Leon Glazer's high school graduation photo

This is a picture of my class. It was taken on 6th June 1959, the day of my graduation from a part-time Technical High School for Economics in Luban Slaski. I didn't go to gymnasium, because I wanted to get a commercial education. I passed some exam and they took me. For the first two years I went to school in Brzeg, and then the school moved to Luban, where I took my school-leaving certificate. I'm standing in the middle row, third from the right. I can?t really recall anyone else in that picture. It was taken outside of the school building by a professional photographer. At first I had to complete elementary school. Because I didn't have any papers, they didn't count my 8th grade. No, because they said that there was no such thing as an 8th grade as such before the war. So in September 1954 I went to this school for people at work, an elementary school in Luban. I went for one year. All officers together. While I was going to the 8th grade Julia and I were still engaged. She helped me with my lessons, because I had no idea about mathematics, and by then she already had a secondary education. I had no problem with Polish. For instance, since childhood I've never made spelling mistakes, although I never learned my spelling much particularly. I don't know why, but it's perhaps a bad trait of mine, but I like correcting people. Not when they're talking, but writing. I graduated from elementary school a few months before our wedding. And in the end that forced me to carry on studying, because already then they were saying, unfortunately everyone has to have a school-leaving certificate. And yet beforehand they'd been saying 'Not certificates, but willingness will make an officer out of you' [a rhyming recruitment slogan]. Once I'd started learning, I said to myself that I would carry on. Studying had sort of attracted me in the sense that I not only had to get my school-leaving certificate, but a higher education too. But straight after my school-leaving certificate they sent me on a year's military training course to Warsaw, because I hadn't been to officer training school and for that reason I'd been in the rank of captain for too long. It was a specialist training course for political officers at the Dzierzynski Political Academy. I became a major while I was still in training. I remember that I was taught education, philosophy, psychology, Polish history and the history of the workers' movement, military geography and army tactics. I completed the course in 13th place out of 120 people. After that course I didn't want to go back to Luban, because unfortunately it was a hole. I thought to myself that after all, there were WOP units in Nowy Sacz, Koszalin, Szczecin, Gdansk and everywhere. I didn't want to go back, but they forced me to. You are there, you have to stay there, and that's the end of it. My friends from Luban who were already studying also encouraged me to study, so right after that course, in 1960, I started a part-time degree course at the Department of Law and Administration at Wroclaw University. It was a two-part course. First a three-year vocational course in administration, and then a two-year Master's course called administrative studies. I got my degree in 1966; I was in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel by then.