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.

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

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Ina Lancman, daughter of Soviet Yiddish poet Naftali Herts Kon, explains why she was born in Kazakhstan and how her family was able to escape German-invaded Soviet Union.

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.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

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

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

2 min 18 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

More information about this oral history excerpt

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