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.

Benjamin (Binyomen) Harshav's Oral History

Benjamin Harshav, z"l, professor emeritus at Yale University, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on March 18, 2013 in North Haven, Connecticut. This interview is entirely in Yiddish.

This interview was conducted in Yiddish.

Benjamin (Binyomen) Harshav was born in Vilna, Lithuania in 1928. Benjamin (Binyomen) died in 2015.

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Video highlights from this oral history

History of the Sofye Gurevich School in Vilna

2 min 43 sec

Moyshe Kulbak Taught at My School

1 min 17 sec

The Kletskin Publishing House Was Downstairs: Prof. Benjamin Harshav, z"l, Remembers From His 1930s Childhood in Vilna

1 min 56 sec

Memories of Chaim Grade, Avrom Sutzkever, and Itzik Manger

1 min 59 sec

The First “Yung Vilne”: Prof. Harshav Remembers Growing Up with the Weinreichs

1 min 48 sec

Benjamin Harshav, z"l, Remembers Collecting Folklore in the Market in Vilna

2 min 52 sec

How Our Vilna School Assignments were Accidentally Saved Through WWII by the Nazis

1 min 49 sec

We Went Right When Everyone Went Left: Benjamin Harshav and Family Escape Death During WWII

4 min 9 sec

I Missed the Train While Escaping to the Ural Mountains During WWII

6 min 50 sec

Artifacts related to this oral history

Portrait

At the computer

Smiling portrait

More information about this oral history

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