Tag #123374 - Interview #78050 (rena michalowska)

My parents did want me to learn Yiddish, so a melamed came to our house to teach me. But my resistance must have been strong, because the effort was short-lived and I didn't learn anything. My father could easily read Yiddish, and so could my mother, I think. My father was very well-read. At home, there were books in Yiddish, German and Polish. I'm convinced he read the classics in Yiddish: Sholem Aleichem [5], Peretz [6], but there was also Herzl [7]. He read in German: Schiller [8], Goethe [Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749-1832, the greatest German poet of the Romantic period], Heine [Heinrich Heine, 1797-1856, a German Romantic poet], not to mention Feuchtwanger [9], Kafka [10], Thomas Mann [1875-1955, German prose-writer and anti-fascist activist, who emigrated in 1933], whom he simply devoured. He loved literature. I can't remember him reading newspapers; I don't know if there were any in Tysmienica.