The tape is a formal interview with Mikhail Iakovlevich Stotland, born in Ovruch in 1926. (Part 1 of 2. See MDV 627) He grew up in an orphanage at a monastery in Ovruch, which he moved to at the age of five. He remembers twelve Jewish children that lived in the orphanage as well. Stotland and his friends would speak Yiddish among themselves, but would switch to Russian or Ukrainian as soon as a teacher passed by. His parents were born in Narodychi. After a personal introduction, Stotland talks about his parents. His father worked as a cobbler. The conversation moves to his Yiddish school education and childhood memories of Ovruch. He attended five grades before the school was closed down in 1940. He remembers a simple Yiddish school with up to one hundred pupils. Stotland then sings a Yiddish song from school about how to build a whistle.

The conversation turns to his life during the war. He among other children from the orphanage were evacuated on horse carriage toward Chernigovka. Stotland was fifteen years old when the war broke out and the Germans already bombed the orphanage. Out of 140 people who lived there only 16 survived. The conversation returns to Stotland's life in the orphanage. When they celebrated Easter, he and his siblings would run away from the orphanage to his aunt, in order to celebrate Passover. Stotland remembers the local synagogues in Ovruch. The conversation turns to life during the war and evacuation. When he arrived in Kharkiv, Stotland managed to help out at a "field kitchen." He was then drafted into the Red Army and fought until the end of the war, during which he was injured twice. When he returned to Ovruch, he worked in a hotel and got married. He was married for 52 years. He studied at two institutes in Kyiv to be trained as a teacher. After the war, Stotland worked as a school principal for twenty years in Ovruch.

The conversation turns to his family and Jewish life in Ovruch after the war. He remembers the struggle of Jewish evacuees to obtain their homes upon their return. He also draws attention to the slowly dwindling Jewish population of Ovruch. The conversation turns to antisemitism and Yiddish culture in the prewar years. Stotland recalls Yiddish plays performed at the local theater, as well as Yiddish writers visiting Ovruch. They then discuss Jewish weddings and dances. The children would run to join the wedding celebrations in order to get some food. They then talk about prewar Jewish life, as well as about the Yiddish press and books. He remembers how children would check out Yiddish books from the school and discuss them in a book club. The synagogues were torn down in 1937. Jews would continue to gather secretly. They then discuss different Yiddish dialects. He remembers a different Yiddish spoken in the Carpathians.

The conversation turns to holiday celebration in poverty with his aunt and uncle. The team then asks a number of questions about Yiddish cultural terminology. Stotland remembers how people visited the tzaddik's grave in Volednick after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The team then asks a number of dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire, which conclude the tape.