Tag #121982 - Interview #100403 (Stanislaw Wierzba)

A bit later I started attending the cheder. My brother did not go there, and neither did my sister, because they were much younger than me, so they did not get a chance to begin their studies before the war. My cheder lessons were not every day, but, I believe, 2 or 3 times a week. But on which days – that I don’t remember. There were 4 or 5 of us attending, all boys. I don’t remember my friends from the cheder, so obviously I would not be able to recognize them today. I only know that two of them were twins. They were identical, and sometimes we would amuse ourselves guessing, trying to figure out which one was which. The cheder was right next to the synagogue. So we would spend an hour there, maybe two at the most, and the teacher taught us the Hebrew alphabet, reading, and he tested us on what we knew. It was not some sort of systematic education, more of an occasional thing, it seems to me. My parents could not afford for me to leave home, drop out of school, and go somewhere, to a Jewish school outside Radomsko. And in Radomsko there was no such school – I mean one that would teach exclusively Jewish things. I do remember that a Jewish newspaper was printed in Radomsko. And I remember that they described the cheder, and that my name was mentioned, among others, as one of its students.