As a parent, she was more strict than my father. If I went to her and said, “I want to go to the movies with my friends,” she’d say, “No, not today.” Then I’d listen and my parents would be having a little disagreement about it. My mother would tell my father that if she said no, it should be no. I might have been ten or twelve at the time. I remember coming home late for supper from oneg shabat at Akiba, a Jewish organization I belonged to. I went not because I was religious — Akiba was for more religious Jews — but because the cutest guys were members. I’d be having so much fun, I’d forget to come home on time. The first time I was late my mother gave me a warning. The next time, I wasn’t allowed to attend for a couple of weeks. This was a big punishment for me. When my mother said no, she meant it.

My parents riding a motorcycle on vacation in the 1930s.

Only one time did I get a spanking from my father. Only once. Every week the cousins used to meet at someone’s house. The adults would come with their children. While the grown-ups played cards, the kids played in another room with a table set up with all kinds of sweets. The same kinds of goodies were also on a table in the room where the adults were. At one point, my cousins looked into the adults’ room and said to me, “Go to the big table and get us some cookies.” I was a very well behaved child; I said, “But we have the same cookies here.” “No,” said the cousins, “the others are better.” So I went to my father and said, “Can I have some of those cookies?” He picked some up and gave them to me. Five minutes later, somebody else wanted something from the adults’ table. So I bothered my father again. I shook him by the arm quite a few times that evening and each time he gave me whatever I wanted.

When everyone had left, he took off his belt and gave me a few. I started crying and asked him why. He said, “First of all, you had everything you needed. Exactly the same things were on both tables. Secondly, we were playing cards and you kept bothering me all the time.” This was the only time my father spanked me. I would have been eight or nine at the time.

I went to a Jewish Sunday school in a synagogue in Bydgoszcz; classes were held in a synagogue. The rabbi’s name was Dr. Sonenschein. One of the teacher’s names was Kopa and another was Wasserman. At Sunday school we studied how to read Hebrew (but not to speak it). We studied Bible in Hebrew and Jewish history in Polish. We learned about men like Theodor Herzl and Chaim Weizmann and Chaim Nahman Bialik. Yiddish wasn’t taught. Although my parents occasionally spoke Yiddish to each other at home, as a family we spoke Polish. I eventually learned to understand Yiddish, but I didn’t speak it as a child.

Sunday school was fun and I had lots of friends there. Every Sunday we had three or four hours of Sunday school, a different subject every hour. And then we played. Or we arrived early and would run around the halls or in the yard depending on the weather. Sometimes I would get together with some of the other kids for birthday parties or overnights.

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