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Recording Content:
This recording consists of a formal interview with Semyon Semyonovich Krotsh (b. 1922 in Stefanesti). (Part 2 of 3. See MDV 527 and MDV 529)
Cities and towns mentioned on this tape: Botosani, Iași, Stefanesti, Rîscani, Rostov-na-Donu, Bucuresti, Baki Sähäri (Baku), Chernivtsi, Odesa, Kolomyya, Kosiv.
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00:00:00
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This tape consists of a formal interview with Semyon Semyonovich Krotsh (b. 1922 in Stefanesti). He speaks about his visit to Botoșani in Romania in the postwar period where his father lived after the war. Krotsh visited the town again most recently about five years ago, and reports that there are no Jews left there or in any other small towns. Krotsh also speaks in general about Romanian Jewry after the war and their mass emigration to Israel. |
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00:05:58
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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. |
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00:19:01
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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. |
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00:28:01
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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. |
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00:40:29
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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. |
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00:47:35
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Krotsh shares his views on fate, G-d and religion. He discusses postwar Jewish religious life in Kolomyya, mentioning the clandestine prayer groups that would come together in private homes on holidays and important communal dates. He then speaks about the history of Kolomyya’s various synagogues. |
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00:55:58
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Krotsh shares his views towards Christianity and discusses the Yiddish terms he knows for Jesus. |
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00:57:38
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Another AHEYM interviewee, David Abramovich Vider (b. 1922 in Sighetu Marmatiei), joins the conversation. Krotsh sings a fragment of the song “Ot Azoy” (Just Like That) and Vider sings a fragment of the song “Ikh ken a maysele” (I Know a Short Story). |
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