Herman Marczak - May 12, 1982
Education
Okay. And um, what about schooling? How much schooling did you have?
Schooling, it--the school system was public, just like here. And uh, in cities like, where it was a large Jewish population, the schools were segregated. The Polacks have schools for the Polish children, the Germans have school for the Jewish children--for their children. All under the same Board of Education, like. They were public, it was appointed through the government, but they were segregated. And, and, and like in--we had two schools strictly for Jewish children in Zduńska Wola.
Were they separate buildings?
Separate, completely separates, completely separate schools. There was five public schools. There was one very large school for the Polish children, there was one school for the German children, there were two schools for Jewish children.
I see.
Yeah, and, uh...
And, how--what hours of the day did you go to school?
The school was half days schools.
Half day.
Yeah, there was--the schools operated in two shifts. One--some kids went in the morning 'til about two o'clock, some went from twelve to late...
Oh.
...in the afternoon, and things like that.
And, uh...
The standard was probably not too high because we're talking about forty, forty-five years ago. But it was...
Did you go cheder too?
To cheder, everybody went to cheder. It was a different, there was no--practically--I don't know, girls maybe in some very poor families, you know, or ne...negligent families. But what concerns boy--was practically not a single boy who shouldn't have some kind of education.
Some kind of cheder.
Cheder education, yeah.
Was there a ??? there?
There was all kind. All, whatever, it is, was all kinds. There was schools for girls and there was cheder and there was Talmud Torah, and there was--private, what you paid when you, you paid for a half--used to pay for a--you went to a, to a, to a malamud with a kid and you agreed to pay so and so much a week and that contract lasted for half a year.
I see. What was the Talmud school? What was that?
That was a, a Zionist school, you know, for parents who they were, they were the Zionists. And their kids, they wanted to have uh, modern Hebrew.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn