THE MEMORIAL BOOK OF PÁPA JEWRY - JewishGen

Unjustified absence from services was recorded
as a missed class. In order to foster a religious mentality
and to advance in Jewish studies, elementary school
pupils spent 2 hours a day studying the Bible. In the
higher grades, there was an additional two-hour class of
Talmudic studies in the afternoon. However, until 1926,
elementary school pupils did not cover their heads when
learning secular subjects, which was unprecedented on a
national scale among orthodox Jewish schools.
Religious education was taught intensively in the
higher elementary school as well. They had the
following subjects: Bible, with German translation,
Psalms, with the classical German translation of Samson
Rafael Hirsch, Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, Hebrew
Grammar, Biblical story in Hungarian, Talmud:
Masechet Beitzah and Bava Metzia. Pupils of the higher
elementary school met on Shabbat afternoons in the
autumn and winter months, led by their teacher Károly Károly Láng, school teacher
Láng, to read poems on Jewish subjects.
After 30 years, the renowned higher elementary school started to decline. In the school
year 1928/29, they had only 103 pupils left. Some of the parents sent their children to – High
School, others to yeshiva. As a result, the number of local Jewish pupils barely reached 30 %, so
the community deemed the great sacrifice of maintaining the school pointless and decided to
close it down. The death knell tolled; around this time teacher Károly Láng wrote to his brother
living in the provinces, paraphrasing with resignation the well-known line from Heine: "Keine
Messe wird man halten, keinen Kadisch wird man sagen"(Gedächtnisfeier by Heine). No mass
will be held, and no Kaddish will be said. It was finished. Some of the teaching staff went to the
town’s vocational school; others went over to the Catholic Higher Elementary School.
However, the elementary school continued until the Shoah swept away the last members
of teaching staff, together with their pupils.
The teachers’s words teaching love and goodness were silenced; the madness of fascism
murdered the children as well. The school building was left abandoned; the prayer after daily
studies cannot be heard anymore:
We gratefully thank you, our good God –
Homewards bound when our feet trod –
Because we did our job so well –
Our heart and soul tending as well
The things we learnt well, grant us,
God, that at home will be noticed on us,
So our good parents will be happy and gay,
And for the glory of your Sacred Name
Amen.
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