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I talked with them in Polish, whereas Grandpa spoke to Grandma in Yiddish, mostly when they didn’t want me to understand their conversation.
When eventually I was able to learn German, which I did with incredible speed, they continued to believe that I couldn’t understand them while in fact I frequently understood what they were talking about, thanks to my knowledge of German.
Oftentimes I would be mystified as to why they didn’t want me to hear them speaking, as they weren’t discussing anything particularly horrifying. Grandma spoke excellent German, like a native; her Polish was also very good, but it grew richer by the year, which means that her Polish was ‘in statu nascendi’[coming to being], that she was in the process of learning it. She spoke a slightly different variant of Yiddish, since I remember that during their conversations Grandpa kept uttering a kind of ‘eh’ sound, and Grandma had to repeat what she had just said a second time.
When eventually I was able to learn German, which I did with incredible speed, they continued to believe that I couldn’t understand them while in fact I frequently understood what they were talking about, thanks to my knowledge of German.
Oftentimes I would be mystified as to why they didn’t want me to hear them speaking, as they weren’t discussing anything particularly horrifying. Grandma spoke excellent German, like a native; her Polish was also very good, but it grew richer by the year, which means that her Polish was ‘in statu nascendi’[coming to being], that she was in the process of learning it. She spoke a slightly different variant of Yiddish, since I remember that during their conversations Grandpa kept uttering a kind of ‘eh’ sound, and Grandma had to repeat what she had just said a second time.
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Interview
Ludwik Krasucki
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