Selected text
There were 2 sets of high school finals. I was the class of 1928-1929. First, sometime in February, was the Hebrew examination. In the exam we had history of the Jews and Hebrew literature, that was in Hebrew – the whole exam. And our normal finals, the state finals, were in May, I think. There were exams in 4 subjects. Polish definitely, history definitely, Latin definitely, and mathematics. I took my exams the first day.
Because our gymnasium didn’t have full state accreditation, I remember that the chairman of the examining panel was from the board of education. That caused absolute terror, because it was a kind of extra level of scrutiny. And the same day as me, one of the top students, Sara Bester, was sitting too – ‘B,’ at the beginning of the alphabet. She only had to sit one subject, because she was exempt from the rest.
And that chairman decided he wanted to examine a student who was exempt from all the subjects. She was suddenly called in and, being taken by surprise, must have given very poor answers. And she didn’t pass her finals. She took it terribly. And she died that same vacation. They said afterwards that it was because of that experience. She was an excellent student, maybe not so very intelligent, but incredibly hardworking.
Because our gymnasium didn’t have full state accreditation, I remember that the chairman of the examining panel was from the board of education. That caused absolute terror, because it was a kind of extra level of scrutiny. And the same day as me, one of the top students, Sara Bester, was sitting too – ‘B,’ at the beginning of the alphabet. She only had to sit one subject, because she was exempt from the rest.
And that chairman decided he wanted to examine a student who was exempt from all the subjects. She was suddenly called in and, being taken by surprise, must have given very poor answers. And she didn’t pass her finals. She took it terribly. And she died that same vacation. They said afterwards that it was because of that experience. She was an excellent student, maybe not so very intelligent, but incredibly hardworking.
Period
Interview
Emilia Leibel