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Then I had a break [didn’t go to school] and I prepared for the state gymnasium. [Private Jewish gymnasiums were not qualified to hold matriculation examinations.] On the whole my parents decided what I did; I don’t even know why I took the state gymnasium exam when my brothers didn’t go to that gymnasium. They probably went to the Jewish gymnasium, I think.
There were two gymnasiums [in Kielce], boys’ gymnasiums. Mine, the Mikolaj Rey [Gymnasium], is called the Zeromski Gymnasium today. The building looked as if it had been a monastery building, because adjoining it was the building that housed the seminary. What the street was called? Jednosci Narodowej, something like that, I can’t remember.
The gymnasium was very old, the plaster badly crumbling. The other one, the Sniadecki Gymnasium, was richer, I’d say, that was where children from fairly wealthy families went. And there was a girls’ gymnasium too, which my fiancée went to, the Zimnowodzina Gymnasium [the Stefania Wolmanowa-Zimnowodzina Girls’ School was on the corner of Wolnosci Place and Slowackiego Street], Zimnowodzina was the headmistress.
I got into the Polish one [gymnasium] by passing an exam, in 1926, I think. I sat mathematics, Polish; Latin started once you got into the gymnasium, I only had it for four years. But two of us took the examination, my future brother-in-law [Mosze Baum] and I.
He did better than me; he was taken at once, but I had to re-sit the exam six months later. Four years of gymnasium, from 5th to 8th [grade], 4 grades. In 1927 [I started], something like that, more or less. Matriculation was in 1930.
I was in a class that numbered around 50 students. The class teacher was Konradi, the Latin master. 50 pupils, three of them Jewish, with surnames that made up a tiny fragment of landscape. You see, there was Baum – a tree; there was Gringras, or green grass; and there was an apple, he was called Jablko [a Polish, not Jewish surname], the third one, not Appel, but Jablko [Mr. Gringras is translating the surnames].
As it happened, in terms of level, we, the three of us, were top of the class. There were a few clever Poles, but not many. Some of them were one-sided, mastered literature well, for instance. Our classmates used to go to Baum’s house; he helped them in math, Polish, etc., he was very helpful. They didn’t come to me.
The three of us didn’t keep apart from the rest of the class. We mixed with the others. There was no isolation within the class. There were no insults, name-calling, etc. The number of pupils dwindled fast. In the next grade there were not 50, but 40 or so, and about 30 of us made it to matriculation.
They dropped out, didn’t move up from grade to grade, or the economic situation was such that they couldn’t carry on. They were boys from the countryside there. There was this one, Bezak. You could tell he was from a very poor family. There weren’t too many wealthy children in my gymnasium.
My friends at gymnasium? I’ve got these photographs taken near Kielce, it was in Dabrowka, in the forester’s hut. One of my classmates lived there, he was called Marian Pilichowski, he’s on the photograph.
We would go on these 7-km walks from Kielce to Dabrowka, and sit there and talk. That was all. That was all for that lad [Pilichowski], because a year or two later he died. He’d most likely been ill the whole time, with his lungs, even though he was the son of a forester. A very decent, nice lad.
We had a school uniform: a stand-up collar on our jackets and kepis on our heads, with crowns, like the kepis the French policemen wear. That was the compulsory gymnasium uniform. The boys on the photograph are in uniform. That was after matriculation, but they were poor boys and their gymnasium uniform was also their best suit. They hadn’t had it altered into ‘civilian clothes’ yet.
As for girls, we didn’t mix with Polish girls at all except in our political activities later in Warsaw. But the Polish girls – who we did look at, of course – went to the St. Kinga Gymnasium. They wore these dark blue hats, but they were girls we couldn’t go up to, because that would have had consequences.
We knew it could end in a fight. At school my favorite sport was skating; I skated well, I was good at gymnastics. And although Polish girls did go there [to the ice rink], we never tried to chat them up, as you say, flirt with them – never!
I don’t remember the teachers much. There’s one photograph of the pupils in the classroom. You can see a tiled stove, benches with desks that opened, and sitting among us, in the center, is Irena Breneisen, the German teacher.
I took all the class photographs, assembled the group, with the camera on the tripod. I would put on what we called the ‘autoknips,’ the timer, and run to my place. Very often on these photographs I’m peering at the camera to check if it’s working. My face is a little different to the faces of my other classmates on the photograph.
The photographs of my class weren’t taken with a Leica. Back then it was a regular small bellows camera. They don’t make those at all any more. That camera had a foldout baseboard, and the lens was at the front in the bellows, a pleated bag like a diminishing accordion; I probably had a camera like that. I had a Leica later, when I was at the Polytechnic.
