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Oral history interview with Chayale Ash-Fuhrman

Oral History | Digitized | Accession Number: 1997.A.0441.30 | RG Number: RG-50.462.0030

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    Oral history interview with Chayale Ash-Fuhrman

    Overview

    Interview Summary
    Chayale Ash-Fuhrman (née Averbuch), born in 1920 in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Romania (Chisinau, Moldova), describes life in Kishinev; her education in public school and private Jewish school; her parents’ troupe of Yiddish actors which she was part of until she turned professional at age 15; details on the Yiddish theater group; the Romanian government restrictions in the inter-war period and the effects of the Russian occupation of Bessarabia in 1940; how the Moldavian Yiddish State Theatre could function only under strict Communist guidelines; being evacuated in June 1941 with the theater group and other civilians to Ukraine with Russian help; being forced to stop in a kolkhoz (cooperative village) in K'harkov (Kharkiv, Ukraine) to help with the harvest; the refugees living under primitive conditions and encountering antisemitism from the villagers; being sent in November 1941 to Kuibyshev (Samara, Russia) then to Tashkent, Uzbekistan to pick cotton in another cooperative; the difficulties of adapting to the Russian way of getting along; relations with the locals and the onset of hatred for Jews; her father dying of dysentery in 1942; using her training from professional school and joining a sewing cooperative to get more bread; trying to practice their religion; working as a clerk in a steel mill in Begovat (Bekobod, Uzbekistan); getting married in 1943 to a man who was working as a mechanic at the mill; returning to Poland in 1945 with her husband in an exchange program for Polish citizens; settling in a displaced persons camp in Silesia; working as an emigration secretary for "Poale Zion" and the various strategies Jewish refugees used to leave Russia; how in 1948 she went with her husband and her mother to Vienna, Austria; being placed in a displaced persons camp in Linz, Austria, where Chayale gave birth to a daughter; UNRRA and the Joint Distribution Committee helping them go to Jaffa, Israel with false papers on an Italian ship, Campidoglio, in August 1948; her husband joining the army; early immigrant life in Israel under wartime conditions; founding the Haifa Yiddish Operetta Theatre in 1949; moving later to Tel Aviv; performing in London, England and touring South Africa with an all Israeli ensemble; her divorce in 1953; marrying her second husband, an actor from Romania, in New York, NY in 1959 and staying in the United States; and her feelings about the Holocaust and its effects on the children of survivors.
    Interviewee
    Chayale Ash-Fuhrman
    Date
    interview:  1981 September 21
    Credit Line
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of the Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive

    Physical Details

    Language
    English
    Extent
    4 sound cassettes (60 min.).

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    There are no known restrictions on access to this material.
    Conditions on Use
    No restrictions on use

    Keywords & Subjects

    Personal Name
    Ash-Fuhrman, Chayale.

    Administrative Notes

    Provenance
    The Gratz College Holocaust Oral History Archive conducted the interview with Chayale Ash-Fuhrman in Philadelphia, PA on September 21, 1981. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum received the tapes of the interview from Gratz College on September 22, 1998.
    Record last modified:
    2023-11-16 08:36:05
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn508650

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