Tag #134365 - Interview #101223 (Anna Eva Gaspar)

We wrote in copybooks, and like today, we had written tests, examinations and moreover they introduced the middle school graduation. For example I graduated from the middle school, and I had to sit an entrance examination to the fifth grade when I finished the elementary school. Unfortunately I had to learn alone, although my mother was at home all the time, but she didn’t speak Romanian. And I learnt in Romanian already I did my homework alone. My brother helped me sometime, but I had no coach. I tell you straight, I was a quite good pupil. I got a diploma every year until I finished the middle school. I was a good pupil, a conscientious one, I learnt the lessons even it wasn’t necessary. I couldn’t go to the school without reading and learning the lesson. But it was pretty hard to us to speak in Romanian. For example, the boards from the street were in Romanian. Even in the corridor of the Jewish school was an inscription: ’Vorbiti numai romaneste!’ [‘Speak only in Romanian!’] But of course we didn’t speak in Romanian… The teachers were obliged to speak in Romanian. Our history teacher was auntie Ida, she spoke bad Romanian and she always planted a guard at the door. The guard’s mission was to notice if somebody came on the corridor. ‘Tell me, son, if somebody came!’ and then she related the history. We listened her open-mouthed. But if it was necessary to spoke in Romanian, she took the book and she read out the lesson from the book. But when she was in a good mood, we used to ask her: ‘Auntie Ida, would you relate?’ And then she related. She loved Napoleon. She related about almost everything, she was an older woman and it seemed that the principal didn’t want to dismiss her, although she spoke bad Romanian. She was a really brilliant woman. Poor auntie Ida. But we had to learn the lesson in Romanian. We learnt nothing in Hungarian. Then we learnt French, Latin and German. We began to learn French from the third grade, German from the fifth grade and Latin from the first grade. They pointed up very much the Latin language then, it was a very important subject. In the Jewish school we learnt Hebrew at religion classes, but I don’t remember anything. I didn’t learn the Hebrew language. I remember, our religion teacher was called Leichmann and he was angry all the time because we didn’t want to learn. We learned how to pray, the Hebrew letters and Jewish history. We had class with poor Leichmann almost every day.