making it impossible for peasants and workers to produce the bare necessities
of life from their labours. There were, however, among them a good many discontented people who strove for a new and better order in Russia. The tsar and
his cronies hounded them without pity and threatened them with prison and
the death penalty. A great many of the secret societies who opposed the tsar
attracted the Russian youth of the time. Roza, who had always been drawn
to the weak and underprivileged and who had always dreamed of freedom
and justice, also joined such movements and was arrested when she was 17.
While in prison, she behaved in such a comradely fashion towards the young
women in their shared quarters that she caught the eye of the prison officials.
She could have improved her situation, but she did not want to avail herself of
any sort of [. . .]. She wanted to be treated like everyone else and, along with
everyone else, bear the [. . .] of her convictions.
Her arrest gave no peace to her mother and relatives, [3] and they used
all their influence to free her. They were successful, but the authorities placed
a condition on her release: that she leave the country because her presence
was detrimental to its wellbeing.
She travelled to Switzerland to continue her studies, and it was there that
the young Roza decided to dedicate herself to children. She chose to study at
the Pedagogical Institute (a teacher-training establishment) in Geneva. After
finishing her studies, she devoted her life to the Jewish child whom she served
in thought, deed, and word, both spoken and written.
Her first practical steps on her chosen path were taken in Vienna where
she spent the years of the First World War (1914 to 1918). There she worked
with the children of Jewish refugees.
But for her, the real fertile soil for her work was in independent Poland
(1918). The Jewish child, Jewish life, and Poland awakened together, and into
this new Jewish life was born a new secular Jewish pedagogy. Schools with
Yiddish as a language of instruction were set up even during the war. Like
chicks from an egg, they were born from the children’s kitchens. The great
Yiddish writers Y. L. Peretz and Yankev Dinezon, and labour activists such as
Vladimir Medem and the like, understood that it was not enough simply to fill
a child’s stomach. It was also necessary to feed his mind, and thanks to their
initiative, teaching began to be introduced in the kitchens. And to imprint
the teaching deeply into the child’s mind, to make it familiar and dear to
him, it was carried out in the language which the child had absorbed with
