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.

She Wanted to Become an American; My Father Refused

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Bella Bryks-Klein, Yiddish speaker and daughter of writer Rachmil Bryks, tells how her mother wanted to assimilate into American culture while her father needed to retain and write his experiences from the Holocaust.

This is an excerpt from an oral history with Bella Bryks-Klein.

This excerpt is in Yiddish and English.

Bella Bryks-Klein was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1948.

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

Other video highlights from this oral history

Advice for Future Generations

2 min 27 sec

My Father Always Said, "It's Best to Write About One Family"

1 min 53 sec

Bella Sings Her Mother's Transylvanian Yiddish Shabbes Prayer

2 min 35 sec

My Father Wrote "To Tell the World What Happened" (formerly "He Never Really Left the Ghetto")

2 min 53 sec

My Father Yiddish Writer Rachmil Bryks' View on Yiddish

1 min 31 sec

He'd Go to Shul and then Buy a Newspaper

1 min 9 sec

How Rachmil Bryks Wrote

2 min 5 sec

Their World Was Lost, Not Just Their Lives

1 min 11 sec

My Life Is Now Completely Immersed in Yiddish

3 min 49 sec

Yiddish in Israel

3 min 33 sec

Learning to Read Yiddish with Poems with my Father, Yiddish Writer Rachmil Bryks

2 min 10 sec

More information about this oral history excerpt

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