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This is a picture of me (second from left) and my colleagues in the Technical University in Brno. It was taken during our classes, in the early 1930s.
I went to university in 1926, but in Czechoslovakia. I was admitted to Brno Technical University after I had been turned down at Lwow University because of the numerus clausus: they wouldn't admit me because I was a Jew. There were many students from Brno in Poland, almost all of them Jews. Jews of all hues, many communists, Zionists, and such as myself, raised in Polish culture, there were like three from Warsaw and like four from Cracow.
In my third year I had my first official exam. I went to Lwow but there they told me to start everything from the beginning, even though they recognized some of the exams I had taken in Brno. In Lwow, my schoolmate from gymnasium, Jan Gustkowicz, was a curate at the Maria Magdalena church. The church stood on Sapiehy Street and the building next door was the university. I went to him whenever anti-Semitic riots started and classes were interrupted. We'd play chess.
During the summer breaks I worked as an apprentice at various factories. On top of that, I worked for over a year in a foundry in Glinik Mariampolski near Jedlicze. There was a master carpenter there, a Czech. I spoke fluent Czech, so we talked a lot. I felt comfortable there, and he qualified me as a journeyman. I completed my studies in 1936. I have a genuine diploma, my only document from before the war.
