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.
Afraid to Speak Yiddish in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast
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Victor Gilinsky, son of Medem Sanatorium co-founder Shloyme Gilinski, discusses the rising tide of antisemitism in the Soviet Union in the 1940's, recalling the hesitation of Birobidzhan's residents to speak Yiddish amongst each other, and musing on the support that the Communist Party continued to receive from the American Jewish Left.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Victor Gilinsky.
This excerpt is in English.
Victor Gilinsky was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1934.
This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.
