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 Smuggled Me Out of the Shavl (Šiauliai) Ghetto: A Hidden Jewish Child during the Holocaust

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Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel - storyteller and leader of a Yiddish shmooze-group in Denver, Colorado - describes how her mother, desperate to save her the day after a kinder-aktsye during the Holocaust, snuck her out of the Shavl (Šiauliai, Lithuania) ghetto to live with a non-Jewish family.

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.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Becoming a Storyteller

2 min 13 sec

Perceptions of Yiddish and the Holocaust in Israel

4 min 10 sec

Happy and Hopeful for the Future of Yiddish

1 min 48 sec

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

7 min 53 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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