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.

"My Mother Hid Us in the Attic": Surviving the "Kinder-Aktsie" (Children's "Action") in the Shavl Ghetto

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Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel - storyteller and leader of a Yiddish shmooze-group in Denver, Colorado - tells the story of how her mother tried to protect her and her siblings during the Holocaust. She explains how they hid in an attic during a "kinder-aktsye" when Nazi soldiers attempted to remove children from the Shavl (Šiauliai) ghetto.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel was born in Siauliai, Lithuania in 1941.