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.

Leo Melamed's Oral History

Leo Melamed, child survivor of the Holocaust and former chairman of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, was interviewed by Christa Whitney in Glencoe, Illinois on December 13, 2012. This interview contains some Yiddish.

This interview was conducted in Yiddish and English.

Leo Melamed was born in Bialystok, Poland in 1932.

Video highlights from this oral history

Growing up with Yiddishist Parents

3 min

Visiting Childhood Home in Bialystok

2 min 49 sec

Celebrating Jewish Holidays In A Literary Yiddishist Fashion

1 min 34 sec

Give Them Passage to the United States! They Are on the Endangered List: Escaping Europe

4 min 5 sec

Reciting Poetry for the Chicago Yiddish Community

2 min 34 sec

Reciting "Dos Yingl fun Ayzn" for Avrom Sutzkever

6 min 25 sec

Icchok Melamdovich's Work

1 min 55 sec

A Father and Son on the Future of Yiddish

2 min 51 sec

Artifacts related to this oral history

Escape to the Futures

More information about this oral history

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