1. Introduction.

Everything changes with time. The world today is different from yesterday. I have observed these changes for many years, from 1885 to the present. But it was not until 1975 that, at the urging of others, I decided to put my observations, experiences and adventures on paper. The subject of these stories is to be my own life experiences and at the same time the changes that occurred in the world during the period indicated above, and in particular in various areas of life in our society.

I am aware of the difficulties standing in the way of carrying out this intention, and there are two reasons. On the one hand, I did not keep any diary and I do not have any notes about the events and people I met, so I have to rely only on my own memory, which is to cover a period of 90 years.

On the other hand, I lack literary talent, which I found out when I was in high school. In the then 8-year Galician gymnasiums in the Austrian partition, which was in the years 1896-1904, i.e. before the First World War, the humanities reigned supreme. Polish literature, especially the period of the Three Bards, as well as Latin, Greek and German, dominated all subjects. On the other hand, subjects such as mathematics and physics, especially in provincial gymnasiums, i.e. outside Lwów and Kraków, were rather tolerated; they were generally considered of little use.

In spite of these tendencies, in the gymnasium I was more drawn to exact sciences than to literature or history. The reason probably lay in the fact that I came from the countryside, where living conditions were much harder than in the city. In the urban environment where I attended the gymnasium, I felt uneasy. I was rather withdrawn and taciturn, which did not favour the development of my literary talents.

This will probably make writing my memoirs more difficult.

2. Grodzisko.

I was born in 1885 in the village of Grodzisko, located between the towns of Leżajsk in the north and Przeworsk in the south, where my father had a farm of about 4 hectares.

This village stands out from many others due to its size. It stretches along a road over 10 km long leading through a wide valley of a small, nameless river [now called Leszczynka], which flows from the northwest to the southeast, then turns south and flows into the Wisłok just outside Grodzisko. The road runs near the river, once on its eastern side, and once on its western side.

In the valley of this river and on the slopes of the valley, two wide strips of cottages and farm buildings with gardens stretch on both sides of the road, sometimes narrowing. Outside both of these strips lie two chessboards of cultivated fields: the eastern one (east of the river and buildings) and the western one (west of the river and buildings) each about 2 km wide.

To the east, the hillfort fields border a large pasture of the neighbouring village of Dębno, located in the San valley, and to the west they lean against a large forest that used to belong (before 1946) to the Lubomirski family in Przeworsk. The terrain of these fields is not even; on the contrary, it is undulating like the surface of a restless sea and diversified here and there by clumps of trees or larger pine forests. In some parts, the terrain resembles the foothills.

The hillfort has a fairly large brick church located almost in the centre of the village by the road described above. The older part of the church dates back to the pre-partition period; construction began in 1720 and was completed around 1754, and the church was later extended. It was the centre of a large parish, which included a number of neighbouring villages, in addition to Grodzisk. In 1900, the Grodzisk parish had over 10,000 Catholics, more than half of whom belonged to Grodzisk.

Before 1945, there was also a small manor house with a farm of about 200 morgens [a morgen is about 2/3 of an acre] in the village. After World War II, the farm was divided into plots, and the manor house was converted into a Health Centre.

In Austrian times, i.e. before 1918, Grodzisko belonged to Łańcut County and was divided into 4 communes, namely: Grodzisko Dolne, Grodzisko Miasteczko, Grodzisko Górne and Wólka Grodziska. The largest of these communes was Grodzisko Dolne, reaching from the southern end of the village north to the church located in Grodzisko Dolne. The aforementioned manor house and farm were located in Dolne.

To the north of Dolne was Grodzisko Miasteczko, then Grodzisko Górne and finally Wólka Grodziska, reaching to the northern end of the village.

Grodzisko Miasteczko was the smallest of the four communes and was inhabited mainly by Jews. For example, in 1900 it had ? inhabitants, of which ? were Jews. In the times of my youth, Miasteczko did not have city rights, although it had them in the past, which will be discussed later. Nevertheless, in this commune there was a rectangular market square, a communal slaughterhouse, and in the market two butchers with different kinds of meat. In addition, there were two inns selling vodka and beer, and a number of shops with various products, and trade was flourishing here, run mostly by Jews.

This situation lasted until the Second World War. During that war, in 1942, the Nazi Gestapo deported the entire Jewish population to an unknown destination and since then there has been no news of it.

Grodzisko Miasteczko ceased to exist in 1930, when the Polish authorities incorporated Miasteczko into Grodzisk Dolny, and a little later incorporated Wólka Grodziska into Grodzisk Górny.

After World War II, the Grodzisk communes were incorporated into the newly established Leżajsk district, and after the districts were abolished in 1975, a single Grodzisko commune was established, encompassing the entire village.

Grodzisko is an ancient settlement. The earliest mentions of it in the archives of Jarosław, Przeworsk and Przemyśl date back to the 13th and 14th centuries. The areas around Jarosław, Przeworsk and Leżajsk were not peaceful in the past. Due to Tatar raids in 1524 and 1575, the town of Leżajsk was completely destroyed and even moved to a new location, so the aforementioned archives of neighbouring towns cannot be too rich in notes about Grodzisk.

This village was probably founded as a fortified settlement at the foot of a small castle erected on one of the hills of today's Grodzisk Dolny. There are assumptions that this castle was a border stronghold of Bolesław the Brave.

