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.

To Write in Yiddish or German? Naftali Hers Kon & Stefan Zweig

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Ina Lancman, daughter of Soviet Yiddish poet Naftali Herts Kon, discusses her father's struggle to choose between writing in Yiddish or German, and the family story of Stefan Zweig offering him advice.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Ina Lancman.

This excerpt is in English.

Ina Lancman was born in Kazakhstan, Soviet Union in 1941.

This interview is part of the Beyond the Books: Yiddish writers and their descendants series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

We Fell Through The Cracks: Our Family's Move to Kazakhstan During World War Two

2 min 49 sec

Great Purges & Yiddish Writer Naftali Herts Kon's First Gulag Experience

3 min 9 sec

Childhood Memories of Yiddish Artists' Gatherings in Czernowitz

4 min 20 sec

Pots Were Still on the Stoves: Returning to Czernowitz Immediately After World War Two

1 min 36 sec

My Relationship to Yiddish as a Child and Adolescent in Soviet Ukraine

4 min 33 sec

Czernowitz, March 1949: Witnessing My Father, Yiddish writer Naftali Herts Kon's Arrest

4 min 36 sec

Description of My Father, Naftali Herts Kon

4 min 9 sec

Poland was Stuck between the Pressures of the Soviet Union and the West: My Father Naftali Herts Kon's Arrest in Poland, 1960

5 min 18 sec

Obtaining My Father Naftali Herts Kon's Papers from the Polish Archives

4 min 28 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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