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.

Parents showing up at hunger strike

Watch now:

Michael Steinlauf remembers his parents showing up at a hunger strike during his youth, and the collision of worlds it represented for him.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Michael Steinlauf.

This excerpt is in English.

Michael Steinlauf was born in Paris, France in 1947.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

Voina and Holocaust

1 min 44 sec

Student Activism in the 1960s

3 min 44 sec

Cultural transmission over time

2 min 11 sec

Confinement of community

2 min 45 sec

The future of Yiddish

2 min 11 sec

"Yiddish eventually becomes yours"

53 sec

"I Don't Want to Just Be An Academic": Yiddish Beyond Academia

1 min 11 sec

"I Love Yiddish": Professor Michael Steinlauf Reflects

51 sec

Growing Up in a Polish Jewish Household

1 min 49 sec

Boredom on Yom Kippur

1 min 7 sec

Father in the Warsaw Ghetto

1 min 35 sec

"From Warsaw to Brighton Beach": Early Exposure to Yiddish

1 min 25 sec

"I'm Not A Yiddishist"

1 min 30 sec

Peretz as an ideologue

1 min 40 sec

"What is My Culture?": Reflections on Yiddish and My Connection to Poland

2 min 55 sec

"I'd rather teach the non-Jews"

1 min 28 sec