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.

The Chicken Farm: An Original Yiddish Song

Watch now:

Helena Lipstadt, a poet and garden designer, describes the sudden change in milieu her parents experienced when they moved from Europe to the United States in 1952. [Note: ORT refers to Obchestvo Remeslenogo Truda: Association for the Promotion of Skilled Trades, a non-profit global Jewish organization.]

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Helena Lipstadt.

This excerpt is in Yiddish and English.

Helena Lipstadt was born in Berlin, Germany in 1947.

Jump to map

This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"The Henry Kissinger of Panama:" Dr. Herschel Klepfisz

3 min 11 sec

American Jews Didn't Quite Seem Jewish: A "European" Jewish Household

2 min 9 sec

My Mother Had Golden Hands: Jewish-Polish Dishes at Home

1 min 35 sec

A Very Small Basket: Limited Knowledge of My Jewish Family Background

1 min 57 sec

A Better World: A Feeling of Empowerment of a Generation in the 1960s

4 min 32 sec

"I Built A House!": Remembering A Feminist Collective

4 min 16 sec

Working From Place of Minority: Reflections on Queers in the Klezmer Revival

1 min 57 sec

Longing for Gan-Eydn (Paradise): Reflections on Identity, Yiddish, and Poland

3 min 8 sec

"Making That Bridge (to Poland) Through Life Rather Than Death": Working on the Gwozdzdiec Synagogue Replica Project

5 min 32 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: