preparation and disregard for hygiene and safety. But the dearth of physicians and nurses is so acute that anybody [with any qualifications] is sought after and will find patients. For any merchandise—even the shoddiest and cheapest fake—will find its consumer. Today, aside from food, finding medical care is the most serious problem in the ghetto. Hence, all physicians in the ghetto, along with physicians with recognized diplomas and actual medical school graduates, cannot meet the demand; not with the horrifyingly rampant epidemics and diseases, not with this mortality rate, malnutrition, and lack of [fresh] air, vitamins, calories, hygiene, and food.
[20]
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The same trend, only more spontaneous and less evident, can be observed in education. Everybody wants to retrain and get a well-paid job after finishing a course. Official substitutes and unofficial fakes replace real schools, institutes, and universities. Medical, chemical, technical, electrical, mechanical, artisan, nursing, gardening, confectionary, pedagogical, and other courses [spring up like weeds] as a result of the demand in the ghetto. The duration of the courses, the lecturers’ qualifications, the textbooks, the teaching aids, the general and initial preparation of the participants, the requirements, the level of teaching, and the discipline—they all had to be adjusted to the existing conditions. What is more, many scammers try to take advantage of the economic situation to earn a quick and dishonest profit. Nonetheless, many respected professionals and scientists do their work honestly.
Most teachers at the underground high schools and junior high schools are professionals from before the war. But what difference does it make as the number of dishonest “tutors” and teachers have penetrated this sphere? After they had failed as traders, smugglers, or middlemen, they suddenly discovered their God-given talent for pedagogy and started posing as “pre-war” leading experts. They operate with impunity and mislead the young, who are thirsty for knowledge and unaware of these ignoble machinations and trickeries. They devise the curriculum, excluding Latin, grammar, and philosophy, as they are incompetent in these fields. They promise middle-school and high-school diplomas. They issue various certificates and diplomas. They claim to have contacts with competent middleand high-school headmasters. They
