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.

How My Parents Ended Up in Soviet Gulags and Then in Kyrgyzstan

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Annette Libeskind Berkovits, Jewish author and former Senior Vice President of the Wildlife Conservation Society, picks up her father's story after he had stolen across the border to the Soviet Union from Poland after the Nazi invasion during WWII. She explains how her parents ended up in Soviet gulags and why they subsequently went to Kyrgyzstan where they met and Annette was born.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Annette Berkovits.

This excerpt is in English.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

"Needed Someone Who Knew Yiddish": My Father's Job in a Jewish Print Shop After Immigrating to the United States

2 min 34 sec

Discovering My Father's Autobiographical Audio Tapes

4 min 15 sec

How to Transmit a Sense of Jewish Identity?

3 min 29 sec

"The Boss Was Completely Incredulous": My Mother Organized a Strike at the Fur Factory

2 min 9 sec

My Father's Involvement with the Jewish Labor Bund and Imprisonment in Poland

3 min 46 sec

My Father's Escape from Poland to the Soviet Union After the Nazi Invasion

5 min 20 sec

Life in Kyrgyzstan and Journey Back to Post-WWII Poland

2 min 55 sec

Description of Post-WWII Lodz

2 min 15 sec

Anti-Semitism in Post-WWII Poland

4 min 5 sec

Experiences of Jewish Life in Post-WWII Poland, Israel, and the United States

3 min 27 sec

Saving Wildlife

3 min 8 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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