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 "Runaway": My Mother's Journey To America At Age Sixteen

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Gerald Palevsky, civil and public health engineer by profession, tells the story of his mother's journey to America at 16, and her first job: keeping the kerosene lamps on miners' helmets lit.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Gerald Palevsky.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Gerald Palevsky was born in Bronx, New York in 1926.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Who Has Not Made Me A Woman: How Her Brother's Religious Education Upset My Mother

1 min 51 sec

Mom's Lawyer, Clarence Darrow

4 min 47 sec

A Yiddishist From Birth

3 min 22 sec

You Always Have to Have All the Information

3 min 4 sec

You Have To Have A Reason: A Lesson From My Father On Saying No To A Bar-Mitsve (Bar Mitzvah)

2 min 15 sec

A Place To Be "Yiddish": Yiddish Folkshules (Schools)

4 min 8 sec

All in the Same Economic Boat: Growing Up In Ethnically Diverse NY Public School System of the '30s and '40s

3 min 12 sec

Blintzes, Hava Nagilah, And Seders: Passing Jewishness Down The Generations

5 min 35 sec

Tikn Oylem (Tikkun Olam), Repairing the World at the Yiddish Book Center

4 min 33 sec

A Mother's Heart: A Yiddish Story about Yidishe Mames (Jewish Mothers)

6 min 34 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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