„Nowy rok, nowe kłopoty. Trzeba się znów wypłakać przed towarzyszem Gołombem”

Abstract

The YIVO Archive in New York contains a number of letters from the years 1926–1927, which were sent by students of the Yiddish Teachers’ Seminary in Vilnius to its director, Abraham Gołomb. In this correspondence they describe the conditions of their new workplace and the character of work in their particular school, whilst also giving unique information about life in the shtetl and social relations there. In this article I try to reconstruct the life of a secular Jewish school with Yiddish as a medium of instruction in Wysokie Litewskie by using letters written by three teachers from a school there: Eugeniush Braude, Mordukh Kahanowitsh and Eydla Segalovitsh.

Keywords

• Jewish schools
• Jewish secular culture
• Yiddish
• shte