Tag #106694 - Interview #88491 (Emanuel Elbinger)

On Estery Street there was a Jewish school where you could do two grades in one year, up to the lower standard examinations. It was a Jewish school with state school powers. The teachers had come back from Russia, Jewish women, professional teachers. Some of them from the camps. Most of the children, the ones who’d come back from Russia, were up to date, because they’d been to school in Russia, but the ones who’d been here just didn’t have that general knowledge – when someone had said something to me in Zakopane about insects, exoskeletons – no way! I knew nothing. Polish was the language they taught in, but there was Yiddish and Hebrew too. And by the time it came to the lower standards I was all caught up. I took the lower standard – a delegation came from the department of education to listen in on the oral exams.