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.

Escaping Kovne (Kovno or Kaunus, Lithuania) During World War Two

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Fira Bramson, z"l, - former bibliographer of the Judaica collection of the Lithuanian National Archives - describes how the war reached Kovno just as she was finishing school, how she escaped, and how her father was mistakenly informed that she had been killed.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Fira Bramson.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Fira Bramson was born in Kovne (Kaunas), Lithuania in 1924. Fira died in 2016.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

Once in a Lifetime: Translating from Yiddish to Lithuanian for the Communist Government

3 min 2 sec

New York or Lithuania?: Where Do Vilna's Yiddish Treasures Belong?

7 min 5 sec

Sneaking Across Ever-Changing Borders in Lithuania/Poland/Czarist Russia

3 min 36 sec

"I Said I Would Write a Book on the Condition that It Be in Two Languages": A Bilingual Lithuanian-Yiddish Memoir

6 min 39 sec

"I Work for the Yiddish Culture": Fira Bramson Reflects on Her Work with the Judaica Collection of the Lithuanian National Archives

5 min 16 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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