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At the age of six I went to elementary school, at Zeromskiego Street. After a couple of days they moved me to second grade because I could already read and write well. I hadn't studied before, but I could. And that ultimately proved my misfortune, that destroyed me, that ease - because I didn't feel like studying at all. I went there for two years, I think. When I was to go to fourth grade, my parents moved me to the school where my sister went - at the corner of Zielona and Zakatna Street, which was later renamed to Pogonowskiego [in 1936]. Zielona was a rather long street, running from the Hallera Square, I think, to Piotrkowska [Lodz's main street]. On the way it crossed Zeromskiego, where my grandparents lived, and there was the so- called green market there - an open-air market, and then those streets across: Gdanska, Wolczanska, Kosciuszki.
There were some 40 of us in the class, only girls, only Jews. It was a Polish-language school, the only difference being that we didn't go to school on Saturdays but instead on Sundays. I remember we started every day by singing 'When the Lights of Dawn Arise' [religious song with words by poet Franciszek Karpinski, (1741-1825)]. That's how it was, we knew it, I don't know whence, but we had in our blood. Let alone the fact when Marshal Pilsudski [4] died in 1935, there was massive national mourning - we all wore the black ribbons.
There were some 40 of us in the class, only girls, only Jews. It was a Polish-language school, the only difference being that we didn't go to school on Saturdays but instead on Sundays. I remember we started every day by singing 'When the Lights of Dawn Arise' [religious song with words by poet Franciszek Karpinski, (1741-1825)]. That's how it was, we knew it, I don't know whence, but we had in our blood. Let alone the fact when Marshal Pilsudski [4] died in 1935, there was massive national mourning - we all wore the black ribbons.
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danuta mniewska
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