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.

"The Gypsy-Life is Cheerful": Yiddish song from the Medem Sanatorium

Watch now:

Chana Szlang Gonshor, Silber Family Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at York University in Toronto, sings a song that she learned at the Medem Sanatorium in Poland as a young girl.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Chana Szlang Gonshor.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Chana Szlang Gonshor was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1919. Chana Szlang died in 2021.