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.
A Very Small Basket: Limited Knowledge of My Jewish Family Background
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Helena Lipstadt, a poet and garden designer, talks about the culture of silence in the survivor community she grew up in, and how saddened she is that so many stories have been lost.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Helena Lipstadt.
This excerpt is in English.
This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.
Other video highlights from this oral history
A Very Small Basket: Limited Knowledge of My Jewish Family Background
1 minute 57 seconds
Working From Place of Minority: Reflections on Queers in the Klezmer Revival
1 minute 57 seconds
"Making That Bridge (to Poland) Through Life Rather Than Death": Working on the Gwozdzdiec Synagogue Replica Project
5 minutes 32 seconds
Longing for Gan-Eydn (Paradise): Reflections on Identity, Yiddish, and Poland
3 minutes 8 seconds
My Mother Had Golden Hands: Jewish-Polish Dishes at Home
1 minute 35 seconds
American Jews Didn't Quite Seem Jewish: A "European" Jewish Household
2 minutes 9 seconds
The Chicken Farm: An Original Yiddish Song
1 minute 26 seconds
"I Built A House!": Remembering A Feminist Collective
4 minutes 16 seconds
A Better World: A Feeling of Empowerment of a Generation in the 1960s
4 minutes 32 seconds
"The Henry Kissinger of Panama:" Dr. Herschel Klepfisz
3 minutes 11 secondsMore information about this oral history excerpt
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About the Wexler Oral History Project
Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 500 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.
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