A Yiddish World Remembered

A Yiddish World Remembered is a 2002 Emmy-award-winning documentary by Andrew Goldberg that uses archival photographs, never-before-seen archival videos, and survivor testimony to reconstruct the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, which were destroyed by the Holocaust. Oscar nominated actor Elliott Gould narrates. Summary Long before the Holocaust, antisemitism threatened Eastern European Jews. Many Jews immigrated to the region after having been expelled from Western Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries, and their communities only became more concentrated when the Russian government confined them to the area, specifically the nations of modern-day Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Slovakia, and parts of northern Hungary. Once they were settled, the Jews still weren't safe. A never-before-seen film shot in the 1920s reveals the aftermath of a pogrom, where Cossacks tore through Jewish neighborhoods raping, maiming, killing, and looting. But terror and hostility unified the Jewish community by forcing them to rely on one another. Jews in a shtetl all chipped in to help care for the poor in their community.