The Yiddish Book Center's

Wexler Oral History Project

A growing collection of in-depth interviews with people of all ages and backgrounds, whose stories about the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture offer a rich and complex chronicle of Jewish identity.

Vilna in the 1930s: We Lived in Yiddish

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Gabriel Weinreich - professor emeritus of physics, Episcopal priest, and son of Yiddishist Max Weinreich - remembers how he spoke Yiddish constantly during his childhood, except when studying Polish history and language in school.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Gabriel Weinreich.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Gabriel Weinreich was born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1928.

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This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Walking through Vilna in 1996

1 min 52 sec

Gabriel Weinreich Remembers His Grandparents' Farm in Niemez

4 min 30 sec

Visiting Max Weinreich in the YIVO Building in Vilna

1 min 25 sec

The Weinreich's Attitude Toward Judaism and Religious Jews

5 min 44 sec

How Would His Parents Would Have Reacted to His Conversion?: Gabriel Weinreich Theorizes

8 min 16 sec

Max Weinreich and Uriel Weinreich: Two Equal Colleagues

2 min 27 sec

Speaking Yiddish Is Like Being Part of an Extinct Species

5 min 35 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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