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.

"It Never Left Me": My Return Trip to Germany

Watch now:

Sonia Pressman Fuentes—co-founder of the National Organization for Women who left Europe in 1934 on the Red Star Line—considers her trip to Germany in 1978. She discusses negotiating the trauma and bloodshed that surrounded her as she visited many sites and met many people with the same questions about guilt, healing, and memory.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Sonia Pressman Fuentes.

This excerpt is in English.

Jump to map

Other video highlights from this oral history

My Brother's Intuition: How We Left Germany in 1933

5 min 5 sec

"Eh, Let It Be Already": Abortion in Pre-War Berlin

3 min 55 sec

A Mother's Broken Promise, An Uncle's Gambled Dowry, A Hat Full of Bullet Holes: The Beginning of My Parent's Marriage

11 min 54 sec

A Family Saved from Deportation by Camille Huysmans

2 min 9 sec

Passengers of The Red Star Line: The Only Survivor at the Museum Opening

7 min 46 sec

Records of My Ancestors: My Trip to Poland

7 min 35 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

Themes: