"And this is my autobiography..."
David Furman, age 92, Berdichev   

In 2002, Indiana University professors Jeffrey Veidlinger and Dov-Ber Kerler went aheym, homeward, to find Eastern Europe's last native speakers of Yiddish, the language that defined Jewish life in the region for almost a thousand years.

Over the course of the next eight years, they traveled across five countries (Ukraine, Moldova, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia), collecting approximately 800 hours of linguistic and oral history video interviews, aided by a team of researchers and film crew.

Conducted primarily in Yiddish, these unique interviews explore Jewish life in the region before, during and after World War II, with a focus on language, religious customs and beliefs, song, and Holocaust testimony. Recorded in situ, or on the site of memory itself, these testimonies bring to life the story of those Jews who not only survived, but rebuilt their lives in the very places where some of the most tumultuous events of the 20th century occurred.