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 Missed the Train While Escaping to the Ural Mountains During WWII

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Benjamin (Binyomen) Harshav, z"l - professor emeritus at Yale University - describes how, as he and his family escaped Vilna by train, he was left at the station during a brief stop. He recounts how he used his knowledge of Russian geography to continue his journey and eventually find his family.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Benjamin (Binyomen) Harshav.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Benjamin (Binyomen) Harshav was born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1928. Benjamin (Binyomen) died in 2015.

This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

History of the Sofye Gurevich School in Vilna

2 min 43 sec

Moyshe Kulbak Taught at My School

1 min 17 sec

The Kletskin Publishing House Was Downstairs: Prof. Benjamin Harshav, z"l, Remembers From His 1930s Childhood in Vilna

1 min 56 sec

Memories of Chaim Grade, Avrom Sutzkever, and Itzik Manger

1 min 59 sec

The First “Yung Vilne”: Prof. Harshav Remembers Growing Up with the Weinreichs

1 min 48 sec

Benjamin Harshav, z"l, Remembers Collecting Folklore in the Market in Vilna

2 min 52 sec

How Our Vilna School Assignments were Accidentally Saved Through WWII by the Nazis

1 min 49 sec

We Went Right When Everyone Went Left: Benjamin Harshav and Family Escape Death During WWII

4 min 9 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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