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.

Chaim Grade and His (Remembered) City Vilna

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David (Dovid) Fishman, scholar of Eastern European Jewish history, reflects on how Yiddish writer and personal friend Chaim Grade spent most of his writing career writing about Vilna (now Vilnius, Lithuania), a city he never visited after fleeing it during World War Two.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with David (Dovid) Fishman.

This excerpt is in Yiddish.

This interview is part of the Yiddish in the Academy: scholars, language instructors, and students series.

Other video highlights from this oral history

More Optimism in Eastern Europe than the United States, Maybe: Dovid Fishman on the Role of Yiddish

5 min 52 sec

"A Book Is Not an Object, It's a Living Thing": Chaim Grade's Relationship to His Library

2 min 4 sec

"You Could Buy the New York Times in Yiddish": A Yiddish Speaking Micro-Community on Bainbridge Ave.

2 min 43 sec

The Address For Yiddish Writers in Philadelphia

1 min 11 sec

The Yiddish World of 1960s New York

2 min 18 sec

Dovid Fishman Remembers Yiddish Scholar Yudl Mark

3 min 10 sec

My Aunt, Leftist Yiddish Poet, Rokhl Fishman

2 min 43 sec

Yiddish Writer Chaim Grade's Appearance and Personality

3 min 41 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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