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Recording Content:
The AHEYM research team travels to the next interview with the well-known Yiddish writer Iosif Kunovich Burg, born 1912 in Vyzhnytsya. (Part 1 of 5. See MDV 406, MDV 407, MDV 408, and MDV 409) (see also: Accession # 09-008.01-F MDV 232)
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00:00:00
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The team greets Burg outside his apartment and then sets up the formal interview with him. Burg talks about his distinctions he received from the Austrian and German government. He is also honorary citizen of Chernivtsi. |
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00:06:29
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Burg talks about his home town Vyzhnytsya. According to Burg, 92% of the 6,800 inhabitants were Jewish before World War II. Burg explains contemporary efforts to memorialize prewar Jewish life of Vyzhnytsya. He then talks about contemporary and postwar Jewish life in Chernivtsi with a population of roughly 2000 today, according to Burg. After the war, Burg states approximately 93,000 Jews lived in Chernivtsi. Burg then talks about his activities, giving lectures and publications at Israeli universities in the 1990s. |
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00:21:33
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Burg shows several of his publications: “A farshpetikter ekho” (A belated echo), published in 1990; “Frayndshaft” (friendship), published in 2002; “Tsvey veltn” (Two worlds), published in 1997, “Okruchy” (Polish, crumbs). The last bilingual book ("Shedra Osyen;” lavish autumn) was published in Russian and German to honor Burg’s life and works. It includes a cover of his birth house. Burg explains that the street name was changed to honor him. He then discusses articles that have been published about him. |
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00:29:38
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Burg talks about his life as a Yiddish writer and his contemporary activities in promoting Yiddish culture in schools for instance. He talks about the difficulties setting up Yiddish language classes at a Jewish school. Burg then talks about contemporary Hasidic life, before he talks about his family. |
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00:43:01
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Burg describes one of his stories about Yiddish teaching in Germany. He then talks about his studies with Eliezer Steinberg. |
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00:46:39
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Burg addresses Jewish intellectual life in postwar Chernivtsi. Burg lived in Russia during the war and returned to Chernivtsi in 1963. According to Burg, twelve Yiddish writers lived there. He remembers several encounters with the Yiddish poet Yoysef Kerler. Burg taught at the Ivanovo State Pedagogical Institute, after he finished his graduate studies of West-European literature in Moscow in 1947. Burg studied with Yitskhok Nusinov. Burg briefly discusses Nusinov’s works, before he mentions the encounters with Yiddish writers, such as Perets Markish, Itsik Fefer, and Dovid Bergelson. Burg then discusses recent Yiddish publications and talks remembers an episodes regarding Fefer, who came from a prison in Crimea, and attended ? 58:53’s show in Moscow in 1948. |
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