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.

Not English, Yiddish!: Yiddish Awareness in Poland and Abroad

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Małgorzata Maciejewska, graduate student in Jewish Studies at University of Wrocław, tells us about the time a soldier in Vilnius mistook 'Yiddish' for a mispronunciation of another language: English, and about how Yiddish is often secondary in people's minds to another very well-known Jewish language.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Małgorzata Maciejewska.

This excerpt is in English and Yiddish.

Małgorzata Maciejewska was born in Kalisz, Poland in 1989.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

Those Poems are so Great!: Learning Yiddish to Learn Poetry

2 min 27 sec

From the Morning to the Evening: Transcribing Jewish Gravestones in Mikulov, Czech Republic

2 min 47 sec

It's More Intimate: The Different Uses of Yiddish and Hebrew

1 min 58 sec

“Now I Belong to the Yiddish World”: Reflections of A Jewish Studies Student in Poland

1 min 1 sec

We Must Remember About Peoples' Lives, What They Did: The Historical Importance of Yiddish in Poland

1 min 53 sec

You Must Feel the Connection with Other People: Advice for Learning Yiddish

1 min 35 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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