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.

"That Family Was a Dynasty": Meeting the Weinreichs

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Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, director of the Core Exhibition at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, relates her impressions of the Weinreich family.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.

This excerpt is in English.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada in 1942.

This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"Nous parlons Français, mir redn yidish": Five Languages of Business in My Father's Toronto Store

1 min 24 sec

"It was black market money, it was no food in the stores-": First Impressions of Poland under Martial Law

2 min 9 sec

"I Realized Everything I Needed Was There": Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett on Beginning Jewish Folklore In Her Family

2 min 1 sec

"I Can't Tell You How Many Apartments in the Bronx I Visited": Collecting a Yiddish Library

1 min 27 sec

"It Was the Genius of a People": Eastern European Jewish Folklore and the YIVO

3 min 51 sec

“The Most Frightening Thing”: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet on Giving YIVO Keynote in Yiddish

1 min 57 sec

"The Holocaust Is Not the Inevitable Outcome of the History of the Polish Jews"

2 min 26 sec

"I Think To Myself, Where Are the Jews?": The Representation of Jews in Polish History

3 min 16 sec

Bring Forward the Sources: Approach to Language(s) at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews

4 min 4 sec

"That Was Sort of An Amazing Experience": Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett On Getting Polish Citizenship

3 min 50 sec

Orange Organza, Blue Organza: Celebrating an Exhibition of Jewishness in Opatów, Poland

5 min 57 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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