World War II (general)

Rezmovits describes being deported in a wagon from Debrecen and what he thought on the journey; he wrote about it in Hungarian. He then criticizes the idea of making a hero of Kasztner. He also recalls meeting Simon Wiesenthal, whose books he admires and who signed them for him.

Asked about the best time of his life, Pearl names his childhood, with family Sabbath meals and harmony at home until 1938. He did not want to emigrate despite an uncle in America; his son did leave. He says he is dissatisfied with the situation in Hungary today and with antisemitism, and he speaks about the wartime bombing of Budapest in 1944.

Doman recalls a Yiddish-Hebrew song about the Nazi occupation, which a Lithuanian refugee taught him in the yeshiva at the end of the 1930s. He then discusses Yiddish dialects in prewar Hungary. Lithuanian and Polish Yiddish were mutually intelligible, and Galician Yiddish was close to Hungarian Yiddish through migration. Kerler asks about the Yiddish of southern Hungary and the use of German mixed with Hebrew.

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

Kalussky describes his grandparents being taken to a forest during the war, where Christians were paid to take a person. He mentions a relative's death there, and Lemster says his own mother was also in that region. Kalussky says two cassettes have already been recorded with him earlier.

At Kerler's request Kalussky sings the war song again, 'oy vey mame', about the war.

Abramovich explains the family tree: her father was born in 1900 and taught at the Odessa conservatory (later Chișinău), where he was a prorector and had famous students. She shows the manuscript diaries of Mendele's daughter Nadezhda, including a notebook titled 'Grandfather and Grandson' about Mendele and Sholem Aleichem, and a telegram from the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee asking for the work. The group works out the place of writing as Molotov, not Kuibyshev. After a remark about Vilnius, Abramovich recalls her summer trips to Lithuania and a Lithuanian composer (name garbled).

Roif tells how a young female cousin, a daughter of her father's sibling (an uncle in America), was taken to Romania by the Red Cross in the war. The girl went despite the family's reluctance, and the family later wrote to Romania and to a television search programme without answer. Katz asks for names, her birth year, the girl's father in America and an address, so that an appeal can be placed.

Gordin sends good wishes to Jews all over the world. He criticises the Iranian president's statements about Israel. He talks about Holocaust denial and hostile writing in Moldova and Romania, including a television discussion of a book. He says antisemitism is not felt in daily life, recalls his trip to Germany, and reflects on why many Jews did not flee early in the war.

Diner recounts that the family was sent away in June 1941 and her father was taken two days later. They were told afterwards that he had been shot, in the first days of the new year. She explains that he was a Zionist who had worked to set up a Jewish party in the Romanian parliament because of the rise of fascism.

Mitlaeva recalls 1942, when German forces approached the Kuban and she and her mother evacuated. She describes how border guards told locals not to leave, a bombed train split in two, and the journey by the Sea of Azov and onward. The route continues through Baku, Krasnovodsk and the Urals. She then talks about working in a school in the Urals where the director and a Jewish administrator helped her with documents and food.

Benderskij tells how the family fled the advancing front, with soldiers and horses killed under bombing, through a burning Chișinău. At the Dniester crossing, with thousands of people at a bridge, an officer shot a man who refused to ferry them. They then travelled to the Caucasus, Makhachkala, Krasnovodsk and a collective farm in Kazakhstan, where they stayed about six months. His father was taken for labor, fell ill and was released. Kerler asks about a Russian term he uses.

Rojtman answers Kerler's question about the war years. The family went on foot, apparently to a place whose name is unclear, and were then put on a train to Andijan in Uzbekistan. She finished school there and then studied at the medical institute in Tashkent.

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

After the formal questions end, Katz asks whether Akkerman sang Yiddish songs; she says she knows songs but cannot sing. Kerler and the others then talk with a second speaker, apparently her son, about the Jewish population of Edineț before and after the war, the loss of Jews in the war, and a possible painter. The exchange ends with contact details and email for keeping in touch. Much of the passage is garbled.

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

She describes the deportation: being driven through villages and along roads, with the mother and sister taken to forced labor. They were held in a ghetto in a village in the Bershad' area, passed through Yampil, and spent two weeks working in the woods. She recalls hunger, a collective march, sleeping in crowded rooms, and gleaning wheat. Kerler asks the meaning of the word for huts.

Nusbrokh recalls the start of the war in 1941: he and his family went on foot from Zguriţa to Soroca, stayed briefly, and crossed the Dniester to a place whose name is unclear (Tsekynivka?). They walked on to Vapnyarka, where he worked on a kolkhoz with his sister at harvest time.

Nusbrokh recalls a memorial service at the synagogue where a letter from his sister and mother was read out, then returns to his war service: the tank crew was shot up, he was injured and spent time in hospital. He was later sent to Stalingrad to guard German prisoners, and after the war walked home to Zguriţa from Drochia, finding his mother and sister already there.

Milevskaya recalls the war: the family fled Pervomaysk by freight car as the poultry plant arranged, crossing toward Golta amid German bombing, and the Germans took the town soon after. They returned in 1944, her mother collecting fragments of shell around the house. Her father returned from the front in autumn 1945, having reached Berlin, and told of Malaya Zemlya and Buchenwald. She also mentions her mother's work as a German interpreter, her sister's later move to Israel, and her son's emigration in 1991.

