Ludwik Krasucki

This is me,at the age of ten. This photo must have been taken in Warsaw, around 1935.

I was a gifted child. When I went to elementary school - I was sent to a normal public school on Hoza Street - Mom arranged for me to be placed in the second grade from the start.

I could read, write, and count. At seven I finished the second grade, terribly bored and with all ‘A’s.

By then I had read all the books written by Curwood and May, as well as London's ‘Martin Eden’.

On the initiative of the headmistress, I was assigned right away to the fourth grade. In that way I completed elementary school at the age of ten.

At the age of eleven, I was admitted to the first gymnasium grade at the Warsaw Merchant Congregation Gymnasium on Walicow Street in Warsaw.

It wasn't a Jewish gymnasium, but the kind of progressive school to which Jewish parents readily sent their children.

That school was the first so-called experimental semi-boarding school in Poland. We were taught by the best teachers.

I was an all-As student but was constantly in trouble on account of my behavior, which didn't involve any acts of thuggery on my part, but rather distribution of cribs, boredom, etc.

At the same time, in the company of boys two years older than me, I developed a kind of resourcefulness, stamina, an ability to adapt to difficult circumstances, and that skill later on had a number of consequences that were reflected in my experiences under the occupation [the German occupation of Poland].