attended cheder. Asked about Yiddish, he says only Yiddish was spoken in Dorohoi, and he states the town's Jewish population before deportation.
Meir talks about Purim and singing in school, then about his parents and brothers. The four boys lived at their widowed aunt's, and their parents brought food from the village. His father was a shoemaker, with brothers in the village. Lemster asks about his grandparents: a grandfather who was a shoemaker or similar tradesman and a grandmother who helped, and a maternal grandfather who was a tailor. Meir does not know what became of them after 1941.
The speaker tells of prewar Dorohoi: a rabbi chosen at 21, mostly mocked by older rabbis. He describes the Jewish town with 24 synagogues organised by trade, and recalls their closing or becoming a museum. The rest is practical talk about visiting relatives in Cluj and Săveni, a Yiddish-speaking couple, a telephone, and being called Tuvye.
Mentions summer visitors who speak Yiddish, many from Israel, and phone arrangements. Then recalls prewar business: a handshake sealed a deal, and a dispute went to a rabbi or dayan. A story about his mother and a commercial matter begins.
Setting up the interview, Shaia gives his family name, his Jewish and civil first names, and where he was born. He mentions his sister in Iași and his brother in Israel. Yiddish was the home language, and he found the Romanian school hard at first. His father was a tailor, and his mother, from a place whose name is unclear in the transcript (Hertsa?), helped him as a seamstress. He then describes how his wife's family, from Noua Sulița (?) in Bessarabia, was deported under the Soviets and Romanians and how one child died.
Isidor remembers Shaia's father, a lock tailor who was very careful with a child, then addresses the non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. The Yiddish-speaking apprentice from a village learned the trade from Shaia's father, married in 1941 (?), was conscripted, and was sent to a disciplinary unit. Lemster and the speaker discuss a Yiddish word of doubtful meaning in the story.
Isidor gives his name and his Jewish name Toybi. His father Moyshe was a grain merchant from a town whose name is unclear in the transcript (Kiriliv?) and was shot in 1939 (?) or 1944. The transcript is unclear on the date.
Grimberg speaks about her family. Her father Iosl worked as a carpenter or workman and died in 1970 (?). Her mother Sara did not work, and there were three daughters. She names her grandparents: her maternal grandfather Elokim was a ritual slaughterer near Răpăciune (?). Her paternal grandmother Kune Leah and grandfather Avrom built a synagogue, and the grandmother went to Chernivtsi to buy a Torah scroll. Two of her father's brothers died in Transnistria.
Asked about Jewish Dorohoi, Lipovici mentions a Jewish bath, a synagogue and a Jewish hospital where the community office now stands. He says there were many synagogues, though the number is unclear, and that they were plundered. He repeats that his father worked at the big mill and died when he was nine. Lemster asks why he became a shepherd, and he answers briefly, apparently because of a livelihood.
Lipovici tells how an elderly Jewish couple, neighbours, were killed by a robber. He tells of trouble with a local official over selling sheep, and of the power of the dead. Kerler asks whether he has seen miracles of the dead; he says he felt them. Romanian is mixed in.
Hirsch talks about his family. His father came from a village near Luduș and was a grain merchant. His mother, Sarah, was a housewife. His parents and sister went to Israel in 1960, and the sister died some years ago. He had two siblings, his mother came from a family of twelve children and his father's family was smaller, and he remembers his grandfathers' long lives. He also says Luduș had about 600 Jews, one rabbi and two shoykhets, and that the synagogue was blown up after the war.
Hirsch recalls that the Yiddish actress Sidi Tal performed twice in Luduș in the early 1930s, when he was about ten. He describes a wealthy Jew, named as Aron Moritz, who owned buildings, a restaurant or café and a theater hall with a stage. Plays were given in Hungarian and Romanian, and Moritz later emigrated to Palestine. Kerler ends by asking about Hirsch's work after the war.
Lemster asks what he remembers of songs, including Romanian ones. Chajim says he sang much but has forgotten most, recites a few lines of a song, and talks about a rich employer who paid late. He recalls his father telling him as a boy to go to the synagogue and then make Friday-night kiddush.
Chajim describes Friday-night family observance in his childhood, with kiddush and Sabbath dishes such as kugel, and his father's wishes concerning kaddish. He says he cannot recite kiddush any more. He tells Kerler and Lemster, who are from Edineț, how glad he is to talk to someone from there, recalling work in Galați and in Rujniţa, Briceni and a village near Edineț.
Chajim says he used to sing while sewing. He recalls that his mother did not sew but cooked, including Passover food. He says he still gets matzo each year, sent by the Bucharest rabbi, and mentions his small pension. He recalls working during the war in several Bessarabian towns and a cemetery, and speaks of Jews from Edineț, whom he can still talk with.
The interviewee and Kerler finish recalling the Purim song, and he mentions a small book. Asked about his parents, he names his mother as Rezl (?) and she was a housewife. His father was a merchant who dealt in goods, and the transcript does not make clear in what. Lemster then asks about the interviewee's own trade.
Abramovich gives the prewar Jewish population of Hîrlău as over a thousand families (about three thousand Jews), and says he spent three years in a camp or ghetto in Transnistria while the town's Jews were deported. Kerler then asks about his childhood: a Jewish town of merchants and craftsmen where making a living was hard. His father was Baruch Abramovich and both parents were born in Hîrlău. A closing remark about a bundle and a coat is unclear.
Chajim says an American once offered money for the old hanukiah and he refused to sell. He describes living alone in a house with furnished rooms, which came from his father-in-law, and recalls having worked in Yedinets (?). The interviewers thank him and say goodbye, and the crew then discusses footage and repeats a line for the camera.
After the date and his name are confirmed, Finkelshteyn gives his birth date and says he never left Iași. He recalls his childhood and his large family (three sisters and six brothers, whose Jewish names he lists) and his father David, a carpenter born in Pașcani (?) who lived in Iași. His mother was also from Iași. He describes his grandfather Aharon, a stove builder who made tile stoves for wealthy households and ate only kosher food, and Kerler checks the word for the stove with him.
Answering Kerler's questions, Finkelshteyn describes what Jews drank before the war: wine on Friday night and for kiddush, little brandy, and mostly tea. He tells of a Jewish tavern keeper and how he sold his drink.
Finkelshteyn talks about non-Jews who apprenticed with Jewish craftsmen and about the rise of antisemitism, which led to trade schools for Christians. He speaks of visitors from abroad who no longer know Yiddish and need a translator, and of rabbis and yeshiva students who come to Iași. The synagogue is now closed. At the end he says his life was full of troubles.
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.
The formal interview with Karuel begins. He gives his Yiddish name and his birth in Iași on 6 September 1929. His father Yisroel, a shoemaker, came from Podu Iloaiei, and his mother Reyzl was born in Ștefănești. He recalls his grandparents in Podu Iloaiei, where the grandfather, also a shoemaker, attended synagogue regularly.
Karuel describes synagogue attendance at holidays and his saying kaddish for his father after the 1941 pogrom. He recalls Jews being rounded up and beaten, and searching for his father at the police station. He says he and his mother survived by his working, as a salesman, during the war.
Karuel talks about life after the war as an engineer, saying it was better than before. He mentions the number of synagogues in Iași before and after the war. He answers questions about Jewish jokes and wise sayings, and mentions his own son and his observance.
Davidovich gives his birth date, with Kerler checking the year, and then tells of the deportation of his family from Siret in 1941 to Transnistria. They were held in several places, among them Pavlovka, Bershad, Obodovka and Pishchana, until 1945. In Pavlovka about 2,500 Jews were held in a pig farm, with starvation and typhus; he says nobody shot or beat them, but Ukrainian bandits came at night to kill and search for gold. His father went out looking for work, got a job making soap for a Romanian lessee near Pishchana, and brought the family there.
Davidovich says the family returned to Romania in 1945 and stayed about three months in Siret. His father had no work there, so they moved to Botoșani (as the name is heard), where he again made soap. Davidovich then studied in Iași and at the university. Kerler asks about songs in the Bershad ghetto, and Davidovich says nobody sang there and that the family stayed only a few months.
Kerler asks Rozenblat for background on the synagogue, and Rozenblat says it dates back more than a hundred years. The Veidlinger voice meanwhile talks of a friend who made a film about the Jews of Romania. Rozenblat explains that the guilds each had their own synagogue and that this one belonged to apple merchants, hence the name Meransky, from the Romanian word for apple.
Resh answers Lemster's questions about folk healing and customs for the evil eye. He describes older Jewish women who quenched coals and uttered spells over a sick child, natural remedies, compresses, cupping and bloodletting, and says that families usually had one general doctor, with many Jewish doctors and professionals in Chernivtsi.
Asked what he remembers from before the war, Shtaigman says mainly Transnistria. He names his parents, Binyomin Leyb and Miriam (née Shnayder), his father born in Rădăuți and his mother in a nearby village (Frătăuți). Both parents worked making brushes for cleaning shoes. He recalls one grandmother who was in Transnistria with them, and Kerler asks where in Transnistria they were.
Shtaigman recalls going as a child to Jewish youth associations (Dror Habonim), where they sang and danced and spoke Yiddish and Romanian. He remembers Sholem Aleichem works (Tevye, Motl) from his Yiddish teacher but no poetry. He studied Yiddish in school until the lyceum, but few Jewish pupils were left, and in the last year 21 of 26 were Jewish. Kerler asks why the Jewish schools closed, and he adds that at the Iași furniture factory most of the staff were Jews.
Shvartz says Yiddish was spoken mainly at the community and the synagogue. He describes the Iași synagogue, now with few Jews because most left for Israel. He says he goes to synagogue and lives next to it; he worked in a factory with a good income.
Chirilau describes folk cures: quenching coals in water against the evil eye, wrapping an inflamed spot, and cupping glasses. She then tells of the barber shop of a neighbour's father, and the visit of his son from Canada, whom she met on the road, who kissed her father in bed. She explains that she is known locally as Mika and officially as Maria.
Chirilau answers questions about terms such as drunkard, fool and proverbs, and says she cannot recall them on demand. She describes the town as handsome, with well-kept houses, and recalls women blessing the candles on Friday. She says Jews stopped working on Friday afternoon, and shopkeepers and tailors took up work again after the Sabbath.
Chirilau answers questions about words for enemy and about the singular and plural of shoykhet. She says the town had two slaughterers, one for poultry and one for cattle, and recalls a Jewish butcher named Moshe Kune (?). She describes matchmakers who arranged remarriages and says Jews and non-Jews lived in the area. She also gives the distance to the border, roughly two kilometres in a straight line, and Kerler promises to come again.
Chirilau tells anecdotes about a poor, drunken neighbouring couple, Dudl Heler and Malka, who borrowed everything from her mother. She describes the trio of brothers who were Purim players and how one was matched with a tall bride. She then tells how rich Jews traded in flour and building materials and how life was natural and healthy before.
Chirilau says her parents were both born in Mihăileni. She recounts her father's friendship with Moshe Itsik, and a funny story about two friends who agreed to circumcise each other's children. She then answers Lemster's questions about Jews who leased out fields and vineyards, with Romanian peasants working the land.
Kerler explains the project: interviews in Yiddish about life before the war. Leichtner then names his parents, Zelig and Esther. His father, from a nearby village (transcribed Serp, i.e. Sârbi), was a kosher butcher, and his mother came from Rina. He grew up with three sisters and three brothers. Family members were taken to Auschwitz and only his father and two brothers returned.
Leichtner describes holidays before the war. On Yom Kippur children went to the synagogue and did not fast fully. He recalls the Purim shpiel and its rhymed lines. For Passover he talks about preparations and about the carob (boxer) pods that children used in a counting game of odd and even. He attended cheder until fifteen, then learned a trade, and was taken at eighteen to forced labor.
Shwartz talks about his parents and grandparents. His father was a student at the Pressburg yeshiva and then a dealer in wheat, potatoes and other foodstuffs, and his father's family was Hungarian. He names his grandmother, a Schlesinger and a relative of a Kaliv/Warsaw rebbe(?), and his mother, Perl Hirn, daughter of Mordkhe Hirn. At home the family spoke Hungarian, while his grandmother spoke Yiddish.
The formal interview with Mihai Freundlich begins. He explains the Yiddish name of Oradea and its fortress, gives his name, birth in 1921 near Baia Mare, and his Yiddish name Avrum-Khayim. He describes his parents (father a poor wood dealer, mother Rachel), his siblings, grandparents and the deportation of relatives. He says he and some siblings survived deportation and two brothers died in a camp.
Freundlich talks about his father, who was deported at about sixty-four, was strong despite a First World War injury, and was always an unsuccessful businessman. He tells how his father took the money he earned as a teenage employee, and recalls a confrontation with him.
Freundlich speaks about Jewish weddings, to which only families were invited, and about his non-religious youth. His father did not reproach him, while his mother kept her traditions. He describes working all week and joining a Zionist youth organisation with weekly discussions.
Macarie names her parents: her father was a businessman, her mother Sheindl Ester sewed at home for Romanian Christian customers. There were twelve children. She recalls her paternal grandfather Hershi and his wife, and her maternal grandmother Khaye, but not the other grandparents' names. After the war only four siblings were left: a brother who lived in Vienna, a sister in Israel and a brother in America. The others, with the parents, were taken to Auschwitz. No visit to a rebbe is heard here.
Macarie continues to list siblings and their Hungarian or Romanian names. She says her parents died in Auschwitz, and that her mother came from Slatina in Czechoslovakia, née Kaufmann, while her father was born in her own village. She had four classes in a Romanian school, with Jewish learning from her father at home. She remembers the Hungarian arrival when she was eighteen and the ghetto, and some prayer lessons. After the war she trained for a few months as a technician in medicinal plants.
Macarie describes working in a laboratory with medicinal plants after the war. She recalls her childhood up to eighteen in a large, happy family where Yiddish was spoken at home and Romanian learned at school. Asked whether the Yiddish of Maramureș differs from that of Moldova, she says no. She recalls holiday preparations and what her mother taught her in the kitchen: cooking, kneading bread, Sabbath cholent and kugel.
Kerler notes the date and their arrival in Oradea. Freundlich states he was born in 1921 in Baia Mare and that the town had no separate Yiddish name. He gives a number of Jewish families that is unclear in the transcript. He lived there until about seventeen or eighteen, in a family of seven children. His father, a Torah scholar who had studied in Vienna, could not earn a living. Freundlich studied in yeshiva until about fifteen and then went to work, because the family was poor.
Freundlich continues on yeshiva life, saying he could not pay for a study partner and so asked others for help. He reflects that his youth consisted mainly of hardship. He recalls being taken out of study before Passover to help in a matzo factory, carrying matzo to the oven. He also mentions work around Sukkot and Purim.
Shwartz describes his family and what became of it. A brother went to Canada and died in the 1990s; an older brother was shot in the war, as was a younger brother, a soldier on the Ukrainian front whose frozen foot meant he could not retreat. A sister who lived in Krasznadorda (?) with two children died in Auschwitz, and the mother Perl also perished there. His father, who was Hungarian-born, a grain dealer and ill after the First World War, died in the 1920s.
Answering Kerler, Mezei talks about Passover in her prewar home: matzo dishes, borscht made by her grandmother, and whether matzo was soaked. She mentions her uncle and a relative who was a Vizhnitz Hasid, and says that her father studied textiles in Budapest and served as a Hungarian soldier in the First World War. She then shows photographs of her father, her school days, her sisters and relatives who died at Auschwitz or live abroad.
Freundlich sings a Yiddish song about green beans eaten every day of the week and the grave on which a page of Mishnah will be studied. He explains the custom of learning Mishnah during the week of mourning and speaks about a tailor friend and a barber's son. He and Kerler discuss boiled milk and the bread and milk the friend brought.
Grinberg speaks about her father, a glazier, who prayed before the amud and never worked on Sabbath or holidays, with nobody objecting. She says she was an overprotected only child, whom her grandmother and mother fed and pampered, and her father took her to school by bicycle.
Grinberg gives her father's name (Borukh) and his shop, where he sold cloth. She and S2 distinguish the Yiddish, German and Romanian words for a shop. She names her mother (Brokhe) and says she herself was an only child, since a baby brother died after a few weeks. She names her maternal grandfather, Khayim, from Lespezi, and recalls a grandmother who died when her mother was young.
Cojocaru explains that she was named after a cousin of her mother's and that her Yiddish name differs from her official one. Her father was named Mendl (?) and was a tailor born in Dorohoi. Her brother in Israel works in a hospital. Her mother, Faigy, died when she was about four. She also recalls two American visitors with whom communication failed, and says she was in Transnistria as a young woman.
Marcus gives his father's name, Moshe, and says he was born in Săveni in 1926 and worked as a cloth and manufactured-goods seller. His mother, Leah, was born in 1922. He names his paternal grandfather, Chaim, who traded in cattle and travelled by ship to Israel and Turkey. Marcus was about four when the grandfather died, and he says his grandmother died in Transnistria. The interviewers also first sort out the pronunciation of his birth year.
Salamon speaks about an uncle who was a wedding jester and how it supplemented his income, and about women's work and dowries before the war. Asked about Purim, she describes the big Purim feast, baking, and sending of shalakhmones, and says there were performances she was too young to see.
Kurtsberg talks about his family before the war. His family left Piatra Neamț for Chernivtsi, where his father's relatives lived. His father worked as a butcher for a large firm. His mother, Matilda (Malke), was born in a village near Piatra Neamț (the name is garbled, Bălțătești per the catalogue) and worked as a tailor. His grandfather Shloyme worked in a boards factory in Storozhynets, whose boards were taken by wagon to markets. His younger sister died in Bershad in Transnistria.
Kerler and Lemster talk with Petraru inside the great synagogue, while the camera films it, including its paintings. Petraru explains that the family name Petrarlu/Petraru comes from his great-grandfather's trade as a builder or mason, and speaks of a woman who restored the paintings and what the work cost. They discuss the women's section and who prays there; he prays at home and the synagogue meets mainly on Sabbath and holidays.
Mehler speaks about her family: a grandfather, named Mendel Weinstock, and a grandmother who lit Sabbath candles and said blessings. She remembers the grandfather as a rich cattle dealer with a big farmyard and exporting animals, and recalls his funeral. She also says she does not speak Hebrew.
Mehler describes Jewish life after her arrival in Vatra Dornei, mostly in Romanian. The Jews of the Bukovina region were deported to Transnistria in 1941. The rich sometimes bought themselves out, and one family avoided deportation by faking illness. After the war many returned to find nothing and emigrated in a mass departure, up to about 1961. She also talks about prewar Jewish trades and the good relations before Antonescu, and about the Romanian Jewish leadership. The passage ends on Ştefăneşti.
Weinberger recalls carrying kosher milk to Jewish homes in the early morning as a boy for his uncle's cows. The date of the interview is stated as 18 December 2006, in Kislev, during Hanukkah, and there is a place-name exchange mentioning Mukachevo. He then begins his personal information: his name, father Leyzer, mother Gitl, sister Leah and brother Shmuel.
