This picture was taken during Tchernichovsky's visit to our gymnasium in Kovel arond 1932. He is the one in the center. This is not my class, it's another one. I don?t remember the names of the students. But I remember that we were very proud that famous writers, poets would come to visit us at school.
There was a Polish literature club in our Tarbut gymnasium. When its first chairman got his high school diploma, he passed his office to me. I remember my first paper 'Byron and Byronism in Polish Literature.' I also translated several sonnets by Shaul Tchernichovsky, who wrote Crimean sonnets just like Mickiewicz. Tchernichovsky later immigrated to Israel, just like Bialik. When I was probably in the eighth grade, an excellent Hebrew poet, a native Russian, Eliszeva, came to our school. She hadn't been born a Jewess, but had married a Jew and converted to Judaism.
Saul Tchernichovsky with students of the Kovel Tarbut gymnasium
The Centropa Collection at USHMM
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