Identity

The New York Times published an article last week noting that, in the past, immigrants to the U.S. sometimes changed their name to make it more American-sounding. Nowadays, the vast majority of immigrants keep their names.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, expositions and fairs were a way of educating people not only about their nation and its place in the world but also about their own place in American society. In 1893, over 27 million people attended the World’s Columbian Exposition—an exposition that used architecture, artifacts, and “living exhibits” to celebrate “American progress.” Held in Chicago to mark the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s voyages to the Americas, it attracted over 13 million Americans—about one of every five people in the nation.

10 minutes
Source: The National Center for Jewish Film

Part of the video montage Jews of Poland, this short documentary captures the spirit of Jewish life in pre-World War II Warsaw. Narrated in Yiddish with English subtitles, it presents the viewer with important images of daily life in Jewish Warsaw as it was before the Nazi invasion.