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.

Find the Matura: A Precious Document That Survived WWII

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Leon Madowitz, z"l, a retired medical doctor, remembers returning to his destroyed hometown of Wielun after the war to retrieve his treasured matura (secondary school diploma), which he had carefully hidden before having to flee.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Leon Madowitz.

This excerpt is in English.

Leon Madowitz was born in Wielun, Poland in 1919. Leon died in 2017.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

A Favored Jewish Student in Polish Catholic School

2 min 22 sec

The Teacher Had a Whip: A Kheyder In Pre-WWII Wieluń, Poland

1 min 19 sec

"I Was the Gatekeeper!": A Shminatseres (Shemini Atzereth) Feast Of The Khevre-kedishe (Jewish Burial Society) In Pre-WWII Wieluń, Poland

3 min 16 sec

Not Just Anybody Could Write a Book Back Then: My Grandfather's Progressive Interpretation Of The Mitsves

4 min 46 sec

Escaping From the Lodz Ghetto

4 min 25 sec

"The Town Was Free of Jews": Memories of Wielun, Poland During World War Two

6 min 56 sec

Life in the Czestochowa Ghetto

5 min 25 sec

The Mice Ate the Rent Money

1 min 24 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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