Ghetto Education Analysis
Analyzing education is the Warsaw ghetto, in addition to the other German-occupied Polish ghettos, is an extremely important aspect of understanding the culture inside these ghettos, and the children’s perspectives of what was occurring during the war. Before we begin analyzing ghetto education, let’s first define what education is (loosely). Education integrates young people into the grown generation which allows them to become capable societal members. For John Dewey (an American educational theorist), education is the way that habits and values are passed from the older generation to the younger generation, which is done in a formalized way through schools for example (Dewey). For Warsaw, this definition is extremely important for the teachers and creators of educational material because they want to make sure that the Jewish children can learn and internalize the Jewish traditions that their previous Polish schools were omitting. Especially during this time, where the Germans and Poles were attempting to totally erase Jewish people, and history, this total Jewish education played a very important role in the ghettos, including Warsaw. This analysis will look at Dawid Sierakowiak’s diary testimony in order to contextualize the youths‘ views with the general ideas of ghetto education while also contrasting Dawid’s experience in the Lodz ghetto with Edith’s in the Warsaw ghetto.
As can be expected, children were scared, disoriented, and generally in poor mental states in the ghettos. This psychological decline can be clearly tied to the beginning of the war and to the sudden lack of schooling, which with its cessation also took any sense of normalcy and routine. One of the most important aspects of their previous life that children lacked in the ghetto was schooling. For this reason, in addition to the general poor conditions inside of the ghetto, children’s health issues—emotional and mental—were dramatically decreasing. As a result, the longer a child went without schooling and routine, the further decreased his or her development became. This lack of mental and emotional development was exacerbated for refugee children who were forced to move to the Warsaw ghetto from smaller towns surrounding Warsaw itself, where education before WWII would have been already lacking.
The ghetto was not an easy place to live, let alone survive: “they were in constant danger of being abused by the Nazis as well as the Polish population... the children [were] vulnerable... they needed the protective school environment” (Maxwell, 195). The opportunities for children to even partake in games were rare. The streets were too dangerous to play or gather, and houses and apartments were too crowded for kids to ‘be kids.’ There were education activists who acknowledged that these children were not able to really participate in any meaningful activities inside of the ghetto. They pushed for the creation of spaces specifically designed to allow children to be themselves and indulge in the childhood that World War II robbed them of. They pushed for the creation of schools, playrooms, and playgrounds, which were spaces dedicated to children where they could process or play through their experiences, and in turn, these spaces reestablished some routine and stability in the lives of the ghetto children. In Warsaw, Adam Czerniakow (leader of the Jewish Council—Judenrat) petitioned on behalf of the children of Warsaw to open Jewish schools inside of the ghetto, which eventually the Germans allowed to happen in August of 1941 (Czerniakow).
Shortly after the ghettoization of the Jewish population, “parents, educators, and public officials were determined to overcome all of the obstacles facing them in order to provide at least a minimal framework for learning” (Maxwell, 294). Many feared that due to a lack of resources and space, that the education systems within the ghettos would be only open to children of the wealthier classes, especially because most other children had to work to help support their families inside of the ghettos (Maxwell, 294). Here, we see a verbalization of the fortune that Edith Millman was granted by her father’s occupation and her lack of siblings. Emanuel Ringelblum and his fellow colleagues helped to create the Oneg Sabbat archives, which was a massive secret archive curated from the people of Warsaw. One recorded report titled ‘The School System’ showed that “children of refugees and the lower classes did not all participate in the educational [programs]” which led them to become envious (Maxwell, 295). This envy pushed the lower income, working children to use their pennies to attend private study groups.
As seen in Edith Millman’s testimony, school took the children's and teenager’s minds off of the hardships of the ghetto--at least for a little while. This same testimony can be seen through Dawid Sierakowiak, who was a teenager in the Lodz ghetto who wrote in his diary: “So I’ll go to school again (only if I don’t have another job to do). There will finally be an end to the anarchy in my daily activities and, I hope, an end to too much philosophizing and depression” (Sierakowiak, 83). At the same time, however, the hardships that the educators faced were unimaginable, with many teaching for free (using up hours that could have been used to work for a wage), spending what little money they had on making the classrooms clean, and happy places for the children, and sometimes bringing in food to help the starving children (even though they themselves were starving). The presence of free food (provided by the teachers) motivated the poorer students to attend classes, which got them off of the streets and into a protected space (Maxwell, 295).
Dawid Sierakowiak’s diary entrees show his earnest to pursue education, even in the ghetto. Throughout his diary, he lays out his ambitious study goals where he also carefully schedules his time: “I just hope that I will be able to manage my entire schedule: tutoring, organization work, political theory, language, books” (Sierakowiak, 92). Many Jewish students reflected this urgency and even risk-taking in their desire to learn and partake in educational activities, which is also seen in Edith’s testimony. The youth explored many different avenues during their schooling in the ghetto. They explored national, religious, cultural, and social conflicts and belonging. The main discussion was centered around what it meant to be Jewish: in general, in the ghetto, and in a global and historical sense. For many students who had attended gentile schools, these questions were not being asked or explored prewar, but now, these questions were urgent. About 60% of the students in the ghettos, attended Polish (gentile) schools before the war (Holländer, 114), and they struggled to fit into their prewar schools, and now struggled in the ghetto to fit in with their Jewish schooled classmates. The difficulties that the Polish educated students faced were extensive: their teachers asked them to only speak Yiddish, follow a strict Jewish study program, and become integrated into an unfamiliar culture with unfamiliar languages and structure. With all of this conversation about what it meant to be Jewish, one question that wasn’t answered was ‘What exactly did a Jewish education look like’?
The Judenrat promoted the speaking of Yiddish and Yiddish culture in the ghetto schools along with the suppression of Polish influence in their textbooks and in the Jewish history. This transition from Polish to Yiddish not only proved difficult for the students but also the teachers who were not equipped to teach the strict Jewish curriculum or fluent enough in Yiddish to be able to properly teach in it. The Judenrat eventually stepped in and provided some teacher training in the new Jewish curriculum and Yiddish language: vocabulary, songs, and literary material (Diephouse, 243). New textbooks were written in order to include more Jewish material to foster a sense of Jewish nationalism in the students. These books were written in 1942, (Czerniakow) however, unfortunately, due to the July 1942 deportations (“Deportations”), they were never printed nor utilized by the students. To provide a brief solution, the books were censored of any Polish nationalism content, where such content was scribbled out and illegible.
It is important to separate the Judenrat from their positive educational policies with their oppressive social policies. These policies were not created to “ease economic disparity and its taxation and distribution of food cards did not favor the poor classes in the ghetto” (Maxwell, 299). The conditions that the children lived in, under the ‘rule’ of the Warsaw Judenrat were some of the worst recorded in ghetto documentation.
The unwavering efforts for survival and success from the Jewish people, as reflected through the creation of formal schools in the ghetto, can be seen through countless documentation as seen throughout this analysis. The teacher’s selflessness to provide food, shelter and an education to the children did not stem from any order that was given, but rather out of innate human compassion. Professional teachers and professors who were forced to give up their profession and move to Warsaw had great pride in their individual work as teachers and “felt that they were fulfilling a mission” (Maxwell, 299). The simple act of creating schools, attending school, and learning about Jewish history and languages is a clear “manifestation of Jewish identity” (Maxwell, 299) and demonstration of silent resistance and denial of Nazism and Nazi control.