In the 14th century, the village belonged to the Leliwita-Melsztyński family, in the 16th century to Hetman Jan Tarnowski, in the 17th century to Stanisław Lubomirski, and in 1804 to Józef Kellerman, with the ratio of manor land to peasant land being very small.

At the beginning of the 17th century, Grodzisko was already a market town with two fairs a year. In 1604 and 1625, two guilds were established here: a weaver's and a shoemaker's, which indicates a large number of craftsmen working here. The guilds were based in the central part of Grodzisko, which was raised to the rank of a town in 1740.

3. Zaborcze and early youth.

My parents' house was located in Grodzisk Górne in the area of ​​the so-called "Zaborcze", located on the eastern side of the river, a short distance from the town and at the same distance from the church in Dolny.

Zaborcze includes only a dozen or so cottages with farm buildings and is the highest part of the village separated from the town and the church by a deep, branched and long ravine, bringing rainwater from the surrounding areas to the river in the town. The ravine and its slopes are covered with thickets and pine forests, once dense, thinned out today.

The buildings of Zaborcze stretch along a narrow and bumpy road leading out of the town, rising higher and higher towards the southeast and separating the buildings from the ravine, with pines, birches and poplars approaching the cottages and farm buildings. The southeastern end of Zaborcze is the highest and has been called "Patria" since time immemorial. From this place, which is currently the triangulation point, there is a vast view of the checkerboard of Grodzisk fields and the San valley to the east and the undulating terrain of fields ending with a forest to the west.

The extremely diverse terrain of Zaborcze with its mysterious thickets, valleys and ravines and four ponds that have disappeared today, was a real paradise for children during my early youth, and especially for four little ones, including my brother Józef, my father's brother Wojtek and Jaś Skiba, all three not much older than me.

My parents' house was next to the house of my grandfather Piotr Leja, whose oldest of six sons was my father Jan, and the youngest was the aforementioned Wojtek. Jaś Skiba's parents lived in the vicinity a little lower down, which made it easier for the four of us to keep in touch and play together. We learned the secrets of the ravines and thickets slowly and carefully.

The older ones, busy with hard work in the fields, usually had no time to look after the children. In the summer, the youngest children were taken to the fields, slightly older ones were left at home and given a series of orders and prohibitions. In addition, in the evenings, children were often frightened by ghosts lurking in the thickets, and the belief in malicious spirits and spells was quite common in the countryside at that time. We also acquired knowledge about the world around us ourselves, which often required a lot of courage and ingenuity from us in the absence of our elders. Of the four of us, Jaś Skiba showed the most courage, perhaps no one talked about ghosts and fears in his house.

Once, the four of us witnessed the following scene: at the entrance to the Miasteczko on Zaborcze, on the thatched roof of a house that was nearing completion, with a ladder attached to the roof, sat the poor owner of a small plot of land, Buczek, who was known to us, walking on crutches, and with his crutches was chasing away two Austrian gendarmes. The gendarmes wanted to pull Buczek off the roof and start demolishing the house, because it was located in the road of a neighbour whose house was slightly higher. A large crowd of people gathered around Buczek's new house, among whom was the son of the lame Buczek, cursing the gendarmes and the owner of the road and threatening to burn down the latter's buildings.

This scene made a huge impression on everyone, and on the four of us in particular. The next day, the four of us put on a show. Near my grandfather's house there was a so-called thick cellar, i.e. a cellar for potatoes and vegetables, dug in the ground and covered with a thatched roof. Uncle Wojtek took the role of the lame Buczek on the thick roof, Jaś Skiba and my brother Józef transformed into gendarmes with wooden rifles, and I, as the youngest, was given the role of young Buczek, threatening the gendarmes. The gendarmes played their roles most effectively, because they destroyed the thick roof, for which my uncle later got a beating from his grandfather, despite his fervent defence of the roof he was sitting on.

I would like to add that the life of children in the countryside during my childhood was not easy and there was not much time for play. Even at preschool age, the child was dragged to work. One of the most important activities was herding cattle, and this was done in the morning, for which one had to get up almost at sunrise, and in the afternoon taking until evening.

The stronghold does not have a pasture and herding took place on narrow roads. The cattle had to be kept on short ropes so that they could not reach into the grain, so pasturing was arduous, but at the same time necessary, because milk was the basis of nutrition. Other duties of mine and my brother included making sure that the hens did not damage the crops, collecting dry sticks and pine cones in the forests for fuel, and at the same time rocking and entertaining the younger sisters when our parents were in the fields.

From my early childhood I still remember the following fact. One day I went to my grandfather's house in the neighbourhood, when I learned that my uncle was coming, who had been living outside Grodzisk after finishing high school. Since everyone was happy about it, I was happy too and ran happily through the garden to the house to tell my mother. On the way I met a neighbour and said: "But you can't be seen by your uncle because you don't have any pants." Only then did I discover that I was only wearing a shirt. Usually, one- and two-year-old children dressed like that in the summer.

4. The image of the village before 1900.

All houses in Grodzisk before 1900 were wooden and all had thatched roofs, except for the houses in Miasteczko, which were mostly covered with shells. The residential house usually consisted of one room and a chamber divided by a hall, in which there was an entrance to the attic by a ladder. In one of the corners of the hall there were millstones for grinding grain for bread and for cattle.

The residential room was also a kitchen with a bakery oven for baking bread, with the oven taking up a large part of the room. In poorer houses there was no wooden floor, it was replaced by packed earth. There were usually two windows in the room, usually small ones, to keep it warm in winter. Double glazed windows were not yet known. The hall and the chamber, intended mainly for barrels of grain, were windowless.

