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

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Fania Brantsovsky - former Jewish partisan during World War Two and librarian of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute - tells how a young Polish man helped her escape into the forest during World War II and reflects on the complicated relationship between Jews and non-Jews.

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.

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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

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

The Sofye Gurevich Secular Yiddishist School in Pre-WWII Vilna

2 min 13 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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