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.

Why I Don't Have Family Photos From Before WWII

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Samuel Ponczak, Holocaust survivor, polyglot, and translator, describes his escape from the Warsaw Ghetto with his mother in the winter of 1941. At three years old, his mother gave him pictures to entertain and distract him from the journey which he tore up during the trek through a frozen river.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Samuel Ponczak.

This excerpt is in English.

Samuel Ponczak was born in Warsaw, Poland.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

"Shloyme, This is Your Sister'": One Girl's Escape from a Cattle Car to Treblinka Extermination Camp

4 min 33 sec

"Remember us! Tell what happened!" People's Screams Going to Gas Chambers During World War II

2 min 19 sec

"Saving the Children and Taking Them to Palestine": Hashomer Hatzair's Jewish Summer Camps in Poland

2 min 41 sec

"The Notion of Jews Being in a Position of Strength was Strange to Me": Living through the 1956 War

2 min 27 sec

"I Remember Asking, 'How Could I Become a Non-Jew?'": Post-WWII Poland in the Eyes of a Jewish Child

1 min 36 sec

"Being Jewish and Being Stateless is not a Good Combination": Jewish Immigration to Buenos Aires in the 1960s

3 min 29 sec

"When I Left Poland the Holocaust was a Taboo Subject": Addressing the Holocaust in the 21st Century

4 min 32 sec

"We Need to Take Care of That Land, Where Our Families Lie": Remembering the Holocaust in Poland

3 min 35 sec

"That Priest Saved My Life": Escape from the Warsaw Ghetto

1 min 42 sec

"Most of the People were Very Strange-Looking": Soviet Siberian Labor Camp in the Eyes of a Child

2 min 53 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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