Dunaevskij talks about his Red Army service on the front. He names Stalingrad, the Caucasus and an area near Warsaw, and says he worked as an interpreter from German in a camp. He was demobilised in 1947. Kerler then returns to the holidays.

Asked to tell more about the war, Dunaevskij recounts episodes from his service as a sergeant near Stalingrad. A Soviet tank commander ordered him to blow up a station, and his group escaped German troops by wading through marshland. He recounts the march in the Caucasus, where he survived an avalanche on a narrow mountain road. He says God helped him survive.

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.

Moisei continues on the politics of Moldova: the difficulty wives faced in returning home from Russia after the war, then Moldovan nationalists, the creation of the border at the Dniester and the 1992 fighting for Bender. He talks about Snegur, Yeltsin and the Russian general Lebed, and the continuing disagreement between the two sides. Kerler brings him back to his own childhood memories.

Grunfeld says he spent the war doing forced labor in Tighina fortress and other places in Romania. He mentions that Cluj Jews were sent elsewhere, some to Transnistria, and that his mother lived in Turda near the Hungarian border during the war, then Hungarian-ruled.

Kraus recounts that he studied at the yeshiva in Cîmpia Turzii in 1940, at age 17. He recalls the Iron Guardists' violence against Jews that winter, with the rabbi and young men forced outside into the snow, and many Jews killed. Kerler asks about the Guardists and Transnistria. The other speaker explains the Guard and the Cuzists.

Lipovici speaks about the war years in Dorohoi. He recalls Germans arriving and being put to work, and says Jews worked in a labor unit, about two hundred according to the transcript. Lemster asks whether he has married and Lipovici, apparently, is still a bachelor. Kerler asks what language he spoke with his siblings and he answers Yiddish and Romanian. Kerler also asks whether he prayed.

The group goes inside the synagogue. Abramovich recites a few words of prayer and shows the women's gallery upstairs and the holes in the wall where Russian troops shot at a royal crown or emblem when they entered during the war. He recalls that on returning after the war the Jews found horses and straw, so the building had been used as a stable, and that they cleaned and repaired it, including the roof, with little money from the federation. Kerler and Lemster tell him they come from Israel (born in Moscow) and from Bessarabia.

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

Karuel speaks about Yiddish amateur theater during the war, in the Iași ghetto, with a Jewish troupe that also performed in Romanian. He gives population figures before the war and mentions Jews killed in the pogrom and sent to Transnistria. He also says there was Jewish life in the war years, including synagogue attendance, and is asked about Yiddish cinema.

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

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

Freundlich continues his wartime story: a group of 47 men held by Russian soldiers, including Jews from the Carpathians who spoke Yiddish and Russian, and an officer who was Jewish. He calls his escape a miracle. Kerler asks about Purim plays and theater, and Freundlich recalls a Yiddish touring actor in Maramureș. He says there were few Hasidim in Baia Mare. He speaks of newcomers and rebbes, a dispute among rabbis, and a visit to a rebbe in Sighet. A passing question about the meaning of a word appears, but a clear dialectological questionnaire is not evident.

Grinberg says many Jews remained in Fălticeni after the war, and that Fălticeni Jews were evacuated toward Suceava but, after a change in policy, were not deported to Transnistria. By contrast, she says nearly all of Rădăuți's Jews were deported and only a few professionals and a factory owner remained. The talk then turns to whether Rădăuți Jews spoke German or Yiddish, and her arrival there in 1971.

Kurtsberg describes the deportation to Bershad: the night in the rain in the woods at Mărculești, the Dniester crossing where the sick were shot, and the winter in unheated houses. He tells of lice and typhus, of children collecting frozen vegetable peelings from Ukrainian yards, and of the yellow star. He describes street-by-street roundups, executions at an airfield and the mass graves, and children's games. He also describes theater performances, prayer in small groups, and two Romanian soldiers from the front who came to the house. Lemster also asks about songs.

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

Kerler asks how life was after the war and Katz asks her to tell something in Yiddish, but Kazakevich answers mostly in Ukrainian and Russian, helped by relatives. She says the family spoke Yiddish at home, that her mother looked Ukrainian and passed as one, and she recalls the Germans rounding up Jews to be shot in prepared pits and her escape. Very little coherent Yiddish speech is heard.

Berman says that after Stalingrad, in 1944, he wrote a letter to Mikhoels at the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in Moscow, describing the tragedy of the Jewish people as he saw it, and received a printed Yiddish postcard in reply asking him to keep writing. He continued to write, including about the rescue of Jews in the Budapest ghetto.

Furman explains the importance of the Battle of Stalingrad: Hitler wanted the city for the oil of Baku, Moscow and the Urals, and taking it would have lost the war. He ends with a Russian wartime slogan that there is no land beyond the Volga.

Furman speaks about his wartime army service, including Stalingrad and the Volga, where many soldiers drowned. Kerler and Lemster ask how he learned that his parents had been killed, and he explains that the Russians wrote letters while he had no one to write to. He mentions soldiers' slogans for the motherland and for Stalin, and the interviewers ask about them.