Weinberger describes Jewish life in Stropkov, where about half the Jews were pious and the rest less so. During the war he lived on false papers as a coachman for a Slovak employer. When transports resumed and he was due to be taken to a labor camp (Sered'), he fled across the Hungarian border in winter via Snina and Stakčín. He describes a night in a military cemetery, a night hidden among chickens in a poor man's shed, going on foot to Bereznyi and on to Uzhhorod, where he stayed in the Jewish community. He then tells of the train to Budapest and a stranger who shared food and gave him money. Kerler asks about words such as kuchtsher and the Slovak for Yom Kippur.
Weinberger names his father, Leyzer Kirshner of Krosno, who was a Polish citizen and so gave his Slovak-born son no citizenship. On arrival in Budapest he stayed in a prayer house with Jewish refugees, learned a little Polish and went to the Polish Committee under the Polish name Yosef Chibotsky (spelled Przybycki in the catalogue). He received papers, money and food, worked in the fields and a bakery, attended services and received meal vouchers from the Jewish community. Kerler also asks about the date of the crossing, which he gives as late December 1943, and about the arrival at the Budapest station. Weinberger also mentions the deportation of Jews from Subcarpathian Rus.
Chaimovic gives personal information and talks about his family. His father was an entrepreneur who dealt in timber from the forests and ran a sawmill. There were six sons and one daughter, and he names the brothers and his mother Hanna. He gives his birth year as 1922 and the years of his parents' birth. He tells how his father lost a hand while fishing, and says the sons were taught to pray and read the Torah. His parents came from places in what is now Ukraine near Khust, which he names as Shandorova and a town that seems to be Monastyrets (?).
Chaimovic says he worked in the forests, taking over and recording the wood the workers prepared, for his father. He says that until 1938 things were better and then troubles began. Kerler asks about a song and then asks him to tell about the war years.
Milchenko tells of her childhood before the war, when she was six. Her father was a guard at a furniture factory, the family lived well, and she had a brother three years older. Her father was drafted in 1941 and disappeared at the front. The Germans beat them, and the Jews were put in the ghetto. Some talk about the language of the interview is mixed in.
Pivnik answers questions about her family: stepsiblings, a stepmother and a stepbrother Misha who stayed close to her. Her family lived with a landlord near the synagogues and went often. She recalls her sister's wedding and being dressed up in clothes her mother sewed. Her mother worked at home as a dressmaker and her father was a baker who traveled for business and organized free kitchens in the 1930s. He was killed in the war; the transcript says that after refusing non-Jewish neighbors' offer to hide him and his daughter he was betrayed in the ghetto by a Jew. She also says Yiddish was spoken at home and recalls an aunt who spoke only Yiddish and friendly non-Jewish neighbors.
Pivnik talks about how holidays were kept at home, with her mother and grandmother, Passover matzo and seder, Purim hamantashn baked by a neighbor and Simchat Torah dancing near the synagogue. She also recalls Jewish streets in Balta and Jewish officials, and the Soviet authorities not interfering. The interviewers ask about potato pancakes (tatshiklekh) and customs after the war: a shoykhet, and the old tailor Khoskl, who went to read prayers. A discussion of songs at the seder follows. The talk turns to Jewish weddings.
Khotenko describes prewar life as poor. She says she attended the Yiddish school for five classes and that a Russian and a Ukrainian school also existed. She answers Lemster and Kerler's questions about the Yiddish school and classes, her reading, and the Yiddish literature she studied. She recalls her mother singing old songs, though she remembers none of them.
Gorberg gives her name and her family's names: her mother Esther, her father Bentsik (Benyamin), and her married name Gorberg. She speaks of her two sons, her father the tailor born in Kodyma (?), her mother from Balta, and her mother's later life in Rîbnița. She attended a Yiddish school for two years and worked on the Chervona Zirka kolkhoz. In June 1941 the family left by cart with the cows; two young men helped them, and bombing left them covered in earth and washed with milk.
Borukaeva recalls her prewar childhood: playing with other children and going to the cinema, and the language of the home. Her father, born in Pyshchanka (?), worked as a baker and died in 1944; her mother died later. She names siblings, among them two brothers killed in the war and one who died in Israel, and a sister now living in Germany. She also tells of a husband or relative whose character and illness are hard to follow, and of her mother's illness, ritual slaughter and a trip to the Rybnitsa rebbe.
Miaskovskaia remembers her grandfather praying and her grandmother, and sings a Yiddish song about an old couple at a sick child's bed. She talks about her children and grandchildren in Rybnitsa and Germany, their languages and her visits to Germany. She gives the names of her grandparents and her father's work as a forwarding agent at a warehouse. Her family kept pigs, a cow and ducks before the war and for selling.
Kazakevich gives personal details to Kerler: she was born in Lityn in 1925. Her father Leyb was a tailor from Lityn and her mother Feyge a housewife from Lityn. Her siblings and parents were killed by the Germans. Her Yiddish is halting.
Vaynman describes the hardships of evacuation to the Urals. Her mother, Rivke Abramovna, had taught at a Yiddish college or institute in Lviv, in Yiddish and Russian, and worked there with children from Poland. They lived in a dugout, and many Polish Jews died of hunger and cold. Her father was a director at a manufacturing base and was killed on the first day of the war. She also recounts the journey in cattle trucks via Kyiv to Kuibyshev, and says her mother was born in Liber (probably Lyubar).
Zhovtis talks about his military service and its end, and about coming back to Litin and Khmelnyk after the war. He tells of marrying in the 1950s and of working in a factory for some thirty years. He also mentions leading a group of families across a border, a bridge over a river and Romanian and German soldiers. He names his children and where they live, including one who is a doctor, and a visitor from America.
Kerler asks about family. Zhovtis says his mother was a dressmaker and his father worked in a factory. He also names his paternal grandfather as Yankl and his maternal grandmother as Sara. Details of the household furnishings are unclear.
Zhovtis says he came to Bar in 1954 for work, and mentions Litin. He talks about the Jews who settled there and spoke Yiddish, and says there was no synagogue, so people prayed in a private room. Kerler asks about an old synagogue building, which Zhovtis does not know.
Marmalevskaia describes the evacuation to Russia near Astrakhan, with her mother and three siblings, while her father and brother were at the front. At eighteen she supported a family of five by catching fish for four and a half years in a fishing kolkhoz on the Volga. She says many evacuees there starved, and that her ten-year-old sister walked to fetch fish.
Marmalevskaia recalls the famine of 1932–33: the family ate potato peelings mixed with oats, and two of her mother's sisters with their children died. Kerler then asks about her childhood, her family's one room with kitchen, her siblings' and parents' birth years, and her mother's work. She describes her mother weaving while swollen from hunger, and how her father sold his suit in Moscow and sent bread, which saved the family.
Marmalevskaia talks about her husband Marmalevskii, who worked at a factory as a smith, was a lifelong Yiddish speaker, and acted in the Yiddish theater in Bila Tserkva from 1989 until about 2000, playing Tevye the Milkman. She tells of her son in Kyiv, a geophysicist, and her daughter Vera in Petah Tikva, Israel, and grandchildren. Kerler asks about the theater, its director Anatolii Klorfeld (now in America), its repertoire and frequency of performances, and the video cassette she has.
Berman recalls his Rivne youth. His father was a well-known leather merchant, and his mother led the Jewish women's organization and took him as a child to banquets where he met Ben-Gurion and others. He mentions Yiddish as spoken by Ben-Gurion, Jabotinsky and Sholem Asch, and an incident at Asch's play. He also speaks of his articles on Rivne's football team and its match against a Viennese club, and on Jewish partisan doctors, which brought letters from abroad.
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.
Bublitskaia says she wanted to speak about Dr. Berman, who knows Yiddish, Hebrew, German and French and is a known doctor whose whole family are doctors. She then describes her own family of doctors: her late husband, her daughter and her granddaughter. Katz asks whether she remembers songs.
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.
Answering Kerler, Shor describes Orhei as a Jewish town, 90 per cent or so Jewish (?), where people traded and lived well in Moldova's good climate. His mother's brother lived in a village with large wine-making holdings. Shor remembers sowing tobacco and wheat there, and says the estate was later dispossessed under Soviet rule.
Isaak Vaisman says he was in Berdychiv before the war. His father, a tailor born in Berdychiv, died in 1928. Beyle Vaisman describes her father, born in Warsaw, who came to Russia as a child and graduated from two institutes. He knew many languages, played the violin, worked as chief accountant and was killed in the war. She kept some of his documents.
Talk about Jewish doctors in prewar Berdychiv, especially a much-loved doctor (named Barabán or similar) who treated people at any hour, took no money from Jews, and was reported to have been killed by the Germans. Many such doctors were murdered. Kerler then begins asking about word meanings.
Skobilitskii names his mother as Khane, daughter of Nakhmen, and speaks of the Kalushner rebbe in Chervone, where there was a sugar factory. His father came from Poland near Warsaw and was a metalworker. His mother did not work and there were five sons, whose names he gives; the youngest, Motele, was killed by the Germans.
Skobilitskii answers many questionnaire items: words for a Jewish street, 'to count', pulse, to knock, to ask or request, and a board. He tells of his mother's brother, a cantor in a Moscow synagogue, and of his grandfather Nakhmen, a rabbi with eight children, including his mother Khane and her siblings. The grandfather's family kept shops and sold goods in villages. Katz notes words he recalls from Skobilitskii's mother.
Furman tells his biography. He did not go to cheder but began work as a carpenter at thirteen, was sent to the front in 1941, and fought at Stalingrad in a guards army. He returned to Berdychiv in 1945 without a leg and found none of his family, which had numbered seven. His wife died in 1992 and he has no children; he is 82. Asked by Kerler, he says he studied at a Yiddish school.
Chukh gives the date and place of the interview and says the Berdychiv tsadik's grave is a pilgrimage site for visitors. She says she was born in Berdychiv, as were her parents, and was evacuated to the Caucasus during the war. Trained as a nurse, she wanted to go to the front but was kept at hospital work because she had a small child. She worked as an operating-room nurse and was later recognised as a war participant. She names her parents (father Yosl/Iosif, a sieve-maker from a place in Poland whose name is unclear; mother Tsirl, a quilt-maker) and her brothers, one in Germany. She describes her Jewish school (school no. 13, seven grades), her later nursing school and her long postwar nursing career in a Berdychiv hospital. She recalls childhood games, dolls she makes today from broken ones, and home life with Yiddish-speaking parents. She tells of the hungry early 1930s, when her mother sewed quilts to feed the children and the school later fed them. She remembers Soviet-era closing of synagogues, the synagogues of Berdychiv, the Hasidic rebbe's prayer house and holiday observance at home but not in school. Chukh also recalls Yiddish literature and press, a large library, visiting Yiddish theaters, the seltzer seller Itsik, and about 60,000 Jews in the town. She describes weddings with music and a rhymester, and Sabbath and holiday foods. She then answers Kerler's dialectological questionnaire: translating Russian words and sentences into Yiddish (greetings, household words, animals, colours, adverbs, body and illness terms), plus words like dybbuk and golem.
Skobilitskii talks about his father, a locksmith whose work left little time for observance, and about tefillin. His grandmother earned more than his father, and he names his grandmother Sarah and a maternal grandfather who was a rabbi in Chervone. He has a relative in Canada. He describes cheder, which he attended for about four years in the synagogue on Kachynivka, with the teacher Srul (?) and the sexton Leibele.
Furman gives his family details. His father Zelik, from Berdychiv, was a carpenter. His mother Leike was also from Berdychiv. He had a sister and two younger brothers, Moshe and Birl, and he was the eldest, born in October. He worked as a furniture maker for forty years.
Furman recalls being in hospital, where his leg was amputated, and coming to Berdychiv in 1945 to find no one. He bought an apartment, married and settled; his wife died thirteen years ago. He mentions the bombing of his evacuation train and being wounded, and says he worked as a furniture maker and did not go to synagogue. The passage ends as Kerler starts asking the Yiddish word for the cross.
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.
Soyfer speaks about relations with non-Jewish coworkers and neighbors. They lived peacefully, worked and ate together, and helped one another with burials. He says antisemitism came mainly from educated people. Kerler thanks him and the interview ends.
Berzon gives her name, her father's name and her maiden and married surnames, and says she was born in 1926 in Berdychiv. She tells about her father, who came from a town in Poland (name garbled), where her grandfather was a rabbi, and how he was captured as a soldier and stayed in Berdychiv. Her mother was from Zhytomyr and was brought up with a brother who went to America. She mentions her siblings: a brother killed in the war and another who died in Russia, and that her father made sieves with her mother's help.
Berzon says the family celebrated Purim, Shavuot, Passover and other holidays at home, and that she went to synagogue after her mother died. She gives her father's birth year and death in 1946 and speaks again about his trade as sieve-maker and his brothers' printing works in Poland.
Asked about Jewish culture before the war, they recall visits of Jewish troupes and artists from Moscow, Kyiv and Odessa, concerts, and full synagogues at holidays. They remember Jewish weddings with a fiddle, and her father's work as an accountant and his many languages.
Soyfer says his mother died before the war, in the year (as heard) before Hanukkah, and that he went to live with his grandmother Rukhl, his mother's mother. His mother was Sure and his father Yitskhak a shoykhet, born in Berdychiv, whose own father was connected with the synagogue. The family was not rich; he went to school, and when the war began he was in Kyiv.
Kerler asks what Soyfer remembers of his childhood home in Berdychiv before the war. He speaks of an old house and street name, whether he can fix the year of Passover 1930, and says he was not invited to Jewish weddings. His father the shoykhet kept the holidays and the Sabbath, and the passage ends with Kerler and others commenting on reading and eyesight.
Asked when life became easier, Soyfer says things improved economically under Brezhnev, when he could earn enough and travel. He says he worked 35 years in one place and so had enough years of service for a pension.
Asked what he wants remembered about Jewish Berdychiv, Soyfer describes it as a Jewish town of honest people with Jewish trades and small prayer houses on every street, where there was no pogrom because young men defended it. He speaks of Yiddish-speaking neighbours, his grandmother in a village near Zhytomyr and the Germans' killing of Jews. Kerler thanks him and asks about his daughter's Yiddish, which Soyfer explains, and the passage ends with comments on yeshiva students and mixed Jews, and Kerler handing over project information.
Vainshelboim lists the mills and factory where he worked for decades before retiring. He suggests another elderly woman as a possible interviewee, a survivor of the war. He describes the outbreak of the war and a Berdychiv newspaper that announced Jews must register and move into a ghetto district. He mentions looting of Jewish homes.
Answering Kerler, Vainshelboim explains how he learned to bake bread, having watched village women bake. He worked briefly in a bakery, and later baked at home for many years after Soviet shortages. He compares white and rye breads, and mentions that people in Israel like black bread.
Burmenko talks about her work as a girl at a sack factory until she married. Her mother-in-law said the husband should support the family. Her first husband, Monia, was also from Berdychiv, his family name was Furman, and his parents were Pesl and Sruliq.
Walking tour of Novoselytsya in which a local man points out former Jewish houses, a street once lived on, and a building that was a synagogue and later a sports hall, with Kerler asking when Jews settled in the town. There is talk about a non-Jew who keeps the Sabbath and considers himself a Jew, and about a Jewish school and soup kitchen. The group enters the building and discusses its decay and what restoration would cost, with figures for the town's Jewish families and students. The informant recalls the tailors' synagogue, the shoemakers' prayer rooms and small klayzlekh, and his father attending synagogue, before talk of the team's onward route by van.
Hodinger discusses Selish before the war. Munkács Jews are nicknamed 'onion Jews'. Selish was a small town with five synagogues. His family was poor: his father hauled sacks at a mill, and he carried luggage for travelers at the station. His father came from Ilnytsya and his mother from Pryslip (?). The house was of earth and unlit. He also recalls hardships in the camp and a beating under Hungarian rule.
Hodinger says he attended cheder from age six to fifteen, as well as the Czech and Hungarian schools, with one melamed and no talmud torah. He then returns to his father's hard labor and describes carrying luggage for travelers at the station.
Murovanaia gives personal information and speaks of her family: born in Nikolaev in 1926 and taken to Haysyn as a baby. She learned fish-making from her mother-in-law from Haysyn. Her father Mordkhe, born in Kiblych, was a military officer who taught at a military school in Moscow; her mother Golde, daughter of Tevye, was born in Haysyn and headed a tailors' artel. She mentions a half-sister who died young and a Russian-language remark about the proportion of Jews in Haysyn.
Kerler opens with the date and Kozak's address, then she gives personal details: her Yiddish name Sheyndl (Zhenya in her passport), her birth in Bershad and her maiden and married names. She names her parents, Avrom Hershkovich and Blume Shlomovna, and their birth years; her father was a furrier who worked in the villages, and her mother was a homemaker and, after the war, a baker selling bread at the market. She recalls her siblings, a Ukrainian eight-year school, evacuation to the Caucasus and Central Asia, and her return in 1944 to find strangers in their home. She then describes prewar Bershad as a Jewish town, her grandmother the midwife and her grandfather's death after a rescue in the snow, and the town's water-carrier, shoykhet and mohel. Kerler asks about weddings and klezmer musicians, a relative's wedding in Khust (?), Sabbath cholent and challah, fish dishes, latkes, Passover and Sukkot, and the old synagogue. She ends by singing two Yiddish songs, one of passionate love and elopement and one about a poor orphan boy.
Leiderman gives her name and says she was born in Bershad in 1924 and lived there until the war. Her father, Melekh Brunfman, was a furrier who sewed felt, her mother Mariam kept house and raised the children, and her sister Etl has died. Her brother David lives in Israel.
Bershadskaya says she was born in Chernyatka, in the Dzhulinka (Zhulynka?) district, on the far side of the Bug, and gives its Yiddish and Russian names. She was born in 1927 and lived there until the late 1930s. Her father was born there too and was a barber; her mother, Khave, was from Bershad'. She says only about twenty Jewish families lived in Chernyatka.
Kerler asks about Bershadskaya's parents and siblings. Her mother was a seamstress and her father a barber who shaved and cut hair for peasant clients in the village, later working at a different job. She names her siblings and says there were four children; she moved to Bershad' at about thirteen.
Bershadskaya says she was not evacuated and lived with her father and younger brother until they were driven into the Bershad' ghetto, where their house burned. She describes hunger, roundups, the Jewish market and selling food, and her father's wood-sawing work. She tells of the Germans' rule, then the Romanians, and a pogrom shortly before the Germans left.
Shor gives biographical data: born in Bershad' in 1922 and lived there up to the war. His father, Pinkhes, was born in Bershad' in 1890 and was a furrier sewing felt. His mother, Reyze, was born there in 1893 (?) and was a housewife. Of the three siblings, Shmuel died in Australia, Hershl worked as a lecturer at a medical institute, and the sister Khayke died in Israel.
