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Recording Content:
The first part of the recording is a continuation of a formal interview with Chara Yakovlevna Bublitskaia, born in 1925. (Part 2 of 2. See MDV 335) [00:00 – 14:07]
The second part of the recording includes another formal interview with Khariton (Khaske) Abramovich Berman.[14:08 – 1:02:23]
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00:00:00
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She talks about the immediate postwar years, when she studied at an institute in Kyiv and met her husband there in 1948. They were sent on a work assignment to Bila Tserkva. Bublitskaia then talks about her family. She was married for 55 years. Her daughter is a surgeon at the hospital in Bila Tserkva. Her son lives in Russia. His daughter works as an endocrinologist. |
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00:02:25
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Bublitskaia talks about life today, making ends meet. |
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00:04:21
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She discusses the local Yiddish theater with director Anatolii Efimovich Klorfeld after World War II. It put on a mixture of Yiddish and Russian plays with local actors. |
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00:07:46
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She discusses other interviewees like Khariton Berman, as well as her family. Similarly to the Berman family, her family consists of several medical doctors. Her maternal uncle made aliyah from Romania in 1970. |
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00:09:12
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She remembers the Yiddish song “Afn pripetchik.” |
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00:12:48
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The team concludes the interview and the camera collects footage of the apartment and shows photographs. Bublitsakaia’s reveals that her favorite writer is Pushkin. |
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00:14:08
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The second part of the tape includes another formal interview with Khariton (Khaske) Abramovich Berman. He talks about childhood memories of the prewar Yiddish theater in Rivne in the 1930s. In Rivne there was a private Yiddish theater called Safran, as well as a folk theater, organized by the community. Itinerant theater groups from Warsaw and Vilna came to Rivne and Berman went to see plays with his parents. Berman remembers various actors, among them, Solomon Mikhoels; whom he heard on the Moscow radio for the first time. |
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00:19:58
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Berman talks about the mail correspondence he began with Mikhoels in 1944, who served as the chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. Berman was at the Stalingrad front during that time. |
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00:22:13
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He discusses his life during World War II in the Red Army. He helped liberate a number of ghettos and concentration camps, such as the Budapest and Vienna ghetto and Theresienstadt. He reported the atrocities he witnessed upon liberation to Mikhoels. |
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00:25:26
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He talks about his first name “Khariton.” His original name was Khaske Abramovich and when he received the promotion as doctor in charge of the entire region after the war, they encouraged him to change his name in order to make it sound less Jewish. |
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00:28:34
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Berman talks about prewar Hasidism and lively religious life in Rivne, as well as about his parents. They were killed in Rivne during the German occupation. He remembers a number of cantors who would visit Rivne regularly like Yossele Rosenblatt. |
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00:35:22
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He discusses the history of Yiddish cultural life in Bila Tserkva, with reference to the Bund and Poale Zion. |
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00:37:01
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Berman talks about prewar religious life in Bila Tserkva, which had at the time eighteen synagogues. Berman talks about the Rebbe of Skvyra. He then discusses the meaning of “shvartstime,” the Yiddish nickname for Bila Tserkva. |
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00:41:20
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Berman talks about life before the war in Rivne. His family was well-informed about the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s, through the local Yiddish press. He mentions the papers Volhyner Nayes and Volhyner Yidisher Kuryer in particular. |
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00:43:41
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Berman talks about prewar cultural life in Rivne, in particular the struggle between Yiddishists and Hebraists. He refers to Hayim Nahman Bialik. |
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00:47:19
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Berman provides information about Jewish buildings and streets, such as the former Great Synagogue in Bila Tserkva, which the team will visit with Berman’s son. He then provides information about religious life today in the Lubavitcher community. According to Berman, there were two Jewish streets and one street was called Peretz Street until World War II. |
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00:53:21
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He discusses religious issues of today. After the war, Berman was asked by the rabbinate in Israel to fix up the graves from the Royver Rebbe and his followers at the cemetery of Bila Tserkva. He was a student of the Baal Shem Tov. Berman’s wife was able to help out because she remembered the location of the cemetery from her childhood as her father would pray in the same synagogue as the rebbe. The cemetery, however, was barricaded as part of a military zone, and he successfully asked a Soviet official for help. The military commander of Ukraine wrote an order that they were allowed to isolate the area around the graves of the tzaddik (righteous) and his followers. He and Meyer Gabai fixed up the grave for three months. |
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01:00:56
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The team concludes the interview with Berman. |
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