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 Was Naïve: Memories of the Beginning of World War Two in Poland

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Alex Lauterbach, a retired chemist, recalls the invasion of Poland by German forces, and the beginning of his family's scramble to evade capture.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Alex Lauterbach.

This excerpt is in English.

Alex Lauterbach was born in 1923.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Nobody Wanted to Talk About It: On ("Polanized") Jews in Poland

3 min 56 sec

Six "Nicaraguans" in Lwów: Escaping Poland During World War Two

4 min 23 sec

"Very Exciting, But Not My World": View Of Yiddish As A "Polonized" Jew

1 min 44 sec

"I Want Them to Feel It": On Educating Children Jewishly

1 min 25 sec

A Sentimental Attachment: Yiddish as One of the Many Jewish Languages

1 min 41 sec

Ham on the Windowsill

54 sec

Soot in the Soup!: A Sukkos (Sukes) story

1 min 20 sec

Rent In Exchange for Medical School Admission: "Numerus clausus" & Racial Quotas in Interwar Poland

2 min 17 sec

Covertly Trained to Help with the Manhattan Project

3 min 53 sec

Values From Secular My Jewish Parents: Find Out What's Going On In The World

1 min 5 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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