Gvinter talks about his late brother Yuzia, the best shoemaker, and describes in detail how he made and repaired shoes. He speaks of Yuzia's wife and daughters and of his own two sons in Israel. One son drives fuel around the country and the other works in a plastics factory. A daughter who is a nurse and the grandchildren's names are mentioned, and he says his father was a shoemaker. Details of who is who are unclear.
Kerler asks about his parents. Gvinter names his father Moshe, a shoemaker born around 1890, and his mother Khasia (Khaye), born around 1892, who was a seamstress. He mentions her relatives in Chernivtsi and her death in 1987 after hospital visits in Vinnytsia. He then describes his wife Nekhama and her mother, who baked bread and prepared fish for weddings, and recalls working in a sewing workshop alongside his mother.
Kerler asks the Yiddish word for an apple tree. Gvinter then recalls early childhood: he was five years old when the war began. He remembers neighbour boys and a Russian neighbour woman who lived next to his brother Yuzia. His father repaired shoes in the villages and shared bread among the five boys. He mentions an older brother taken into the army and his mother working at the back of the synagogue.
Gvinter talks about his brothers. One died, another worked as a loader and died after an operation, and a third emigrated to America from near Odessa and was killed by a car after three years. Asked why he does not move to Israel, he says it is hard for him. He recalls his forty years in the sewing workshop and mentions that his grandchildren speak Hebrew.
Gvinter talks with Kerler and Lemster about the song of going to Palestine, which was sung in secret in the ghetto and more openly after the war, and comments on politics and the Israel–Palestinian conflict today. He mentions his own illness and a daughter's family. He answers terminology questions about Bila Tserkva, about words for non-Jews and for a foolish or wicked person, and about a convert. He recalls the Bershad' ghetto, people from Chernivtsi held and shot at the stadium, and non-Jews who learned a few Yiddish words. He then speaks about his own life: neighbours and the shoe workshop, the sale of a building he was asked to sell, his marriage in 1958, his children, and his siblings. Finally he explains why one synagogue in Bershad' stayed open after the war while others were closed, and mentions the building turned into a cinema.
They talk about the main street of Bershad' (named for Lenin). Feldman gives her name, her birth in Bershad' and her age. Her father went to the war in 1943 when she was three and was lost; her mother, a shoemaker, went blind, had cataract operations, and later carried water to earn bread. She names her mother and father (Khave and Moshe, with surname forms unclear) and mentions a phone call.
Teitel gives personal information: she was born in 1936 in the village of Baremcha in the Sarata district. Her grandfather ran a restaurant, and the family was evacuated to northern Kazakhstan, where she finished two grades before returning to Baremcha. She describes the destroyed synagogues there and the fate of the Jews killed under German occupation. She tells about her paternal family from Stanislav, her uncles, and the move to Bilhorod-Dnistrovs'kyy in 1962. She says her brother lives in America, and discusses her children and grandchildren and her husband's work in Sarata.
Berkovich gives his birth year, 1921, and talks about his parents. His father, who died in Auschwitz, was a carpenter. His mother, née Shteyner (?), did not work outside the home and had a large family. He did not know his grandfathers and barely remembers one grandmother, Betty. He is reluctant to say much more.
Berkovich says he prays in the synagogue today, and that after the war he built its door, about fifty years ago. He says Hungarian was spoken at home, though his father spoke good Yiddish; he spoke Hungarian with his wife, his son speaks Yiddish and English, and his son attended a Hungarian school. Lemster explains the archive's purpose and urges him to tell his story in Yiddish.
Pustilnik gives her birth year, 1939 (?), and says she was born in Yampil. She recounts, as her mother told it, prewar life in Yaruga: not kosher, everyone working on the kolkhoz, a Jewish kolkhoz within a non-Jewish one, called Petrovsk and later Lenin. She describes its vineyards, wine, apples and peaches, and sunflower oil, wheat and bread. Kerler asks about a food, and she says she likes it.
She explains a way her family prepared meat before the Sabbath, with washing, onions and a little vinegar. She gives her date of birth as 16 March 1930, and names her parents Ruvn and Khayke and her grandfathers David and Leyzer. She says her father was a tailor working in an artel who later went blind, and her mother also a tailor; she finished seven classes of a Ukrainian school.
She says her father the tailor sang while sewing, and Kerler and Lemster ask about the words of the song. She says Yiddish was understood by Ukrainian neighbours and tells how her father went blind and worked in an artel. She has two brothers and a sister, and mentions a husband Pavel and a daughter Adelke, and ends by saying she loves Jews.
Kupershmidt describes a non-Jewish forced labor group of about a hundred men that was released to the districts and warned to avoid Jews. He fled from this group and returned to Bratslav, where he worked in a garage for a German firm, with papers allowing him to move about, and drove a German to Vinnytsia. He used the driving to look for his family in the Bratslav ghetto. One day he found his wife, child and parents gone to the camp at Pechera, and he tried to get them food. He describes false documents and the camp under Romanians, flight to Mohyliv-Podilskyi, and being in its ghetto before his draft into the army.
Kupershmidt recalls surviving the grave, then answers Kerler's question about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish and says Jews and non-Jews lived together well before the war. He describes his father's work with horses and a cart, hauling loads, and gives his father's death as 1952 (as heard from INF2).
Kerler asks what she wants future generations to remember; she wants people to help each other and live in peace without war. She recalls what helped during the war (giving away belongings for bread, a woman who gave bread) and her mother's work, and her brothers' later careers.
Geller says he studied again at the factory school in Kyiv to be a turner, and was drafted in 1950 and sent by freight train for a month to the Primorsky region near Vladivostok.
Sofia describes how few Jews live in Bratslav today and that there is no militia or police presence. Asked by Kerler what she remembers of old Bratslav, she says she was born into a drayman's family. Her mother kept the home and lit Sabbath candles, and her grandfather, a melamed, was killed in the pogroms of 1918. The war began when she was twelve, and her father had a wagon with two horses.
Kupershmidt speaks about his parents and siblings: his father Aharon, a Bratslav native with a horse and cart who carried loads to the mill, and his mother, from a village about twelve kilometers away. He says his mother's father, a miller there, and the grandparents were observant. The family later bought a cow, and he tells how the milk was kosher.
Kupershmidt describes the melamed, called rebbe in Bratslav, and recalls a rabbi named Chaim and the Hasidim, perhaps eight, who were poor tinsmiths and shoemakers. He tells of the Sukkot gathering with dancing, of the honesty of the poor, and of his father selling a horse and how the sale was done. He also mentions his mother's home practices.
Kupershmidt recounts being called up in Khmelnytskyi and learning to repair military vehicles. He then drove a lorry through Poland to the Finnish war, and later the Germans came. He says it would take two weeks to tell it all.
The talk begins with whether someone returned from Israel, then Kerler asks about antisemitism after the war. Kelmenson says she did not feel it herself or at the school or her husband's institute. Others describe easier admission in Moldova and difficulty elsewhere, and she says she was the only Jew at her school and mentions colleagues who left for America.
Lifshitz says he lived in Snovsk until 1936, when he went to Birobidzhan. His father was a tailor who traveled to villages, and his mother helped him. His mother wanted him to go to cheder but he did not, and the family lived poorly. His father was away from home for months at a time.
Lifshitz answers Katz's questions on non-Jews who became Jews or Jews who converted, saying non-Jews were friendly to Jews. He is asked about trades in the shtetl and answers briefly about millers (?).
Bielaia answers a question about what Jews did for a living in the early years, naming tailors and shoemakers.
Bielaia lists trades, including shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers and others. She remembers a wedding at a neighbor's house as a child, and carrying a bench for her mother to the synagogue. Katz then asks the meaning of Yiddish words such as a golem.
Bielaia talks about her prewar life: she married in 1937, her husband acted in a Yiddish drama circle and she went to rehearsals and acted too. She worked at a Jewish institution until the war, when she was evacuated, borrowed Yiddish books from the library, and had a small daughter.
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.
Burg tells how the family moved from Vyzhnytsya to Chernivtsi when he was about twelve. His father, a timber trader, continued traveling to Vyzhnytsya and lodged them in a tenement room, and died in 1938; the mother stayed on for two years until the Soviets came. He says Chernivtsi had seventy-six prayer houses before the war, and discusses the synagogues near where they lived.
Kleiman talks about his family: his naming after his grandfather and sister's after his grandmother, his father David son of Yeshaye, and the story of his grandfather marrying a niece (his brother's stepdaughter), apparently after a quarrel over kashrut. He gives his mother's name Golde, her father Tevye (?), her family name Utshitel, her brother's emigration to Palestine, and her role as housewife. His father was a shopkeeper before the war and worked in a shop afterwards, and Kerler asks which words were used.
Kleiman describes his father as an honest, pious man who prayed daily, and recalls the Sabbath, Yom Kippur, Passover preparations and food such as gefilte fish, and Purim customs. He remembers going with his father to the rebbe on holidays and the rebbes and dayan of Vadrashkov. He also covers the Jewish centre of the town, trades, reading, visiting theatre troupes, political groups, Hebrew learning and weddings with the chuppah by the house and the badkhn.
Gimelbrandt, born in 1932 in Chernivtsi, gives personal information and talks about her parents. Her father, Margulis (Simkhe, called Fridl), was a tailor born in Sadgora and raised among Hasidim, and her mother, Leah, was also a tailor, born in Vyzhnytsya. Her grandfather Yisrol sewed uniforms for the rebbe of Vyzhnytsya, and she names her grandmother. The start of the passage still carries the end of Kleiman's part.
Gimelbrandt tells how her father lost his parents at four, his sister was taken to America, and he grew up with a tailor, working there so that he could attend cheder. He was taken to the front in 1941 and returned badly injured. She recalls her mother's upbringing in Vyzhnytsya among Hasidim, where Yiddish was the only language she spoke, and her grandfather who sewed uniforms for the Vyzhnytsya rebbe. Her mother used to tell of the rebbe's good deeds. Local non-Jews sought his advice and spoke Yiddish.
Gimelbrandt speaks of her husband, a tailor, who died at 56. She first says she had three children, then corrects herself to two sons. Her daughter, who was ill, died at fourteen, and her husband died a few years later. She raised the sons alone and walked to the Sadgora paint factory at night. She tells of having them circumcised, and of a non-Jewish doctor who asked about it.
Shternberg says her father was a merchant who took partners and traded goods. She recalls her mother visiting a rabbi to ask for blessings and describes the Sabbath at home: blessing the candles, two loaves, charity money, a non-Jewish woman who heated the stove and the cholent kept warm. She sings a Friday-night song. The talk turns to taking a piece of dough, the God of Abraham prayer, Yiddish writers, Purim players going from house to house, water carriers, and folk remedies against the evil eye.
Shames gives personal details: her name, her father Shlomo, who worked in a mill in Yanoshpol, and her homemaker mother Sarah (Sharkeh). She had one sister, Niusye. Kerler asks about the town and its Jews before the war. She cannot recall the name of a nearby town where her father also worked.
Shames speaks about the war years and after. She worked in a factory in evacuation and then came to Khmil'nyk, where her mother had survived the war. She worked as an accountant, did not attend a Yiddish school (she was taught at home at eight), then switched to Ukrainian. She tells how her father was killed and how her mother hid and survived, and cannot recall details.
Kerler praises her Yiddish. Shames says she is the only Jew left in her village or street and a Christian neighbour helps her. She describes her pension and her 20-odd years of service in a textile factory, where she worked in the laboratory and as accountant until it closed. She tells how she and her mother bought a house that was later taken and replaced by an apartment.
Shames says her father remained a miller until he was killed. Her parents went to the synagogue on holidays and took her; as a child she could read Hebrew but now knows nothing. Kerler asks whether non-Jews in Yanoshpol spoke Yiddish, and she says no. She remarks on the synagogue's fate under Soviet rule.
Kerler notes that Khmil'nyk was a spa town after the war and asks whether Jews came in summer. Shames says they did, but Jewish practice faded. She worked as an accountant in an office where Jews spoke Ukrainian or Russian. At home with her mother she spoke Yiddish.
Kerler asks about vodka and the word 'dybbuk', which she does not know. She recalls a holy site visited on yortsayt, with a rebbe before Soviet rule. Back in Khmil'nyk after the war she worked at a factory making boilers, in the laboratory and as accountant, before Kerler proposes a short Russian-to-Yiddish word test.
Kerler invites Shames to tell something freely in Yiddish; she says she has nothing to tell and did not expect the visit. The interviewers explain they study the Yiddish language. She says she learned Yiddish as a child and speaks it now with nobody. She describes working for 23 years in a textile factory, where co-workers spoke Russian or Ukrainian because the boss was Christian. She recounts evacuation to the Urals, her parents being taken, her return to Khmil'nyk, where her mother had survived.
Gammer says Khmil'nyk had about twelve thousand Jews and was a Jewish town. Even the Ukrainians understood Yiddish, though they could not speak it well. She names three prayer houses (the tailors', the shoemakers' and the rich men's synagogue near the sanatorium) and recalls the wealthy Jews. She recalls her father as a poor tailor who sewed for villagers. Lemster then turns to her schooling.
Gammer says she worked 37 years in a bread shop and now lives on a pension. Her daughter is also an invalid. She spoke Yiddish with her husband at home, and her daughter Genia learned to read Yiddish from her father. She comments on Jews who left for Israel, Germany and America, and on the town's Jewish population: about twelve or thirteen thousand before the war and five or six thousand after.
Kapustina speaks about her family. She explains that the interviewers can have the tape sent to America, and that her brother lives in Los Angeles. She was born in Khmil'nyk; she gives her maiden name Kolomeir and her first name Sonya. Her father was a simple worker at a poultry combine, her mother was Liba. She discusses her grandfather Mordkhe, who traded in leather and built a house for his daughters, and her paternal grandfather Meyer, a leaseholder from a village near Khmil'nyk. She names her three brothers (Grisha, Avrasha, Nyoma) and talks about her second brother's illness and her own operation.
Kerler asks about her working life. She says her father and mother worked, and that she was an accountant after the war.
Kapustina describes life after the war: raising her young brother, working her way up to chief accountant in Khmil'nyk, and later her marriage and her husband's departure to America. She describes her relatives in Israel (Netanya), Los Angeles and New Jersey, her visit to Israel in January 1991, and her long account (largely Russian) of trying to get an Israeli, then American, immigration, being refused over pension and medicine. She says she is upset and lives alone.
Shames says she did not attend a Yiddish school; Yanushpol was a Jewish shtetl, and a synagogue existed. Her father worked in a mill and her mother was a housewife. She cannot recall aunts and uncles, and mentions possible relatives in America. She worked 23 years as an accountant in a factory after the war.
Shames says she spent the war in the Urals, alone. She did not return to Yanushpol because no one lived there and her mother had been killed there (?). She says many Jews were killed near Khmil'nyk. She trained as an accountant in Yanushpol before the war and says life was always hard.
Srulova talks about religious life in Zvil after the war and about hardship in childhood and wartime. She was widowed and has two daughters, and worked many years in a mill laboratory. She attended a Yiddish school for six grades before the war, then Russian schools; she describes the subjects and recites Russian poetry. Kerler prompts her for Yiddish verse.
Weiss talks about his two grandmothers: one on his father's side, whose name is given as Chaya Adel Weiss from Boryslav (the name is discussed at length), and another, Rozhe Hershdorfer. He shows a photograph of his paternal grandmother and the book on Jewish Drohobych, and mentions cousins in America. He says his father was a merchant and his mother helped in the grandmother's confectionery shop, and he names a rabbi on his mother's side. He then describes being administrator of the Zionist youth organization (about 150 members) and lists the other youth organizations (Betar, Hashomer Hatzair, Bund), all of which met in Polish and had no contact with each other.
Shekhovich talks about the occupations of Jews in prewar Sambor, such as shops and trade, and says some lived very well until Hitler came. She says few Jews remained after the war. She did not go back to her house, which her husband avoided, and her daughter has seen it. When asked about Purim customs and songs, she says she remembers little. Her daughter urges her in Ukrainian to recall songs.
Kerler opens the interview with Schreier, giving the date and place. Schreier was born in Drohobych in 1922 and says he is the last Jew born there before the war. His father, a chemist, studied in Germany and took his doctorate in Switzerland. The family lived for ten years in Jasło, where his father was chief chemist at an oil refinery. He lost the job in the Depression and the family returned to Drohobych in 1932. His mother, Leontina, was a pharmacist's daughter. The passage ends with the great action of 1942.
Shekhter describes his postwar life: his first wife, a Russian, died in the 1990s, after which he looked for a Jewish wife and moved to be with her. He then answers Kerler's questions about his family. His father was a cobbler, his mother Manya did not work, and he names his brothers and sister and their birth order.
Shekhter talks about Jewish books and his regret at not studying, his pension and work in a clothing combine, where there were few Jewish cobblers but many tailors. He answers questions about words for a cemetery and for a pious or honest man, and about Kaddish, the Shema and morning prayers. He names his best years (Sverdlovsk and Zolotonosha) and says he believes in God, who saved him from the war.
Khasidovich talks about the war years in Fastiv: she stayed in town with her small children and hid with them in a cellar, saying survival was a matter of fate. She mentions the killing site (garbled in the transcript, possibly Babi Yar in Kyiv), says she has no friends left from before and that her children are her only family, and describes working in the bakery at night to feed them. She says that non-Jews also helped her and that she helped others. Lemster closes by asking about Jews who visited the bakery.
Khasidovich answers questions about the prewar period. She says her family managed with what they had and were not badly hungry. Asked whether Jews died of hunger, she says it was rare, perhaps two or three. She does not remember pogroms under the Soviets, though a pogrom around 1919–20 is mentioned. She says Jews in town were craftsmen such as shoemakers and tailors, builders and other specialists, and she is unsure whether any were militiamen. She is asked to explain a proverb about many trades and few blessings, and glosses it as everyone having his own work.
Kopyt recalls the outbreak of war and the family's flight on foot toward Kyiv, and says seventeen relatives were killed. She talks about her mother, who was a baker, and her grandfather, a synagogue gabbai, and speaks about neighbours and Babi Yar. She describes her first husband's death after Chernobyl and her second marriage, her grandparents' hiding in the civil-war pogroms, and a visit to the site where her grandfather was killed. She also tells of her own fall.
Burshtein says he lived in Sobolivka with his parents until the Germans came. His father, Leyb Mendels, was born in Sobolivka and worked as a tailor, and his grandfather was also from Sobolivka. Kerler's explanations of the project and chat in Russian and English interrupt the account.
Beigel talks about her father's work after the war and her own studies and work as a medical assistant. She married a man who returned from the front and a former classmate; he was from Voroshylivka (?) and his father was killed. She names her siblings, Esi and Grisha, and her grandfathers.
Beigel 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.
Iuris gives her Yiddish name, Pesl Ester, and says she was named after her great-grandmother and her paternal grandmother. She names her parents and grandparents, and says her father worked in Chernivtsi's main post office writing addresses and her mother did not work. Before the war her parents had a shop or a small restaurant in Moldova. Kerler states the date and place of the interview, and she gives her address and telephone number. She mentions a stepbrother, Yasl.
