Anna's Shtetl

18. The Worst Winter (1918-1919)

The memories of peacetime winters, however harsh, became almost nostalgic after the winter of 1918–1919 had done its work. Korsun’s high school students had looked forward to classes each fall since the school had opened four years ago, proud of their new, clean building, the ¤rst public high school ever built in the town. The ¤rst day of each fall semester had been a hopeful occasion when the students met the teachers and sang songs. Going to school was a special joy for students like Anna, thirsting for education . Now, however, with the last battles of the world war still being fought and with the Russian Civil War already almost a year old, the gathering on the ¤rst day of school in 1918 was subdued. Most of the teachers lived in other towns. The principal had held a meeting to tell the parents that the start of school would be delayed because too few teachers had returned. Nina Constantinovna, the home economics teacher, was taking time off to have a baby, but the students did not know why the other teachers were missing. They might have been murdered by robbers or taken into the army. They might have died of typhus, or they might have decided to quit teaching. Olga Alexandrovna, who taught French and German as well as geography , had tried in vain to recruit a few young women from other towns as teachers. She lived a half block from school and was the only woman among the returning teachers. She came to school with a black patch on her brown skirt. The young Russian Orthodox priest, who had studied at a university, taught mathematics in addition to a religion course for Christian students. He lived a few houses down the street from Anna’s grandmother . The third teacher, the Ukrainian, taught history. An older man, perhaps in his sixties, he was not eligible for army service. The fourth returnee was a Czechoslovakian art teacher who had taught drawing at the high school since Anna’s ¤rst year. 18 The Worst Winter (1918–1919) These four teachers for Anna’s third-year class taught two subjects each,¤lling gaps in the curriculum. Classes were improvised. Sometimes the teachers gave lectures, but sometimes the class recited poems or sang songs. With town life so disturbed by the war, the students were happy to be continuing their education in any fashion, happy to have the daily routine of walking to school. Wanting the students to learn the important subjects such as geography and Russian history, the four teachers lectured on those subjects whenever they could. They kept up the spirit of the school, and even though they were not being paid, they were determined to teach. Anna thought them heroic. In normal times each subject was taught for a one- or two-hour period, the ¤rst one from nine to eleven in the morning. Then the next teacher would come into the classroom, and Anna and the other students would take out their books for that class. Anna sometimes brought her lunch and ate at school, but students often went home during the one-hour noon lunch period, coming back for the one o’clock and three o’clock classes. In winter, it was already dark at four when they went home. The schedule was not the same every day of the week. A home economics class met once or twice a week. The last thing on Tuesday afternoon, Anna’s class would have an hour of singing in the piano room, and sometimes the whole school assembled there for a lecture or for a student singing recital. The Jewish students, forbidden to write on the Sabbath, attended the half-day session on Saturday morning, taking no notes. A teacher occasionally insisted on a written examination on Saturday. The Jewish students sat idle. When the school had opened the year before Anna entered, townspeople who favored modern secular education had been proud of its ¤ne new building and excellent teachers. The tuition fees were used to pay the principal , the teachers, and the custodian, as well as to maintain and heat the building. Families with more assets paid higher tuition than those who were poor, and Leya was one of those allowed to pay less. Now, however, the whole atmosphere at school had changed. Many of the parents who had been well off before the war were reduced to poverty. The school’s intake of tuition money had fallen...