At the time in question, there were still smoke-burning cottages in Grodzisk, which did not have chimneys extending above the roof. The percentage of smoke-filled cottages and rooms without floors in 1900 was already small. From 1900, the kitchen was separated from the living room in an increasing number of houses.

I would like to add that before 1900, iron was rarely used in the countryside. For example, the entrance door from the outside to the house did not have iron hinges, and the entrance door lock was made entirely of wood. The role of nails was usually played by pegs made of hardwood. Rural clothing and costumes from before 1900 were fundamentally different from those of today. The basic material for various garments at that time was homespun canvas, made in a home-made way from flax or hemp grown on almost every farm.

From these plants, after drying, the grain (i.e. linseed) was first separated from the stalks, and then fibres were obtained from the stalks after a series of procedures such as soaking, drying and kneading in so-called cierlices [these are wooden devices used for threshing flax fibres].

The fibres were used to spin various types of ropes and cords in the autumn, and in the winter all the girls and women, and often also men, spun threads of various thicknesses from the fibres on so-called distaffs. In the spring, the commissioned weavers made linen, hemp, carded and warped canvases from the threads. Linen and hemp canvases were used to make underwear and various types of garments, such as płotnianki [type of man's coat] and rantuchy [type of outer garment], and bags, sacks, etc. were sewn from carded and warped canvases. Linseed oil and hemp oil were pressed from flax and hemp seeds in the Grodzisk oil mills. These fats were used to anoint dishes during the Great Lent before Easter. During this Lent, people often abstained not only from meat dishes, but also from dairy products.

The rural summer and autumn costumes from before 1900 are quite well illustrated by three paintings by the famous painter Józef Chełmoński entitled: "Storks", "Indian Summer" and "Shepherd". The models for these paintings were probably taken by the artist from the area around Łowicz in the Russian partition, where he came from and where he lived before 1900, but the Grodzisk costumes of that time differed little, as I gather from the aforementioned paintings, from the costumes of the village near Łowicz. In winter, the older and wealthier wore sheepskins.

Footwear in the countryside before 1900 was rather a luxury. Except in winter, children always went barefoot, and the elderly only wore boots with uppers on holidays to attend church. Shoes were not worn in the countryside at that time. Of course, it had to be different in winter. But since footwear was expensive, children from poor families who did not have shoes did not leave their homes in winter.

The diet of the rural population was mostly meatless. The basis was wholemeal rye bread baked at home, milk, potatoes, cabbage and groats made of hreczka or millet. Breakfast usually consisted of borscht (żurek) with potatoes and groats cooked with milk. Lunch was cabbage with bread or potatoes and baked groats, supper consisted of one milk dish, e.g. sour milk with potatoes.

In addition to these three meals, the so-called juzyna was sometimes served in the field (e.g. during harvest or while digging potatoes), i.e. an afternoon snack consisting of bread, butter and cheese.

Every not too poor farmer usually fattened one pig for himself and slaughtered it at home at the beginning of winter, in order to have some meat for the winter and bacon and fat for buttering dishes throughout the year.

5. Poverty of Galicia.

The life of a peasant family in Galicia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century was not easy. The amount of land owned was usually too small to support a large family, often consisting of 6-10 people. The Grodzisk lands are middle class and with the then not very intensive economy (there were no artificial fertilizers yet) to feed a large family, in my opinion, a farm of at least 10 morgas was needed (1 Polish morgas = 0.56 hectares).

Meanwhile, in Grodzisk, about 75% of farms had less than 10 morgas of land in 1853, and in 1931 as many as about 94% of farms. Therefore, the population was constantly impoverished along with its growth, because there were no other means of subsistence apart from agriculture. In these conditions, a significant percentage of the population had to eat below the norm, and thus starve, and this percentage was constantly increasing.

During my studies, I learned that around 1890, a brochure (or book) by a social and perhaps political activist, Stanisław Szczepanowski, entitled "The Misery of Galicia" was published. I did not see this publication, I only heard that the author was the first to draw attention to the fact that the average peasant farm in the whole of Galicia had only 3-4 acres of arable land. Szczepanowski's brochure was therefore the first alarm sounded by the authorities regarding social relations in the Galician village. However, neither the Austrian government in Vienna nor the national authorities in Lwów showed sufficient concern for improving the living conditions of the smallholder population.

How differently these matters were approached in England. There, supposedly as early as the 16th century, parish committees were required to keep a list of families in a given parish that earned less than was needed to feed the family. And when a family earned too little, the parish board was required to either find the head of the family a better-paid job or to pay the amount missing for normal food from contributions distributed to other members of the parish.

There were no factories in Galicia, and therefore there were no jobs. This was probably in the interest of the Austrian Germans, so that Austrian industry would not have competitors in Galicia, and also in the interest of the owners of farms in Galicia, because it made agricultural workers on farms cheap.

When I was in the 4th grade of secondary school, i.e. in 1899, the Przeworsk-Rozwadów railway line was being built near Grodzisk. My father told me then that for the first time in his life he had the opportunity to earn a few Austrian crowns while working on this line of earthworks.

A few years later, the first Galician factory, namely a sugar factory, was established in Przeworsk. When the first Przeworsk sugar appeared for sale, the Austrian sugar factories lowered the price of their sugar for Galicia below their own costs, in order to put the Przeworsk factory out of business in this way. I remember that the Polish population of Galicia organised committees at that time, obliging their members to buy the more expensive Przeworsk factory sugar instead of the cheaper Austrian sugar.

