Tag #109758 - Interview #78228 (Leon Glazer)

I was getting an education too. Because I didn't have any papers, they didn't count my 8th grade. No, because they said that there was no such thing as an 8th grade as such before the war. So in September 1954 I went to this school for people at work, an elementary school in Luban. I went for one year. All officers together. While I was going to the 8th grade [Editor's note: 7th grade; the 8th grade in elementary schooling was introduced in the education reform of 1961] Julia and I were still engaged. She helped me with my lessons, because I had no idea about mathematics, and by then she already had a secondary education. I had no problem with Polish. For instance, since childhood I've never made spelling mistakes, although I never learned my spelling much particularly. I don't know why, but it's perhaps a bad trait of mine, but I like correcting people. Not when they're talking, but writing.

I graduated from elementary school a few months before our wedding. And in the end that forced me to carry on studying, because already then they were saying, unfortunately everyone has to have a school-leaving certificate. And yet beforehand they'd been saying 'Not certificates, but willingness will make an officer out of you' [a rhyming recruitment slogan].