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.

Reciting Poetry for the Chicago Yiddish Community

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Leo Melamed - child survivor of the Holocaust and former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange - remembers how his parents immersed him in Yiddish literature and poetry, which he recited for the Chicago Yiddish-speaking community.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Leo Melamed.

This excerpt is in English.

Leo Melamed was born in Bialystok, Poland in 1932.