“Vi hostu a kop tsu azelkhe narishkayten?”²⁸⁰
He said that, looking at him with mockery and disdain. This is the attitude of the lion’s share of our children. If they are playing, they do it to please the care worker, not themselves.
2. Whoever knows the environment of the residents of the Points, the sanitary conditions, constant illness, uncertainty, nightmarish scenes born of poverty and hunger, knows how difficult it is to create an atmosphere for common-room activities under such conditions. It is very unfortunate indeed that the common room is not sufficiently isolated from the Point.
3. Children have no clothes, shoes. I have received not a single pair of children’s shoes in nearly 2 years of working in common rooms. They cannot come to the common room.
4. The common room has absolutely no materials for the classes. There is no necessary equipment. A table, benches – such things can only be obtained through great effort. Windows are glazed at the end of November, the furnace arrives at the common room in December. Many months pass, during which
nothing can be done with the children because it is cold in the common room.
All of this disorganises the work, interrupts and paralyses classes. Because of
the constant interruptions, it is difficult to impose a certain regularity and consistency in attending the common room on the children.
I have only listed the key reasons to explain the difficulties that the care worker faces. There are many more of them. The fact that the commonroom classes are [29] conducted non-systematically, and at some Points are not conducted at all, does not mean that the care worker does not occupy an important place at the Point and that her work there is not profound and meaningful.
It is difficult to talk about the positive aspects of care workers’ work
because their effects are elusive for someone from the outside. To appreciate
it, one should take a close look at it.
Hands washed clean, a polished dish, the calm behaviour of a hungry
child during breakfast distribution, helping a care worker with her work,
responsible performance of tasks assigned to them, the way they eat, speak –
these are seemingly small things, but they demand an arduous, daunting
effort, and not a one-off one. Most opportunities for education are provided
280 (Yiddish, Warsaw dialect) lit. “How do you have a head for such foolishness?”