Vainshelboim describes the soup kitchen, which fed the poor, and prewar Jewish occupations in Berdychiv. Asked about his father, he says that he was a prisoner of war in Austria in the First World War. He lists his siblings, including his brother Shloyme and two sisters, one of whom died of scarlet fever. Another sister, Polye, finished ten Yiddish classes at eighteen and was killed in 1941. He then begins to introduce the start of the war.

Vainshelboim narrates his escape and wandering in the countryside during the war. He swam a river, was given old clothes and food, hid in an attic and passed himself off as a non-Jew. He stayed with several peasants and farm owners, including one who sympathised with the Germans, worked as a herdsman, and later moved on after the arrival of the Red Army. Kerler asks clarifying questions. The passage ends with him living with relatives after the war and working at a mill.

Vainshelboim tells of his mother's sister, whose two children died during the war, one of hunger in the camp. She went into the town with a child and was shot there in the 1940s. The details of names and place are unclear in the transcript. Kerler asks what she was called.

Snook says she was about twenty when she was taken before the war. She tells how a relative's wife, after her brother-in-law's death, asked her to take one of two children when Jews were being taken to the camps. The transcript is garbled about who exactly the relative was.

Gvinter recalls the war years: at the age of about twelve (?) she was taken to Pechera in 1943, first under the Germans and then under the Romanians. She tells how she bought potatoes from peasants, passing as a non-Jewish girl, and sold them at the Jewish market. A partisan came to the family, who lived in the basement under the synagogue, and refugees from the area were brought in and many died. She also mentions an older sister who left in the 1941 evacuation, her mother's relatives, and money sent from America.

Kerler asks her to set the events in order. Gvinter recalls the ghetto at the start of the war, the police and robbing by them, a bomb that fell on the family house, and a partisan (named Volodya?) who helped with bread and asked her to carry leaflets. She also remembers the partisans hanged along the bridge. She describes how she was taken to Pechera and was hit, with a black car and the camp journey.

Kerler and Lemster ask Sklyarskiy to sort out who was in the pit: three sisters with their children and Sklyarskiy's brother, with names of the mothers and their children. Sklyarskiy then tells of joining partisans in 1944, a brother's volunteering for the army, and the time in hiding in the forest. He also recalls hiding among trees and in an attic, a non-Jewish man named Vasyl who helped, and how he remembers the date of the shooting.

Sklyarskiy recounts how in summer 1943 a group of thirteen or fourteen escapees set out to find the partisans, carrying bread. He tells of a dream voice that warned him to run to the fields rather than the forest. Cossacks attacked in the woods; he escaped but found two of the group shot dead, and he describes the loss of his shoes and a girl who was wounded.

Sklyarskiy returns to the night in the fields and the dream that told him to run to the fields, not the forest. They also discuss a note where he wrote the dream down. He recounts the Cossack attack, the death of those who ran into the forest, and a thirteen-year-old girl wounded in the leg. A cousin who shared his hiding place later became a partisan hero.

Kupershmidt explains that he was a driver, worked at a driving school before the war and was in the Finnish war. On returning he drove a military vehicle, was stopped by Germans when the war began and was identified as a Jew from his papers. He was taken to dig a pit and fled when Soviet prisoners mocked him, was recaptured and driven to Zhytomyr, and denied or admitted being Jewish at different moments. He describes the Jewish prisoners held naked in the camp, hiding in a barracks attic, and joining a non-Jewish work group of Tatars and Georgians. He was then taken to a prisoner camp in Rivne, where he feared recognition by someone from Bratslav and gave a false Ukrainian name.

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.

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 answers that their daughters are content. Kerler then asks how the evacuation from Zhmerynka was organised. The speaker, who was twelve, recalls loading belongings, leaving most things behind, and travelling in heated freight wagons. Katz begins asking how it was decided that Geller should go into the army, and Kyiv is mentioned.

Geller explains that he had a four-year deferment from mobilisation. He pressed the authorities to take him, and then worked for a month in Kyiv on bricks. Back in Bratslav, already married, he found work as a turner at night because electricity was supplied only at night. Kerler closes by turning to postwar antisemitism.

Kupershmidt talks about his wartime experiences. He trained as a driver and worked for a Soviet official, and says he was exempted from army service when the war started. He describes his plan to flee with his wife and child, and the false name he took under the Germans. He mentions earlier service in Finland and time in Zhytomyr (?) and Rivne ghetto, though many details are garbled.

Bielaia says her husband did not come back from the war and she raised their daughter alone.

Khavin reflects on why six million Jews died, saying he can accept his own guilt but not that of children and pious women, and mentions a relative who came to Moscow to his sister. He begins a longer story about relatives in Moscow and a trip toward Oster (?), with a question about the Yiddish form of that name. The recording is interrupted by a Russian request not to disturb the filming.

Khavin answers Kerler's questions about prewar Chernivtsi, saying he saw its large synagogue but does not remember what Yiddish was spoken. He says the Romanians did not kill the Jews of Chernivtsi and that the Jews of Mohyliv-Podilskyi also survived. He and Kerler discuss Mohyliv, where his wife's family came from and where the cemetery lies on a hill.

