Tag #108994 - Interview #77965 (Jankiel Kulawiec)

When I was six my granddad took me to cheder. I remember that the rebe guy - the teacher - [melamed] was a tall, red-haired Jew, with this red beard, terribly nasty. The lessons were held in his house; he lived upstairs, I think, in this two-story wooden house. He had a long wooden table and he sat by a window that faced east. And on both sides of him in a row, were the kids. There were over a dozen of us there, all boys. [Editor's note: girls were typically educated at home by the mother or by a melamed, or (after the 1920s) in schools, but separately from boys.]

We mostly learned to pray. And on the corner of the table hung the whip, this leather whip with a dozen or so leather thongs. And he would talk, and if he didn't like something, then smack! Over your hands. 'You're to hold your pencil like this, not like that! You're to turn your piece of paper over like this, not like that! You're to read like this!' And so on. Incredible discipline. And I didn't like it.