The only salvation for the starving smallholder population of Galicia in the period in question was migration in search of work. These were either seasonal migrations within the country or emigration abroad. The first category included the so-called bandochy (i.e. seasonal trips to work in the fields on the manors), rafting (i.e. floating wood down rivers to Sandomierz or to Gdańsk) and the so-called balarka (i.e. trips to the forests in winter or summer to cut down and process wood intended for shipping by water or rail to other regions or countries). The smallholders from Grodzisk also travelled to Germany for seasonal field work, namely to Saxony, Prussia and the Poznań region. The second category included the fairly well-known emigration to the USA, Canada, South America and later also to France.

6. The public school and education in the countryside before 1900.

I do not know when the obligation to send children to school was introduced in Galicia, but it already existed in 1892, when I was enrolled in the first grade of a public school. At that time, there was already a 3-grade public school in Grodzisk, located in Miasteczko, but it seemed to be the only school for the entire village consisting of four communes, or maybe even for the entire parish, covering about ten communes.

In these conditions, the obligation to send children to school could not be fulfilled even with the best intentions of the parents, and therefore the state of education in Grodzisk and in the surrounding villages before 1900 must have been very low.

Mention was made above of ghosts and spirits told to children by adults. When I was a few years old, I heard about a cow that was bewitched by a neighbour by putting some herb in the hay, and which suddenly lost milk because of this. I was later told that when the first bicycles appeared, people crossed themselves at the sight of them, thinking it was some kind of hallucination or witchcraft.

The Grodzisk school consisted of two identical brick buildings, divided by a courtyard, with a fruit garden located at the back. These buildings were supposedly once owned by the local manor house. The school principal was the universally respected Maciej Tarkowski. One of these buildings housed one classroom and the school principal's apartment, the other housed two remaining classrooms. The school had two more teachers in addition to the principal.

The details of my education at the Grodzisk school have faded from my memory. I remember, however, that classes always took place before noon, that I studied well and was not punished with the cane used by teachers on those who did not study or misbehaved, and that the cane was also used on those Jewish fellow pupils who spoke Polish badly. I went to the first grade with a primer and a black board with a stylus. We were taught to write first with a stylus on the board, and only in higher grades with a pencil and ink on paper. I will also tell you about two events related to the primary school in Grodzisk, which have stuck deeply in my memory.

In the 2nd grade, I received an order from my teacher during a lesson to bring him the next day osier sticks [an osier is a small willow] growing in the Zaborcze thickets. I considered this order an honourable distinction among my classmates. So right after lunch I started looking for osier in the forest and the next day I carried the sticks to school with some pride. In the meantime, right in front of the schoolyard, several older Jews attacked me and took the osier away so that I went to class crying and ashamed. It was only later that I understood that the osier was intended as a discipline for those Jewish students who spoke Polish badly and that is why the parents took away the instrument of punishment for their children.

And here is the second event. When I was in the 1st or 2nd grade (I don't remember which), all the students received their first half-year report cards with the obligation to return them after their parents signed them. In particular, my brother, who attended a class one year higher than mine, and I brought home our two report cards. In the evening, a neighbour visited us, illiterate like most people, and when she found out about the two report cards and the signatures on them, she shouted to our parents: "You did a very bad thing, it must be a trick, the signatures are probably for the reintroduction of serfdom."

At that time, my brother and I did not understand what serfdom was, but the threat worked, because the next day we returned our report cards to school with the signatures scratched out.

I would like to add that serfdom in Grodzisk was not, I think, as severe as elsewhere, because already in 1787 the ratio of manor land to peasant land in Grodzisk was 1:17. Nevertheless, the event described here shows that even in 1892, i.e. long after serfdom had been abolished, the fear of it was still alive.

In the Grodzisk school, in addition to reading, writing and arithmetic, we were also taught how to tend fruit trees, because in the spring the school principal employed the better students to work in the school garden.

I would like to add that in the times before 1900, there were generally no orchards in the village. Only rarely could you find a wild pear or apple tree, which are said to have sown themselves. In the gardens by the Zaborcza farm buildings, there were usually linden trees, elms and poplars. Near my parents' buildings, there was also a large maple and ash tree, as well as a large walnut tree and five tall cherry trees.

It was only with the growth of my generation after 1900 that illiteracy began to disappear from the village, and orchards slowly began to appear in place of the wild trees in the gardens.

7. An important decision and a fire in the village.

When I was in the 3rd grade of primary school, the family decided to send one of their two boys to a gymnasium, then called a Latin school in the village. This was combined with a huge burden on the 4-hectare farm, especially since, in addition to the two boys, my parents had four daughters at that time. The nearest secondary school was then in Jarosław, 34 km away, where the fees for board, books and uniforms were high.

My brother, a year older than me, was then in the same 3rd grade as me due to some obstacle and was a very good student. My parents thought for a long time about which of us to send to further studies. The choice finally fell on my brother, because he was supposedly a better student than me.

A few months before finishing the 3rd grade, I witnessed a huge fire in Grodzisk Dolny. A residential house was burning near the church. The flames first engulfed the thatched roof, which after some time collapsed inside the framework, throwing a huge column of sparks in all directions. After a while, I saw two people in the framework of the house with unfamiliar tools in the background of flames bursting from inside. At the same time, I could hear the terrifying screams of people, the roar of cattle and the ringing of church bells at the same time. There was no fire department in the village at that time.

