Anne Hirschle - July 21, 2006
Education
Do you remember as a child in Breslau in, in school-and you went to a public school...
Yes, I went to public school.
...and then you went uh, was it shul that you went to once a week after school? The religious...
No the religious instruction as I remember is that a man-a Jewish man came to the school and a little group of us would be given this religion instruction for the last period in school. It must have been after school because my tram conductor knew we'd been late because we'd been to Jewish school instruction.
Do you...
Actually, I, I always say that tram conductor saved my life.
Because it had, had proved the catalyst for you.
It, it was the catalyst, yeah.
When you were in school, do you remember the teacher talking about race and...
I had a very decent teacher, a wonderful teacher who in fact was having an affair with a mother of a Jewish child.
Oh.
He was, he was-I-many years later my mother told me this. At the time I didn't have a clue...
Sure.
...of course, what that meant. But uh, so obviously I had a very uh, uh, very nice teacher who himself was not a Nazi. Uh, as far as the other children, I don't remember uh, I remember I would go on the tram with children who were definitely not Jewish. And I had a complete mix of friends, some Jewish, some not Jewish. I was looking at an old photograph of a kid's birthday party, and while some of the children were Jewish on that picture, certainly not all of them were Jewish, so we were, we were totally integrated.
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