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.

Memories of Fleeing: from Białystok to a Russian Work Camp

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Jacob Apelberg, Holocaust survivor and translator of Yiddish poetry, tells his journey out of Poland after his grandparents pass away. He and his mother are removed from a Bialystock synagogue and put on a train that takes them to a work camp in Russia.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Jacob Apelberg.

This excerpt is in English.

Jacob Apelberg was born in Wasewo, Poland in 1932.