Ziselis gives his name and patronymic and says he is from Khotyn. He recounts the war years: Tulchyn, hangings, forced labor, and escaping from the work column to hide in the barracks with the help of an acquaintance. He describes shootings, the death of acquaintances, and his father the shoykhet who was shot. The transcript is garbled and details are uncertain.

Asked by Kerler to tell something of the war and postwar years, Srulova says her older brothers were killed in the war. The family returned to no home, and her father worked as a shoemaker. Older sisters married and took her to live with them. She describes the children's games with a bench and a doll made from her father's shirt. She says her father's brothers in America stopped writing after the war, and that relatives' dollars were exchanged for flour and sugar in the shop. She mentions that the poverty continued and that her daughter and grandchildren abroad bought a refrigerator and a washing machine. The passage ends with mutual thanks.

The formal interview begins: Shekhovich gives her first name and Yiddish name Sheindele, her patronymic, her maiden name Kamerman, her street and her telephone number. She was born in Sambor. Her father Israel (Srul) was a merchant, with his own father named Nakhum; her mother Mina/Mirl was also from Sambor. She names the seven children, her maternal and paternal grandparents, and says all her relatives were killed by the Germans. In between Kerler explains why the memories are being recorded.

Shekhter explains that he was drafted before the war and so was separated from his parents; his father was a synagogue shammes. He never saw his parents or siblings again, and he is the only survivor of his family, with no children from either marriage. Kerler asks about Yiddish speakers in Fastiv; a woman present mentions a few people, including a man who speaks a little Yiddish.

Shekhter describes the war years in a labor battalion: he was taken in Ivano-Frankivsk and moved on foot toward Kyiv under German bombing. He was later in Omsk with a Polish army unit and in Sverdlovsk, where he fell ill, and then worked as a cobbler, self-taught beside his father and brother. He met a Russian woman there in 1943, and he spoke Yiddish with Jews he met; later he moved on to another place (unclear).

Khasidovich speaks about the war years. She says some Jews hid because they feared being taken into the army, and that people hid from the Germans. Kerler and Lemster press her on who took her parents (the Germans) and who brought her food while she hid. She says many Jews of Fastiv perished and few remained. She says some people helped them, among them Jews who were with the Germans, and that bread was distributed in other ways. She mentions a family that did not hide and was lost.

Beigel says she had no good years. The war began when she was a teenager and brought only hardship. Now she does nothing and her children help her. Asked about lullabies, she remembers none.

Bukshtein recalls writing home to a non-Jewish neighbor in Novoselitsa after the liberation of the area, and learning that the family's house had burned down. He then received a letter from his sister, who had returned home, and learned that his mother, brother and younger sister had survived, while his father had been killed on deportation. In the army in Siberia he met his Jewish wife Lucye, whose family came from the Poltava region and had lived in Leningrad; he answers Kerler's questions about her.

Geller mentions a childhood friend from Kuzmin with whom he went to school in the same class. He met him again in 1944 at the staff, after his hospital discharge. He tells how the friend's father was killed before the war and buried under a threshold, and was found when a new owner dug there.

The formal interview begins with Gaiviker, aged 95, saying that he speaks Yiddish, Russian and Ukrainian. He lists battles he took part in from the first day of the war, among them Stalingrad, Kursk and Kharkiv, and says he was demobilized from Königsberg. He describes service with aviation ground crews and bombings, and the death of many comrades; Kerler insists the interview be in Yiddish.

Kaviner lists Yiddish authors he read: Mendele, Sholem Aleichem, Peretz, Hasidic tales, and Soviet writers including Bergelson, Kvitko, Markish, Nute Lurie and Orland. Derazhnya had a Yiddish library and a large one in the synagogue; the books and Torah scrolls were burned, and he says Jews took part in lighting the fire.

Vaisblai continues his escape narrative, moving from Kupyn and the surrounding district from village to village. He passes as a non-Jew, is tested by a drunk, is sheltered by peasants, and hides in barns and on stoves. Some are kind, others turn him away or threaten to denounce him; he meets a few Jews and narrowly escapes. Finally he gets back to Chemerivtsi, where a gendarme makes him clean his boots.

Kerler asks whether Vaisblai remembers the day of his liberation. He recalls the arrival of the Red Army in 1944, with a cavalry scout, wagons and tanks. He did not return to Chemerivtsi at once because he had been advised against going.

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.

Kaviner recalls his schooling and being drafted into the army, then study at an aviation-technical military school in Leningrad and the rank of sergeant. He describes service in Lithuania (Shiauliai) and Latvia, and the first days of the war in 1941, when the airfield was bombed. He describes a railway-station massacre of fleeing civilians, a place he cannot name, and the evacuation to Moscow.

Kaviner describes the parade in Red Square on 7 November 1941, where Stalin spoke. He recites parts of Stalin's speech in Russian, and Kerler asks him to continue in Yiddish. He tells of being wounded and in hospital near Moscow, of serving in an aviation regiment, of the first and second parades in 1941 and 1945, and of his medals and demobilization in 1946.