The sight of this fire made such a shocking impression on me that from then on I dreamed of huge fires every night for weeks. Thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that the cause of fires in the countryside was thatched roofs. Houses in the cities were, as I heard, covered with shells or roof tiles and were safer than houses in the countryside, because I had never heard of a fire in Miasteczko.

The holidays of 1895 were approaching. In order to get into a gymnasium, you first had to finish the 4th grade of primary school. The nearest 4-grade primary school was in Leżajsk, 8 km away from our house.

My brother began to prepare for the Leżajsk school. But when the time of departure approached, he was sorry to leave the village and Zaborcze. He was also sorry to leave the horses, which he loved very much, and he suggested to my parents that they send me for further studies.

For me this offer was rather pleasant, as I was still haunted by the terrible image of the recent fire in the countryside, and so I willingly agreed to continue my studies in the city.

8. School in Leżajsk and entrance exam in Jarosław.

After the holidays of 1894, I found myself in Leżajsk, known in the area for its Bernardine monastery from the 17th century. I was enrolled in the 4th grade of the local primary school and placed in the house of a townsman, Karaś, who, together with his wife, was a butcher.

In the same house, there was also another townsman, J.S., also enrolled in the 4th grade. We both slept in the master's bedroom on straw mattresses spread on the floor. I do not remember much from my year at the Leżajsk school, except that studying was not difficult for me, that I missed the countryside and the Zaborcze region, and that I was often hungry.

I also remember that the owner of our apartment was not feeling well at that time and usually stayed in bed, and because he liked drinking mead, he often sent me or my friend for this tasty drink, and always when his wife was not present. The owner's wife had a butcher's shop in the Leżajsk market square, where she sold pork and cold cuts. When she came home from work, she often found her husband tipsy, and so she forbade us boys from buying honey for her husband. We found ourselves in a difficult situation, because either the owner or the owner's wife was displeased with us for disobedience.

After receiving my certificate of completion of the 4th grade, I went with my mother to Jarosław for the entrance exam to the gymnasium. We arrived there the day before the exam and stayed overnight at the Capuchin monastery. Another candidate for the gymnasium also stayed at the same monastery with his father. The father was supposedly an organist and came from the vicinity of Jarosław.

In the evening, during a group chat with my mother, the father began to quiz his son and me on the exam material to check our preparation. After this mock exam, the father expressed doubts as to whether I would pass the entrance exam, because I did not know about the Philistine-Jewish battles and how many Philistines took part in those battles. This opinion was a big blow to me and my mother.

However, the next day it turned out that I had not been asked about the Philistines during the entrance exam and the exam result was successful. My path to high school was clear.

9. Imperial-Royal Galician Gymnasium.

In the former Austrian partition, the gymnasium was an eight-year secondary school with a humanities major. In addition to the gymnasiums, there were also 7-year secondary schools with a technical major, called real schools. Latin was not taught in the latter.

The gymnasium was divided into lower and higher. The lower included grades 1 to 4, the higher - grades 5 to 8 and ended with a secondary school leaving exam, or matriculation exam, which gave the right to study at higher schools without entrance exams.

Unlike primary schools, education in gymnasiums was not free. For education, the student was obliged to pay a fee, called tuition, to the state treasury every year. In the event of good progress in education, the student could be exempted from tuition after submitting a certificate of the parents' indigence to the school authorities.

Each secondary school pupil was required to wear a navy blue uniform with the appropriate number of stripes on the standing collar of the jacket for the given class and with the metal letter G on the front of the peaked cap.

The Galician village provided for a very small percentage of pupils going to secondary schools. The reason was the difficult financial conditions of the average rural household. For example, from the commune of Grodzisk Górny I was the only secondary school pupil for a large number of years. And if someone in the village decided to send their son to secondary school despite difficult financial conditions, it was always to a school with Latin, i.e. to a gymnasium, and almost always with the intention that the son would become a priest one day. The material situation of priests at the time in question was generally very good, which was expressed by the slogan known at the time: "If there is a priest in the family, poverty will not befall it."

Gymnasiums were often called Latin schools. This may have come from the fact that of all the subjects, Latin took up the most hours per week in gymnasiums. For example, in the first grade of a gymnasium there were 8 hours of Latin per week, while other subjects were divided into 2, 3, or at most 4 hours per week.

In addition to Latin, the curriculum included Greek language and literature (from the third grade), German language and literature, and of course Polish, so that the Galician gymnasium, with the right selection of teachers, could give its graduates a fairly good preparation for the humanities.

It was worse with subjects such as mathematics, physics, or chemistry, especially in provincial schools in Galicia, i.e. outside Lwów and Kraków. These subjects were often taught by teachers without qualifications, who did not have the appropriate preparation. For example, during my eight years of studies at the Jarosław gymnasium, I probably had mathematics teachers with qualifications in only two or three classes. The result was that at least 75% of students in Galician gymnasiums received a lower level of preparation in science subjects and despite this moved from one class to another. When I took my final exams, only two students from my entire eighth grade solved the problems in the written exam in mathematics, the rest of the pupils wrote nothing.

Moreover, the school authorities seemed to place no emphasis on subjects such as mathematics and physics. They were probably considered of little use, and tolerated perhaps because they were in the secondary school programmes of all Western countries.

