Exhibit of the Month for September – Chasia Spanerflig’s Memories of the “Tarbut” Gymnasium

To mark the beginning of the new school year, we invite you to step back into interwar Vilnius and experience school life through the eyes of Chasia Spanerflig, a former student of the Tarbut Gymnasium.

In 1933, twelve-year-old Chasia arrived in Vilnius to continue her education at the Hebrew Tarbut Gymnasium. Born in 1921 in what is now Dyatlovo, Belarus, she had attended a local Tarbut kindergarten and school before moving to Vilnius.

The gymnasium was part of Tarbut, Hebrew for “culture”, a wider network of Hebrew-language schools and cultural institutions that flourished in interwar Poland and across Eastern Europe.

But what was it actually like to study there? What languages did the pupils speak? What happened during the breaks?

Chasia’s memories allow us to step through the doors of her former school and see it, for a moment, through a student's eyes:

“At the gymnasium we studied Hebrew, Polish, German and English. We spoke Hebrew with the other students. Most of our textbooks were in Hebrew <...>. On the second floor, in the hall, there was a buffet where we could get snacks, buns, tea, milk and cocoa. <...> The teachers organised trips around the outskirts of Vilnius. I remember going skiing in Karoliniškės. Even then, it was a hilly area.”

These small details offer precious glimpses into a vanished world, not only into one young woman's life, but also into the everyday rhythms of interwar Vilnius.

Chasia's story reached the museum many decades later. In 2013, researchers at the Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History collected memories, photographs and documents from former students of the Tarbut Gymnasium. Among them was Chasia's personal file, compiled by Jevgenija Sedova using materials provided by Judita Rozina.

There is something especially meaningful about sharing Chasia's memories here today: in the very building where the school life she describes once unfolded. The former home of the Vilnius Hebrew Tarbut Gymnasium now houses the Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews and the Lithuanian Jewish (Litvak) Community.

Come and discover Chasia Spanerflig's full story: from her schooldays in Vilnius to her memories of the Second World War at the Museum of Culture and Identity of Lithuanian Jews, Pylimo St. 4A, Vilnius, from mid-September.

Text by Dr Dovilė Čypaitė-Gilė, Head of the History Research Department.