mean disloyalty on our part as citizens of the Republic of Poland. Therefore, it was decided to follow the decision of the Polish school teachers not to submit any applications. As a precaution, some secret classes were split into groups of 2 or 3, but only temporarily, as this would result in utter material ruin. Young people do not respond to the Germans’ threats either, and continued their education. We only made sure that pupils never carried too many books with them on the street, so as not to draw attention.
It soon became apparent that the concerns of Jewish teachers were irrelevant. The school law turned out one of those regulations which were not meant to be actually implemented, but were used only to terrorise the population. In Polish education there were some cases of people being arrested, but they were quickly released. The Germans decided that the law did apply to the Jews, for whom the issue of education had not yet been settled. The Germans could see that many groups of young people were being educated, but decided to turn a blind eye to this. They do not care at all about this issue, and they have neither the time nor the people to take care of it. They realise that the vast majority of young people are receiving [5] no education whatsoever, and their whole point is to demoralise the masses to destroy Jewish culture, so dangerous to mankind. This policy, when implemented for a long time, can have very serious results. The indifference of the Germans is confirmed by numerous cases in which police invaded houses during classes, without any repercussions. One such occurrence was as follows:
During an underground class comprised of 6 girls, the police unexpectedly entered the flat so quickly that the students did not even manage to hide their notebooks. One of the Germans said ironically to the frightened teacher: “Secret classes. Schadet nicht, lehren Sie weiter, es ist doch erlaubt.”550 Nobody even had to show their documents. After “confiscating” a parcel of linens, the Germans left the premises.
The organisation of a number of vocational courses in 1940 had no major impact on the course of life in the secret classes. Young men enlisted en masse in such courses, in an attempt to find protection from the looming threat of labour camps. I have pointed out that the participation of boys in secret classes was limited anyway; moreover, those who were pupils in many cases never stopped coming to secret classes even after joining the course.