Katz talks about his family. Both parents and most siblings were killed in the war. His father Moyshe, a distillery worker, came from Horodenka; his mother Gitl was a housewife from Tlumach, and her father was Gershon. He was named after his grandfather Hersh. He recalls his cattle-trading grandfather Gershon, helping him build the sukkah, and his grandmother's pet name for him. Kerler goes through his siblings' names (Rozia/Reyzl, Leyb, Klara, Mina/Menia, Kuba/Yankl, Nusia) and establishes that there were seven children, with Katz the eldest.
Katz says his wedding canopy was set up at the rebbe's in Stanislav in 1940, because Soviet rule had arrived. He recalls cheder, where he learned to pray, and says some of his teachers used a whip. He then recites a prayer (Kaddish) and speaks of the four-class Polish school of Baron Hirsch, which had a Hebrew teacher. After that he describes his vocational training in Lviv and work for a private employer in Tlumach. He recalls a pond where children swam, the ritual bath and bathhouse, and its use before festivals and on Fridays; he also mentions his grandfather's death.
Katz describes Sabbath and holidays at home. His father worked at the landowner's distillery on Sabbath, supervising the animals, and Katz sometimes helped with the production figures. His father prayed with tefillin and did not eat before praying. Katz names Sabbath and holiday foods: bread, challah, cholent and potato dishes. Kerler questions him about the potato dish called mandeburchenik, and about fish, which was expensive. The owner's lake was fished out once a year, giving a festive occasion and gefilte fish. Katz also mentions Hanukkah money, the dreidel and latkes. For Purim he describes beggars going from house to house and recites their begging rhyme twice.
Fishman and the interviewers go through dialect items such as attic, cross, sick, sleep and tree. He says his father was born in Chudniv and his mother in a village nearby. He recalls that many Jews lived in Chudniv and then emigrated, and mentions his sister in America. His father held several posts, including chairman of an artisans' cooperative and factory director, and then retired on a small pension.
Geller 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.
Vertman gives his address and personal data and says he speaks Yiddish. He talks about his family: his father Aren, born in Polonne, worked as a drayman for a householder; his mother Lite was born in Izyaslav and baked bread at home for sale. He names his two brothers and two sisters and their years of birth.
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.
Kerler asks when the village club play took place, and Lys places it in the late 1920s. He describes Kornitsa as a Jewish shtetl where people traded in cows and boards. His father, a carpenter, had to leave after the militia threatened him and settled in Izyaslav after marrying. The end of the passage is garbled.
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 gives his birth year (1923), birthplace Kuzmin in the Krasyliv district, and his parents' and grandparents' names; both parents were from Chisinau. His father was a cobbler and his mother a seamstress who worked in a kolkhoz kindergarten; she was admitted to the Russian school because of her father's carpentry. He recounts at length episodes from his father's tsarist army service, including a conflict over spoiled meat, a fight, imprisonment, and later service with Kotovsky's army.
Geller describes Kuzmin as a large Jewish shtetl where most Jews were rope-twisters and only two families were well off. He explains the word for a trader who collected old rags and scraps, then begins a story about a business trip in his police work, remarking that he has no one to speak Yiddish with.
Geller remembers his religious paternal grandfather, a carter and porter at the railway station, who prayed while waiting for customers and used a large samovar. He describes him as a Talner Hasid who wore two pairs of tefillin. Kerler then asks whether religion was taught against in school.
Geller says he worked in Slavuta in the police for three years until 1951, with many Jewish clients. He tells how his wounds from the war were missed by X-rays and doctors for years and were only confirmed later, to the surprise of the commission. He also gives his birth year, 1923, and mentions where Kuz'myn lies relative to Krasilov.
Geller answers questions about Kotovsky's brigade. His mother served as a nurse and his father was a soldier. He says Kotovsky was a strong character and may have spoken some Yiddish. After the civil war his parents settled in Kuz'myn where he was born; his father was a shoemaker who met an old comrade in Staro-Konstantinov.
The passage begins with Later's postwar work as director of a large wholesale warehouse and chairman of a cooperative; he mentions a Yiddish journalist. He then tells his life story at Kerler's request: he went into the army in 1940, served at the front, and was twice wounded. He lists his many orders and medals, and mentions the extra pension he receives from the Ukrainian state. He names the places he passed through at the war's end, among them Warsaw, Germany, Vienna and Prague, and says he came on a camp soon after its liberation. He also says he came back to his home town on a short leave and found his mother, brother and other relatives had been killed. A Ukrainian friend of his had told him how this happened. He moved to Kam'yanets'-Podil's'kyy in 1955 and worked there until his eighties. From about 14:00 Kerler turns to a questionnaire on foods and words, and on how Yiddish was spoken in Later's home area. Items asked include gefilte fish and sweet or sour dishes, potato pancakes, words for devil, golem, thanks, please, mouse, house, wife and husband, and numbers. They also cover bodily words, colours and emotions, plurals, 'flowers', 'store', 'attic', 'beam', 'rich man', 'enemy', and the phrase 'to come back'. Later gives local forms and says which ones his own family used.
Gelman gives his Yiddish name and birth date in 1921 and says he lived in Kam''yanets' until the war. He describes his parents and grandparents, including a maternal grandfather who traded in Kitaygorod (Ketaret), and names his three siblings. He then recalls his childhood: leaving a Jewish school after four grades during the 1933 hunger, selling coal he gathered at the station, and his father's hospitalisation. He tells at length of his Red Army service, from the first bombing in 1941 through hospitals, a long march and tank-unit service, to the advance on Berlin in 1945, and mentions a decoration, work in Germany afterwards, and his later work buying cattle. Kerler's questions then turn to prewar Sabbath and holiday life in a poor household: meat versus challah, the mother's blessings, driving for others on Sabbath, the town's trades, the Jewish street, ritual slaughter, Passover preparation, Jewish and non-Jewish friends and neighbours, Hanukkah foods and the bathhouse and mikveh. These parts include terminology for shops, trades and foods.
Kraidman gives her father's name as Shmuel and says he was a brushmaker who came from Poland near the Belarusian border, apparently because there was no work there. Her mother was Khane. She has a brother, Yoysef, who has died, and a sister, Luba, who lives in Israel in Kiryat Bialik.
Kraidman says she spoke Yiddish at home before the war. In evacuation she spoke Russian with the many Jewish workers from Odessa, working by day and studying bookkeeping in the evening. After the war she worked in Zhytomyr.
Sonya gives her name, her maiden name Sosne and her birth year, 1920, and says her father was Volk. She contrasts her family's comfortable life with her husband's: a horse, a cow, a large courtyard, plenty of food and helping others. Her parents, a brother and the whole family were killed by the Germans in 1942; her father worked with horses, her mother Khane baked twice a week, and the whole family met on holidays.
Gaiviker describes the many prewar synagogues and small prayer houses, near one of which he lived, and says he prayed in all of them. Kerler asks what a "heymishe shul" means, and Gaiviker lists the trades of the town (tailors, shoemakers, hairdressers, tinsmiths). Asked about Purim, he remembers little, and Sonya recalls her grandfather Meir's synagogue visits and the pastries he brought. He mentions that his father opened a hairdressing shop where he learned his trade.
Kaviner gives family details: his father David was a barrel maker (born 1889(?)), his mother Ester a housewife. He did not meet his grandfathers and remembers only one grandmother, Leye. There were three children: Milke (born 1920), Shmuel (Shmilikl), and himself as the third. He says he hardly worked before the war.
Lemster and Kerler ask about Jewish types in his shtetl. Kaviner talks about the wealthy and the poor, a learned man who worked as an employee (Moyshe Zilberman, as the transcript has it), a professional actor, card players and the water carrier.
Vaisblai 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.
Bivson answers what it means to be a Jew: having pity for everyone, loving animals, and being honest and good. She mentions her two cats and a dog and her flowers. Lemster returns to the questionnaire with items on flowers and a flowerbed, a Yiddish expression, 'come', and the word for book. She then speaks of her age, the war and the people she lost, and of her forty years as a telephone operator, including calls from Israel.
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.
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.
The passage opens with unclear side talk, partly in Russian, about a book in the room. Katz then describes baking matzo and the seder at home, including the four questions and a Chad Gadya song. He talks about his father's exhausting coachman work. He answers questions about Purim: the reading of the megillah, children going from house to house, and why he himself did not go (he was busy helping at home). He also touches on the decline of Jewish life today and the difference between a town and a shtetl. At the end he turns to the deportation of his family, the camps and the burning of what was left.
Zinger describes his father's work as a stonecutter of simple tombstones at the cemetery of his hometown. He says some of the stones still stand, as he saw three years ago, and speaks of black marble stones made in Uzhhorod, including his wife's. Katz and Kerler close the interview with good wishes and thanks. Zinger says his daughter tells him not to tire himself and that the questions reminded him of Yiddishkayt and Yiddish words.
In the Khust synagogue Repkin explains its history in Russian: construction began in 1861, much of it is original, the paintings are original, the lions part came from Oleksandrivka, and the wiring was replaced two years before the visit. He recounts the Khust Jewish population in 1940 and its losses in the Holocaust, the ghetto from April 1944 and deportations to Auschwitz, and that Soviet authorities tried to close it for a club in about 1965–66 and a protest by women and children, apparently, saved it. He describes the books found there, with stamps from villages in the region and Yiddish, Hungarian and Slovak printings, and his catalogue of owners for a future museum. He also describes the repair of doors, donors from abroad, the mikveh-side rooms and a slaughtering knife found in the building, and talks about his own career at the shoe factory and the synagogue's upkeep, caretaker and minyan.
Smelanskii recalls his grandfather, a respected man in Smila to whom people came with questions, and the six or seven synagogues that stood until 1941. He lists uncles, aunts and cousins with their names, occupations and places (Moscow, Cherkasy, Kharkiv, Israel), says that relatives were evacuated or killed at Babi Yar in 1941, and mentions an uncle who ran the printing house of the Smila newspaper. He also says his father worked on the railway.
Smelanskii says Yiddish newspapers came from Kyiv and Moscow, and names classic writers such as Sholem Aleichem and Peretz, while saying no Yiddish writers visited Smila. He notes that young people left for institutes in the big cities before the war. He does not remember songs and says he was not a singer, and describes his work as a machine builder, with thirty-six years at one factory, and then as a dental-clinic mechanic making apparatus.
Smelanskii talks about the religious groups and prayer houses in his town before the war. Each trade had its own synagogue: tailors, shoemakers and others. He also mentions a distinction between groups in prayer (the transcript is unclear on the details). At the end Kerler starts a new question about stories of love affairs opposed by parents.
S2 asks what was eaten and cooked in the town, and Smelanskii describes Sabbath food and everyday dishes such as homemade noodles, kasha and potatoes. His father was a shoykhet who slaughtered only fowl. Smelanskii himself learned shehitah, kept his father's knife after his death, and slaughtered for those who came to him. Knife sharpness is discussed, and the transcript is partly garbled.
Shapiro tells how he left kheyder at age seven because he could not bear the rabbi's beatings. The teacher was not clever and hit the boys, and Shapiro climbed out of a low window and refused to return. He recalls praying to God and his grandmother telling his parents, and his father then took him to a craftsman, apparently a jeweller, to learn a trade. Shapiro dislikes it and later works as a woodturner and shows some turned objects. Kerler asks him about two kheyder pupils who became religious judges and about the names of things.
In part in Russian, Shapiro talks about his age at various points and mentions a document saying he was taken from Vinnytsya. Kerler asks about other prewar trades and tells him that interviewers trust the speaker more than papers. Shapiro says he was drawn away from Vinnytsya.
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 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.
Semyon Braverman describes the Zhmerynka synagogues and what they became after the war (a club, a bakery, a library, a militia building). His pious father led the congregation and made Yiddish calendars that were mailed across the country. The father's biography, from a Jewish gymnasium graduate, appears in a published book, and Semyon mentions a police fine for an unregistered prayer gathering. Semyon then begins the story of Zhmerynka friends who wrote a letter in 1948 asking to go to Israel.
Kipnis speaks about her grandparents: her grandfather was a tanner who prepared hides, and the family's workshop was later taken by the Soviets. Her grandmother kept house, livestock and poultry and cared for the grandchildren, and visited Kyiv only briefly because she missed home. The grandfather stayed behind under the Germans and was killed in 1941. The segment ends with Kerler promising to return.
Torchinsky discusses a mischievous child, as in Sholem Aleichem, and how he too was a prankster, growing up without a father with his widowed mother and two sisters. He says his grandfather, perhaps a carpenter, gave them a small part of his house. He recalls how the relatives in America sent 25 dollars so that his mother could buy proper flour for Passover latkes, and that the flour was stolen at night, in the mid-1920s.
Torchinsky tells how his mother, after her trade was liquidated, joined a Jewish collective farm and worked as a cook and later in the fields. She suffered from Parkinson's disease. He describes the move to Kyiv in 1934, helped by friends, and working at a repair factory. His sister Freyde came too and worked as a planner at the factory after a technical course in Kharkiv. He then moves to his army service from 1938.
Khandros says he finished tenth class in Ozarinets in 1941, after four Yiddish classes, then Ukrainian school. He recalls the graduation evening and fishing with a friend when the war began. He later taught briefly after the war and, before the war, worked as head of the school library.
Khandros explains theories of the name Ozarinets, which an older teacher derived from a lake, though he now thinks it comes from the word for bazaar. He recalls the fairs held in the town until the late 1920s, twice a year, with peasants coming from many villages and separate places for selling cattle, pigs and clay pots, and Jews earning a great deal in three days. Kerler then asks him to recall his childhood between ages three and six.
Zak continues her wartime account: the family caught the last train out of Miropol' and ended up in evacuation, working in a kolkhoz with little to eat. Her father died of hunger there. They returned to Polonne in 1944, where she worked in an orphanage speaking Yiddish with the children, and in 1945 she was asked to organize a children's library, where she worked until her retirement in 1988.
Rusakovskaia describes her parents. Her father went to the synagogue daily and on Sabbath and holidays, and her mother went on holidays. After the war the synagogue was taken away, Jews gathered in private homes, and the police fined them for it. She describes the prewar synagogue with its two floors, with men below and women above reading from prayer books. She gives her father's name as Isaak (Shloyme) and her mother's maiden name as Shepelski, with her first name given as Malke. Her father was a carpenter and her mother a housewife who raised three daughters.
Rusakovskaia says her father the carpenter made windows and doors with fine decoration. She then describes Passover food, especially fish, and discusses with Kerler the terms for fried, chopped and stuffed fish (gefilte). In Chornobyl' fish was made without sugar. At Passover the shoykhet came, and after the war, when he died, one came from Ovruch.
Rusakovskaia says relations between Jews and non-Jews were normal and friendly, though her close friends were all Jewish, from her street. At school pupils from the Yiddish and Russian schools mixed. After the war there were fewer Jews. She worked in a bank as the only Jewish employee and used the name Raisa, and later as a bookkeeper in a collective with a Jewish director and mostly Jewish staff, where Yiddish was sometimes spoken.
Rusakovskaia recounts the family's evacuation. They left Chornobyl' and were turned back at Kyiv by the crowds, but her father insisted on going on with the children. In Dnipropetrovsk a friend related to Kaganovich took them on a special train. They worked on a kolkhoz near Stalingrad, left when the planes began shooting, and her father repaired another family's wagon. They were then sent east to a town with a military factory in the Chkalov region (Sol'-Iletsk), where they worked until the war ended. She also says when they came back to Ukraine.
Rusakovskaia describes the return to Chornobyl', where their own house was no longer standing and the family lived with others. Her father, a carpenter, then bought a ruined house (the word is explained to Kerler) and rebuilt it into a fine one. She says she moved to Kyiv in 1967.
Vider speaks about his mother as housewife and his father's work, and about the family house in Hîrlău, which was washed away in a flood, and his father's business as a forest leaseholder. He compares his Transylvanian Yiddish to what he met in Iași, says he reads Yiddish and had a fine Yiddish script, and discusses Kolomyya Jews who speak Yiddish and the Podolian visitors' speech. The passage ends with Kerler asking about a Kolomyya man named Greif, born there, and the telephone numbers of local Yiddish speakers, and then returning to the Rebbe's court.
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.
Grayf says some non-Jews in Kolomyya learned Yiddish from living among Jews. He says the Yiddish word for Jew carried no insult and that Jews were not robbed or murdered before the war. Kolomyya's shops were almost all Jewish, while Poles and Ukrainians held butchers' trades and a few other shops. He guesses about forty thousand Jews lived there, and mentions that there were no Jewish firemen. Kerler also asks about converts and mixed marriages, which Grayf does not remember.
Krotsh describes a typical day in the Hebrew school in Stefanesti. Romanian subjects were taught first, then Hebrew, and Yiddish was not taught as a subject, though he knew it from home and cheder. He did not know Romanian until he attended the state school. He tells of his employer, the tailor Yude Leyb, who refused to speak Romanian with his non-Jewish clients, and of poor children being given bread and milk by the committee.
Krotsh first mentions meeting a stranger who spoke Yiddish, then recalls prewar Passover: his mother's latkes, bringing Passover dishes down from the attic, matzo and matzo meal, and going to synagogue. He worked for a tailor who stopped work for the eight days of the holiday. Kerler, Katz and a second man then discuss the distinction between the Yiddish words for 'erlikh' (honest) and 'frum/frim' (pious), with examples such as helping the poor and learning Torah day and night.
Krotsh says that non-Jews never converted to Judaism in his town because Jews lived apart from their neighbors, but that many Romanians spoke Yiddish. Jews were the great majority in Stefanesti. He read in Yiddish and Hebrew in school, including Sholem Aleichem and religious books, and went to yeshiva while also working as a tailor from a young age.
Krotsh recounts stories he heard from his employer about the Stefanester rebbe's miracles, chiefly a tailor ordered to make a coat for a general who warned him by the rebbe's advice, and a prisoner who came to the rebbe. Kerler asks about dybbuks and Krotsh says only that he remembers hearing of them being exorcised.
Katz introduces the team and the date. Grayf gives his name and says he was born in Kolomyya, and names the street where he lived, near the town hall. He says he remembers little of childhood. He recalls a mostly Jewish town, with a Hebrew school twice a week separate from the state school. His father Gershon worked in the timber trade. He describes the many synagogues and a time when a minyan was easy to find, compared with today when ten men are hard to gather. He estimates the prewar population and the Jewish share of it.
Vider answers questionnaire items on how his Transylvanian-born parents spoke, contrasting Sighet usage with that of Iași and Hîrlău. Items include the words for potatoes, honest, pious, cross, sick, sleep, breath, dove, house, groats, mouse, luck, wife, and non-Jew or Christian, along with greetings and thanks. He also names the trades of Hîrlău and tells of the midwife.
