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Recording Content:
The first part of this recording is a continuation of a formal interview with Shaiia Davidovich Kleiman. (Part 2 of 2. See MDV 411) Kleiman answers a number of dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire. Kleiman briefly talks about the history and language of Bessarabian Jews. [00:00 – 20:54]
The second part of the recording includes town footage of Chernivtsi. The camera collects town footage and Kleiman gives a tour of the former Jewish neighborhood, headed towards the plaque of the Yiddish writer Moyshe Altman. [20:55 – 27:49]
The third part of the recording is a formal interview with Riva Fridrikhovna Gimelbrandt, born 1932 in Chernivtsi. (Part 1 of 2. See MDV 413) [27:49 – 01:02:22]
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00:00:00
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Kleiman answers a number of dialectological questions from the AHEYM Yiddish questionnaire. Kleiman briefly talks about the history and language of Bessarabian Jews.
The second part of the tape includes town footage of Chernivtsi. |
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00:20:55
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The camera collects town footage and Kleiman gives a tour of the former Jewish neighborhood, headed towards the plaque of the Yiddish writer Moyshe Altman. |
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00:27:49
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The third part of the tape is a formal interview with Riva Fridrikhovna Gimelbrandt, born 1932 in Chernivtsi. Gimelbrandt, nee Margulis, provides personal information and talks about her family. Her father was born in Sadgora and worked as a tailor. Her mother, born in Vyzhnytsya, was a tailor as well. Gimelbrandt mentions that her grandfather Yisrol sewed suits for the rebbe of Vyzhnytsya. |
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00:32:31
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Gimelbrandt discusses her childhood memories. She mentions holiday celebrations, in particular Purim and Passover. Gimelbrandt finished one year at a Yiddish school. She grew up with a sister and a brother, who attended religious school (cheder) and lives in Israel. Gimelbrandt remembers how her non-Jewish friends, who spoke Yiddish, celebrated Purim with her before the war. She then describes food customs for Sabbath, Shavuot, and Passover. |
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00:43:54
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Gimelbrandt talks about her father Simkhe Fridl, who lost his parents at the age of four. Gimelbrandt explains that her father was raised within the Hasidic community in Sadgora. Her father’s sister was adopted by relatives, who lived in America. Simkhe Fridl lived in a tailor’s home and worked for him, which financed his religious school (cheder) education. He was drafted into the Red Army in 1941. Gimelbrandt then talks about her mother, who grew up within the Hasidic community in Vyzhnytsya. She also explains her grandfather’s work as a tailor for the rebbe of Vyzhnytsya. Gimelbrandt recalls how her mother would tell stories about the good deeds of the Vyzhnytsya rebbe. |
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00:52:27
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Gimelbrandt talks about her family’s life in 1944, when they returned to Chernivtsi. She explains how her mother hid in a basement, because of the fear to be taken to the gulag in the Donbas region. Gimelbrandt talks about her life during the war. She describes how the Romanians forced her family into the small synagogue in the late fall of 1941, where they had to stay for six weeks in terrible hygienic conditions. Gimelbrandt remembers how her non-Jewish friends helped her out with food. After six weeks, Gimelbrandt continues, her family was taken to the railway station and forced into freight cars, headed to the Transnistria region. According to her, they traveled for roughly twelve hours in an overcrowded car and stopped at the River Dniester. The Romanians forced them over the bridge toward Mohyliv-Podilskyy and checked everybody for valuables, before sending people into a school for disinfection. Gimelbrandt remembers her mother taking off clothes from corpses for her children. From the school in Mohyliv-Podilskyy, her family had to walk twenty-five kilometers in snow to Slidy. She remembers how she bid farewell to her mother, who carried her two year-old sister, ten kilometers before Slidy. Gimelbrandt could not continue walking and stayed behind in the snowy fields. She was rescued by a non-Jew, who took her to his house in Slidy on a horse. As soon as the non-Jewish man found out that it was a felony to hide Jews, he smuggled Gimelbrandt into the Slidy ghetto, formerly a pig farm near Slidy. There she was reunited with her family. Gimelbrandt describes the horrific life in the ghetto with beatings and barely any food. |
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