Introduction of changes, removal of Polish and introduction of Yiddish as the language of instruction in Jewish schools First, Polish history ceased to be taught. At first, no history at all could be taught, because the Soviets concluded that there were no appropriate teachers who would be able to present the course of history in the spirit of the new principles. Religious instruction was also eliminated, and so were Jewish religious subjects and Hebrew in Jewish schools. The issue of the language of instruction also arose.
Schools were divided into three groups: First group with Ukrainian as the language of instruction, second group with [7] Polish as the language of instruction (a very small number), and third group encompassing all Yiddish and Hebrew [schools], with Yiddish as the language of instruction. The change with regard to the Jewish language was made in a symptomatic way, that is, all existing Jewish secondary schools used Polish as the language of instruction, with the exception of one or two where they taught in Hebrew. And so in all those schools (as well as in the Polish ones) a meeting of the Teachers Board was organised with the participation of invited parents of students at a given school. Such meetings were also attended by a representative of the board of education (who was a Jew in Jewish schools). The representative of the board of education was the first to take the floor. Having briefly explained that the Polish state had ceased to exist, he said that consequently there was no need to teach [8] the young in a language alien to them and that in the USSR the Jewish language had the same rights as other languages. Therefore and because all students and teachers in those (Jewish) schools were Jewish, they were to switch to Yiddish. The entire speech was given in Yiddish. A representative of the teaching staff and the parents also spoke in support of that proposition. Then a motion to exchange the Polish language for Yiddish was put to a vote and an appropriate resolution was adopted. In practice, however, this change did not go over so smoothly. For even though most teachers knew Yiddish, they did not know it well enough to speak it fluently, let alone teach in it, particularly because they had been teaching [9] their subjects in Polish for a few years or a decade or more. The pupils, too, had trouble because they could not properly articulate their thoughts. So in practice the lessons were taught neither in Polish nor in Yiddish, but only partially, or actually for the most part in Polish instead of Yiddish. Both the teachers and the pupils spoke Polish among themselves.
Removal of the Jewish language as the language of instruction and the Ukrainisation of Jewish schools . The process of Judaising, that is, converting
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