Selected text
I was very fond of singing. My friends and I used to go to the bank of Tismin River where we sang Russian and Ukrainian songs, but mostly Yiddish, of course. My voice has lost its strength, but I remember songs:
[sings in Yiddish]
‘Girl Hannushka went to the woods and unbraided her hair. All of a sudden she met a young man that asked her ‘Hannushka, what are you doing in the forest? What are you looking for, did you lose something?’ She says ‘I’m looking for daisy flowers’. He said ‘Well, you are on the way there while I have already found the most beautiful and interesting flower with lovely hair and beautiful eyes. May I stroke your hair and hold your hand?’ ‘No, you can’t. My mother wouldn’t allow it. My mother is old and ill and I won’t do things that she forbids’. He was hurt and left and she goes on looking for a daisy, tra-la-la’ .
Many boys fell in love with me when they heard me singing. Young people used to get together in the evening: there was quite a bunch of us. We played lotto – it was a popular game then, [the players got 3 cards each with numbers in them written in rows. The game master took wooden casks with numbers out of a bag and a player having this or that number took a cask and put it on a card. The winner was the one that was the first to fill up his card] went to the park – there was a big park in Smela. In summer we went boating on the Tiasmin River. We liked going to the cinema at weekends: there were silent movies, but we liked comedies, especially the ones with Charlie Chaplin. I had Jewish friends. We spoke Yiddish, but we had fluent Russian as well.
[sings in Yiddish]
‘Girl Hannushka went to the woods and unbraided her hair. All of a sudden she met a young man that asked her ‘Hannushka, what are you doing in the forest? What are you looking for, did you lose something?’ She says ‘I’m looking for daisy flowers’. He said ‘Well, you are on the way there while I have already found the most beautiful and interesting flower with lovely hair and beautiful eyes. May I stroke your hair and hold your hand?’ ‘No, you can’t. My mother wouldn’t allow it. My mother is old and ill and I won’t do things that she forbids’. He was hurt and left and she goes on looking for a daisy, tra-la-la’ .
Many boys fell in love with me when they heard me singing. Young people used to get together in the evening: there was quite a bunch of us. We played lotto – it was a popular game then, [the players got 3 cards each with numbers in them written in rows. The game master took wooden casks with numbers out of a bag and a player having this or that number took a cask and put it on a card. The winner was the one that was the first to fill up his card] went to the park – there was a big park in Smela. In summer we went boating on the Tiasmin River. We liked going to the cinema at weekends: there were silent movies, but we liked comedies, especially the ones with Charlie Chaplin. I had Jewish friends. We spoke Yiddish, but we had fluent Russian as well.
Period
Location
Smela
Cherkaska oblast
Ukraine
Interview
Sarra Nikiforenko