Vaisblai says he is a unique informant because he was old enough to see and remember everything during the war. He mentions Hungarians and Romanians in the Vinnytsia region. Kerler asks whether anyone else has interviewed him; he says yes, in Russian, and that this is the first video recording.

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

Katz and Kerler divide the books: Kerler takes the Yiddish ones and the others are left with the Russian ones. The host's husband shows three small booklets he made about Jews in the war, and Kerler asks whether he wrote them.

Khandros speaks about the Black Book of the Holocaust. He says he wrote a letter to Ilya Ehrenburg about a friend from Lviv that was printed in the collection on the murder of peoples. Kerler notes that he will look for his own family name there. Kerler then asks about his grandmother Sure.

Rusakovskaia describes preparing for evacuation at the start of the war. She led the cow Manke out to the field. A barge loaded with salt was dumped into the Prypiat river so that people could leave Chornobyl', and her father hung the key on the house, expecting to return. Almost all their things stayed behind.

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.

Vider says he was a Hasid of the Botoshaner Rebbe in Iași and went to him for the High Holidays and for selikhes, and took part in prayers there. After the yeshiva he trained three years as a tailor in Iași, disliked it, and left for the Soviet Union. He also recalls working as a tailor during the war and sharing bread with hungry people.

Grayf says that he can still read Yiddish prayers and holiday texts learned in kheyder but remembers little at age eighty and lost his spoken Yiddish in the army. He worked on the railway just before the war and was moved to Voronezh. He was then drafted into the army in 1941 and sent to Khabarovsk, near Birobidzhan, and in 1942 to the Stalingrad front. After light and later heavier wounds near Leningrad he was discharged and worked in a district elsewhere, returning to Kolomyya in 1945.

Asked whether he served in the army, Vider says he worked in the oil industry in Turkmenistan, from where no one was drafted. He describes the shift system in the mine over four weeks, the showers and bus after work, and being photographed on the board of shock workers. He also mentions giving blood as a donor for ten years.

Krotsh describes the war years, when he was drafted into the Red Army at Kirovabad. He did heavy military construction work there, with hunger and thin soup, and was then put to work as a tailor. He tells of meeting a Jewish workshop head, getting a sewing machine, and being helped by a senior party woman, so that tailoring saved him. Kerler asks whether he went to a rebbe, and Krotsh answers that perhaps his father's blessing helped.

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.

Obodovskii recounts the wartime journey: leaving Kotovs'k in July 1941, going first to Voronezh province and then to the Altai region near Barnaul, where local Siberians took the evacuees into their homes without rent. He describes returning to Kotovs'k in 1944, with the town still bombed by German aircraft, and the dangers and nightly raids.

Obodovskii recalls his school years in Siberia during the war and a class excursion to the Kotovsky mausoleum in Kotovs'k, describing the body displayed under a glass lid with his decorations and a sabre. He tells how the mausoleum was damaged in the German occupation and later restored, and that it is now closed. He then speaks of Polish neighbors, two brothers, one of whom was a lieutenant at the front and the other who gave away partisans to the Germans. Asked by Lemster, he says antisemitism existed in Kotovs'k, though not in his construction brigade, which was international.

Dorfman describes being mobilised with his fellow students at the start of the war and building fortifications at the front. He retreated with his unit as the Germans took L'viv, via Tiraspol, Odesa, Rostov and Stalingrad to Saratov. As someone from newly annexed territory he was then sent elsewhere, where he commanded a group of about three hundred men.

Brandler describes his wartime route from Mostiska by foot and train to Husiatyn, where German planes bombed the platform, and on to Bobrynets in the Kirovohrad region. He was taken into a labor battalion digging anti-tank trenches and worked in the Rostov area and in a coal mine. In 1944 he was drafted into the army, fought as a mortar man, and was wounded and hospitalized. He later served in the artillery, was hurt again, and was demobilized in 1946. Kerler also asks how Yiddish speakers in his area said words like trench and dugout.

Leibel recalls being sent to the front with the Red Army and seeing German vehicles near Berezhtsi (near Kremenets), where he saw a Jew praying in a window, and reaching Pochaiv. He was taken to the Kharkiv region and, in 1941–42, to Sweden-bound (?) Polish Jews were sent east; he became a sergeant and fought at the Third Ukrainian Front, where he was wounded and commanded a unit. In 1945 he was sent to a lieutenants' school, which was then disbanded, and he was demobilized.

Kerler asks about the taste of his mother's gefilte fish. Leibel then tells how the Red Army arrived in Rivne in 1939 just before Yom Kippur. After synagogue he met a young Jew from Poland who had not eaten for two days, and took him home and fed him. Kerler asks whether the grandparents stayed in Rivne, and the rest is chat about refreshments.

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

Kerler explains the interview, and Listengurt settles in to speak. She speaks about the early Jewish settlement of Odesa and its large prewar Jewish population (a majority). She tells how the Germans and Romanians took the city in 1941 and how long Odesa held out, and she recalls a Jewish history teacher and her own challenge to antisemites. She says Stalin was good to the Jews and names local figures such as the party secretary Naum Gurevich and General Petrov. She also tells of her father, who worked in the port and was a Communist, and of the early days of the war. Her father was nearly blind and ended up in Tashkent. Her older sister served at the front for the whole war, was a medical-institute student and afterwards a nurse (?). She also discusses catacombs and local building stone.

