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.

"The Fate of All Jews will be Our Fate Too": Memories of the Beginning of WW2

Watch now:

Yakob Basner, Yiddish teacher and Holocaust survivor, recalls learning about the beginning of World War II from newspapers and German refugees, and how his family decided whether to stay or flee.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Yakob Basner.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

Yakob Basner was born in 1927. Yakob died in 2021.