Jewish education in Poland is having a hard time of it, according to reliable reports received here. Teachers are scarce, government cooperation is less than adequate and parents are wary–of both the Jewish Communists who run the schools and of the value of schooling in this country.
Eighty percent of the children in Yiddish schools are from repatriated families and spoke neither Yiddish nor Polish when they arrived. There was a dearth of Yiddish teachers who could speak Russian and almost no teachers who could speak any of the variety of languages the children had learned in Soviet Asia. What has been accomplished in the past six months has been chiefly the responsibility of the Yiddish teachers and their devotion to their task.
Though the law requires younger children to go to school, their parents question the value of their learning Yiddish if they are to remain in the country and the value of Polish if they emigrate to Israel. For the elder children they question the value of anything but the learning of a trade.
For the few Jews who plan to remain in Poland, sending their children to Polish schools seems more valuable. However, many are forced to resort to the Jewish schools because their children encounter anti-Semitism in the mixed classes.
The Jewish Communists are frantically trying to build a network of Jewish schools to justify their own existence as a separate leadership. However, few parents trust their “Jewishness” and cooperate haltingly. While the government educational hierarchy has been helpful in preparing curricula, scaring up almost unobtainable texts and training teachers, Polish Communists and government officials in general are far from enthusiastic.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
