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.

The Sofye Gurevich Secular Yiddishist School in Pre-WWII Vilna

Watch now:

Fania Brantsovsky - former Jewish partisan during World War Two and librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute - shares memories of her school days, including Yiddishist in Vilna and celebrating Purim.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Fania Brantsovsky.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Fania Brantsovsky was born in Kaunas, Lithuania in 1922.

Jump to map

Other video highlights from this oral history

Helping My Least Favorite Teacher in the Vilna Ghetto

3 min 50 sec

Uniforms and Antics: Fania Bransovsky Recalls Pre-WWII Student Life in Vilna (Vilnius), Lithuania

3 min 59 sec

How I Came to Join the United Partisan Organization (FPO) in the Vilna Ghetto

2 min 37 sec

We Would Embrace Even A Stranger: Vilna in the First Days After World War II

2 min 42 sec

Why I Stayed in Vilna After the War

1 min 42 sec

My Part in the Creation of the Famous "Black Book" About the Holocaust

2 min 38 sec

Vilna, Post-WWII: How We Found Out Who Had Survived

2 min 25 sec

I'm Alive Thanks To the Help of a Young Polish Man

3 min 20 sec

How I Became the Librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute

1 min 56 sec

Because Those Who Died Can't Tell These Stories: Fania Bransovsky Explains Why She Continues to Work Into Her 90s

5 min 48 sec

Purim at the Sofye Gurevich School

57 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: