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.

Riga's Beloved Yiddish Theater

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Yakob Basner, Yiddish teacher and Holocaust survivor, recalls the thriving Yiddish theater scene in Riga before the war, and how he used to go to show with his neighbor who worked as a stagehand.

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.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

"I See Riga with Different Eyes": Memories of My City

1 min 46 sec

Growing Up in Riga's Yiddish-Speaking Jewish Neighborhood

2 min 21 sec

Jewish Education in Latvia Before the War

3 min 29 sec

One of the Biggest Markets in Europe: Working, Buying, and Selling in Pre-War Riga, Latvia

2 min 34 sec

"Look How They're Kissing": Connecting and Reconnecting with My Wife

2 min 28 sec

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

2 min 35 sec

They Took My Mother: The First Days of the Holocaust

4 min 38 sec

Roaches and One Hundred Grams of Bread: Life in the Riga Ghetto

3 min 16 sec

The Day They Burned the Synagogues of Riga

3 min 20 sec

He Was a Matzah Specialist: Making Matzah with my Father-in-Law

2 min 8 sec

Memorializing the Rumbula Massacre of Latvia's Jewish Community

4 min 46 sec

Arrested for Nothing: Jewish Life Under Khrushchev

2 min 42 sec

Announcement for a "Yiddish Event": Finding a Jewish Community in California

2 min 4 sec

"My Language, My Life": My Connection to Yiddish

2 min 4 sec

Remembering the Rumbula Massacre in Latvia

7 min 25 sec

Jewish Community Politics in Riga

4 min 50 sec

What Little Yiddishkayt We Could Observe in Post-War Soviet Riga

1 min 22 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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