Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Irene Sobel - September 8, 1998

You started to focus on learning the language, I would guess.

Well no, strangely enough, strangely enough I did not take any language uh, courses or classes. My English is that--the way I go, to think--what sounds right. I cannot tell you the grammar structure or the justification why I use one gender or one tense as opposed to another, it just sounds, it just sounds right. I read about it but I did not take any English courses. And looking at some of those blue books--and I don't know if they still use blue books for term papers--looking at some of the blue books on which I got a A, I thought that my uh, teachers were very compassionate. The content was good, but the language not. And somehow it worked out.

And how long were you in Cincinnati?

I was in Cincinnati for thirteen years.

So you got your degree from Cincinnati.

I got my undergraduate degree from Cincinnati in evening college. And normally the evening college would have been eight years because they for some strange reason give you half the credits that they do in the day school. But I finished it in five years because I took some extension course for uh, from uh, what's the California university? Oh, I blank out the university from which I call--took also extension classes. And they did...

State systems?

No, no. Maybe by the time the tape is out I'll remember but--no, a private university that had a correspondence school in addition to its normal--Berkeley University.

Oh.

I took correspondence courses from Berkeley University. Uh, and, as a matter of fact, developed some very interesting interaction with some of the professors. And I also was given a few credits for the teacher's college that I attended in Israel. So with the combined--it was a kind of a very intense teacher's college--after one year and they put me into a class to teach Hebrew. Uh, I was an elementary school teacher in Israel for two years. So I finished it in five years, then I went to graduate school in social psychology.

Where?

In Cincinnati.

Also the same place?

Yeah, uh, no, that was in the day, daytime, in the day school.

But the University of Cincinnati.

University of Cincinnati.

[interruption in interview]