Then I would make the prints, myself. I developed them, because that camera took glass plates, about 6 cm by 9 cm in size, not film. And I made the enlargements in the laboratory at my father’s photography firm. I developed and enlarged them myself, and made 50 or so prints. For all my classmates.
There were two gymnasiums [in Kielce], boys’ gymnasiums. Mine, the Mikolaj Rey [Gymnasium], is called the Zeromski Gymnasium today. The building looked as if it had been a monastery building, because adjoining it was the building that housed the seminary. What the street was called? Jednosci Narodowej, something like that, I can’t remember.
The gymnasium was very old, the plaster badly crumbling. The other one, the Sniadecki Gymnasium, was richer, I’d say, that was where children from fairly wealthy families went. And there was a girls’ gymnasium too, which my fiancée went to, the Zimnowodzina Gymnasium [the Stefania Wolmanowa-Zimnowodzina Girls’ School was on the corner of Wolnosci Place and Slowackiego Street], Zimnowodzina was the headmistress.
I got into the Polish one [gymnasium] by passing an exam, in 1926, I think. I sat mathematics, Polish; Latin started once you got into the gymnasium, I only had it for four years. But two of us took the examination, my future brother-in-law [Mosze Baum] and I.
He did better than me; he was taken at once, but I had to re-sit the exam six months later. Four years of gymnasium, from 5th to 8th [grade], 4 grades. In 1927 [I started], something like that, more or less. Matriculation was in 1930.
I was in a class that numbered around 50 students. The class teacher was Konradi, the Latin master. 50 pupils, three of them Jewish, with surnames that made up a tiny fragment of landscape. You see, there was Baum – a tree; there was Gringras, or green grass; and there was an apple, he was called Jablko [a Polish, not Jewish surname], the third one, not Appel, but Jablko [Mr. Gringras is translating the surnames].
As it happened, in terms of level, we, the three of us, were top of the class. There were a few clever Poles, but not many. Some of them were one-sided, mastered literature well, for instance. Our classmates used to go to Baum’s house; he helped them in math, Polish, etc., he was very helpful. They didn’t come to me.
The three of us didn’t keep apart from the rest of the class. We mixed with the others. There was no isolation within the class. There were no insults, name-calling, etc. The number of pupils dwindled fast. In the next grade there were not 50, but 40 or so, and about 30 of us made it to matriculation.
They dropped out, didn’t move up from grade to grade, or the economic situation was such that they couldn’t carry on. They were boys from the countryside there. There was this one, Bezak. You could tell he was from a very poor family. There weren’t too many wealthy children in my gymnasium.
My friends at gymnasium? I’ve got these photographs taken near Kielce, it was in Dabrowka, in the forester’s hut. One of my classmates lived there, he was called Marian Pilichowski, he’s on the photograph.
We would go on these 7-km walks from Kielce to Dabrowka, and sit there and talk. That was all. That was all for that lad [Pilichowski], because a year or two later he died. He’d most likely been ill the whole time, with his lungs, even though he was the son of a forester. A very decent, nice lad.
We had a school uniform: a stand-up collar on our jackets and kepis on our heads, with crowns, like the kepis the French policemen wear. That was the compulsory gymnasium uniform. The boys on the photograph are in uniform. That was after matriculation, but they were poor boys and their gymnasium uniform was also their best suit. They hadn’t had it altered into ‘civilian clothes’ yet.
As for girls, we didn’t mix with Polish girls at all except in our political activities later in Warsaw. But the Polish girls – who we did look at, of course – went to the St. Kinga Gymnasium. They wore these dark blue hats, but they were girls we couldn’t go up to, because that would have had consequences.
We knew it could end in a fight. At school my favorite sport was skating; I skated well, I was good at gymnastics. And although Polish girls did go there [to the ice rink], we never tried to chat them up, as you say, flirt with them – never!
I don’t remember the teachers much. There’s one photograph of the pupils in the classroom. You can see a tiled stove, benches with desks that opened, and sitting among us, in the center, is Irena Breneisen, the German teacher.
I took all the class photographs, assembled the group, with the camera on the tripod. I would put on what we called the ‘autoknips,’ the timer, and run to my place. Very often on these photographs I’m peering at the camera to check if it’s working. My face is a little different to the faces of my other classmates on the photograph.
The photographs of my class weren’t taken with a Leica. Back then it was a regular small bellows camera. They don’t make those at all any more. That camera had a foldout baseboard, and the lens was at the front in the bellows, a pleated bag like a diminishing accordion; I probably had a camera like that. I had a Leica later, when I was at the Polytechnic.
Then I would make the prints, myself. I developed them, because that camera took glass plates, about 6 cm by 9 cm in size, not film. And I made the enlargements in the laboratory at my father’s photography firm. I developed and enlarged them myself, and made 50 or so prints. For all my classmates.
Period
Interview
Julian Gringras
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