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.
They Spoke What I Swore was German: Growing Up in a Multilingual Home
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Michel Araten, banking/operations researcher by profession, talks about the different languages his parents spoke in the home where he grew up in French protectorate Casablanca, Morocco. He reflects on his later revelation that his father's conversations with his brother were conducted not in German, but their first language of Yiddish.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Michel Araten.
This excerpt is in English.
Michel Araten was born in Casablanca, Morocco in 1940.
