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Hardly had I got back than I wanted to enroll in school, so much had Father instilled in me that 'you must learn.' I enrolled in school on Oleandry Street, but because I was too old to start from the beginning, I did two years in one year. You see when I got back I was 20, and it was a bit too late to start from the first grade of gymnasium. I caught up somehow. After that I sold another house and then another, got myself a few clothes. I already had some friends at school. When I finished school I started studying chemistry at the Jagiellonian University [12]. We used to go out having fun, as young people do, to Feniks for tea dances. In Bratniak [a student self-help organization] at the Jagiellonian University there was this Mr. Chlebowski. He was some chairman, some party guy out of this world. He helped me a lot, because he got me an apartment on Czapskich Street. A little attic room, but I was over the moon. He got me into the university student canteen. And his colleagues taught me and tried to make sure I passed everything, because in chemistry I had problems with math. My studying chemistry was stupid; I was more of a humanities person. What made me decide to do chemistry, I don't remember. But I think it was a girlfriend who went to do it. So we went together. I was hopeless at math, because I've never had a head for the exact sciences. But I made it through somehow, only I didn't write my dissertation. My son was born and I didn't manage it. I didn't have any help, because we had nothing. We were poor. My husband was a student, then he worked at Polfa [a pharmaceutical company]; he earned 700 zloty and we never had enough; my father-in-law helped us out a bit.
Period
Interview
Teofila Silberring