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.

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

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Ina Lancman, daughter of Soviet Yiddish poet Naftali Herts Kon, describes her complicated relationship to Yiddish as a child and adolescent, and remembers her friends' antisemitic responses to Yiddish.

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

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

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

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

More information about this oral history excerpt

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