Vasile Grunea's school leaving certificate

This is an official certificate, which confirms that I finished the Jewish elementary school of Brasso in June 1937. I went to this elementary school between 1933 and 1937. It was a Romanian-speaking Jewish elementary school and this certificate allowed me to enroll into secondary school. In our school, we didn't finish the 4th grade with the same teacher that we started the 1st grade with, as it was customary in other schools. In our school there was a different teacher in each grade, so you started school with one teacher and you finished the 4th grade with a different teacher. David Kain was the teacher of the 4th grade, and he was also the director of the school, so he signed the certificate. The school was maintained by the Orthodox and the Neolog community together. 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. After finishing the Jewish elementary school in 1937, I enrolled into the Dr Ion Mesota Lyceum. I had finished the 3rd grade there and the 1940/41 school year was about to start and I was going to start the 4th grade, when the Antonescu regime passed the numerus nullus for Jews and I couldn't continue studying in a Romanian school. My sister went to the Principesa Elena and she was going to start the 4th grade there. Both these lyceums were Romanian. A few months after I had been expelled, the Scoala de Meserii Evreasca a Comunitatii Evreiesti de Rit Occidental din Brasov [the Jewish Trade School of the Brasso Jewish Community of Occidental Rite] was founded. The 'Rit Occidental' [Occidental Rite] meant that it was Neolog. So, it was the trade school of the Neolog community offering the locksmith and locksmith-fitter trades to boys and tailoring and sewing to girls, and this school operated until August 1944. But it was a four-grade school only, we couldn't study for eight grades there, so we studied at home.

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