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Recording Content:
This video begins with a few seconds of a conversation among community members in Russian in the Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy community center/museum. [00:00:14]
The camera then cuts to a formal interview with Abram Davidovich Kaplan, born 2 May, 1933 in Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy. (Part 1 of 3. See MDV 585 and Accession # 09-007.06-F MDV 185)
Cities and towns mentioned on this tape: Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy, Kozenits, Ozaryntsi, Pechera, Constanta, Bucharest.
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00:00:00
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This video begins with a few seconds of a conversation among community members in Russian in the Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy community center/museum. |
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00:00:14
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The camera then cuts to a formal interview with Abram Davidovich Kaplan, born 2 May, 1933 in Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy. Kaplan begins this interview sharing much of the information about his parents and siblings that he gave in his first interview. His twin brother Leyb/Lev has lived in Germany for the past seven years, where his wife was stabbed to death by a Rom (Gypsy). His youth was marked by poverty and a strict, disciplined upbringing “like Tsar Nicholas”, i.e. very strict. |
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00:09:12
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Kaplan sings "A Postekhl" (A Shepherd) in a better rendition than in his first interview, but states that he had a heart attack, and it is therefore hard for him to sing. |
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00:10:07
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Kaplan remembers the deported Bukovina, Bessarabian and Hungarian [sic] Jews that were sent to Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy during the war. Kaplan also describes how the Russian school had two classes set aside for children who grew up in Yiddish-speaking homes and didn’t know Russian, and so studied in Yiddish, Ukrainian and Russian, only later being integrated into the mainstream Russian school system after seventh grade. Kaplan himself did not enter school until after the war (he was supposed to enter in Sept. 1941, but could not attend as hostilities had already broken out by then). Kaplan also discusses synagogues in Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy both before and after the war. His mother was, as he says, “more frum (religious) than necessary” and fasted every Wednesday and Thursday. She died in his arms as soon as he returned from the army. |
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00:18:44
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Kaplan also sings a dacha song "Volga Volga". |
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00:19:08
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His father worked as a soap-maker and a cantor in one of the town’s synagogues. Kaplan relates shabes (Sabbath) customs from before and after the war, detailing, for example, how his mother sometimes employed a shabes goy. During the war, Kaplan was in different camps in Transnistria, and tells the story of how his family escaped and returned to Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy in 1942, all the time hidden and cared for by non-Jewish neighbors. Kaplan notes that many Jews collaborated with the Germans and Romanians, forming special Jewish police battalions, and relates the story of the sinking of a ship of Jewish orphans who had supposedly bought freedom off the coast of Constanta, Romania. Kaplan also speaks about contemporary war memorials and ceremonies, as well as ties to landslayt (former town residents) from abroad and the post-Soviet revival of Jewish life led by Sobol [late husband of interviewee Maria (Molke) Iosipovna Sobol (née Cioban)]. Kaplan then sings a fragment from the song "Shik mir a shtral" (Send Me a Ray (of Sunlight)). Kaplan also speaks about the different sections of the Jewish cemetery, how holidays were celebrated sometimes in secret before/after the war and answers some questions related to linguistics and Yiddish dialects. Cities and towns mentioned on this tape: Mohyliv-Podil’s’kyy, Kozenits, Ozaryntsi, Pechera, Constanta, Bucharest. |
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