For those interested, the Archives of Historical and Ethnographic Yiddish Memories(AHEYM - “homeward” in Yiddish) is an oral history research project of Indiana University Profs. Dov-Ber Kerler and Jeffrey Veidlinger which seeks to record for posterity the memories and legacies of Yiddish-speaking Jews who remained in Europe after the War. From 2002-2010, Kerler and Veidlinger traveled across five Eastern European countries - Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia - to conduct about 900 hours’ worth of interviews with approximately 350 survivors in their home environments, discussing with them Jewish folkways, customs, religious practices, cuisine, and memories from life before, during, and after the Holocaust. The website contains samples of video interviews with these fascinating European Jews and is connected with a blog, managed by Project Manager Dr. Asya Vaisman, which also posts content from these interviews on a regular basis.

And now, just for fun: check out “Yiddish: The Living Language of the Jewish People,” a 2008 article by Rokhl Kafrissen disputing the common claim that the Yiddish language is “dead” and stressing its importance in contemporary Jewish life; thisWikipedia article on a contemporary English-language (and also Hebrew-language) phenomenon known as Shm-reduplication (“money, shmoney”), which, as you might have intuited, actually traces its history back to Yiddish-speaking Jews in America; and a recently-published Haaretz article about a new tour of Tel Aviv’s Yiddish cultural scene (h/t Larry Weinman).