I Need to Learn
Yitskhok Rudashevski was born in Vilnius, Poland in 1927. He was an only child. He loved hiking, reading and writing. In 1940 Yitzkhok was deported with his parents to the Vilnius Ghetto. In the ghetto Yitzkhok wrote a diary about his life in the ghetto.
Yitzkhok did not survive the Holocaust. His cousin found the diary, and it was published after the Holocaust.
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I need to learn
Why was it so important for Yitzkhok to study?
Read the sentences from the diary and drag the suitable reason from the bank.
Click 2 to read more testimonies about schools in the ghetto.
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“[…] after a lot of hesitation and thinking it over, I’ve decided to take advantage of every moment – I need to learn, I still have conditions that make it possible, and so I must not stop. The will to learn has become, for me, like a defiant act against the present times in which learning is hated and labor and toil are loved. No, I have decided, I’m going to live for the future and not in the present. And if out of a hundred ghetto children my age [only] ten can learn, I must be among the happy ones; I must take advantage of it. Studying has become more precious to me than before […]” |
