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Recording Content:
The tape is a formal interview with Anna Moiseevna Marmalevskaia, nee Trudenko, born 1923, in Bila Tserkva (Yiddish: Shvartstime). (Part 1 of 2. See MDV 333)
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00:00:00
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After providing biographical and family information. She grew up with three siblings. His parents were born in Bila Tserkva. Her father Meyshe was tailor. Her family lived there until the beginning of World War II. Her family evacuated to Russia, near Astrakhan. |
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00:01:53
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Her father and brother were drafted to fight at the front. Since she was already eighteen years old, she was responsible for feeding a family of five when they were in evacuation and brought them through this time full of hardship. Marmalevskaia worked as a fish farmer at a fishing kolkhoz located on the banks of the Volga for four and a half years. At the beginning of her time in evacuation, her mother also helped out at the fish farm, but she soon fell ill with malaria. She explained that all of the families from Bila Tserkva at the kolkhoz perished from famine except for her family and a few members of a second family. Her ten-year old sister Tanye walked twenty kilometers to get the fish from the kolkhoz in order to bring it to her family. |
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00:05:48
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The conversation moves to her return home to Bila Tserkva in October 1945. Her father returned from the front, seriously injured in 1944. Many of her family members perished during the war. They discovered after arrival at the railway station that their house was not standing anymore. Later on, her family purchased a ramshackle kitchen, where the six members of Marmalevskaia's family lived. Her brother Yankl returned home from the front in 1949. |
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00:08:46
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During the Great Hunger in 1932-33, two of her aunts died. She remembers eating potato peels mixed with oats. Marmelevskaia then discusses her childhood memories. Her family lived in one room with a kitchen. She returns to the topic of the Great Hunger. Her mother, originally a homemaker, worked as a weaver during the famine. Her body, however, was so swollen that she could hardly climb into the weaving machine. They survived because her father traveled to Moscow, sold his suit, and sent his family vouchers for bread. |
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00:15:21
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Marmalevskaia discusses her childhood and education; she attended a Yiddish school for ten years, until 1940. |
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00:17:21
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She talks about life after the war. She got married in 1946. Her husband worked as a blacksmith in a factory, and participated in a Yiddish theater from 1989 through 2000 in Bila Tserkva. Among other roles, he played Tevye the Milkman. He passed away due to weak heart, which was due to the hunger of 1946. She has a son Naum works as a geologist in Kyiv and a daughter Vere who lives in Israel. The conversation returns to the postwar Yiddish theater. The director's name was Anatolii Klorfelt. |
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00:30:19
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Marmalevskaia shows her Yiddish books, in particular volumes by Sholem Aleichem. |
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00:31:49
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The conversation turns to religious life and synagogues in prewar Bila Tserkva. She explains that one of the synagogues was turned into a Yiddish school. Zedelkovsky was the director of her school. The conversation turns to prewar holiday celebration and food customs, as well as about non-Jews who spoke Yiddish. She also remembers itinerant Yiddish theater troupes from Dnepropetrovsk. One actor frequently stayed at their apartment during season. They then briefly address the Yiddish newspaper "Der Shtern" (The Star), before they discuss the actor of the Moscow State Jewish theater Solomon Mikhoels. |
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00:54:50
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Death, burial and the local cemetery. |
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00:58:13
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The tape ends with linguistic questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire. |
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