Tag #150809 - Interview #97113 (Semyon Goldwar)

I went to the first class of the Ukrainian higher secondary school near our house in 1932. Our first teacher was a fat rough woman. She slapped us on our cheeks. I was a naughty and lively boy and suffered the most. Once I gathered together a group of my classmates and led them to director’s office to complain. The situation was scandalous and the teacher was hfired.  We liked a lot our next teacher Vera Ivanovna. I don’t know what nationalities were in my class. We didn’t focus on the issue of any national origin. I got along well with all children. At Christmas our teacher staged an anti-religious play  The Pope and the Barometer. It was about a draught when farmers asked a priest to pray for rain. The priest said that they were sinners and didn’t deserve to be prayed for. But then one day he said to the farmers: ‘All right, I don’t want your children to be hungry – let’s go to the field and I shall pray.’ They went into the field and the moment the priest began to say his prayer it began to rain. However, the reason was that the priest had a barometer at home and knew when it would rain. I read the author’s lines – and our performance deserved a storm of applause. But when I came out of the school some boys in the street called me ‘zhyd’ [Jew]. I heard the word zhyd for the first time. When I came home I began to ask my parents what the word zhyd meant and they had to calm me down.