In the restaurant one man tells a story about a worker who drank in a factory office to get hired and found two drunk directors, and another tells about repairs of the city streets paid by money from Americans from Kolomyya. S3 then tells a story about a Christian woodcutter who is invited to a Jewish Sabbath-eve table, eats the fish and kugel and asks the Jew why he studies the prayer book so much. Kerler comments on the answer.
Krotsh answers Kerler's questions about the meaning of words he used, such as the watch, Romanian-derived words and a Hebrew-Yiddish phrase. He then talks about Romanian Jews in contrast to Bessarabian Jews, and his trips to Lviv after the war as a tailor. He mentions that there is no one in Kolomyya to speak Yiddish with, and recalls songs he heard in 1946.
Krotsh says he spoke only Yiddish with friends and at home, and knew some Romanian. He describes the town's many synagogues and the rebbe's large court, which drew visitors from abroad. He retells a story from his master tailor about a Jew drafted in the First World War whom the rebbe said would not be taken. Two Romanian generals then picked other men to take him as an orderly, and he was sent home.
Krotsh repeats a Yiddish song about the Jews at Sinai, whom the non-Jews could not understand. Kerler then asks about the phrase 'good Jews' for rebbes' followers and about rebbes, including the Podolier rebbe, whom crowds went out of town to welcome. Krotsh says he studied at a yeshiva for half the day and learned a trade for the other half. He was about thirteen when his father, advised by an older man, decided he should leave the yeshiva for tailoring.
Krotsh talks about his year in Bessarabia, where Moldovan girls laughed at his Romanian greeting. He explains local Moldovan expressions and what he learned from them. Kerler asks about Yiddish words such as 'tsunoyfshpaden' (?), which Krotsh links to Russian and to his tailoring.
Krotsh sings a Yiddish song about a drunkard in a tavern, to whom the streets seem drunk. He says he remembers more verses and other songs only partly. They talk about songs that tailors sang while sewing.
Krotsh says his son lives in Kolomyya and does not know Yiddish, and tells an anecdote about being asked whom he was talking to at home. Kerler asks about people he spoke Yiddish with after the war. Krotsh recalls a Jewish workmate in Baku, the Russian-speaking environment there, and his team of workers; Kerler asks about a song, which Krotsh does not know.
Kerler and Belous discuss Yiddish authors they know through Sovetish Heymland, among them Aleksander Belousov, Velvl Chernin, Mikhl Felzenbaum and Leo Barinski. They mention Moisei Lemster. Belous then talks about his work in Zhytomyr when emigration started and about the difficulty of commuting.
Sonia talks about her name, which was given after her mother's mother Sarah (?), and about her parents, who divorced. Her grandmother Dashke raised her. Her grandfather Benyamin Futerman was a furrier. Kerler questions her about where she lived before the war, in Korosten'.
Sonia describes her evacuation to Chelyabinsk with her grandmother, father, aunt and cousin. Her grandmother cut wood and got milk from villagers, and her grandfather died in evacuation. She speaks about her family and her father's craft as a furrier. Her grandfather Benyamin's family came from Bykhi, and her grandmother came from Chopovychi. Relatives were lost in the war or emigrated to America. Kerler also elicits Yiddish words such as the verb peseyren, klirn (to think) and zun.
Skop talks about his family. His father Yosl, who was born in a small town (Polonne?), was a gravestone maker, and his mother Reyzl came from near Moscow. His parents stayed in town during the war, and the local police killed his mother while the Germans commanded. He names his six brothers. Five of the seven brothers were killed in the war and one died earlier.
Skop talks about being taken in 1940 with other Jewish children to a vocational school to learn a trade, and then, aged seventeen, being sent to Siberia. He was drafted into the army at eighteen. He fought at Stalingrad, in the Donbas, at Kursk and Dnipro, then in Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Katz asks Skop about the Sabbath and the town before the war. Skop recalls cooking cholent, baking their own bread and buying milk, and the family trading in meat. He names five synagogues in Korosten', including one for the wealthy, a shoemakers' and a tailors' synagogue and a kloyz near the railway station open day and night. Travelers came from Korosten' and other towns, among them Berdychiv and Kasrilevke.
Ocheretianyi gives his surname and his Yiddish name, Moyshe, and talks about his family. His father Zelik and his grandfather were blacksmiths (the exact Yiddish word is unclear), and his mother Sosye was a housewife. His father was born in Korsun in the 1890s (?), and the Yiddish and Russian names of his father and grandfather are discussed. He had two brothers; one served at the front and later worked on a kolkhoz as chairman, and the other, Shloyme, lives in Haifa and wants him to visit. He then describes his own work as a cutter of shoe leather and later a brigadier and factory director, his army service in the 1940s, and his schooling in a Ukrainian school after the Yiddish school was closed.
Ocheretianyi describes the family's evacuation when the Germans approached: they travelled by horse and wagon as far as Voronezh and then by train to Kazakhstan. In Kazakhstan his father and brothers were taken into the army. They returned to Korsun in 1944, and his father built a forge and worked there. Later he himself was drafted.
Ocheretianyi compares prewar and present Jewish life: before the war Korsun had about 2,500 Jews, and now very few remain. He returns to Hanukkah foods and Passover at home, then recalls non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, especially a wagon driver, Ivan Nahayets (?), who learned it living among Jews. Under the German occupation he was suspected of being a Jew and was checked physically before being released. Ocheretianyi also notes that he worked among Jews in a shoemakers' shop where many non-Jews spoke Yiddish.
Belobrov says he went to a Ukrainian school and finished five classes before the war. He did not attend a Jewish school, and his father was a tailor. He had two brothers. The younger one died in evacuation in Kazakhstan, and his brother Meylekh, two years younger, lives in Vladikavkaz, where Belobrov keeps contact with him. His maternal grandparents and an uncle were killed by the Germans in Shpola. He worked for decades as a lathe operator at a factory.
Belobrov recalls childhood play in the street and says his parents were not strongly religious. They still marked Passover, Hanukkah and Yom Kippur, though they did not go to synagogue. His father, a tailor, worked at home and so was able to keep Sabbath. Friday evening was a festive meal. He describes baking matzo together with neighboring families, and gives a detailed recipe for gefilte fish. He also mentions Jewish song and a choir that travelled to Kyiv, and non-Jews who spoke Yiddish.
Kislinskaia gives her birth date, 15 March 1924, and talks about life today: a grandson with a disability, medical costs, prices, pension, and help from the Cherkasy Hesed. She also tells of her mother's brothers in America and the house she lived in before the war. The old house was left unfinished, and she signed her prewar house over to her daughter. Her father David was a shoemaker and her mother Etl a housewife who later worked.
Lemster asks about the number of Jews and synagogues in Pishchanka, then about Leiderman's parents. Her father was from Obodovka (?), and her mother from Sobolivka (?), the villages named in the transcript. Obodovskii mentions a grandson who visited from abroad, which leads to talk of the laptop. He describes his father's limited schooling and his parents' work on a kolkhoz near Kotovs'k, in a village settled by Czech colonists, and the family's move to Kotovs'k in 1939.
Leiderman describes her mother as a seamstress who sewed for the family only. Obodovskii recalls his grandfather Khayim with a red beard, his grandmothers Anye and Gitl, and his paternal grandfather Yisroel, after whom he is named. He recounts the family's names, where the grandfather lived near Korytne, and that his grandfather ran a small shop in the NEP years. His maternal grandmother died around the Revolution. He then begins describing the 1941 departure from Kotovs'k in evacuation.
Gershtein gives personal and family details. His Yiddish name is Avrom, and he was eighteen during the war years. His father Motke(?) was born in Holoby in the 1870s (?) and worked at a slaughterhouse. His mother Gitl sewed at home on a machine together with another woman. There were six children. Gershtein names several siblings, among them Shmuel, Khave and Yankl, and says some family members went to America and Israel after the war while he was in the army. His grandfather Moyshe Itskhok died in America (Detroit?). Gershtein also recalls his uncle, aunt and three children killed in the woods, and says the town was called Kovel in Yiddish.
Gershtein recalls going from house to house in the Purim play in 1936–37, aged about ten, and earning a lot of money from the wealthy. He names the miller Matl and the miller David Katz, who each gave a coin, and describes the poor and the wealthy in town. His uncle Rakhmil Vitsnudl kept a dairy, and he remembers the wandering poor, a Sabbath meal for the poor, the Slikhes wake-up call and the slaughterers' homes.
Pensatii describes Odesa in the 1920s as a Jewish city where Jews and non-Jews lived together without distinction. Jews spoke Yiddish among themselves and Russian with non-Jews, and he knew non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. Kerler asks about the bendyuzhnik, a kind of horse-drawn carter, and Pensatii explains the word and mentions Jewish carters and a film made on a street in Odesa.
Dorfman gives personal information: his Yiddish name, birth in 1923 on Shavuot, and life in Chişinău before the war. His parents, Malka and Mendel Dorfman, were well-known; both were jailed in 1940 under the Soviets, his mother serving long terms and returning later. His father was a skilled workman, and he recalls antisemitism.
Dorfman discusses the theater at a place called Ridel (?) in Chişinău and the town's Jewish working-class population: porters, craftsmen and butchers. He lists Zionist and sports organizations such as Betar, Maccabi and Hashomer Hatzair. He recalls the Gordonia study circle reading Marx, with a Siguranța informer present, and debates and literary evenings.
The team and local guides drive through Zhovkva; the informant and a companion point out the town centre, the school and hospital, and former Jewish shops and houses. The informant says Jews lived here, some raised geese, and sold meat; the synagogue is pointed out. Part of the talk is in Russian and the audio is poor.
Nisman estimates Jewish numbers in Chernivtsi and L'viv today. She describes her parents' poor but strictly religious home and her father's work as a forest caretaker. Kerler asks about words for an honest man and a pious man, and she explains terms for a trusted forest steward and for an honest and a believing person. Her mother complained about hunger.
Leibel gives personal information, including the Yiddish forms of his first and family names, with Kerler discussing diminutives. He mentions cousins who went to Palestine as pioneers in the 1930s. His family was poor: his father was a petty trader and his mother helped him. Two sisters, Gitl and Faygele, are named. His parents and sisters all died in the Rivne ghetto while he was in the army.
Leibel says he studied at an institute in L'viv and survived the war, and that he was born in 1921. He names grandparents on his mother's side: a carpenter grandfather and a grandmother who sold yeast to poor Jews from a small scale. He also explains what their names were and where she sat in the town. The war's start and army call-up are mentioned only briefly.
Leibel talks about Rivne before the war: a small town, the streets, the large stores and a small bookshop that sold school texts and serial novels read by Jews, and his memory of Friday night. He names his mother Golda and recalls his father as a soldier in the First World War who told stories about Jews freed to attend synagogue on the High Holidays. His grandfathers, a carpenter and a tinsmith, are named. He grew up with two sisters, and his parents and grandparents were born in Rivne. Kerler also notes that his own great-grandfather came from Rivne.
Leibel speaks about his Polish school education and answers whether non-Jews spoke Yiddish, which he does not recall. He tells of a Jewish lawyer who converted and a quarrel with his son over a ball, and names wealthy local Jews. He says the poor never converted while some rich did, naming a doctor family.
The group walks through the former Jewish quarter, stopping at a building numbered three with an old Polish inscription for a barber. Dorfman explains that this area was the big market where Jews made their living in small shops, and that Jews settled outside the ghetto after the Austrian reforms of the 1860s. He also shows English and Russian books about Jewish L'viv, which Kerler wants to buy, with a price mentioned in dollars.
Brandler answers Kerler's questions about his cheder teachers: one taught the alphabet, the second taught Yiddish writing and Humash, and a third taught Gemara. They discuss his dialect and the Litvak teacher's origins. He describes his father as a devout Jew, but not a Hasid, who never visited a rebbe, and his mother Hanna Rachel (?), who sold milk to customers for a living. He says he was called Khaim, with Nakhum added for the Torah reading.
Leibel gives his birth year (not clear in the transcript) and recalls prewar Rivne as a Jewish town with many small synagogues, and the street where he lived. His grandfather Moshe was a tinsmith and his father kept a cellar shop dealing in old things. He describes the state gymnasium, where he sat at the last bench next to a prince's son, a religion lesson and a discussion on Zionism. He finished in 1939, expected to go to Warsaw, and after the Soviet entry studied for two years before being drafted.
Leibel speaks about his traditional childhood home and about his father working in the cellar of a textile store. He lists organizations in Rivne, including Betar, a Zionist group (names garbled) and a Hasmonea football club, and a Maccabi club. He explains that gymnasium pupils were forbidden to join political organizations and had to study. Kerler asks in what language the Betar and Bund booklets were written; Leibel says Yiddish.
Leibel mentions Yiddish and Zionist newspapers before the war. He says his uncle was a tailor and that his parents worked in a shop all day, warming themselves with a pot of coals in winter, supporting the family on very little. He then recalls returning to Rivne after demobilization, finding few Jews left, and mentions a milkman who remained.
Leibel describes his mother baking for the Sabbath on Friday morning, with challah and cakes, going to the synagogue women's section, and lighting candles. Asked about his grandmothers, he remembers Khaye Hinde, who sold hay (?) in small quantities by weight for her living. He says he does not remember much of Sabbath at his grandparents' but that Jewish life was good though not easy.
Speaking mostly in Russian, Diner says that in wartime he worked in a mine, then as a shoemaker in Poltava, and was called into the army in 1941 and served until 1945 as a private. He says his sister and brother did not survive; his brother's children were killed too.
She talks about relatives named Teper in America and recalls an uncle who left with the Reds in 1919. She names her parents, Avrom the merchant and Sara (called Sulke), their birth years, and her grandmothers, and says her grandfathers died young. She was the eldest of seven children, naming siblings including Shimen, Malke, Shmerl, Brokhe and Bashe; two survived and some froze to death in the forest during the war.
Continues with her army service in hospitals in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. She did not know that her sister had been evacuated to Kharkiv, and she found her there. She returned to Luts'k, married, and worked as a nurse for 55 years. She has a son in Luts'k with three children, and a granddaughter in Israel; her husband has died. She moved to Israel to be near family, in Bat Yam, but pined for Luts'k and came back, and she is now unsure whether to help the granddaughter who wants to return. Kerler ends by saying he has language questions to ask in Russian.
Shvardovskaia gives her personal data: her Yiddish name, her Russian name and patronymic, her parents' names and her father's birth year. Both parents came from Trokhinbrod. Her maternal grandfather was a potter who dug clay pits and made pots and Passover vessels. She says there were four synagogues in town and that she was born in 1923.
She says she came to Luts'k in 1946 after the war. Partisans found them in the forest and she worked in a field hospital as a nurse, and afterwards in a hospital. Lemster and Kerler ask about postwar Luts'k, and she says its Jews were nearly all newcomers from Russia and she was the only local Jew from Volhynia.
She describes Purim before the war, with baked goods and children dressing up, and says Jewish life was full and no one expected to be shot. Lemster asks about rich Jews, who were tanners or leather workers. She also tells of meeting by chance on a bus a man from Trokhinbrod, apparently Meir Shvarts (Schwartz) (?), with his non-Jewish wife who had adopted Judaism.
She says all non-Jews in Trokhinbrod understood Yiddish, since Jews outnumbered others, and tells of a Polish man's son who learned Hebrew. She lists Jewish occupations: shoemaker, tailor, miller, tanner, teacher, bakers (the Bas family), butchers. She describes the bathhouse and mikveh as separate buildings, going on Friday before Sabbath, the shoykhet, a Polish policeman and the post office as the only non-Jewish offices, and also mentions balagulas.
Kaplan talks about his army service, including a Party document shown to the interviewers and a visit by an Israeli guest (Buchbinder) whom he guided around the area, followed by an Israeli television programme whose commentary angered him. He says he never met antisemitism in the army, attributes this to his dutifulness, and mentions Jewish commanders. He says antisemitism has existed and will exist everywhere, including Germany and Israel, and distinguishes good, bad and neutral people. Kerler then asks about expressions and terms (a good place for a cemetery, a good Jew, a good eye and envy, Lithuanian Jews and their speech). Kaplan describes his mother's gefilte fish, home-made horseradish, Passover and Hanukkah foods, mamaliga and malay, and home-made liquor, and says his father was a soap-maker and his mother a teacher. He recalls the ghetto in Mohyliv, the camp at Pechera and flight to Zhurin and Chernivtsi, and reports the recent murder of two Jews there by neighbours who robbed them. Kerler ends with further questions on words such as dybbuk, golem, a blessing for the dead, luck, house, group, skin, mouse and window glass.
Khaiut shows rose jam she makes for baking, then recalls folk cures and charms from village healers (babkes). She tells how she turned down one suitor and then met her husband Khayem, who left for Moscow with a residence permit, and shows photographs of him. Kerler asks about the Yiddish newspapers and library she used before the war, and then puts a long run of vocabulary items for her to render into Yiddish: words for ghost and golem, thanks, greetings, colors, house, courtyard, deaf, ear, later/higher/faster/nearer, and breathing.
Leger gives his name, patronymic, birth year and the names of his parents and grandparents. His father was a bookkeeper and his mother a nurse. He says he learned Yiddish in the ghetto, after the family had spoken Russian at home. He recalls trying to evacuate with his mother, her stillborn child in a nearby village, the return to the ghetto, overcrowding with Bukovinian and Bessarabian Jews, typhus, fear and hunger, and his mother's work in a hospital. He then describes language after the war, his work as an engineer, Soviet-era prayer, the destroyed synagogue, and the 300 or so Jews in the town today. In the final part Kerler and Lemster ask about songs, stories, folk customs and Yiddish writers, which he does not remember.
Fiksler tells how Hungarian forces advanced into Subcarpathia in 1938–39, and how Jewish children were then barred from school and Jewish shops were closed. She remembers life being harder for Jews than for others, a Jewish doctor and dentists, and good non-Jewish friends who returned her belongings. She recalls a Romanian (Vlach) man who knew Yiddish and attended cheder with the Jewish boys, and says Solotvyno's mixed population spoke little Yiddish among non-Jews. Kerler leads her to the events of March 1944.
Nayman recalls attending cheder until age thirteen and mentions his brothers Berish and Hershl, one of whom lived in Haifa and died in the early 1990s. He says about eighty Jewish families lived in the village among many non-Jews. His parents farmed, kept six cows and made butter and cheese that he carried to Mukacheve and sold. He recites bits of psalms, prayers and songs, much of it garbled.
Nayman briefly says that after returning he got his vineyard back, made some wine and sold grapes. He then answers questions from the dialect questionnaire, including the Yiddish for 'cross', 'honest' and 'believing', words for mistake and certainly, a sentence translated from Russian, and 'who does this child belong to'. He also answers questions on 'cart', 'quick', 'sick' and 'barely'.
Snook says she was born in August 1921 in a village called Lazes (?), where about sixty or seventy Jewish families lived with a shul. Her father was named Leyb and worked with horses, and the family kept a cow and lived from the land. She had two brothers and three sisters who were taken away; she was already married by seventeen and living in another village.
