Tag #135893 - Interview #78511 (Vasile Grunea)

I didn’t go to cheder. There was a four-grade Jewish elementary school in Brasso, where the language of teaching was Romanian, but there were Hebrew classes, which were held by the director of the school, Kain, for a while. Religion classes were mainly held by rabbi Deutsch and in the framework of these classes he usually gave us lectures on Jewish history, Jewish self-esteem, arts, and Jewish writers. What’s more, he also organized a youth service for the pupils of the school on Sabbath. The Jewish elementary school – which was officially called Scoala Primara Izraelita Brasov [Israelite Elementary School of Brasso], I think, and had only 4 grades – was located in the same street as the Saxon elementary school, we were separated by an alley-way only; we had blue caps and the Saxons had red caps. I went to this elementary school from 1933 to 1937. It happened very often that when we or they left school, we ran into each other and they picked a quarrel with us and we had fights. We must have been more vehement because we beat them up from time to time and then the director of the Saxon school came to complain to the director of our school. We got to know about these visits because the director used to call us and tell us not to fight with them again. So, there were such conflicts between us.