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.
Assimilated German Jews
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Arnold Friedmann - Emeritus Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst - describes Jewish life for German Jews, the importance of his German background, and the difficulty his parents had accepting what was happening to the Jews in Germany during the late 1930s.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Arnold Friedmann.
This excerpt is in English.
Arnold Friedmann was born in Nuremberg, Germany in 1925.
Other video highlights from this oral history
Assimilated German Jews
1 minute 53 seconds
Going to School in Nuremberg, Germany in the 1930s
56 seconds
My Interest in Yiddish Goes Back to New York
1 minute 9 seconds
Being Jewish and Being American: Complementary Identities
1 minute 43 seconds
Yiddish, A Plastic Language
2 minutes 39 seconds Judenstinker
56 seconds
German Jews Lived Together in Palestine
1 minute 15 seconds
Bar Mitzvah Presents Suitable for Emigration
1 minute 27 seconds
Refugee Life in Palestine
5 minutes 59 seconds
Joining the British Army
1 minute 24 seconds
A Kosher Home, Please?
1 minute 4 seconds
Matzoh and Bread in the Bread Box
1 minute
Joining the Jewish Community in Palestine
1 minute 42 seconds
Hitler Made Me A More Proud Jew
58 seconds
Renting a Garden in Nuremberg
1 minute 3 seconds
"We Lost All Contact After We Left" The Fate of Relatives in Germany During World War Two
2 minutes 9 seconds
Kristallnacht: A Personal Account
4 minutes 4 seconds
Joining the Fight for Israeli Independence
2 minutes 1 second
Destroying Ammunition in Cairo While in the British Army
1 minute 53 seconds
Running to Jewish High School in Germany in the Thirties
1 minute 51 secondsMore information about this oral history excerpt
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About the Wexler Oral History Project
Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 500 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.
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