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.

"He kept answering in Russian": Moishe Katz meeting Peretz

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Lyber Katz - z"l, progressive activist, Yiddish translator and son of Moishe Katz - remembers his father's story of meeting Peretz and trying to initiate speaking Yiddish while Peretz responded in Russian.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Lyber Katz.

This excerpt is in English.

Lyber Katz was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1921. Lyber died in 2014.

This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Anti-antisemitism in the Soviet Union

2 min 29 sec

Chased By A Headless Chicken: Lyber Katz Remembers Visiting Family in The Shtetl As a Boy

2 min 29 sec

Should the Jewish Young Fraternalists Chorus Keep its Jewish Name?

1 min 53 sec

"When I Met My Wife, She Already Knew My Family": Lyber Katz Remembers

4 min 38 sec

Memories of the McCarthy Era

2 min 43 sec

Landslayt lebn Machu Picchu!: Jewish Connection in Peru

1 min 59 sec

"Learning English" with Itche Goldberg at Camp Kinderland

1 min 49 sec

Lyber Katz on Translating his Father Moishe Katz's Book

1 min 12 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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