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.

A Gulag Survivor's Story

Watch now:

Al Rosen, WWII veteran, recounts the story of a friend who survived a Siberian Gulag as a child and tells how that Gulag was liberated.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Ellsworth (Al) Rosen.

This excerpt is in English.

Ellsworth (Al) Rosen was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1924.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Doing the Right Thing: Kosher Food for his Father

1 min 2 sec

Flunking Out of the ROTC

2 min 36 sec

400 Letters from Chaim Grade

3 min 18 sec

Escaping the Draft in Russia To Be Drafted in America

1 min 17 sec

My Grandfather, the Fruit Peddler

2 min 24 sec

My Father Never, Ever Called Me By My Given Name

1 min

Sending Money to his Mother in Russia

1 min 2 sec

Visiting Dachau after Liberation

2 min 7 sec

Reading and Political Activism

2 min 21 sec

1930s: We Didn't Believe Everything We Read About WWII At First

1 min 20 sec

A 1945 Seder in German Barracks

1 min 12 sec

1945: Liberating A Boxcar Full of Jews

3 min 8 sec

Accompanying Aunts Singing Yiddish Songs

1 min 35 sec

Antisemitic Incident with a Polish Student

1 min 21 sec

Cantor Father's Guggle Muggle Before Kol Nidre

2 min 19 sec

Coming Across a Camp of Roma People