10. Lower Gymnasium in Jarosław.

I began my gymnasium studies in September 1896 in Jarosław. My parents placed me in a boarding house, a small house with a garden, owned by a widow who ran a small shop selling various items. I lived in a room with a fourth-grade student, and for lunches and dinners I went to the gymnasium dormitory.

The school principal throughout my studies in Jarosław was a Polish teacher, Professor Wójcik, co-author of the textbook entitled "Wypisy polskie" [Polish exerpts], and the dormitory manager was a catechist, Father Dr Mateusz Czopor.

I do not manage to remember much from the first four years of my studies in Jarosław. I will only mention a few details. In the first semester of the first year, my studies were not going smoothly. I felt lonely and often thought about my Zaborcze. In the afternoon, to force myself to do my homework, I would climb a tree in the landlady's garden and there I would memorise Latin words or zoology. I got my first D in zoology because I didn't learn the Latin name when describing a stork.

Out of our professors in the first grade that I remember quite well was the professor of Latin, the class tutor. He was a nice gentleman named Starzewski, menacing to look at, because he had a strong beard and stubble, but for us school kids he was kind and a good teacher. In the first semester he gave me a pass mark with difficulty, but in the second I got a very good mark.

The junior high school dormitory where I ate was small and could probably accommodate no more than twelve students. The food there was modest, after dinner I was often hungry. I remember a discussion at the common table on the issue of whether one should eat quickly or slowly in order to be satisfied with the food served. Finally, the eighth-grader living in the dormitory ruled that one should eat quickly, because chewed food has a larger volume and can fill the stomach.

My fourth-grader roommate was already smoking cigarettes and would send me to the train station in the evenings, when the shops were already closed, for cigarettes. As a reward for this favour, he ordered me to smoke one of the cigarettes he had brought. I carried out the orders of this "authority", although I did not like smoking it very much. In the second semester of the first year, I stopped being a weak student, I was already an average student, and sometimes even good. However, the last two months of this class were poisoned by the following, very unpleasant thing for me. From my landlady, I would occasionally receive rolls, sweets, etc. from her shop. I treated it as a reward for the small favours I did for her. Meanwhile, before the end of the school year, my landlady told me to write to my father that I owed her eight Austrian Rhine coins for sweets, rolls, etc. received during the year.

This was an astronomical amount for me. I was threatened with not only a beating for this debt, but maybe even a ban on further studies. To save myself from the consequences, I wrote to one of my uncles and asked for financial help. My uncle sent me five Rhine coins, so my debt decreased to three Rhine coins. But this amount was still huge for a debt. At the end of the school year, students from each grade sold their books to students from lower grades. My parents already knew that I would move to the second grade and told me to buy used books from the second grade students before the holidays. In the end, I paid off the rest of the debt, which was terrible for me, by increasing the price of each of the purchased books on the list for parents by a dozen or several dozen groszy. This is how I freed myself from the nightmare that had been haunting me for two months.

From the second grade, I remember a difficulty that I encountered during a maths lesson devoted to proportions. The way the concept of proportion and the term "proportional fourth" were introduced was completely incomprehensible to me. It seems to me that teaching about proportions should have been introduced differently or moved to higher grades.

And here is a fact of a different kind, which I remember well from the third grade. In the Polish language class we were given homework: "Description of your hometown". I had no idea what to write about here, whether about Zaborcze, or about my parents' house and rocking my younger sister, or about herding cattle. In the same class I had a friend Szalewicz, who came from Leżajsk and had very good grades in Polish. I asked him to write this assignment for me. He refused. Besides, he had never been to Grodzisk. The next day, after I insisted again, he asked in the jargon of the time: "And are there Jews in Grodzisk?" When I told him that there were, he said: "Okay, I'll write you an assignment".

And he kept his word. His description of Grodzisk specifically mentioned Jews as parasites who exploited the rural population and, although they had lived among us for centuries, had not learned to speak Polish. I copied this description and gave it to the professor as my assignment. After a few days, the professor brought the corrected assignments to class and, while discussing the essays, said, among other things: "Leja wrote the best homework." In this way, thanks to my colleague, I grew up to be a Polish teacher. I later learned that our Polish professor did not like Jews and that was probably why he liked the negative opinion about them.

In the 3rd and 4th grades, I was one of the fairly good students, although not the best. Maths came particularly easily to me, while memorised subjects such as languages ​​and history were more difficult. When I was in the 4th grade, the parents of one of my friends asked me to give lessons to their son in several subjects, mainly maths. I gladly accepted the offer because it improved my financial situation. When I was in the 4th grade, I began to receive a private stipend from the parish priest of Grodzisk, named Father Czesław Kaczorowski, for the amount of twenty Austrian crowns per month. I received this stipend for ten months during the year and throughout the rest of my studies.

This aid was a significant relief for my parents in their expenses for my education.

11. Higher gymnasium and matriculation exam.

In 1900 I moved to the 5th grade. We got a new professor of mathematics in this class, who was an excellent lecturer and from whom I learned a lot by solving so-called construction problems. Today, unfortunately, I do not remember the name of this professor; he taught us for only one year.

My studies in the higher grades of the gymnasium went well for me, especially mathematics. When I was in the 6th grade, I lived with two students from the 8th grade, one of whom stood out in his class as a highly gifted mathematician and at home he often bombarded me with problems to solve, adding: "I am sure you won't touch this", or: "I bet my neck you won't solve this problem". With such sayings he fuelled my ambition and in this way in the 6th grade I learned the mathematics of higher classes, which improved my financial situation, because in the higher grades I had several paid tutoring sessions in mathematics.