Opening talk about addresses and phone numbers, and Medved's hearing and Yiddish speaking. She explains her Yiddish and says she was born in Miskivka (name unclear) in the Kryzhopil district, in 1927. Her father was named Borukh and her mother Lea, and her father was killed in the war; she describes his journey by rail and the bombing of a train. She also talks about her son, daughter-in-law and Yiddish today.

Vainbrand says he served seven years in the army, on the Northern front near Murmansk, in the artillery, and that he holds an order. He worked as a bookkeeper, and a school question leads him to say he no longer remembers much. He has a son, who is in the apartment, and a daughter living elsewhere (the transcript suggests the States), as well as grandchildren.

Vainbrand describes how, in the month of Elul, pilgrims with children stayed at his family's house near the rebbe's grave in Valedniki, and how a man wrote notes (kvitlekh) that were taken to the grave. He then says how old he is and why he did not remarry, that his wife died after the war, and that he says Kaddish and lights yahrzeit candles. Kerler and Lemster then ask about the non-Jewish boy who learned Yiddish and became a policeman or translator for the Germans, who he says needed someone to tell them about the Jews.

Dorfman gives personal information: he was born in Slovechno, which the Germans burned down in the war so that not one house remained. Katz asks how he is called, and he is Boris Dorfman, called Berl.

Dorfman tells how in 1939, at the time of the war with Poland, a Jewish young man came from Poland, sent by his mother to visit the Velednik tsaddik. They rode by bicycle twelve kilometers to Velednik and a wheel fell off the cart as the young man had half-joked; he describes it as seen with his own eyes and his father's reaction. He then recalls the start of the war and soldiers going out against the Germans.

Stotland sings a school song about how to make a whistle. He mentions Yiddish translations of Pushkin and Shevchenko. He then describes the evacuation of the orphanage by horse cart, its bombing by German aircraft, and the few survivors. He names his brother and two sisters, one of whom emigrated to America and another to Israel.

Turovskaia tells how, when the Germans occupied Khabne, the tzaddik Leybl of Khabne was asked who would win and told them to take two roosters, a white and a red one, and see which won. Katz and Kerler ask which rebbe this was; Kerler notes that the town appears in literature (Sholem Aleichem). Katz also asks about the story of the tzaddik who gave blows.

Turovskaia talks about Leybl the Khapner, called the Trefer or the White. He knew who came to him, predicted that the family would survive and that war would come. When the Germans took Khapne, asked who would win, he told them to bring a white and a red rooster to fight. The red rooster won, which meant a Soviet victory. He died a hard death, and Kerler adds his own doubts about the man.

Turovskaia talks about her return to Ovruch after the war: her mother died after she left on pension, her father was left alone and the family was scattered, and her husband stayed in Siberia for a time. She describes the destruction of the town and the house that was divided in two with several rooms, then the start of the war and what Polish Jewish refugees said about the fascists.

Fish tells of fleeing Rivne on foot with his brother's wife's brother, just before the Germans entered, heading east. He describes the chaos, trains via Novograd-Volynskyi and Kyiv, evacuation to a Korean kolkhoz in Kazakhstan where he worked in rice fields and bookkeeping, and being refused army service as a former Polish citizen. He then went to Stalingrad to a war factory, and was mobilised in 1942 into the sappers; he describes the siege, the encirclement and the winter, and the move to Kursk.

Fish, in Russian and Yiddish, names and explains his medals and orders. They include the Order of Glory, a Ukrainian order, the Zhukov medal, a medal for the defence of Stalingrad and a victory medal. Kerler comments on a long-service award.

After informal talk about water and arrangements, Vaisman gives personal data at Katz's request: the town's Yiddish name, his address, postal index and telephone, his name and nickname, and his birth in Sharhorod in 1940. He was named for his grandfather Avrum. His father Khayem, born in Sharhorod, lost his right hand and was on a disability pension, and his grandmother had a clothing shop. His mother Blume was born in Kleyn Tshernovits and was a seamstress. He names his sister Roza (b. 1923, deceased), brother Danya (b. 1929, deceased) and Kolmen (b. 1936, in Israel). He describes his work as a photographer and photo-correspondent for the local paper, learned from his brother. He then remembers his father at synagogue and the single synagogue he knew, which was burned down; others say there were eight before the war. He cannot read Yiddish and attended Ukrainian school. He recounts emigration from the town to Israel and America and anecdotes about shopping in Romania and Poland. He names older Jews such as a cantor, a shokhet, a hatter and a felt-seller. He looks at his old photographs, says Sharhorod was a Jewish town and is no longer, and describes the Jews as pious and non-pious. He closes with the two tsadikim and the belief that no Jews were killed under the Germans and Romanians, plus a story about money collected from townspeople.

