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.
Raphael Roginski's Oral History
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Raphael Roginski, musician and activist, was interviewed by Christa Whitney on May 5, 2013 in Sejny, Poland.
This interview was conducted in English.
This interview is part of the Yiddish and the Arts: musicians, actors, and artists series.
Video highlights from this oral history
Gambling in Yiddish: Growing up in Frankfurt in the 1970s and 80s
4 minutes 46 seconds
"You Can't Understand the Music Without Yiddish"
2 minutes 4 seconds
Raphael Roginski on Countering the “Fetishization” of Jewish Culture and Music in Poland
5 minutes 44 seconds
Raphael Roginski: Improv in Sejny, Poland
2 minutes 55 seconds
“Finding Space for Another Language in Polish Monoculture”: Using Yiddish in How I Present My Music
1 minute 59 seconds
“Who Am I, A Ghost?”: Making Sense of Multicultural Polish Past
3 minutes 25 seconds
“A Symbol of What Was Jewish Culture for Me”: My Uncle, an Auschwitz Survivor, was Funny
2 minutes 18 seconds
Raphael Roginski: Improv #2 in Sejny, Poland
4 minutes
Everything Had “A Flavor of War”: My Later Childhood in Post-WWII Poland
6 minutes 13 seconds
“An Amazing Place”: Red Lights, Trauma, and Yiddish in 1970s and 80s Frankfurt
7 minutes 46 secondsMore information about this oral history
Themes in this oral history:
- Germany, Poland, Podkowa Lesna, Borderlands Project, Fundacja Pogranicze, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s,
- Advice
- Family history
- stories about ancestors
- Childhood
- Jewish Identity
- Yiddish language
- Coming back to Yiddish
- Post-vernacular uses of Yiddish
- Immigration
- Migration
- Music
- Literature
- Poetry
- Ethnography
- Career and Professional Life
- Israel
- Eastern Europe
- Transmission
- Roots
- heritage
- Jewish community
- Rural
- Urban
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About the Wexler Oral History Project
Since 2010, the Yiddish Book Center’s Wexler Oral History Project has recorded more than 500 in-depth video interviews that provide a deeper understanding of the Jewish experience and the legacy and changing nature of Yiddish language and culture.
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