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There was a youth theater here.
"Maydim" was here, it was a doll theater.
It wasn't specifically a children's theater.
They put on many political shows with dolls.
Maccabi (Jewish youth sports organization) was in the hall here for some time.
The large hall here was connected with our Jewish culture.
This street was Makowa (in Polish), mon (poppy seed) street (now Aguonu in LT)
And at five Makowa street there was the Sofye Gurevitsh gymnazium (high school), over there.
And CBK was here. That was the Jewish "central youth committee" of (unintelligible).
I remember that there was a telephone here in the CBK building.
And my teacher used to ask for someone who could speak clearly to make calls.
And I was so proud because he used to pick me. This was fifth grade.
What do I want to tell you about our Sofie Gurevitsh school?
The academic level was very high.
We didn't write just what was dictated to us. We wrote stories from third grade on.
We had a literary court trial. Bontshe Shvayg, the main character of (Issac Leib) Peretz story.
We had a literary trial of Bontshe Shvayg (Bontshe the silent).
We split the class up into defenders and prosecutors.
We had a court. And in order to show.. Well I don't know why.
But the boys were the defense council and us girls were the prosecutors.
Other woman's voice: Who won?
Fania: Who won? Hmm. We had peace (idiomatically: a tie)
We had to go to the literature to find examples to back up our points.
For instance that in Sholem Aleichem's story x happened or it was written a certain way
And the other side would say no "the opposite is written in Mendele's story" (the writter Mendele Mokhr Seforim)
There was, I don't know if any of you know of him, there was a Jewish actor named "Granakh"
Man's voice: He was mentioned in the poem by (Moyshe) Kulbak
Fanya: Yeah, he was Granakh, right. He lived in Germany. And he left Germany for the Soviet Union.
And he visited us and saw the trial.
And I remember how he stood and said
"if we have this type of youth, it means that we will acheive/reach our goals"
Some of the students of our teachers new him.
This was my school, the Sofye Gurevitsh gymnazium
Eliot: I'm going to summarize a little in English because I saw from faces that not everyone understood.
Eliot: The last words of the story were "the prosecutors laughed resoundingly"
Woman: What building was the school again?
Fania: A hundred meters from here.
Man's voice: How old were you when you participated in the trial?
At the time of the literary trial I think that we were 14
Man: So young! Fania: The academic level was very high.
Man: So young! Fania: The academic level was very high like that with many things.
Only now am I able to understand how much the school gave us.
This was our school. We put on performances.
When we talked about the almanac we mentioned our teachers at the Sofie Gurevitsh school from Mosin (sp)
It's mentioned in the Jerusalem Almanac (a contemporary Yiddish literary journal)
I even showed you the photograph I have of it.
Now I'm going to show you what was the wood market.
Because many things that we read (in Vilna Yiddish literature) happens at the wood market.