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Interviews with Holocaust survivors reveal the richness of Yiddish

JL;DR SUMMARY The creation of the Corpus of Spoken Yiddish in Europe (CSYE) has made historical Yiddish dialects accessible by utilizing over 200 Holocaust survivor interviews from the USC Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

YiddishHolocaust SurvivorsUsc Shoah FoundationJewish Cultural HeritageYiddish DialectsTranscriptionCorpus Of Spoken Yiddish In EuropeIsaac BleamanLinguistic ResearchVisual History Archive

Places mentioned

Ukraine
"In this Yiddish interview, for example, Holocaust survivor Lazar Milamed talks about his childhood in a Ukrainian village, his experiences under the Nazis and his post-war life in Brooklyn."
Brooklyn, New York, United States
"In this Yiddish interview, for example, Holocaust survivor Lazar Milamed talks about his childhood in a Ukrainian village, his experiences under the Nazis and his post-war life in Brooklyn."
California, United States
"Based at the University of Southern California, the VHA holds almost 50,000 video interviews with Holocaust survivors."
Berkeley, California, United States
"After joining the faculty at Berkeley, Bleaman sought a way to make the VHAs Yiddish interviews more accessible to both linguists and students learning the language."

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Retrieved 2026-05-20 05:30:52 UTC
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