Interview

Aba Kaviner was born in 1921 in Derazhnya, where he was able to receive a Jewish education, first in a heder and then in a clandestine yeshiva. His father worked as a cooper and his mother was a homemaker. In 1939 he was drafted into a military school in Leningrad. He remained in the army until 1946, serving in the Baltics and in Moscow. After the war he returned to Derazhnya, but soon thereafter moved to Khmelnytskyy, where he eventually found work as the director of a carpentry workshop.


Other Interviews:

The Butcher's Synagogue
Transmitting Secrets to America
Antisemitism

Physics in Yiddish

Khmelnytskyy, Ukraine

Aba Kaviner was born in 1921 in Derazhnya, Ukraine. As a child, he attended both a Soviet Yiddish school and a yeshiva. Kaviner completed his education in the Soviet school in 1939, just before the school closed. At the school, all subjects were taught in Yiddish, including math and physics. In this clip, Kaviner describes how physics was taught in the Yiddish language -- accessibly and clearly.

Kaviner served in the army from age 19 and moved to Khmelnitsky after the war, where AHEYM interviewed him in 2008.