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.

How Singing for Josef Kramer in Bergen-Belsen Saved My Life

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Moshe Kraus, Holocaust survivor and first chief cantor of the Israel Defense Forces, describes how his family nearly escaped the Holocaust, and how his singing saved him in Bergen-Belsen.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Moshe Kraus.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

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Other video highlights from this oral history

How Synagogues have Changed

1 min 56 sec

How a Nign is Born

1 min 56 sec

The Role of Yiddish Today

1 min 26 sec

'A Sweet Mouth": They Came to Me For Blessings Because of My Grandfather, Kerestirer Rebbe

1 min 53 sec

"Last Night I Walked in Heaven" A Hasidic Folk Tale

8 min 24 sec

I Sang Professionally Into My Nineties

1 min 34 sec

'Keyn Kotsk Furt Men Nit' - Lyrics Explained

1 min 29 sec

Studying Music in Vienna with Joseph Schmidt's Teacher

1 min 47 sec

Surviving Kristallnacht in Vienna

1 min 20 sec

Life as a "Wunderkind"

2 min 17 sec

A Hasidic Folktale About A Graveside Miracle

2 min 3 sec

Sharing Meals with the Needy in Interwar Užgorod

3 min 41 sec

I Proposed After Half An Hour: Meeting and Marrying My Wife

4 min 16 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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