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.

"As If It Was My Own Story": The Powerful Impact of Anne Frank's Diary on a 12-year-old Polish Evangelist Girl

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Katarzyna Leszczyńska—Evangelist Jewish studies scholar and March of Life volunteer who grew up near Auschwitz—recalls the first time she read Anne Frank's novel and her deep emotional connection to it which sparked her lifelong interest in the Holocaust and inspired her to create lesson plans and go to different classrooms in her high school teaching about the Holocaust.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Katarzyna Leszczyńska.

This excerpt is in English.

Katarzyna Leszczyńska was born in Oświęcim, Poland in 1989.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"Growing Up on the Volcano": Non-Jewish Childhood in Auschwitz in the 1990s

2 min 14 sec

A Non-Jewish Pole's Interest in Jewish Studies

1 min 25 sec

"Our Responsibility as Poles is to Face the Truth": The International Perception of Poland, Anti-Semitism, and Remembering the Holocaust in Poland Today

5 min 54 sec

"There is a Risk That the Interest Will Die Out:" The Future of Yiddish

2 min 25 sec

The Surviving Synagogue in Auschwitz

1 min 57 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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