Pasik talks about prewar holidays she remembers little of, and says non-Jews in the colony spoke Yiddish and that there were craftsmen, such as tailors and shoemakers. Yiddish newspapers arrived. She lists other Jewish colonies near Mykolayiv, such as Novopoltavka, Bereznehuvate, Dobre and Romanovka, and Kerler and she discuss the name Efingar and the river. Kerler asks whether theater visited from Mykolayiv.
Endelshtein talks about his grandfather, a cooper whose customers came from Moldova and Bessarabia, and about the house. He recalls the New Synagogue, a Torah scroll sent by Queen Marie of Romania, and putting on tefillin at thirteen. He describes a Passover seder at his grandfather's house with ten children and sings the opening of Chad Gadya.
Tzentziper says his mother and brother ended up in Kazakhstan. Lemster asks about his father, named Hersh, who worked at a grain elevator receiving grain. S2 helps with the Russian and Yiddish terms and gives the father's birth year as 1898 (given in Russian). His mother's name is given as Khasya, and she was also from Dobroye. Kerler explains that they record such details for history, and Tzentziper says everyone at home spoke and sang in Yiddish.
Kenin gives his birth year, 1921, and says that he, his parents and his grandparents were all from Nizhyn. His father, Avrom Volf, was a leather worker (kirzhner), and his mother, Khaye Beyle, was a homemaker who had picked up some tailoring from her father. He is an only child. He names his maternal grandfather, Nakhmen Yosef Dubinski, a tailor whom Jews held in high regard, and recalls his grandmother Mini.
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.
The formal interview with Masovich begins with the date and the Jewish year. He gives his name, patronymic and surname, his Chernihiv address and phone number, and says he was born in Nizhyn in 1926. His father Elye, born in Nizhyn, worked at the cemetery with the burial society, was removed from it around 1929 and then worked in an artel making paints until the war. The family lived in Nizhyn until 1941 and then went into evacuation before returning to Chernihiv.
Cherner introduces himself: his first name, Alexander, with Shure in Yiddish, and his birth in 1935. Lemster says he is from Chişinău. Cherner mentions an uncle who was repressed under Stalin as a revolutionary, and his grandfather Khayim Zise, a glazier, who was a klezmer. He says he writes klezmer melodies, more than five hundred, and songs in Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish. He played the violin with his grandfather's band at Jewish weddings in Balta and describes dancing the sher. He recalls no Purim-shpil texts, only melodies.
Medved says she moved to Odesa in the 1930s and recalls that her family came to Bershad from Miskivka when she was small; her father's work and a grandfather who was a trader are discussed. Her maternal grandfather, a textile and shoe merchant, was shot. Her mother's sister Rakhil is mentioned.
Tokar gives his birth in Zheludok near Lida, then in Poland and now in Belarus, in 1920, and says the family name is Tokar. He talks about his maternal and paternal grandfather, a builder for a count, and his mother, a baker's daughter. His father served in the Tsarist army, took part in 1905 revolutionary activity and fled to Paris, then served in the First World War and was a German prisoner, and was a miller by trade who later kept a grain shop. His family perished in 1942.
The formal interview begins. Vainbrand was born in 1919, and Kerler wishes him health to 120. His father, Moyshe Dov, was a shoemaker, and his mother Libe was a housewife who did not work. He had no sisters and three older brothers, whom he names as Yankl, Khayim, Ruven and Avrom (he himself was the fourth). He did not know his grandparents. He put on tefillin until 1935.
Vainbrand speaks about visiting the rebbe's grave in Valedniki and about his wife's burial, which the transcript places in a town whose name is unclear. After the war he came to live where she lived. He feels he has lived too long and mentions his age. He gives his father's trade as shoemaker and his wife's father's as a rope-maker (?), and answers questions about the Chernobyl rebbe and the Khabne preacher with no recollection.
The couple say that Brodsky's parents did not speak Yiddish to the children, but his paternal grandfather did, and he was a synagogue warden (gabbay) and an honest man. Brodsky gives his father's name as Abraham Yankel and his Yiddish name as Berl (Russian Boris Abramovich). His father attended synagogue on holidays only, and worked in textiles or as a manufacturer (a doubtful Russian word); his mother, Basia, sewed at home. The synagogue is named as Chabad Lubavitch. The interviewers talk about their American university and give Brodsky a card.
Lerner speaks about his family. He and his wife were both born in Ostroh and lived on the first street, near the synagogue. His father had a small shop and his mother was Beyle, née Harpak (?). Uncles were killed by the Germans, one with his wife and children in the ghetto. A grandfather named Aron is mentioned, a grandfather worked at a sawmill for a Jew, and relatives lived in America. His daughter lives in Israel. Lerner has difficulty recalling Yiddish words and several details are unclear.
Lerner speaks in Russian, with Yiddish interjections, about prewar Jewish Ostroh. Wealthy Jews lived in the center and the poor on the outskirts, working as porters, shoemakers and tailors. There were several synagogues, including a women's one; the main one survives, and he mentions photographs and a chandelier given from America, now in the museum. He then talks about Yiddish books and ritual objects in the museum and the Jewish calendar he owns. He also says the Jews were shot nearby and he can show the graves. Lemster and Kerler ask about Slavuta and Zaslav, and about distances.
The formal part begins with the date and place of the interview in Slavuta. Kipervaser gives her name and family: her father was Yankl Milshenker and her mother Yente, from Berezdiv. Her father was born in nearby Velykyy Pravutyn (?). He had no special trade and worked on a Jewish kolkhoz until the war. She was born in 1924 and grew up in Berezdiv. She also says the Kipervaser family were from Berezdiv.
Kipervaser describes prewar Berezdiv: everyone had a trade (shoemakers, tailors), people got along and knew each other, and the synagogue was near their home. She remembers a chuppah. Her parents kept a kosher home, and her grandmother lit Sabbath candles. Her husband, also from Berezdiv, went to cheder; they studied together at school. He was called up in 1940, served at the front and ended up in Germany, and learned German. They keep Yiddish books, observe holidays and light memorial candles. Their son speaks Yiddish and knows the holidays.
Dorfman talks about his family. His father was born in Slovechno, worked as a shoemaker and later traded in fish and mushrooms; his mother and her maiden name are discussed, and he names his grandfather as a very honest man with a white beard. He had a brother in Israel and two sisters, one in Israel and one who died in Canada.
Dorfman says he was a boy before the war; afterwards he finished an institute and worked as a supervisor of building repair for nineteen years and as foreman for eighteen. Katz then asks about his earliest childhood memories.
Dorfman lists the Jewish trades of Slovechno (shoemakers, tailors, smiths, masons, painters), says Jews were not in the fire brigade there although an Ovruch fire chief was Jewish, and says football and volleyball were played informally. He was not in any Jewish youth movement.
Feldman names his home village, Yanova Rudnya, which had only six houses, and discusses how its name was said in Yiddish and the origin of "rudnya" (ore). After his father's death he lived in a town and worked in a shop. He describes the water mill his father leased, the fish in the river, and being taught at home by a hired teacher together with four sisters. He begins to mention the holiday songs he sang with the minyan.
Feldman says he 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 names the teachers (melamdim) he studied with in Veledniki, Slovechno and Luhyny, including the sons of rabbis who had studied at the Vilna yeshiva. He names Yosl the rabbi's son and a relative. He also mentions a strange man living near the village. Kerler asks whether being a melamed was honourable, and Katz asks about women healers, who whispered cures and were called babkes (?).
Feldman compares the economy under Tsar Nicholas, when trade was free, with Soviet times, when state trade took over; he worked in a cooperative. He cannot name a best time in his life and recalls that his father was killed and that the war started for him in 1941 (?). He says he wants to sell his house in Ovruch to move to his daughter and son in Simferopol, and discusses prices. He talks about his second wife, who went to Germany with her children, and Katz suggests another match.
Stotland says he married Beyle, a native of Ovruch, and they were married 52 years until she died. He studied at two institutes in Kyiv and worked as a teacher, then as a school director in Ovruch for some twenty years. He has two sons, one also a teacher.
Turovskaia talks about her parents. Her mother was born in 1899 or 1897 according to different records, and her father worked in trade, preparing livestock for sale. She praises her mother as a good housewife. She names a brother, Fayvl, who died, and says that seven children were born and four survived, because of a scarlet fever epidemic before the war.
Turovskaia says she keeps the yortsayts (memorial days) for her parents and grandparents, as her father told her, and recalls them. She names her maternal grandparents (Reyzl, daughter of Yitskhok, and Binem Shloyme, family name Vaynbrand) and her paternal grandparents (Shloyme and Fayge). Her grandfather had a matzo machine and a wool-carding machine and her father baked matzo. She distinguishes Novyye Veledniki from Staryye Veledniki, her grandparents' village, and says her father knew many tales of the rebbe.
Turovskaia says she finished four grades of Yiddish school and can read and write Yiddish. Her sister in Israel writes to her in Yiddish and Russian. At Lemster's prompting she tells in detail how her father, as a teenager, fell into the hands of bandits, probably from Kobyl'ye, during the Civil War. They cut the owner's fingers for gold, he escaped through a window, and she names the year uncertainly. Other tales follow about his supplying food, and about the grandparents naming him for the tzaddik after a dream. She then turns to a Polish occupation of Ukraine and Cossacks at the door.
Turovskaia says she read Sholem Aleichem, then talks about her work as a teacher before the war, with its daily lesson plans and many classes, and her earnings. She goes on to prepare food and answers Lemster's questions about making a vinegar meat dish.
Lemster asks for Jewish anecdotes and funny stories from childhood; Turovskaia says there were few to hear and mentions a neighbor family named Zilberman who were leather makers. She describes the well near the old synagogue where water was drawn, and complains about water pollution today. Kerler asks about tales of fools, which she does not know.
Zak tells about her husband, who is Jewish but grew up in a village and does not speak Yiddish. His family lived in Shepetivka before the war and was evacuated to Kazakhstan, where his father was killed at the front and his mother died of hunger. After marriage he worked at a ceramics factory for 36 years. He now has health problems, and his commemorative plaque (?) is mentioned.
Answering Kerler's questions about her early years, Zak says her father worked for a landowner (?) and then in a factory after the revolution. The family lived in an old, dilapidated house, which he rebuilt shortly before the war. He died young. Her mother returned with her to Polonne after the evacuation and lived until 1969.
Zak says that today's Polonne has hardly any old houses; the town was rebuilt after the war. She says that non-Jewish children understood Yiddish but did not speak it, and that she played with Russian children. She goes on to tell how, at thirteen, she worked at a factory because of the family's poverty, and how her mother made her return to school so that she completed ten classes.
Vainsheinboim talks about the synagogues of Ostroh: the large Krasnohirka (?) synagogue, brick buildings rather than wooden ones, and about sixteen small prayer houses, including a tailors' and a shoemakers' synagogue.
Fish speaks about his wife's illness and how he thought of emigrating to Israel with her but could not. He continues recalling his first days of work, being offered the job of bookkeeper at a restaurant, and the high food prices in the early postwar years.
Fish describes his housing in Rivne: the father's house on a side street had no running water, and he had an operation in the 1940s that left him unable to carry water or fuel. He later moved into a cooperative house and bought into it, and says he worked throughout. Kerler then turns to questions about the prewar bathhouse.
Fish says he knew nothing of Hasidim or rebbes in Rivne. He explains a "good Jew" as someone who gives help and charity to the poor. As an example he describes a Rivne cloth shop whose owner gave small coins monthly to long lines of poor people, and he mentions that he worked briefly as a bookkeeper there after the gymnasium.
Kurliandchik recalls attending Yiddish School No. 1 in Novohrad-Volyns'kyy until 1941. The other Yiddish school became a Russian school, which he blames on Jews who sent their children to Russian or Ukrainian schools. After his father's death his eldest brother returned to run the household. His sister was a telephone operator and his other brother a bookkeeper until called up in 1940. All the siblings studied in Yiddish schools.
Kurliandchik answers Kerler's questions about the holidays and the Sabbath. His mother lit candles, his father went to synagogue, and as a boy he carried his father's tallis. His grandfather, a rich merchant with eight children, ran a shop selling tallitot, tefillin and prayer books. His older brother Berl studied in a kheyder and knew Hebrew well. Berl emigrated to Israel, lived in Ashkelon, and died in 1983 (?). Berl's family includes daughters in America, and Kurliandchik visited Israel and Berl's grave.
This very short stretch holds one remark in the transcript: Litvak's father was a hatter (kirshner). The catalogue's civil-war story about him is not visible in the transcript.
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.
Litvak describes the trades of her grandfather, who worked in leather with several workers and had many children, her father the hatter and her brother the tailor, now in Netanya. She names her mother Leyke, her maternal grandparents Leybl and Etl, her paternal grandmother Malke, killed in Romaniv, and her siblings, among them Dvoyre who died in the famine. She says her family was not large for those days. Her mother sewed privately, which the authorities forbade, and was caught once.
Shteingart recalls his prewar Kovel' childhood: he lived on a street near the railway station, with many Jews and about ten prayer houses and a great synagogue. He attended cheder from age three for six years, studying Humash with Rashi and prayers, and still has a siddur and tefillin and prays daily. He then did not study for a long time and began working in a pharmacy.
Shteingart says that before the war he worked on the railway, delivering goods by wagon. He talks about Kovel' becoming Soviet in 1939, a few Yiddish schools and the Yiddish newspaper Kovler Shtime, which was closed after a short time.
Describes a happy childhood home in Berezdov with her mother, two uncles and a sister (?). Her mother was Khane (name heard as Khaye), and her father Leybke died of typhus around 1919; he worked in forestry, hauling timber for wealthy owners, and her mother worked at home and later as a cook. She names her two brothers, Shaye and Shleyme, who did not return from the war; they served as a pilot and in rocket forces.
Answers Kerler's question about singing: she had no time and had to work. After her mother died she raised her two younger brothers. She recalls that the older, Shleyme (?), studied and later became an officer, and she mentions her children and grandchildren.
Answers questions about Passover: as children they held the seder at their grandfather Alter's table, while her mother celebrated with her own siblings. She tells of stealing the afikoman and getting presents. The grandfather had a matzo machine; his wife is named Sarah. She trained as a bookkeeper in a place whose name is unclear, perhaps Slavuta.
Discusses Yiddish performances: children singing Yiddish songs today, and prewar events. She saw a production of Tevye the Dairyman, probably by a Kyiv troupe, and the film later on television. She recalls the town club with a Yiddish drama circle putting on plays in Yiddish and Russian, and the amateurs included tailors and shoemakers.
Shvartzbroit describes her family's life before the war: her father's sewing workshop with two non-Jewish servants, and her mother's weekly Sabbath help for old people whose wealthy relatives had been deported to Siberia by the Soviets. She also recalls taking in homeless people and giving her house for poor couples' weddings, and she mentions grandchildren in Germany and America.
Shvartzbroit names her father Kalmen and her paternal grandfather (Tsalik), and says her grandfather the rabbi played the violin. Her grandmother Etl kept a shop, and she herself is named after her. Another grandfather was a ritual slaughterer, and the family numbered about four hundred. Her father had a sewing workshop for fine garments. Kerler asks about a women's Sabbath headdress (shterntikhl), which she does not recognise, and she describes the Sabbath headscarf and the sealing of the cholent oven with clay.
Shvartzbroit says her mother worked with her father in the sewing workshop, which sent goods to Moscow and Leningrad until the late 1920s and 1930s. Her mother did not teach her to bless, lit Friday candles and worked on non-Jewish holidays. She lists the Jewish holidays and retells the story of Esther and Mordecai, offering Kerler a booklet. She says she had one sister and that both parents' fates and her sister's killing in Pechora are told here. She describes her father's death from an illness.
Fish explains that his father Shloyme was a builder of houses, with Kerler helping on the Yiddish word. His father built the family house, and Fish went with him to the synagogue on Sabbaths and holidays.
Fish answers Kerler's question about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. He recalls a woman co-worker at a restaurant where he worked in the 1950s who spoke Yiddish with a proper Jewish accent, and that she was later removed from the job. In answer to Lemster, he says Jews in prewar Poland spoke Yiddish in the street, not Polish.
Yerikhman argues against emigration, especially to Germany, saying people abroad struggle and that he is attached to Sharhorod, a Jewish shtetl, and answers Katz's questions about its future. The team then goes into the former synagogue, now a wine factory, with his nephew, who shows and reads from old religious books (a book of laments for Tisha b'Av, a handwritten letter, a kind of wedding gift); a man explains the building and the street. The team then sits in Luda's café-restaurant Dana, where Kerler explains that she learned Yiddish from her mother-in-law, and she and her family answer questions in mixed Yiddish and Russian about the town's Jewish population (a figure of 4,000 is mentioned), emigration, and her son Igor'. Finally the team meets Klara Kurman, who gives her name and her parents' names (father Leyb, a feldsher; mother Rivke), mentions her grandfather as an apothecary, and begins describing her work and hiding in a cellar during the war.
Kleiner explains that an aunt, who had no children, took her in at age two, and that this happened to other children in town. Her uncle was a tailor. She describes Shepetivka as a Jewish town with many trades, the closing of the cheder in the early 1930s and of the Jewish school later, the six synagogues, and Rabbi Shapiro, who was sent to Novosibirsk after the war; his son Shlomo lives in Baltimore. She also discusses a charitable society for the poor on October Street, the surviving synagogue, a Russian shoemaker's sons who attended the Jewish school, and children's games (forfeits, tag, hide-and-seek, sledding), with Kerler asking about terms.
Kleiner explains how gefilte fish was prepared and which fish was used, with questions about sweetness and pepper. She discusses latkes made from buckwheat flour for Hanukkah or from potatoes for Passover, her father's work as a sausage maker making kosher goose sausage, the removal of veins (trebern) and plum terms. She describes a baked dough dish with nuts, whether Jews drank brandy or beer, and homemade kvas.
Kleiner says she married in 1945, after the war, with a cantor writing the betrothal contract and a wedding canopy. She mentions that her son is a painter and her husband a military man, and recalls that she has no wedding photographs. She remembers prewar Jewish weddings, with betrothal contracts (tnoim), klezmer music and the breaking of a plate. She then answers questions about folk remedies such as milk with butter or honey, potato compresses, rubbing with turpentine, kerosene for worms, and cupping.
Kerler elicits Kleiner's Yiddish and official names, with a second voice helping with the Russian form. Kleiner was born in 1917 and moved to Shepetivka in the 1930s, where he worked in the post office. His father Avrom (Shike) was a butcher born in Lyakhovtsy near Yampil'. His mother Malke was from Yampil'. There were nine children, and Kleiner names several siblings. He alone survived, because he was in the army.
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.
Formal introduction: after the date (5 May 2003) is given, she gives her name as Malka, in Russian Maria, Liberzon. She says her mother was a Tverski, her father a Liberzon, and his mother a Shapira, linked to Reb Moshe Shapira, the Slavuta rabbi. She tells of the Slavuta press, its fine paper and print, and the Russian bookbinder Yuri. The owners were accused when he died, flogged and exiled to Siberia, in 1835, and pardoned after Nicholas I died in 1855.
