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.

What Hitler Couldn’t Take Away From Us With Hatred, We Wouldn't Let America Take With Goodness

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Elliott (Elye) Palevsky - former CEO of River Garden senior services and child of Yiddish-speaking former partisan fighters - reflects on his parents' attitude toward Yiddish, assimilation, and raising their children in America after surviving the Holocaust.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Elliott (Elye) Palevsky.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Elliott (Elye) Palevsky was born in Bronx, New York in 1947.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

Growing up with Bundist Parents Got Me Involved in Civil Rights Activism

1 min 49 sec

My Teacher, Moyshe Goldshteyn, Cultivated Pride in Jewish Culture

1 min 29 sec

Re-visiting Vilna and the Jewish Past and Present Place in a New Way

3 min 35 sec

"She Has to Come to Grips with It": A Jewish Partisan Comes Face-to-Face with A Nazi Collaborator

2 min 49 sec

How My Mother Escaped the Ponary Massacre

4 min 5 sec

My Uncle Approached Communism with the Same Fervor of His Hasidic Upbringing

2 min 14 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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