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.

Menachem Begin's Promise

Watch now:

Tova Weiss, teacher and tour guide, tells the story of Menachem Begin's failed attempt to smuggle over 1500 Polish Jews, including her father, into Palestine shortly ahead of the German invasion of Poland, and of his promise that they would be reunited in the Land of Israel.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Tova Weiss.

This excerpt is in English.

Tova Weiss was born in Slazburg, Austria in 1946.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"A Field of Bones": What I Knew of Linchitz, My Ancestral Home

1 min 6 sec

The Gift of Yiddish Wisdom

1 min 59 sec

From a DP Camp Hospital to a Jewish Homeland: Settling in Haifa After World War II

2 min 20 sec

How My Parents Fell in Love in the Middle of World War Two

1 min 56 sec

"Amkho?": The Secret Code of Jewish Refugees

1 min 16 sec

"Az Men Shmirt, Fort Men": A Bribe for a Transit Visa

3 min 18 sec

"Shoyn Farshtanen!": Guiding A Yiddish Speaker Around Israel

1 min 56 sec

A Generation of Refugee Children

1 min 32 sec

My Father's Yiddish Folk Song Medleys

2 min 48 sec

Waiting for the Messiah to Take Him to Israel: My Grandfather's Anti-Zionist Orthodoxy

1 min 31 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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