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.

Perceptions of Yiddish and the Holocaust in Israel

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Rosalyn (Reyzele) Kirkel - storyteller and leader of a Yiddish shmooze-group in Denver, Colorado - describes spending time in Israel in the 1980s, where people associated Yiddish with both victimhood and warmth.

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

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

7 min 53 sec

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

6 min 43 sec

Becoming a Storyteller

2 min 13 sec

Happy and Hopeful for the Future of Yiddish

1 min 48 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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