Tag #110458 - Interview #88510 (Ludwik Hoffman)

I went to elementary school in Drohobycz. It was a Polish school, a public one. It was located on Mickiewicza Street, so it wasn’t far from my home. Young people of three denominations studied there: Roman Catholics, Greek Catholics, and Jews. There were hardly any problems between them, though some professors were obviously disposed rather unfavorably towards the Jews. I remember one professor who, when you didn’t know something, would say something like, ‘You stupid little Jew!’ But those were isolated cases. The obligatory religious class was organized so that the students were divided into three groups: A, B, and C, depending on their religion. All the Roman Catholics in a given class were allotted to, say, A, the Greek Catholics to B, and the Jews to C. And a teacher or priest would come and teach his religion. I certainly wasn’t among the most talented ones, in fact, I never applied myself to study. I was interested in history, in a sense also Jewish history.