Lala’s Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust
by LaLa Fishman and Steven Weingartner
(Northwestern University Press, 1997)

I employed interviewing and related oral history skills to chronicle experiences of Holocaust survivor Lala Fishman (née Weintraub) before, during, and after World War II. As well, I interviewed Lala’s brother, Fima Weintraub, to recount his experiences as a Red Army artillery officer and officer in Haganah during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. Additionally, I consulted a host of primary and secondary sources to provide the historical backdrop for their personal accounts, researching and writing about Jewish life in Eastern Europe and Poland in the early 1900s, the Nazi genocide, military operations on Eastern Front, the plight of displaced persons in postwar Europe, and the creation of Israel.