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Joseph Gringlas - January 22, 1993

This is part two of an interview with Joseph Gringlasat his home in Farmington, Michigan. Uh, part two is continued on January22, 1993. The interviewer is still Sidney Bolkosky.

I'm, let's, let's um, go back a little bit before the warand see if I can um, ask you a few questions about...

Yes.

some of what you already told me. The language that you spokeat home.

We spoke eh, mostly Jewish around.

You spoke Yiddish.

Yiddish. And that was the problem for me was a kid to go to startschool. Is- Polish wasn't good because we spoke all the time as a child andat the p...parents, Jewish-Yiddish, so that, that when I went to school itwas a problem for us. And, and you know I remember exactly when the, the teacherwere-was uh, mad, he was anti-Semitic too. And he said you eat our bread andyou don't speak right Polish.

So you learned Polish in school.

Yeah, I learned Polish at school. But the start was very hardbecause of that.

So you must have had a Yiddish accent in your Polish.

It uh, it was li....not the accent, Polish accent like a...

Like a...

like Polish eh, speak. So-but then, then later on I, I was better,you know and eh, then starting to getting a hold of more-the, the, the wayto speak it. And got to know the, in eh, teachers. They-you know, you couldsee they were speaking out about. Like he, like I said, you eat our breadand you don't speak...

Mm-hm.

the right eh, Polish. But I-it se...seems to me something waskind of like of, to me, teacher. You know there was always, doing something,anything she want-and one time I never forget that, it was the director ofthe school and he, his, his birthday was in Pesach. And I was picked the oneJew from the class to go with a group to like address him as for, wish himhappy birthday for that director of the school. And it stayed on my, my mindthat even there was a lot of anti-Semitic going on, the teacher to me waskind of like, liked, liked eh, to, to tell me what to do, and to help out,things what to help out in class and like picking me out for that-going tothe director. There was something struck me, something like that. So I kindafeel kinda close to the teacher at that time.

But you never spoke Polish at home. When you came.

Polish no, mostly Jewish.