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.

Absorbing Jewish Refugees into kibbutz in Israel

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Haim Gunner describes receiving Jewish refugees at his Kibbutz. He was astonished at the differing backgrounds of the refugees, and describes organizing the droves of people and what it was like to navigate around languages and nationalities.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Haim Gunner.

This excerpt is in English.

Haim Gunner was born in 1924.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Experiences with Arab Resistance on Kibbutz During Early Years of Israeli State

5 min 30 sec

From Europe to Israel in the mid-1950s: DP camps and refugees

2 min 44 sec

Rejecting then returning to Yiddish

1 min 14 sec

Missing sister's wedding due to discipline of the youth movement

39 sec

A Request Unfulfilled: Imrich Rosenberg's wife

3 min 27 sec

Haim ruins the family seder

1 min 43 sec

Hashomer Hatsair in the 1930s

3 min 53 sec

Why I Left the Kibbutz

3 min

Hashomer Hatsair in the McCarthy Era

2 min 30 sec

Meeting His Wife- "We took an immediate disliking to each other."

1 min 50 sec

Life Beyond the Kibbutz: a Tel Aviv Purim Party

3 min 19 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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