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.

"It Was a Real School": The Sholem Aleichem School System

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Frederick Schwartzman, native Yiddish speaker raising his children trilingual and nephew of Yiddish writer B. Demblin, recounts his experience in the Sholem Aleichem school system and tells how after completing mitlshul (high school), students could go on the lerer-seminar (Jewish teacher's seminary).

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Frederick Schwartzman.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

My Uncle, B. Demblin, Was an Author and Intellectual

2 min 11 sec

A Story of Double Cousins

2 min 3 sec

Brisk (Brest-Litovsk) Was an Important (Jewish) City

3 min 33 sec

Our Children Spoke Japanese with Their Mother and Yiddish with Their Father

1 min 50 sec

Founding Pripetshik, a Play Group for Yiddish-Speaking Children on Park Ave.

2 min 57 sec

Speaking Yiddish To Prevent It from Becoming Latin

3 min 13 sec

"Open Mouth and Speak!": Speaking Yiddish by Choice

1 min 18 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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