Tag #127027 - Interview #78410 (Ticu Goldstein)

In high school, I was on good terms with Principal Litman and his nephew, Dan Alter. My father used to do some carpentry work at the principal’s house, somewhere by the [Kiseleff] Highway, in a residential part of Bucharest. The man had a great and generous heart. His school was a refuge for many teachers and pupils who had been banned from the Romanian schools. There were two or three teachers of Latin or History. Litman didn’t really need them all, but he wanted to help them survive. This remarkable teacher once showed us some pictures taken in Paris with him in the company of Bergson and other French scientists [Henri Louis Bergson (1859-1941): important French philosopher, though placed outside the philosophical trends of his time. His works include L’Evolution creatrice and Matiere et Memoire.]. After the war, Litman left for Israel, where he taught philosophy and opened a psychotherapy practice. When I finished high school, he wrote me a dedication on a book I used to prepare my graduation exam in philosophy. It went like this: ‘Don’t forget Eretz Israel even when you do philosophy’. You will later see how right he was.