Selected text
I was a good student. Once I even had to go to school on a Saturday. This was during an inspector’s visit. The inspector would sometimes come to check how the students were doing. Miss Kaminska pleaded with Mother and Father, so they’d allow me to come to school on a Saturday, but without a pencil and a notebook, because they wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise [one wasn’t allowed to carry anything on Saturdays, because that was considered labor]. She wanted to show off how much her students knew. So they asked me questions and I answered perfectly. I even remember one question, about a writer named Jachowicz [Jachowicz, Stanislaw (1796-1857): Polish pedagogue and writer of fairy tales] and I told them everything. I had several favorite subjects at school: I liked Polish very much and geography; mathematics wasn’t very easy for me. It was professor Nawrot who taught me. He was a very good teacher, but for himself. He knew a lot, but he couldn’t pass on this knowledge of how to understand algebra to his students. Unfortunately, there were no students who could do their homework on their own.
I never received any kind of punishment. I remember in public school I once got the so-called hand from my favorite teacher, with a pencil case or ruler, I don’t remember exactly. Such was the story: the teacher wasn’t in the classroom, the boys broke a window, nobody wanted to admit it, nobody wanted to tell on anyone. She knew I was too delicate for that [breaking the window]. So I was punished then, because everyone was, with this so-called hand.
They thought highly of me at school. Later even when they wanted to fire some teacher, because she hit someone unjustly, this Kazubinski came to us, on behalf of his daughter Zosia, and asked me to approach all my classmates with him to collect signatures that we have such respect for this teacher that we don’t want to see her punished.
I never received any kind of punishment. I remember in public school I once got the so-called hand from my favorite teacher, with a pencil case or ruler, I don’t remember exactly. Such was the story: the teacher wasn’t in the classroom, the boys broke a window, nobody wanted to admit it, nobody wanted to tell on anyone. She knew I was too delicate for that [breaking the window]. So I was punished then, because everyone was, with this so-called hand.
They thought highly of me at school. Later even when they wanted to fire some teacher, because she hit someone unjustly, this Kazubinski came to us, on behalf of his daughter Zosia, and asked me to approach all my classmates with him to collect signatures that we have such respect for this teacher that we don’t want to see her punished.
Period
Interview
Jakub Bromberg
Tag(s)