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When I was 6 years old I went to school on Krochmalna Street [Chmurner school number 36] because of Bundist sympathies at home. I started going to Freblowka [a pre-school ran according to the pedagogic system of F. Froebel] in the same building where the school was. I have very funny memories from Freblowka – I fell in love with a girl, Nomcia, I think Apfelbaum, who I [later] met in the ghetto, after such a long time, and it turned out Father knew her father, who was also a writer. I remember a boy, I can’t remember what his name was, but he had a runny nose all the time and he never wiped it, even when he would eat a bun. I remember a girl, I think Hanusia, who left Poland with her parents and went to southern America, which was a big deal. The entire pre-school walked her to a bus, which was strange, and that bus was to take them somewhere. Maybe to some port somewhere?
I went to Freblowka on Krochmalna until the 6th grade. I didn’t do the 7th, because I went to the Laor [Hebrew: light] high school [2A Nalewki Street]. On Krochmalna the teaching language was Yiddish, except history and Polish which were in Polish of course. There were crafts, once I hurt my finger with an iron file. In the gym there were ladders on walls. We had to climb them. I wasn’t good at gym, I couldn’t jump over any vaulting horse.
I remember that the school corresponded with another school n Vienna, possibly also a Bundist school, we wrote letters, to various kids, in Yiddish. I remember a gentleman used to come over, I think his name was Melech Rawicz [originally Zacharia Chone Bergner (1893-1976), a poet writing in Yiddish, a traveler], who used to show us slides from Africa. I always liked geography, biology, animals.
I don’t remember the school on Krochmalna well. I think it was in the back premises, because we used to exit onto a yard. I remember a big room, where they used to show us the slides, a classroom, double door, a blackboard on the right, desks on the left, I always wanted to sit with Pola Boznicka. She was my sweetheart. They caught me once when I cut out the name Izio and Pola from a newspaper, from an obituary I think, and I glued it in my notebook, everyone laughed at me. It must have been in the 1st or 2nd grade.
There was a hole for an inkstand in the desk, we used to write with a pen called ‘mendelowka’ or ‘krzyzowka,’ those were nib pens. ‘Mendelowka’ was long, ended with a kind of a flat circle, it wrote completely differently than ‘krzyzowka’ which had a cut in shape of a cross. I didn’t have good handwriting, the teacher didn’t like it. We were 30 in the class. There were lunches at school, but I never ate them. I used to go home for lunch, and bring breakfast from home.
I remember the action of drinking cod liver oil. We had to go [to school] and it annoyed me that I had to do the trip again from Sliska to Krochmalna in order to drink that horrible cod liver oil, and there wasn’t always a lemon to kill that taste in your mouth.
I went to Freblowka on Krochmalna until the 6th grade. I didn’t do the 7th, because I went to the Laor [Hebrew: light] high school [2A Nalewki Street]. On Krochmalna the teaching language was Yiddish, except history and Polish which were in Polish of course. There were crafts, once I hurt my finger with an iron file. In the gym there were ladders on walls. We had to climb them. I wasn’t good at gym, I couldn’t jump over any vaulting horse.
I remember that the school corresponded with another school n Vienna, possibly also a Bundist school, we wrote letters, to various kids, in Yiddish. I remember a gentleman used to come over, I think his name was Melech Rawicz [originally Zacharia Chone Bergner (1893-1976), a poet writing in Yiddish, a traveler], who used to show us slides from Africa. I always liked geography, biology, animals.
I don’t remember the school on Krochmalna well. I think it was in the back premises, because we used to exit onto a yard. I remember a big room, where they used to show us the slides, a classroom, double door, a blackboard on the right, desks on the left, I always wanted to sit with Pola Boznicka. She was my sweetheart. They caught me once when I cut out the name Izio and Pola from a newspaper, from an obituary I think, and I glued it in my notebook, everyone laughed at me. It must have been in the 1st or 2nd grade.
There was a hole for an inkstand in the desk, we used to write with a pen called ‘mendelowka’ or ‘krzyzowka,’ those were nib pens. ‘Mendelowka’ was long, ended with a kind of a flat circle, it wrote completely differently than ‘krzyzowka’ which had a cut in shape of a cross. I didn’t have good handwriting, the teacher didn’t like it. We were 30 in the class. There were lunches at school, but I never ate them. I used to go home for lunch, and bring breakfast from home.
I remember the action of drinking cod liver oil. We had to go [to school] and it annoyed me that I had to do the trip again from Sliska to Krochmalna in order to drink that horrible cod liver oil, and there wasn’t always a lemon to kill that taste in your mouth.
Period
Interview
Izaak Wacek Kornblum