Yerikhman talks about his parents. His father was a trader or dealer who went to the front, and his mother stayed at home with the children. After his father died in 1958 he went to an old man's small prayer room, said Kaddish for eleven months, and recalls the old man's Jewish books and a possible Torah scroll. He remembers Sabbath food (soup, fish, cholent) and then answers a long series of questions about Yiddish: Russian words to translate, greetings, words for non-Jews, a Litvak neighbor's accent, and the names of card games such as blandzh. He also speaks Yiddish with Jewish colleagues at work. Later he recalls his mother's brothers and sisters, some of whom are in Israel, the hunger of the war and 1947, his father's return, and his part in a Yiddish film made in Sharhorod. He mentions the cemetery with two tsadikim and Romanian Jewish deportees who died of hunger and disease. Near the end he turns to relatives in America and Israel, relations with neighbors, and Jews leaving for Germany.

Kurman recalls going to the synagogue with her parents, her mother's knowledge of Yiddish and Hebrew, and the lit interior, now gone. The synagogue closed before the war, and her father prayed at home. She says she was sent to a Russian school and cannot read Yiddish. She recalls the Passover seder and hiding the afikoymen, and that her older siblings preferred the cinema or theater. Kerler then puts a long series of vocabulary and translation questions: greetings, everyday objects, Passover and Hanukkah food and the dreidel game, a year in words, and the word for a gravestone. Kurman then tells of the war: the Germans' arrival, the family's hiding place under the stove, the Bukovinian Dr. Taykh who paid the contributions and saved them, and hunger deaths under the Romanians. After a short talk about her health, the camera moves to Shpykiv. The team meets a woman who gives her name as Sheyndele (Krasner), with mostly Russian talk, jokes and a Polish song. She tells of a rebbe of the town, her mother's family and her uncle's house, and her uncle's death at Pechera. She recites a counting rhyme and sings Yiddish songs learned from her mother.

Klein reflects that life was peaceful before the war and that the best years were lost to it. After the war it was hard but she studied and finished a technical school, and she is pleased with the visit.

Burshtein says his war story would take many days and then summarizes it. After the Germans entered Sobolivka, Jews were taken to forced labor, later driven by the Ukrainian police. He was held in the Raygorod camp, working on road building and stone breaking, and survived the shooting of about six hundred women and children there. He was moved to Bratslav and Mykhailivka, where he got one meal a day and worked full days, and he was in Haysyn at the pogrom of the ghetto in 1943.

Marinina speaks about non-Jews in Teplyk who spoke Yiddish, among them her father's friend Kazarsky, who spoke better than Jews, and a fish dealer. She tells how, under the Germans, one man was beaten or taken after being taken for a Jew, and a villager's fate is told. Kerler asks whether they spoke with an accent. Her own Jewish and non-Jewish friends are touched on briefly.

Gliazer answers Kerler's questions about his military service, which he began a year before the war as a radio operator (signalman). He spent the war far from the western front, in Siberia, and finished it against the Japanese, near Korea, opposite the Americans. The talk touches on kamikaze pilots, a Japanese general, and Japanese who speak Yiddish.

Katz asks how Jews and non-Jews who had lived peacefully came to turn against each other. Gliazer describes antisemitic literature and caricature spreading from Germany from the 1930s, boycott calls and attacks on Jews. He recalls Hitler Youth slogans and his own puzzlement before leaving for the army in 1941.

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

Miaskovskij mentions a sister in Israel and answers Lemster's and Kerler's questions about prewar Jewish weddings in Tomashpol' and his father's house. The house is about a hundred years old and has a mezuzah on the door but not on the window frame; he explains what a mezuzah is for. He recalls his pious grandmother and speaks about the languages he used and his Ukrainian school. He says his mother died before the war and that his father hid during the occupation, with a ghetto mentioned. Kerler asks to see the father's books in the attic, but Miaskovskij says he cannot climb up.

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.

The interview with Golfeld begins, and Kerler introduces him. Golfeld, born in Tul'chyn, gives his mother's name as Eydye and his father's as Nakhum, who went to war and did not return. His mother was left with three children, and he mentions the arrival of the Germans in 1941.

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

Yurkovetskij 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.

Waldman talks about the start of the war, when her mother left and her father stayed. He was called up and taken for work or service in the first days of the war. She also describes Uman' before the war, with Jews living in the center and non-Jews in the outer districts.

Chirkova recalls being sent to the front as a nurse and working in a hospital in Uzbekistan, with an episode involving a transport of canned goods and an accusation to be cleared before a tribunal. She describes Uzbek customs she saw, such as eating on the ground and men having three wives. She ends by saying she wants to speak, joke and sing in Yiddish.

Kerler asks about a photograph, and Chirkova says it shows her when she came back from the front. She tells of having it taken at a photographer's, and says she was at the front or working on supplies for it. She mentions a sister who worked in a factory and sent packages. Kerler asks which front she was on; her answers are unclear.

Asked about meeting Jews in Chişinău, Furer recalls the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia, probably in 1939 or 1940. He tells of army barracks and shooting from the roofs, a Jewish owner of a shop near the barracks, and of how education has changed compared with his youth.

Vainer-Shpak recalls the war, when she went into the fields as the militia fled. Aircraft bombed the area, and she says the bombing damaged her hearing. Kerler then asks about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish.

