Grievances in Poland

The problem of Jewish schools, the dismissals of Jewish teachers, and the whole question of Jewish education, has again come to the fore on the long list of Jewish grievances in Poland. Like all the other minorities, the Jews are entitled to be provided with free primary education of a kind in which the cultivation of their mother-tongue and their religion is possible and unhindered.

However, while the State maintains over a thousand primary schools for Ukrainians and several hundred schools for Germans, there are no State schools where Yiddish or Hebrew is taught at the cost of the public funds.

There are nearly 200 Jewish schools in Poland now where Yiddish is taught. There are also some 200 primary and secondary schools where Hebrew predominates. There are one Yiddish and three Hebrew seminaries, and sixteen Yiddish technical schools. Nearly 20,000 Jewish children are thus able to receive tuition not only in Polish, but also in Yiddish, which they regard as their mother tongue, and more than 20,000 additional Jewish children receive instruction in Hebrew, which again they regard as their mother-tongue. But none of these schools are maintained by the State—they are paid for by Jewish institutions, educational and others.

Moreover, not only does the State refuse to maintain these schools, but, it is complained, all sorts of excuses are found to diminish their number. Although the Chedarim, in some of which the methods of instruction are still reminiscent of the Middle Ages, are allowed to flourish freely, a large proportion of the modern Yiddish or Hebrew schools have been closed down.

To these grievances, new ones have now been added. Since 1921, a number of schools existed in Poland where only Jewish children have been taught. These schools, numbering about thirty, had Jewish teachers, and, as the pupils, too, were Jewish, they were allowed to close on Saturdays and open on Sundays. (In Poland, primary schools conduct classes six days a week). About a year ago, the educational authorities began appointing non-Jewish headmasters in these schools which are called, because of their being closed on Sabbaths, “Szabasowski” schools. It was then decided that Jewish teachers were to go to non-Jewish schools and non-Jewish teachers to Jewish schools.

The ultimate result was that many of the Jewish teachers were left without posts and many Jewish children were unprovided with schools. Most of the Sabbath schools have thus been closed and numbers of Jewish teachers have been ##prived of their livelihood.