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.
Cantonists: How Many Jews Arrived in Finland
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Joseph Gideon Bolotowsky, president of Jewish community in Helsinki 1988-2007, describes his own ancestors’ arrival in Finland, mostly as Cantonists. He then goes on to describe what Jewish Cantonists were, young boys who were recruited into the Russian Czarist army schools at the age of 11 or 12, educated in the non-Jewish Cantonist schools, then forced to serve the 25 year army service—all in an effort to convert the Jewish children to Russian Orthodox.
This is an excerpt from an oral history with Joseph Gideon Bolotowsky.
This excerpt is in Yiddish.
Joseph Gideon Bolotowsky was born in Helsinki, Finland in 1947.