Barshteyn talks about a German named Julius who worked in the mill as an engineer before the war and was friendly to Jews. During a roundup he intervened and no one was killed; he wore a German uniform but harmed no one. She does not know his surname.

Barshteyn says she forgot many songs and that Bessarabian songs were very sad. She then tells how Jewish refugees from Bessarabia and Moldova came to Sharhorod, carrying little. Many froze in the severe frost, and she saw with her own eyes how the frozen bodies were carted away to a common pit. She begins to speak of the Germans' arrival.

Barshteyn tells of the German troops' first two weeks in Sharhorod, when they seized Jews off the streets, including children and old people, and held them in a large building. An ethnic German named Julius, who had worked at the mill and lived on good terms with the Jews, talked to the Germans, and the Jews were released without being shot.

Barshteyn continues about Julius, who stayed after the Germans left and later disappeared. She tells of a girl threatened by the Germans and her mother killed, and of the looting of shops and the mill when the war began. She describes how the Romanian Jews in the ghetto lived with local families and told them about life in the Romanian cities.

Barshteyn says the Romanian Jews went home after the war and names several towns they came from. She returns to describing how many of them froze to death and were taken to a mass grave. Kerler asks whether 'Romanian Jews' meant Bessarabian Jews.

Katz describes her nursing training and being taken into the army. She recites the Soviet military oath, in Russian, and describes her training. She was sent to Poland, and after the Polish campaign she brought wounded back to the hospital in Vinnytsya. She also tells of working in a factory and singing in a choir, and of the outbreak of war on 22 June 1941, the call-up and soldiers coming to her window.

Khazin says he was summoned to the military commissariat for the 63rd Victory anniversary and given a colonel's rank. He tells of 1941 in a Komsomol volunteer detachment with unusable rifles, retreat to Dnipropetrovsk and wounding in a bombing. He was taken to Tatarstan, where he found his mother, grandmother and sister. They went on to Chelyabinsk looking for the Vinnytsya railroad administration and his father, whom they did not find. Evacuees were freezing at the station. They moved to a small railway settlement (Viazove?), where he worked as a blacksmith's helper, then took a course as machinist's assistant. He later worked as an electrician on locomotive turbines in harsh conditions.

Khazin continues his wartime story. His mother worked as a dishwasher at the station and fed the grandmother and sister. Through the evacuee registry they found his mother's sister in a Tatar village in the Ulyanovsk region, and went there; his mother and sister fell ill with typhus on the way. He worked repairing tractors and trained as a tractor driver. Drafted in January 1943, he trained as a radio operator in Ulyanovsk and Kuibyshev, in hungry conditions. He went to the front, doing radio monitoring and taking part in re-establishing a German communications center in Vinnytsya and in the advance on Ternopil and Sandomierz. He was presented to the commander of the 4th Guards Tank Army.

Khazin shows a wartime photograph and identifies the army commander and himself beside the guards banner. He tells of working on a radio in an armored vehicle from Sandomierz to the end of the war, advancing toward Berlin and then to Prague. They entered Prague on 9 May; crowds greeted the army while German prisoners were pelted with stones. He celebrated Victory Day there. He served in the army as an instructor until March 1950, eight and a half years of service in all.

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

Nayman describes how liberated prisoners died of typhus after eating too much rich food, and her stay with an old German woman in a town after liberation. Kerler asks whether she believed in God in Auschwitz; she says she did and still does, and she describes her prayer book and psalm book.

After a few lines of informal talk at the start, Geller recalls arriving in a town (apparently Ostrów Mazowiecka) in 1939 and lodging with Jews there. He recalls a former Polish teacher he wanted to approach while the German army was marching past. He then tells a story that Jews hid Piłsudski from the Bolsheviks in a study house, put tefillin and a tallis on him, and so won his lasting friendliness toward Jews. Katz asks about Piłsudski's death and his burial wish regarding Vilna. Kerler closes by asking where they stopped on the way with Geller's father toward the Russian side.

Geller narrates the journey with his father and brothers after leaving the Germans. They walk through burned villages and forest, meet Russian soldiers, and are taken to Zembrów (?), then Białystok. In Białystok they stay in a club and are hosted by local householders for Sabbath. They are then taken by truck to a commune near Babruisk, where his father works in a factory. He goes on to describe German-Jewish refugees in the 1930s whose songs he learned, and sings two of them. Kerler and Geller briefly discuss Yiddish and German speech, the ban in Russia on criticising Germany, and a Moscow Yiddish newspaper.

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.

Burshtein talks about the German Jewish refugees in Russia and the Soviet-German pact, after which nothing negative could be said about the Germans. He tells how people on arrival in Babruysk would not believe the accounts of killings, and recalls Hitler's speeches heard on the one radio in town, in the school. He also recalls a Jewish forced-labour episode and his brother's return home, and reflects on why the Germans were so cruel to Jews.

Burshtein describes the German entry into Gorovo, when the synagogue was undermined and the Jews were herded together. He says a great rebbe had blessed Ostrów Mazowiecka, and that many people tried to flee there. The rebbe was thrown into a fire. He was a child and studying gemara at the time and does not remember details.

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 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.

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