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.

Fleeing the Vichy Government in Morocco to Manhattan: My Father, the "Undocumented Alien"

Watch now:

Michel Araten, banking/operations researcher by profession, relates how his father was advised by diplomat friends to leave Vichy-controlled Morocco, and used creative and persuasive means to secure residency in the United States.

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.

Other video highlights from this oral history

Speaking Hebrew in My Sleep

1 min 15 sec

They Spoke What I Swore was German: Growing Up in a Multilingual Home

1 min 29 sec

"Michalina, Daughter of Israel": My Great-Aunt's Abduction by the Catholic Church

10 min 42 sec

Explaining Baseball to an Egyptian General, and Other Encounters From My Travels in the Middle East in 1947

1 min 54 sec

Witnessing the Aliyah of Soviet Jewry

1 min 46 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: