Tag #130208 - Interview #101129 (Samuel Eiferman)

The village was too small to have a kindergarten, so all the children were brought up at home until they were old enough to go to school. The school was located up on a hill and consisted of seven grades. When I entered the 1st grade I could speak German, Ukrainian and Polish, but I couldn’t speak Romanian, so I had to learn it in school. We were taught by two Jews – a schoolmaster and a schoolmistress. I forgot their names. I later met them in the camp. I started going to school at the age of 7 and I attended 7 primary grades. Classes were taught in Romanian. The teachers were Romanians who had been brought from the Kingdom [Ed note: People living in the territories that were the last to become part of Romania, in 1918 (as is the case of Mr. Eiferman’s native Bukovina), used to refer to Walachia and Moldavia, the two provinces that united to form Romania in 1859, as “the Kingdom”], since our village only had Ukrainians. There were one female teacher and two male teachers. The men’s names were Cozma and Lefter. I can’t remember the lady’s name though. Both men were reservists, wore “pre-military” uniforms and service caps and conducted drills with the boys aged 18-19 in order to prepare them for the military service. Teachers weren’t the only professionals who had to be “imported” from elsewhere; it was the same for priests. The pupils wore whatever their parents could afford. Some were dressed in traditional outfits; others had watchmen’s uniforms [4].