When I was in the 6th grade there were six Ruthenians and eight Jews among my classmates. In the lower grades there were no national differences between us. They began when we were in the 6th grade and mainly between Poles and Ruthenians. The latter began to call themselves Ukrainians. One of them, named Twardochleb, a fairly good student, ordered us to call him Twerdochlib from then on and began to treat us Poles hostilely. This hostility was mainly manifested in the singing of a new Ukrainian song, beginning with the words: "Don't worry, don't worry, we'll kill you ..." In 1902, I was invited along with two other Polish colleagues to an evening organised in a Russian dormitory by a Rusyn professor to honour the poet Taras Shevchenko. When, after the introductory speech, the aforementioned song " Don't worry ..." was sung, our three invited Poles left the room.

While in the 6th grade, I was accepted into a secret student organisation, banned by the school authorities, which probably existed in the upper grades of all gymnasiums in Galicia. The purpose of this organisation was to acquaint young people with the true history of Poland, torn into three partitions, and to organise celebrations on the anniversaries of important events in our history, such as the Constitution on 3 May.

When I was in the 7th grade, a secret organisation of Polish youth from Jarosław and Rzeszów organised a joint reunion meeting in Jarosław, which took place late in the evening on the outskirts of Jarosław and in which I took part. Organisational and educational activities were discussed. The next day, the political authorities learned about the reunion meeting and considered it a threat to the Austrian monarchy, and the school authorities sentenced all participants of the meeting, students of the Jarosław grammar school, to sixteen hours of "detention". Moreover, one of the main organisers of the meeting, an 8th grade student F Młynarski, was expelled from the Jarosław grammar school.

I would like to add that at the time in question (the beginning of the 20th century) the level of education in the countryside in the Austrian partition was very low. The Galician village was then about 37% illiterate, and the lack of factories and jobs caused part of the population to starve, which was already mentioned above in the section "The Poverty of Galicia". Therefore, young people studying in secondary schools and higher schools, and coming from the countryside, often devoted their entire holidays to educational and social work in the village. In Grodzisk, during the holidays we were involved in organising educational lectures as part of the People's School Society and performing theatrical tricks in school buildings. When I was in the 5th grade, there was a performance of a play entitled "Łobzowianie", in which I was assigned the role of the girl Magdusia, due to the lack of a suitable actress. This was my first public appearance, I suppose not with the best results. In addition to theatrical performances, the young people studying in Grodzisk during the holidays organised festivals with buffets and dances, and the income from the performances and festivals always went to buy books for the Society of the Grodzisk People's School library in Grodzisk.

The school-leaving exam in 1904 was approaching. I remember my colleagues preparing for the written exam in mathematics. A few days before the exam, a meeting of all the school-leavers took place late in the evening in Jarosław Park, at which it was decided that for one half of the classmates, the solutions to all the topics in mathematics would be written by my colleague J Łosek, a good mathematician who later became a priest, and for the other half of the classmates - by F Leja. The written exam in mathematics took place in accordance with this resolution and the school-league ended successfully for all the classmates. In particular, all those previously punished with sixteen hours of "detention" received their school-leaving certificates in 1904.

12. Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów.

In the Galician countryside, the gymnasium was often called a Latin school, and its students were said to be studying to be priests.

Even in the early grades of the upper gymnasium, I slowly came to the conclusion that I was not cut out to be a priest, and in the last years before my final exams, I was increasingly eager to continue my education at the University or the Polytechnic in Lwów. However, I was aware that I lacked the financial resources to continue my studies. My parents were too poor to support me in Lwów, and they were also resentful of me, especially my father, when they learned that I would not study theology. The then parish priest of Grodzisk, Fr Feliks Świerczyński, although of conservative beliefs, was an enlightened man. When I told him about my problems, he promised me that he would try to ensure that I received the previous scholarship named after Fr Kaczorowski, and at the same time influenced my father not to reproach me for not having a vocation to be a priest. This was a great encouragement for me to carry out my intentions of further education, although the promised scholarship was at most 1/4 of the cost of living in Lwów.

Finally, counting on the fact that it would be possible to earn a living in Lwów by giving lessons, I enrolled at the end of September 1904 at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Lwów with the intention of studying mathematics, physics and philosophy. There were no entrance exams at that time; every graduate of a gymnasium, with a certificate of secondary education, had the right to be a student of a higher school. The only requirement was to pay a tuition fee every year, or maybe even every semester, the amount of which depended on the number of hours of lectures entered in the index, although one could be exempted from tuition on conditions similar to those in high school. Studies at the Faculty of Philosophy in Lwów usually ended with an exam for teachers in secondary schools in a suitably selected group of subjects, for example mathematics and physics. At that time, there was no master's degree. One could be admitted to the teacher's exam after at least four years of studies. Often, young people studied longer, because there were no rigorous limits on the length of studies.

During my studies in Lwów, I was often hungry and cold. Although I received 20 crowns of allowance named after Father Kaczorowski every month, I had to earn at least three times more to pay for my accommodation and food.

My paid work varied. The most common were lessons given in private homes. For some time, I worked as a surveyor for the Office of Weights and Measures in Lwów and travelled to nearby breweries to measure the capacity and mark new barrels for beer.

