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According to the New
York Public Library, which houses the entire oral
history collection of the American Jewish Committee:
"The New York Public Library's Dorot Jewish Division's
American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection is the
outcome of the 'grandparent' of Jewish oral history
projects. The Division holds the only complete
compilation of transcripts and recordings from this
25-year project that began in the 1960s. The collection
contains interviews with 2,250 individuals--comprising
approximately 1oo,000 pages of transcripts and 6,000
hours of audiotapes. The American Jewish Committee
interviewed individuals from all walks of life, thereby
compiling a collection of oral histories documenting the
Jewish experience in America."
One
of these interviews was conducted with the great Yiddish
actress Celia Adler over a two-day period in October
1974. It was then part of the William E. Wiener Oral
History Library of the American Jewish Committee.
With the
permission of the AJC, the Museum of the Yiddish Theatre
eagerly makes twenty-five excerpts of this
interview available to you here (more than an
hour-and-a-half's worth in all), so that you may hear here, from the lips of
our dear Celia Adler, about her life, both on a personal
and professional level.
Many of the anecdotes that appear here are detailed in
greater depth within her written autobiography, "The Celia Adler
Story," which is also made available to you here within
this exhibition, translated into English from its
original Yiddish. You may like to listen to each of the
excerpts before reading the two volumes of her story. |
