Tag #117096 - Interview #78547 (Leo Ginovker)

In 1920 I entered the 1st grade of the Jewish elementary school in Tallinn. It was housed in a small two-storied building that belonged to the Gildebrant family of teachers. The Jewish community rented the building for the school. The Gildebrant couple were Russian immigrants; they taught geography and maths at our school for several years. Ours was a large class of about 25 students. The school had just opened the previous year, so it only had two classes. We were taught in Russian, but studied Yiddish, Hebrew, and Estonian from the 1st grade onwards. Later on, our school moved into a synagogue, or rather into a synagogue extension. In 1924 the new building of the Tallinn Jewish Gymnasium [10] was opened, and we began studying there. The school belonged to the Jewish community. Perhaps, the state also supported it – I don’t know for sure. We had to pay for tuition, but the community paid for the poor.