Goworowo

This is another school photo. It is Goworowo’s public school, the one my, Icchok Grynberg’s sister, Sarah Grynberg, attended. Since in Goworowo the classes were relatively small, I suppose that all the children that attended the school are in the picture. You can recognize the schoolmaster in the middle.The photo was taken in the 1930’s.  I don’t know who took this picture.

I was going to cheder since I was 4. It was an unpleasant time. All day long I was sitting at school, and had no time to play.  Through the window we saw children who were walking around, playing with their toys. Whenever we wanted to play ball or something, we would sneak out of the cheder. We would leave when the melamed was busy with other children. When the river was frozen, we liked to slide. A kid always wants to move a little - we went out on ice, there was no one around, sometimes the ice gave in. I remember after one Pesach we changed cheder.  I was a bit older then.  I remember how they chased me on a street because I didn't want to go to the cheder. A teacher and Father came and were yelling: 'You go to the cheder!'. I really didn't want to go, because it was unpleasant. But in the end I got used to it and I studied.

My melamed, I mean  teacher, was called Aaron Weinstein and was one of the three melamedims at the cheder. All day long he was at school teaching children religion. I was also going to a private teacher to learn how to write and read in Jewish - Yiddish. That Jewish alphabet I 'hob gelernt' [Yiddish: learned] and until this day I can write beautifully. I had to learn it because in the cheder they didn't teach Yiddish. They taught loshn-koidesh  [Yiddish: holy language], that is Hebrew... and to pray.

The second sister, Sara, was studying and working, like me. Like all children in our family she was bahvutsinikh [Yiddish: enlightened] - well read, she had various interests. Sara was born in 1918 and completed 7 Polish grades [in a Polish public school]. Later she went to a religious school Beit Yaakov -  Bais Yaakov , if I were to speak in pure Jewish [Yiddish]. When she graduated from that school, she was 16. Then she went to Pultusk, to my father's cousin who had a photographic shop. His name was Lis. She studied photography there for two years. She worked when she was 17-18. (She took all the pictures I have from before the war).