Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Mala Weintraub Dorfman - September 15, 2005

You went to school.

Yes, I did.

Polish school?

I went to, to a Jew... To a school yeah, and then I went to Bais Yakov in the evening.

So cheder.

Bais Yakov, whatever. Cheder's for men, Bais Yakov was for the girls.

For the girls, okay. So it's... That's a long day.

Yes, it was.

Public school in the day.

Yes, it was.

What did you speak at home?

Is... At home, on the beginning when I was young we spoke German and we lived in a German neighborhood. But we start speaking Yiddish and Polish.

So, you lived among Volksdeutsche.

Yes, yes, but we moved away from there because the pogroms started there and all that, so we moved to another neighborhood.

Um, what, what was a typical day in, in school like? I mean, would, you would...

We went to school, was uh, probably about, I don't remember exactly, I think eight o'clock. And uh, we had different subjects we learned and the respect for the teacher, we was petrified of them. We were scared, so we were sitting and listening and answering when we were asked to answer. And uh, 'til one o'clock we went to school. Then I came home, we had dinner. We had received a mea... a main meal during the day. And then I went to Bais Yakov and there we were two hours, two and a half hours. I learned how to daven and stuff like that.