Liberzon explains she studied history at Odesa but could not work in the field since she was not in the Communist Party and did not know Ukrainian. She taught in one school for many years, 45 by one account. She is interested in Yiddish and is asked to translate letters from relatives in America who do not know Russian. A second voice speaks briefly, apparently about teaching, with mention of the Rokeach.
Liberzon recalls a Polish count whose estate and factories gave work to Jews and who helped the Jewish poor at Passover and the synagogue. A street in Slavuta bears his name. She says Poles and Gentiles who worked with Jews spoke Yiddish, and she mentions Jews working in the surrounding forests.
Liberzon talks about her grandfather Khayim Shapiro, who moved from Bessarabia to Slavuta and went to a rebbe after losing children. She describes her father's father, a physician for fifty years who took no money and called it a mitsve. Kerler then asks what her father told about the Vilna Gaon.
Vainshelboim talks about his family. His father was a tinsmith and his mother, Zlate, a housewife; both were born in Ostroh. They had four children, two boys and two girls, and he was the youngest. He mentions sisters including Zisl, and a brother David; the birth years are unclear. He says he did not work.
Vainshelboim talks about Ostroh before the war: a beautiful town where the shops were all Jewish and where non-Jews who grew up playing with Jewish children also spoke Yiddish. In a Russian stretch he recalls his two-storey wooden house, dismantled and carried off after the war, and then his work for 44 years at a warehouse in Slavuta. He recalls a clever, helpful rabbi whose name is unclear in the transcript. Kerler thanks him and says the team must move on to Zaslav and Zhytomyr.
Klein speaks about her family. Her father Shmuel, born in 1894, worked as a carpenter and furniture maker and later headed an artel. He was evacuated to Omsk as a specialist. She gives the names of her mother Rivke, grandmothers Mirl and Beyle, and her siblings, and describes their street, the synagogues and her grandmother's attendance at the Beys-Medresh. Kerler also asks about a Yiddish library before the war.
Bivson, born in Polonne, recalls a good childhood there: her father was a laborer and her mother worked. She attended a Yiddish school for five grades, later a Ukrainian school, and describes the Jewish life of the town. She mentions the poet Peretz Markish as a native of Polonne, the many shoemakers and tailors, and the synagogue, and says she fled on foot when the bombing began.
Bivson talks about her family: there were three children, one sister is still alive and one has died. Her mother was Fruma and her father Elye Melekh (?). Her mother worked at a paper factory far from home and walked there.
Bivson recalls celebrating Purim: baking, giving shalekhmones and visiting guests. She does not recall Purim songs. Kerler then asks which language she spoke with her husband; it was Yiddish when the children were not to understand, but mostly Russian, and she worked many years at a telephone job.
After the date is stated, Kerler asks Klein her Yiddish name, and she explains she bears her grandmother's name. She tells of her carpenter father, born in Hrebenynky (?), her mother from Sakhnovytsi (?), and her four siblings. One sister lives in Israel and one elsewhere in Ukraine, and she mentions a niece. They talk briefly about the cold and about which language she uses with them.
Yakuta says her father refused to stay as a selected artisan when his wife and children were taken, and that he was killed with them. The other specialists were killed later. Kerler asks for the Yiddish for "later".
Yakuta speaks about the shops of prewar Teplyk, including an iron goods store, and about where vodka and lemons came from. Kerler asks about the Sukkot sukkah. She says neighbors used to come to sit in the sukkah at her father's house, that fish and soup were served, and that songs were sung. Kerler also asks about the words for meals (supper, breakfast, lunch).
Marinina describes the kolkhoz where children lived like siblings, with livestock, sheep, horses, orchards, melon fields and vineyards. Her father and aunt worked there, and she remembers her mother as a good housewife. She completed three grades in the Yiddish school there, then went to a Russian-language 'Jewish' school in Simferopol' and later to Feodosiya, living away from home.
Asked about the town's synagogues and prayer houses, Gliazer distinguishes Hasidim from the less observant. He says that after 1939 the Soviets did not close the synagogues but restricted prayer to Sabbath. He then describes how the economy changed: no factories, small trade, and taxes on artisans.
Kerler meets Reznik at her home and explains the interview. She says she was born in a village near Tomashpol' (name unclear) and gives her maiden name, Kordonskaya, and her husband's family. She went to a Ukrainian school, took courses in Kyiv and worked as an economist and bookkeeper. She was evacuated in 1941 to the Urals and then to a kolkhoz, and returned in 1944, married and bought the house. She names her parents and where they came from.
Liza Petrunenko joins and gives her name and Yiddish name. The talk covers her parents and grandfather, and the family's work in the kolkhoz. Reznik and Petrunenko recall prayer in private houses, the many prayer houses of the town, and Sabbath and Passover customs. Reznik names her siblings and recalls childhood games. They discuss non-Jews who spoke Yiddish before the war and today, and Reznik shows the old mezuzahs on doors and windows and her old house.
Tkach, born in 1935 in the small town of Chernivtsi ("Kleyn Tshernovits"), talks about her parents, grandparents and the traditional Jewish house with its mezuzah. She recalls her uncle the gabbai, the synagogue with its women's gallery, her aunt reading tkhines, and the killing of another aunt's family. She describes the war years, refugees and the ghetto, the postwar schools and her brother's studies, and her forty years as a journalist in Yampil'. She then covers food customs for Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah, children's games, Yiddish-speaking neighbors and friends, and weddings with their dances and musicians. She also talks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, the postwar fear of speaking Yiddish and the antisemitism of the Doctors' Plot, and Ukrainian literature. The last part is a dialectological questionnaire: she is asked how various Russian words, phrases and sentences would be said in Yiddish (greetings, house and window words, colors, comparatives).
Kerler and Lemster talk with Vasili Mukha (b. 1933) about his Yiddish. He spoke it with Jewish friends as a child, has forgotten much of it, and is asked for songs and sayings. He says his father's brother was a Jewish shoemaker. In the war Jews slept in his family's house, with the transcript suggesting they were hidden. He is asked whether there were beautiful Jewish girls, about life after the war, the town's Jewish trades and streets, and his own work.
After opening chat among those present, Shusterman gives her father Toyva's name and says he was born in Tomashpol' in 1901 and died in 1995 aged 94. He worked in several jobs, including at a bank, and wrote well in Yiddish and Russian. She describes him as an honest and pious man who prayed daily and led the Passover seder. After the war he acted as a kind of rebbe, saying kaddish for the dead, and the militia broke up prayer gatherings. She says she cannot tell about Jewish life before the war and then talks about his singing and her own love of music. She talks about her own accounting career, leaving work at 53 to care for her blind father, and then knitting and selling at the market. She also covers her own illness and depression. The few Jews left in Tomashpol' (eight) gather for holidays and yortsaytn, and she explains why she will not emigrate and a relative in Germany. She says antisemitism was present earlier, and she describes her wartime evacuation to Mordovia and the postwar housing and compensation. She also talks about her husband, a non-Jew, and a lost love from Odesa. The passage ends with Kerler's thanks, a promise to send Yiddish songs, and fragmentary talk.
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.
Mukha speaks about his life today and before the war. He is on his own, and says his family have died, and that he misses his friends, who have scattered to Vinnytsia, Odesa, Kyiv, Israel, America, Zaporizhzhia and Moldova. He recalls that there was a Jewish school and a Jewish prayer house in Tomashpil' before the war, that Jews made a living there, and that older Jews prayed, though the transcript is unclear. He remembers the war as a hard time, with Jews sleeping in his house, and Kerler asks about a telephone to reach him.
Shveibish says her father was called Nyune by the townspeople but Yeynekh in his documents. He was arrested in 1937 and released later; no one knew why, and her grandmother wept and lit candles. He worked in a sheet-metal (?) shop and sent goods to towns such as Bershad, Haysyn and Lodz. He was not a property owner, and the family had two sons and wanted a girl.
Kogan gives his Yiddish name as Yosl and his birth as 12 August 1927 in Bershad. He lived there until the war. His parents were both from Bershad. His father was a soap-maker who died of hunger. His mother, Gitl, was a candy-maker whose sweets he describes, and she died in the 1960s. He moved to Tul'chyn in 1960 and has lived there about thirty years (the figure is unclear).
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 describes the ghetto market where refugees from Bessarabia and Bukovina sold bread and police drove them away. He quotes a song in Ukrainian or Romanian, recalls families killed after an informer's denunciation, and says Bershad' had good craftsmen. After liberation the survivors were buried. A cinema mechanic was killed by a sniper in a church.
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.
Kogan talks about his wife and her family from Zabokrych, where many were killed and she herself survived with great difficulty. He then speaks about his parents: his mother, a housewife, and his father, a prosperous merchant known as Abraham from the soap, who died in 1933 after eating with a Christian. His father had earlier been to America and his mother was his father's second wife. Kogan was about six or seven at the time.
Shveibish (the guide) shows the group a former Jewish house with a cellar entrance in the old Jewish quarter. She says that many Jews, eight households, lived here and that a Jewish shop stood nearby. She recalls the maker of a shop or dress item, Abraham Rubin (?) of Odessa (?). Part of the stretch is Russian or garbled.
Asked about the best years of his life, Yurkovetskij says they were after he returned from the war, when he reunited with his children, rebuilt his life and worked as a driver. Kerler wishes him long life, and they discuss old photographs and sending a message to Tul'chyn natives in America. Photographs for the exhibition are discussed.
Kogan talks about his parents. His father Avrom, called 'of the soap', had been in America and died in the early 1930s (?) in the famine; his mother Gitl, his father's second wife, made candy and died in 1964 (?). He also says that Bershad' was a place of great importance, and Kerler suggests he write a book.
Katsman gives personal information: her name in Yiddish and Russian, her maiden name Chechelniker, her birth date and the fact that she has always lived in Tul'chyn. She talks about her family, which includes her father, a brush maker, her mother Perl, and a brother who froze to death in the camp. Her father was taken into the army and died after the war, and the family spoke Yiddish at home. She says the family's house was lost when they were driven into the ghetto. She recounts being driven to the Pechera camp, with disinfection in a bath, a night on the floor among about fifty people, beatings by police and help from some local non-Jews. She also mentions the return home after the war and attempts to claim compensation. Her half-brother in New York, her son in Israel and her second husband come up, along with her work as a tailor for 39 years. She answers Kerler's questions on relations with non-Jews before and after the war, on non-Jews who spoke Yiddish, on the shoykhet Moshe, on Sabbath, Passover, Purim and Hanukkah food and recipes (gefilte fish, cholent, latkes, varenikes, cakes), on children's games at school and by the river, and on hardship in the postwar years. She also describes annual trips to the Pechera memorial, some arranged by an organizing group; the discussion then shifts to a neighbor Pesia, Kerler's explanation of the archive, and a closing exchange about the mezuzah.
Lev surveys Jewish history (Solomon, David), and Kerler asks how Solomon is said in Yiddish. Yenta says that after the war her father, a baker, always went to pray in his tallis. Tomashpil is named as the birthplace of a mother, whose is not clear.
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.
Efim gives his mother's name and maiden name (Shtutman) and tells how she travelled to Israel and died there in 1991 (?). His father is buried in Buki, and he has visited his sisters' graves in Israel. He mentions his daughter, a dentist in Kharkiv, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He says he was the eldest of three siblings and that his father was a barber, as was Motl's father, a butcher. His own work as a dental technician comes up, as do the death of Motl's father in Buki and the family names.
Teplitskaia recalls her prewar childhood in Ternovka. Her father was a worker (the exact term is unclear) and her mother kept house; the family of seven had pigs and a cow and, she says, was not hungry before the war. Kerler asks why they kept pigs.
Asked about school, Rubin says there were several Jewish schools and workers' schools (for tailors, shoemakers and others) where reading, writing and singing were taught. He recalls a gramophone and songs, including a wedding song about seating the bride. He describes his family of klezmers who played clarinet, flute and fiddle, and Hershl Bonder (?), the leader of the klezmer group, whose four daughters also played.
Waldman says she loves her town, which before the war had about fifty thousand people and was divided into three districts. She describes the largest, Rakovka, where many Jewish families with many children lived, among them the writer Polyanker (the spelling is not clear in the transcript). She says many people, including her grandmother's children, died of the Spanish flu, and mentions factories and craftsmen.
Waldman talks about the poverty of Uman's Jews and about her family, many of whom were communists. Her father Avrom, an orphan from Zhytomyr, worked in a factory. She says they lived near the market and she has no photograph of him. The passage ends as she turns to the first of August, when the Germans came.
Naybauer and the group approach a former synagogue building and discuss neighboring buildings, including a former large restaurant that employed many Jews, a shop owner, and a house of Dr. Neumann (?). He talks about the Jewish market and the community's size of about ten thousand. He says the Czech period was a good time, followed by Hungarian rule. He also talks about a Jewish bank director who sent money to America.
In the restaurant, the formal interview begins with Naybauer's family, whose parents died in Auschwitz. He describes his childhood in a poor family in Mala Dobron (Kis Dobron), where he was born in Natkapash (?). His father, from Dubove, died when Naybauer was ten or eleven, after a failed shipment of cabbage; Naybauer then helped support the family. He talks about his grandfather and uncle, lists the Jewish families of Mala Dobron and describes its stone synagogue, rabbi, shoykhet and mikveh. He also mentions receiving compensation in Budapest and being liberated by the Americans.
Answering Kerler, Naybauer says he did not know of the killing of Jews, even in Auschwitz. Kerler asks about his work as a boy after his father fell ill. He describes carrying goods from villages to town in the ghetto period and an episode on Passover; the passage ends mid-sentence.
Zinger recalls the family's modest life in Velykyi Bereznyi: his father carved gravestones in summer and made picture frames and mended windows in winter. He describes the Sabbath meals, kugel and meat, and the braided challah. At Passover he helped his father bake matzo for neighbours, with women making the dough. He mentions a friend from the Soviet camp who died the day before. He says relations with non-Jewish neighbours were good, with some antisemitism blaming Jews for everything.
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 gives her birth date in July 1914 and says that Yiddish birthday greetings were brought to her by acquaintances. She finished the Jewish school in 1930 at sixteen and then worked as a typist in the court and procuracy. Her father, known as the Stanislavchyk rabbi, preached in Zhmerynka. She names an uncle Elye who was a ritual slaughterer in Moldova and later worked in a kolkhoz. She remembers Stanislavchyk as a Jewish shtetl with Jewish craftsmen and a market, where Christians worked the fields and her mother made ovens. Her father travelled to Proskurov and came back with accounts of a terrible pogrom there. She says there was no pogrom in their own town and relations with neighbours were good. The family left because her father wanted to go to Romania and sold the house cheaply, but they ended up buying a small house in Zhmerynka.
Chirkova speaks of the non-Jewish woman to whom the children were sold, who gave her gifts and attended the wedding, and who knew some Yiddish and told her about life. Asked about her father's work, she says he was a rabbi and also an expediter who traveled to villages buying goods. She then complains about her situation today and about a Gentile who treated her badly, and confronts a woman over her wartime conduct.
Chirkova says her father prayed in the beth midrash in Krasne and that craftsmen such as shoemakers and tailors had their own synagogues. She puts the number of synagogues at two or three, and cannot recall the name of her father's.
Katz asks about Hanukkah; Chirkova says people must prepare, pray and help the poor, and that there was no dreidel spinning. She recalls hemp work from earlier times, and describes preparing Sabbath food in the oven, a stew kept closed until guests arrived.
Furer talks about life before the war. His father died at 43, and his mother was left with three sons. They went to work at a kolkhoz outside town for food, the father working as a tailor there.
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.
Barshteyn recounts working twenty years as a telephone operator at the post office, then retiring and moving to Vinnytsya with her widowed father, after her mother's death, to be near her son. She speaks of visiting her parents' graves at Sharhorod, where there is no one to say Kaddish, since her son knows Yiddish but does not speak it. She describes the gravestones she had put up for her mother and father.
Vaisman recalls being drafted into the army in 1943 and serving until 1946, then returning to Berdychiv. Asked about life before the war, he says it was very hard, with hardly any bread. His mother worked at a factory washing, and Lemster presses him on her job. He names his sister Sonya (Yiddish Sara), who is still alive.
Barshteyn leads the team through the former Jewish quarter of Sharhorod and points out former Jewish houses now lived in by non-Jews. She says there were ten synagogues, of which only the big one remains. She describes a church and a monastery, visiting theater troupes, wealthy men and cantors from other towns, and Jews working as tailors and shoemakers. She says she left Sharhorod for Vinnytsya in 1983, recalls her mother's holiday cooking and Hanukkah latkes (?), and says she studied in a Yiddish school and can read Yiddish (Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Mendele). Her family house was pulled down and is now a garden; the former synagogue is now a library, and she points out traces of a mezuzah, the house of a woman called Klara, and a place linked to hiding. Several Russian exchanges with locals occur.
Barshteyn says she spoke Yiddish with her parents, that elderly Jewish women in Vinnytsya often do not understand Yiddish, and that her son (about 52) finished school locally and went to Vinnytsya. She says Hebrew was known only to those who went to a yeshiva, and that Hebrew is now taught. She names her father's seven siblings and their trades, including trading, tailoring and shoemaking, and her mother's early orphaned family. Lemster asks whether the cousins met.
The team meets a Ukrainian man, Matsey (also called Volodya, surname Pidpaliuk (?)), who is about seventy and speaks Yiddish. He says he lived all his life on a Jewish street and worked with Jews. Asked by Kerler and Lemster, he points out the old shoykhet's house, recalls Jews hiding in a cellar during the war, and mentions playing with Jewish children. He talks about his five children, Soviet life and politicians, the Jews he worked with, and whether life was better with Jews.
Lemster asks the man about his father's name and what he worked at. He answers in Russian that he was formerly called a speculator and is now called a businessman. He recalls a Jewish militiaman named Berman (?) who helped someone wrongly accused. Kerler then asks whether he attended Jewish weddings.
Mostly in Russian, the man tells how in Kazakhstan around 1955 he worked on a construction site, and a Jewish foreman asked in Yiddish whether he was a Jew. He answered that he was a Ukrainian who had grown up among Jews, and the Yiddish helped him. He tells a joke about Khaim at customs. Lemster and Kerler praise his Yiddish and ask for a proverb, a curse or an anecdote; he offers curses such as going into the ground and a black year.
Katz recalls her childhood. At three she lost both parents to typhus; she describes in detail her mother's last days and the neighbors finding her dead. A relative of her mother's, apparently an uncle, took her in, and she describes her chores in his household and his work as a tinsmith. She goes on to her few years of schooling, starting work as a child, and finishing school in 1939.
