Daniel Bertram on a school trip to Blonia, Cracow

This is a photo taken on 4th September 1934. The group of students from the School of Commerce went to Blonia, one of the parks in the center of Cracow. I am the third from left in the bottom row. When I met a friend of mine Beno Loewi from Montreal in 1976, we were trying together to write down all the names of people who went on this trip with us. I can give you some names of the students on the picture: Romek Singer, Dranger, Beno Loewi, Daniel Bertram, Grunhut, Jakub Kranz, Henryk Mauer, Brenner, Maciej Engelberg, Manek Rubinstein, Dudek Honig, Henryk Gries, Ignacy Spinner, Grajower, Hilek Gerichter , Ignacy Kineller, Eli Scheinowitz, Henek Grunwald, Zygmunt Akerman.

I went to the School of Commerce. I went to school longer than either my brother or my sister. It all cost money. The fees were 20 [zloty] in the first year, but I got in for 15 zloty. Then more and more every year; you paid more or less every month or so. It was a co-educational school. A Jewish high school of commerce, coeducational, a very hard school, one of those with four grammar school classes with a school-leaving exam. We had a few foreign languages: besides Polish there was German, English and Hebrew.

There were 16 teachers there, men and women, 23 subjects altogether. Among those who were still alive after the war was Mr. Aleksandrowicz. Mr. Szlang also survived the Holocaust. He probably immigrated with his wife to Israel. Of the other teachers, I met Mr. Bart in Lwow. Mr. Natel - bookkeeping - and Mr. Mandelbaum - commerce and commercial correspondence - taught there too, in a partner school. Bart taught commodities and calligraphy. There in Lwow there was Mr. Silberfenig, teaching Palestinography. There was Miss Szylingier, she taught geography and history. And Mr. Guzik taught us religion and Hebrew. Mr. Szlang taught religion and Hebrew too.