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.

Unexpected Opportunity: Conducting Over 500 Interviews with Soviet Jews about the pre-WWII Period

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Anna Shternshis, Associate Professor of Yiddish at the University of Toronto, speaks about how an unexpected closure of an archival facility in New York led her to conduct her own interviews with Soviet Jewry.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Anna Shternshis.

This excerpt is in English.

Anna Shternshis was born in Moscow, Russia.

This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

The Daughters of Chuvashia Marching to Defeat Facism: A Yiddish Song from the Archives

4 min 2 sec

Language and Memory: Interviewing WWII Survivors About Yiddish Songs

1 min 9 sec

Living Through the Collapse of the USSR

1 min 58 sec

Being Jewish in Primary School in 1980s Moscow

2 min 17 sec

Formation of a Jewish Scholar in Moscow

4 min 42 sec

"Laughter as a Weapon": The Creation, Seizure, and Rediscovery of the Archive for Jewish Proletarian Culture

5 min 58 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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