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I went to school in 1936. I guess there was only a Polish school in Tysmienica. I think it had 6 grades. I remember only girls in my class, so there must have been a parallel one for the boys. Or maybe the whole school was for girls, for there was another building. That's all submerged as in a fog. One-story building, without a gym, only some beaten dirt. There were not more than twenty of us in one class: Polish, Jewish, Ukrainian. I think that maybe the Ukrainian children took religion classes at the Orthodox Church and the Jewish children went to the Synagogue. I didn't. About two weeks into the first grade, the girl who was placed at the same desk with me by the teacher, raised her had and said, 'Ma-am, my mother wants me to sit with someone else, not with Reginka [diminutive from Regina], because Reginka is Jewish.' So the teacher moved her somewhere else and I sat with another 'Jewish' girl. I remember another girl from school, Wanda. She was Polish and her family was one of the richest in town. Her father had a large workshop in which he employed people making embroidered sheepskin coats. Wanda found me after the war.
Period
Interview
rena michalowska