Tag #131869 - Interview #78773 (Masha Blumenthal)

n Liepaja we had three Jewish schools. In one of the schools lessons were taught in German. This school was considered very fashionable. It was for children of the richer parents. I don't know if they paid for studying at this school or not. The second was in Yiddish and the third in Hebrew. I attended the school that was in Hebrew. In our school we had the rather poor children. The parents who were better off, like my father, helped the school a lot. In addition to the preparatory class I studied in this school for six years. And then in the 1930s there remained only one Hebrew secondary school and I passed the exams to enter it. I was accepted, but could only study there for two years because the war began.

I went to this grammar school for two years before the war. The main language of instruction was Latvian. But the children spoke German among themselves. It wasn't difficult to enter that school, but you had to pay 500 Lats a year, not including the books. 500 Lats was a huge sum of money.