Katz gives details of her family, answering Kerler's questions. Her husband's surname is heard as Gersman (?) and his father's name as Gersh Leybovitsh (?). Her daughter Raya works in a factory and is a widow with two children. Her son, born in 1948, is a hypnotherapist in Yugoslavia who visits every two years. Her father Shalom worked at a mill, her mother Rachel was a housewife, and she lives on Komunistychna street. Her husband died in 1985, on Victory Day. At the end Kerler mentions her service during the war, and she says she is disabled.
Fishman discusses where his Yiddish comes from, mainly from Yampil, and then his career moves. He was sent to Yampil after the institute in 1953, was transferred to head a bank office in a district centre where Jews had been shot, probably Tyvriv, and moved to Vinnytsya in 1959. He describes Jewish life in Vinnytsya, with one synagogue on Krasovsky street that was crowded on holidays, and says that before the war there were many synagogues.
Fishman states that he studied at the credit and economic institute in Odesa, in the banking specialisation, from the 1940s until 1953.
Tsodikovich answers Lemster's questions about Kopayhorod food customs, such as stuffed geese and cracklings, and says some things were not done in his family. He remembers his grandparents as very religious, with his grandfather praying morning and evening. They then discuss the town's tailors, barbers and shoemakers. Tsodikovich and Lemster try to recall local musicians and singers, a father and sons who played accordion and guitar, and Yiddish periodicals read in town.
Lemster and Kerler introduce themselves and explain that they collect Yiddish language and folklore, including variant song texts. Khazin recalls an earlier research group that asked about surnames, and they discuss surnames such as Kerler, Zukerman, Lemster and Feikin. He tells of his work in supply organizations and sings 'Vyo, vyo, ferdelekh', mentioning a woman in Germany who knows more. He speaks of his mother, born in 1903 (?), youngest in her Nemyriv family, who attended the girls' gymnasium free through the princess and trained as a pharmacist. Her older siblings, including brother Naum, a Communist, are mentioned.
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).
Lebvol, b. 1920 in Zhovkva, talks about her daughter in the USA, whom she visited about ten years earlier, and gives her name, patronymic and address. She names her parents Shulim and Rekhele and her eight siblings, and says only she and one brother survived. Her father was a butcher and then a glazier. She also mentions a local woman who researches the history of the Zhovkva Jews, her mezuzah, and the visit of her relatives who need a US visa.
Lebvol returns to the Yoysef play, in which twelve brothers and a sister were needed, and recalls a blind man who led the player of Jacob and ran a library. She says the play was organized by one man and tickets sold, and that all the shops in the old town were Jewish except one Polish and one Ukrainian. Kerler plans to drive her around to show prewar sites, and asks about a good Jew in Zhovka.
Kerler formally opens the interview, noting the date and place, Zhytomyr on 9 July 2002. Shpitz gives his name, says he was born in Zhytomyr, and speaks of his schooling and work years. He recounts being drafted in 1939 and moving through Poland and Finland into German territory, and returning to Zhytomyr in 1948, where he married and worked as a turner.
Answering Kerler's questions about his childhood family, Shpitz names his siblings, six brothers and two sisters, and tells that the sisters were killed in 1941 because they could not be evacuated. He recalls his schooling in the Yiddish school no. 24 on Sadova street and the poverty that sent him to work at the Stalin factory before being drafted in 1939. He says that the language of instruction was Yiddish, and mentions a rich friend and his own studies.
Shpitz recalls the street where he lived as a child, a street inhabited only by Jews, among them several doctors, and says his father was a cobbler. Kerler adds a couple of questionnaire items, including the word for an honest person.
Mixed questionnaire work and memories. Shpitz is asked for words such as cart or wagon and 'road', and says that his family had no wagon and that Jewish occupations included fish dealing. He explains golem, the dreidel, the ceiling and cleaning the floor for Passover. He also describes the interior of a house.
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.
Burshtein talks about his father's trade as a men's tailor and about Jewish life in Govrove, which was safe under Piłsudski and became worse after his death under Rydz-Śmigły. He recalls antisemitic boycotts, signs telling people not to buy from Jews, and a Polish baker's window caricature of a Jew in a prayer shawl.
Burshtein describes life in Babruysk, where he attended a Belarusian school at about the age of ten or eleven. The family lived at a factory that had trade with Germany, and his brothers worked as a tailor, a sweater maker and a shoemaker. He explains how his brother came to be called Alter Peysekh after a rebbe's advice cured the child's illness. He names his siblings and how names were given, including his own name Lazar after his grandfather, and Kerler asks whether he can speak Polish Yiddish.
Burshtein describes arriving in Zhytomyr at fifteen and seeking work and training, and getting registered and food products from a director. He remarks on the ruined city, where the largest houses had three storeys. He says he did not know Ukrainian and learned it gradually, and that he writes and reads Russian and Yiddish well but finds Hebrew difficult. Kerler's question leads him to speak of prayer.
Katz and Kerler interview Goluvinskaia, who is said to have turned a hundred, with a helper explaining a Hesed video. She was born in Zhytomyr. Her father worked at a factory and died when she was a child, leaving five children, and she names her mother and some siblings. She worked in a cinema before the war and was evacuated in 1941, the place being unclear. She recalls praying, going to cheder alone, Sabbath candles and holidays, which she mostly no longer remembers. She says her grandfather was a rebbe who held gatherings at his table, and she mentions a Russian school. She then answers Russian-prompted questionnaire items (breathe, ear, attic, sky colour, mouse, deaf, pigeon), with some of her answers uncertain.
Antsis talks about her family and the hunger of the early 1930s. One brother died after overeating when food finally became available, and another died during the war. Of four children two survived, and her sister emigrated to America when many people wanted to leave, then died not long afterwards. Antsis names the sister as Freydele and tries to recall her mother's name (Dania or Datshi, unclear). Her father had a small shop. Her mother later worked on a Jewish kolkhoz near Zhytomyr, while Antsis studied at a technical school.
Antsis recalls that her childhood was very hard. After finishing technical school she was sent to the Donbas to work for several years before the war. She returned to Zhytomyr, married, and the war began. Her husband was a lieutenant, and her child was six years old.
Antsis tells how she and her mother returned to Zhytomyr while the war was still going on. Her mother, still fairly young, worked again, and Antsis herself found employment where she could.
Antsis answers questions about her schooling: the Yiddish School No. 3 and the name of its director (unclear in the transcript). She studied for seven years, and then at a technical school in Zhytomyr. She recalls how her mother, after the move to Zhytomyr, sold cigarettes (papirosn) at a stall on Malovinska (?) street.
Kerler asks Antsis to describe the town of Lyubar. She names trades such as shoemakers, cobblers, tailors and smiths, and the Yiddish and Ukrainian words for them. She also talks about two wealthy men, one named Katz, who left when the war began, and about the local doctor Refild (?). She remembers the cinema in town and a film about going to Birobidzhan, and the conversation turns to the Yiddish words involved.
The interview with Shor opens. The people present compare their origins (parents from Rogachov in Belarus, a Litvak's Yiddish, a team member born in New York), and Kerler states the date and place. Shor gives his name (Yosl/Yosef) and his father's name (Hershl), and the family name Shor (Hebrew for ox). He was born in 1926 in Orhei (Urive in Yiddish, Moldova), and his mother Feyge came from Telenesht. His only sister Rive died at nine, and the family spent about three war years at Stalingrad. His father was a trader, with the item (eggs or hay) unclear.
Skobilitskii points out the house of a wealthy local businessman (named something like Magazanik, uncertain). He ran a large farm with cattle, sent dairy products to Zhytomyr and Kyiv, and owned a leather factory that exported to Czechoslovakia. Many Jews lived in his buildings and worked for him. Skobilitskii also mentions a four-year Jewish school after the revolution, an old ornate door, and a visitor from Canada who no longer knew Yiddish.
Geller gives his Yiddish name as Binyomin, nicknamed Mime, and says he is nearing eighty. His father Yankl was a glazier until 1932, and his mother and her family's names are discussed, including a grandmother Etshi and another named Mintsi. His parents had no child for ten years until the rebbe promised one, and his mother lived to 93. A relative of his grandmother had 23 children. His mother was taught by a tutor, studied two gymnasium classes, and loved Pushkin and Tolstoy.
Shraibman describes his grandfather the tailor, who served the villages around the town with a sewing machine. Old non-Jews still remember him and speak Yiddish in the town. He says that few Jews are left, whereas before the war the town was about eighty percent Jewish, and he recalls his grandmothers.
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.
Burshtein tells anecdotes about his family in Poland. His father was waiting for a sister in the woods near a town, where he was followed by two silent figures. Another anecdote tells of a man in the woods in 1938 who predicted the war. His father and grandfather, both tailors, were fooled on the way to a fair by a sack of salt that proved to be a demon's trick. He mentions the religiosity of the family, where men slept in yarmulkes, and an incident in which his brothers entered a Polish sausage shop and the rabbi was told. He then begins to recall the start of the war, apparently in September 1939.
Groisburg describes Zhytomyr before the war as a large provincial city with many Jews and a Yiddish school. She studied in Ukrainian because her work required it, as her father had died and the family was large.
Geller talks about Pyatka before the war. Young people left the town in the 1930s for big cities, and he mentions a Jewish council (?) and Jewish craftsmen. His father Yankl worked in a factory, which closed during the hunger. Yankl went to look for work elsewhere, fell ill, returned in 1934 and died. His mother lived to 93 and kept house for four children. He then begins on his maternal grandmother, who had no child for ten years and went to a rebbe who promised her one child who would live long; the rebbe's name is not remembered.
Geller talks about his family today. He has a daughter and a son and grandchildren who are teachers, and he mentions a grandson in Kazan. He married in 1949 a woman from Zhytomyr, whose father was a tailor and mother a housewife. He speaks of an old-fashioned Jewish wife's duties and, in garbled lines, of a son's circumcision; Lemster then asks about cooking at home.
Shpitz gives his surname and says he was born in Zhytomyr. He recalls going to synagogue with his father as a child. His father was a poor cobbler with eight children. He began factory work early, around the fifth grade, and the passage ends with a muddled mention of the post-war years.
Shpitz says his brothers were killed in the war. He speaks Yiddish with his parents at home. Asked about Yiddish theater, he answers only vaguely. He describes his father as an honest man, a poor cobbler and a synagogue gabbai. He mentions a brother Yasha who was an artist and painted. Lemster asks about his two sons, and a Russian aside interrupts the exchange.
Burshtein describes Jewish political life in Gorovo, with Zionists, Bundists and Betar members who marched in uniform with a Star of David. He sings a song of longing for Eretz Israel, and says German Jewish refugees came to Gorovo and walked the streets with it. He describes Gorovo as a small town of several hundred or a few thousand Jews, with tailors, shoemakers and other trades, and mentions Yiddish newspapers. He begins a refugee song.
Burshtein tells stories from before the war: a naked man in the woods who predicted the war, his father the tailor traveling to fairs, and a sack of salt on the road. He tells how his father was followed by silent figures, and a madman dug up his father's body before a holiday. He recalls fear of demons as a child and how he wore tzitzit to go out. He explains how people were buried in Poland.
Sandler begins speaking of the outbreak of the war. His father had his own horse and wagon and worked with his brother. People around them said the Germans would not harm ordinary working people, and the family hesitated over whether to leave. The passage is garbled, and Kerler urges him to tell it in Yiddish.
Nibulskiy talks about poverty in prewar Pulen, with no factories and many poor people living on credit. A man bought furs and roosters in the German colonies to resell. His grandfather collected from the rich to bring Sabbath food to families like Nokhem the shoemaker's. He then tells a story of Shmilik, a bonder from Lithuania, who consulted the Baal Shem Tov (Reb Yisroel) and found gold in his oven, which led to a furniture workshop. Kerler asks about word meanings and the man's name.
Nibulskiy speaks about his observant father, his own cheder attendance, his wife's Jewish schooling and his self-taught Yiddish reading. He tells how the Makarover rebbe visited his great-grandmother in a nearby town, where she recovered after a fire. He describes his great-grandfather Shimunke, a farmer and crop adviser. He also tells of a Jewish lessee in Burakivka troubled by a German over hops, who went to the Makarover rebbe for help. Kerler asks about the Yiddish word for a village.
Nibulskiy gives the town's name as Chervonoarmiys'k since 1936 and describes the Czech and German colonies around it, where Jews traded. His grandfather, a tailor with four Singer machines, sewed for rich non-Jews. He begins to tell of an uncle who emigrated to Canada in the early 1920s (the year not fully clear).
Nibulskiy speaks about his difficult wartime work and what he did after the war: pedagogical school, then a pedagogical institute, painting and art history, working as a teacher for forty-one years. He says he has lived in Zhytomyr for thirty-one years and states his birth year as 1926 and his wife's as 1921. He then offers to tell more about the Berdychiv rebbe.
Nibulskiy tells further Hershele Ostropoler anecdotes, including how he had a hat made and tricked innkeepers into feeding him by waving it, and one about tearing cloth for trousers by force. These end with a saying that things are not torn off without force, which Kerler asks about as a proverb.
Nibulskaia says she completed two courses before the war and the institute after it, and worked at a Russian school with an extremely heavy load, taking on extra duties as class leader and reading to children in a hospital. Her father worked in a cooperative and her mother stayed at home. Lemster then asks about the Yiddish library.
Nibulskaia says that on the kolkhoz everyone worked in the fields, sowing and planting, and her father worked in the smithy. Lemster then asks about the war years in the Chelyabinsk region.
After the war Nibulskaia returned to her sister's village. The sister, a teacher, had been saved from the Germans because her Russian husband said she was not Jewish. Her brother-in-law brought her to teach in Pulyny (Chervonoarmiysk), where she met her husband without a matchmaker and they married. They lived in Pulyny until 1977 and had three children; two now live in Zhytomyr and one in Kyiv, and a grandchild is on a kibbutz in Israel.
Nibulskaia describes the synagogue in Zhytomyr with its shames and gabbai, then talks about her brother David, who went to the front and had a wife and child, probably in Moldova. She gives her husband's biography: evacuated with his parents, he studied at a pedagogical technical school and an institute, and later taught drawing. They lived poorly with three children, moved to Zhytomyr in 1977, and she taught math for 39 years.
Informal greetings and banter with the community members, including talk about the cassettes and when copies will be sent. Kerler asks one man where he is from: a native Zhytomyr man born in Polikovka (?), he was at the Stalingrad front and returned in 1945. He recalls his father hiding his observance when he was about twelve, says he worked as a house painter, and explains that the name Motl comes from Mordekhai. The passage ends as Kerler asks about news from Pyotke.
Nibulskiy describes the poverty of prewar Pulen: no bread, no firewood and no pensions. Some craftsmen earned a little, and small traders bought food from German villagers and resold it in town. People had nicknames. Shopkeepers kept credit books in which customers' debts were chalked up, and Kerler asks how the system worked. He also mentions the three prayer houses, those of the shoemakers, the tailors and the merchants.
Nibulskiy tells anecdotes about the Makarov rebbe and his family. A fire burned down the house after the rebbe's advice, but the sick daughter, his grandmother, recovered. His great-grandfather Shimonke was a trader, and the rebbe stayed at his grandfather's house. Other stories are about a lessee at Burakuvka troubled by a German neighbour, the rebbe's way of answering by burning a written note, and a non-Jewish woman who asked the rebbe for a child. He also recalls a pogrom threat at Sukkot and a tailor's mishap.
Nibulskiy tells how his grandfather Avrom, a tailor, burned a hole in a customer's garment, and the Veledniki rebbe, who happened to arrive, advised him how to repair it. He then explains the family: his great-grandfather Shimonke and grandfather Avrom Alters, who was killed by the Germans in 1941 after refusing evacuation. Avrom was a synagogue warden and supported a poor shoemaker's family on the Sabbath. Nibulskiy compares this with the complaints about aid today.
Nibulskaia says her father, Meir (son of Menashe?), held a real seder every year until his death. He attended synagogue daily, in Korosten (three synagogues then, closed later) and in Zhytomyr after the war. She also mentions his work and small pension, her mother, and the hard life.
Shraibman, born 1930, was eleven when the war began and was hidden by non-Jews for about a week and a half. He tells of his maternal grandfather, a tailor who worked in the surrounding villages with a Singer machine, and of another grandfather killed in 1918 by Petliura's men. He describes sheltering with a customer in the village of Dvorishche (?) and the decision to return to town despite warnings. He recounts the arrival of Soviet scouts, the German entry, the formation of a police force, the shooting of Jews and the roundup of about 700 Jews in the militia stable.
Shraibman says he loves Yiddish as his mother tongue. At work in cold stores he spoke Yiddish to Jewish and non-Jewish colleagues, most of the Jews not knowing it. Kerler asks whether Yiddish could be heard on the streets of Zhytomyr in the 1970s, and Shraibman begins a story about a friend who served in the army near Zhytomyr.
Bluvshtein gives personal information: born in 1929 in Zhytomyr, in the Pavlikovka quarter. His father Itsik, son of Velvl, made ice cream together with his mother, and both parents came from Zhytomyr. He also speaks of his grandfather, a sister and a brother, his two sons (one in Jerusalem) and his grandchildren.
Asked about prewar Zhytomyr, Bluvshtein says little: his father went to the synagogue, and Jews kept the Sabbath. He and Kerler discuss how his parents made dairy ice cream in a mould and sold it from a stand near the post office.
Bluvshtein tells how the family left on the third day of the war, was picked up by a military train and travelled via Kharkiv to Stalingrad. They stayed there about two years, and he worked in a factory making cartridges and similar items. They returned in 1945. Meanwhile someone shows a newspaper to the team.
Bluvshtein says that after the return he was sent to train as a house painter and worked in an office. He later began going to the synagogue.
Bluvshtein describes life after the war: bread on ration cards, then work and good earnings as a painter. Kerler asks about a ritual slaughterer in the town.
A speaker, partly in Russian, recalls acquaintances and a friend who worked beside him selling goods at the Zhytny market in Zhytomyr and later left for America. He says he worked in trade, selling ice cream, beer and vodka, and mentions a letter he would have to find. Kerler explains the word zhytnie and then asks what it means to be a Jew.
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 (?).
Kerler asks about Yiddish poets and prose, including a work 'By the Dnieper' whose author is unclear in the transcript. Nibulskiy says he reads Yiddish periodicals every day at 83 and keeps tefillin. He recalls carrying his tailor grandfather's prayer shawl to the tailors' synagogue every Sabbath, and the few kopecks and sweets he earned. He remembers poverty, carrying Hanukkah gifts, and a childish prank in his grandfather's workshop that frightened the tailors. Kerler then asks which stories he still wants to tell.
Nibulskaia recalls the 1933 famine, when her blacksmith father had nothing to eat and the family moved to a kolkhoz near Novozlatopil (the kolkhoz's name is unclear in the transcript) with twenty-eight Jewish houses. The school there had only the lower grades, so she walked eight kilometers each way, stealing produce from the fields. In winter she lived in a cold dugout dormitory with plank beds, and she went on to a Russian school in Korosten after seventh grade. Her mother worked as a cook and kept a garden.