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.
Martin Schiller's Oral History
Martin Schiller, a retired electrical engineer and Holocaust survivor, was interviewed on June 13, 2013 by Mark Gerstein at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts.
This interview was conducted in English.
Martin Schiller was born in Poland in 1933.
Video highlights from this oral history
Experiencing Polish Anti-Semitism As A Child Before WWII
4 minutes 13 seconds
Saving My Mother and Brother from Execution
5 minutes 4 seconds
"A Tremendously Liberating Feeling": Sabotaging the German War Machine
4 minutes 2 seconds
Praying in Synagogue on the Eve of the Holocaust
1 minute 50 seconds
Debating the Existence of God During and After the Holocaust
5 minutes 15 seconds
"Shabbes for Me Was A Song From Friday Night Until The End": Celebrating Shabbes in Tarnobrzeg, Poland in the 1930s
1 minute 34 seconds
The People of Chelm and the Cat
2 minutes 59 seconds
Learning Yiddish Songs From M. Shtrigler in Buchenwald
4 minutes
The Dilemmas Posed by Collective Punishment in Forced Labor Camps During WWII
1 minute 41 seconds
A Fellow Yeshiva Student Questions the Holocaust
3 minutes 8 seconds
That's When I Fell In Love With The Nation of Israel: Singing While Baking Matzah
2 minutesArtifacts related to this oral history
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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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