School certificate

School certificate

This is my certificate from school.

[I attended] the Jewish school. We weren't only Jews there. There were Bulgarian children, too. The Jewish school was only till 4th grade. We studied everything there, including Hebrew language, exactly the same way as they do at my granddaughter's school now. We went to the Synagogue every Friday evening when I was a student at the Jewish school. There were some parts of the service in which we took part also. My grandmother was very proud that I sang in the temple. After the Jewish school, we went to schools for primary education.

Then it was time to enter a high school. There were certain quotas for us - the Jews. Practically only students with very high grades managed to enter high school. There were other Jews in our class. Classes at school were formed according to the foreign language that we wanted to study. And, as we [Jews] were ill disposed towards German because of all the sufferings we had borne, we were all inscribed in a French parallel [a class for students studying French as a foreign language]. We were all girls at the same age. And we are still friends. I even meet those who are still here from time to time. There were Bulgarian girls who were our friends as well.

Out of school most of my friends were Jews, maybe because we lived close to each other. As far as it concerns the subjects we studied, from the very beginning I liked mathematics. Our math teacher was a very nice person. Sometimes you like the subject because you like the teacher. And I had another teacher who was teaching Geography. He wanted to rate my work with a lower mark. I don't remember why. There was a school-leaving examination for students with lower marks. So, I was forced to pass that final exam because I needed high scores to have better chances when applying to the university.

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