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 Safe Haven in Siberia During WWII

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Helene Shafran, born to Yiddish-speaking Polish immigrants, describes the remarkable story of how her sister-in-law and over a million other Polish Jews escaped the Holocaust and waited out the war in Siberia.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Helene Shafran.

This excerpt is in English.

Helene Shafran was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1934.