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.

"A Tool To Formulate Their Longing": East German Use of Yiddish as Resistance to Atomic Warfare

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Jalda Rebling—Renewal Cantor and Yiddish performer—recalls how Germans used Yiddish as a symbol of protest, identifying it as a language of the underdog.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Jalda Rebling.

This excerpt is in English.

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This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

"It was a Combination of Yiddish Dances, Music and Song": The Start of Renowned Yiddish Performer Lin Jaldati's Career in a Self-Started Performance Program in 1930s Berlin

2 min 48 sec

"They Gave Illegal House Concerts": Life of a Jewish Artist in the Underground in the Netherlands During Nazi Occupation

1 min 29 sec

"My Mom was Singing Yiddish Song in the Concentration Camp": Lin Jaldati's Yiddish Songs

2 min 35 sec

"On Stage She Was a Powerful Woman": The Internal Struggle of Renowned Yiddish performer Lin Jaldati

2 min 43 sec

"It's Very Difficult to Explain to People Who Don't Know": Jalda Rebling on Jewish Identity

2 min 21 sec

A Commemoration of Anne Frank sparked a Career in Yiddish Performance

1 min 56 sec

"We Jews were scared.... our protectors had disappeared": Jewish Life in Post-Cold War Germany

1 min 14 sec

"I Found the Light in the Darkness of Being a Jew": Spiritual Awakening in Upstate New York

2 min 49 sec

"I'm not part of the whole Klezmer business": The Generational Divide in Yiddish Music and the Preservation of Culture at the Yiddish Book Center

3 min 24 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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