The tape is a formal interview with Rakhil Shlemovna Shames. (Part 1 of 2. See MDV 421) She discusses her family life before the war in Ivanopil' (Yanoshpol), where she was born. Her father Shleyme worked in a mill, and her mother was a homemaker. She had a sister, Niusye, who was killed by the Nazis near Khmil'nyk. Her father’s family lived in Lube, before they moved to Ivanopil', where they lived until the war. Then the conversation moves to her life in evacuation and life in Khmil'nyk after the war. During the war, Shames worked in a textile factory in the Urals. Her mother spent the war in Khmil'nyk.

After the war, Shames worked as an accountant in a textile factory for 23 years in Khmil'nyk.Her co-workers were mostly Jewish, yet they did not speak Yiddish among themselves, because the manager of the factory was Christian. Shames then discusses her childhood and early adult memories. She mostly spoke Yiddish until her early teens and then switched to Ukrainian. After she finished school in the 1930s, she helped her mother at home. When she was ten years old, a religious instructor came to her house to teach her how to read Yiddish and prayers. As soon as the government turned Soviet, the teacher stopped coming, and Shames went to a Ukrainian school. Her mother took her to the synagogue when she was a child, and she remembers how she read Yiddish on holidays. The tape concludes with a further discussion about life in Khmil'nyk after the war.