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.

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

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Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, director of the Core Exhibition at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, recalls the time she gave the keynote speech at a YIVO banquet, the significance of the talk, and the strange thing she found in her mailbox the next day.

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

"That Family Was a Dynasty": Meeting the Weinreichs

1 min 9 sec

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

3 min 51 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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