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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.

I Began Writing To Entertain the Children: A Yiddish Writer's Inspiration

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Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman z"l, Yiddish poet and songwriter, remembers how she began writing songs and poems for her children to enjoy while her husband was at work.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman was born in Vienna, Austria in 1920. Beyle died in 2013.

This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Isaac Nachman Steinberg and the Frayland Lige (Freeland League)

2 min 13 sec

Yiddishism Is a Way of Life

1 min 25 sec

"It Gives Us a Reason, an Ideal": Yiddish in the Schaechter-Gottesman Family

2 min 9 sec

I Read Every Holocaust Memoir I Find

3 min 56 sec

"The Last Day of Joy": Chernowitz in 1945

1 min 39 sec

Eliezer Shteynbarg Was Our Peretz

1 min 46 sec

Bainbridge Avenue: A Micro-neighborhood of Yiddish Culture in the Bronx

1 min 39 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: