Of the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust 85 percent spoke Yiddish. Therefore, not only did the Jews of Eastern Europe experience near annihilation, their language, too, came close to extinction. Surviving Yiddish voices rarely entered the wider public discourse nor scholarship on the Holocaust leading many non-Yiddish speakers to believe the language and its rich culture had ceased to exist altogether. Using the example of Eastern European survivor landsmanshaftn in countries such as Poland, Germany and the United States, the lecture presented Jewish home town associations of key importance for the preservation and rescue of Yiddish secular culture after the Shoah. They offered a regular safe space for survivors to speak Yiddish and they actively committed themselves to keeping Yiddish alive. They held meetings, published magazines and books, and organized cultural and commemorative events – all in Yiddish. These practices were instrumental for Yiddish to remain an actively spoken language in the diaspora.