At the request of the then canon of the Lwów chapter, Father Adam Sapieha, later Cardinal of Kraków, I spent a number of months collecting materials in the Lwów libraries about the history of the Catholic Church in the Prussian partition in the times of Bismarck.

My other activities during my studies in Lwów included a half-year of work as an accountant in the administration of one of the Lwów weekly newspapers, and also cooperation with the founder of a newly established tube factory in Lwów.

Of course, my employment had a hampering effect on my studies. However, this effect was not too great, because the mathematics studies at the University of Lwów were not very intensive either.

During my studies, the University of Lwów had two professors of mathematics: Józef Puzyna and Jan Rajewski, the latter of whom was on a long sick leave at the time. There was no assistant professor or assistant to conduct classes. In these conditions, the mathematics studies had to be poor, because not all branches of mathematics could be taught. The Viennese authorities were probably not very interested in education in Galicia.

In addition to mathematics and physics, I was interested in the fields of philosophy and psychology. I remember a year-long lecture course on psychology and a half-year-long lecture course entitled "Introduction to metaphysics". The psychology lecture course was interesting to me, but I couldn't listen to it in its entirety because of my work. On the other hand, I was disappointed by the "metaphysics" despite attending the lectures meticulously. After listening to "metaphysics" I gained more respect for mathematics and its deductive method than for philosophy.

About ten years later I learned about the following witty and at the same time malicious definition of philosophy, uttered by one of the young German philosophers (I don't remember his name): "Philosophy is the systematic distortion of terminology invented for this purpose." The metaphysics lecture mentioned above had features expressed in the previous definition of philosophy.

Theoretical physics lectures in Lwów were then given by a young associate professor Marian Smoluchowski, who had graduated from the University of Vienna a few years earlier. In this lecture course I learned for the first time that a projectile fired vertically from the ground may not return to the ground if its initial speed exceeds 11 km per second.

In 1909 I took an exam at the University of Lwów to become a teacher of mathematics and physics in gymnasiums. Although my grades in this exam were generally very good, I was not satisfied with my studies in Lwów and to my colleagues who congratulated me after the exam I said: "But I don't know how to do this mathematics."

At the university I only learned about the huge building of Higher Mathematics, but there was not much that I could learn about this building due to the lack of an adequate number of lectures and exercises. Therefore, after completing my studies in Lwów, I intended to continue them at home after receiving a position as a teacher in a gymnasium.

13. In the Austrian army.

In the Austrian partition, military service was three years, only boys with a secondary school certificate were required to serve one year. I applied for military conscription during my studies in Lwów. I was considered fit for military service and my service was postponed until I completed my studies.

After passing the university exams to become a mathematics and physics teacher, I volunteered for the army in Lwów in the autumn of 1909. The aim of the military authorities was, of course, to teach the recruit how to defend the Austrian monarchy against enemy attack. But many of us conscripts were not interested in this goal and all of them, including me, set themselves a different goal: to be released from the army as soon as possible by simulating various ailments and diseases.

At the beginning of our military service, we were taught drill and various manoeuvres. During drill, we made various mistakes, for example, lifting our left foot instead of the right one. I remember how our commandant, who knew that I had graduated in mathematics, reprimanded me for such a mistake with the words:

"You Leja, you learnt the logarithm tables yet you don't understand that."

The language of the drill was German. After three weeks of such exercises, I was sent to the garrison hospital in Lwów for examination of my lungs and heart. There I found myself in a spacious first-floor room intended for one-year soldiers, with twelve beds along the walls and a large rectangular table in the middle. There were already nine one-year patients in the room, or rather, as I soon found out, nine malingerers.

One of them, who had been undergoing the examination for a long time, let's call him S, made his stay in the hospital more interesting for himself and his colleagues in the following way:

The ward for the one-year conscripts was looked after by a soldier who kept order, contacted the hospital office and when a new one-year patient was to come for the examination, he informed the ward with the words: "There is an addition." Just before the arrival of a new patient, the one-year conscript S would leave the ward, dress up as a doctor and when the 'addition' was already settled inside, he would enter in a white coat and with a stethoscope in his hand. At that time, all those present in the ward would stand to attention by their beds, and at the entrance door the soldier - the ward supervisor - would report: "Mr Medical Officer, I report: nine ​​men and one more."

"Who is the addition?" S asked. After a while, he approached him and began the examination. First, the questions were: "What is your name?" "What are you in civilian life?" Then, the order was given: "Take off your clothes" and when the examined person had only taken off his blouse and shirt, a further order was given: "No, no, take off all your clothes". Then, pretending to be a doctor, Mr S tapped the 'addition', put the stethoscope he had brought with him to his lungs and heart, ordered the examined person to perform a series of gymnastic movements and repeated the previous examinations with the stethoscope, while whispering the word "malingerer" during the examination. Finally, there was an order for the new subject being examined to run around the table in the room several times, and when the run was too slow, Mr S would add: "faster, faster, why do you run like a cow".

Then came the tapping and examination of the lungs and heart. Of course, only the 'addition' took this examination seriously, for everyone gathered in the room it was great fun. After this examination, the "Stabsarzt" S would leave the room, and the 'addition' would complain to his colleagues around him that the doctor had whispered the word "malingerer" during the examination. After a while, S would enter the room, no longer dressed as a doctor, and greet the 'addition' as a one-year conscript. The astonished 'addition' risked a punch in the face, but all his companions surrounded him and explained to him that each of them had undergone a similar "examination".

After several weeks in the garrison hospital in Lwów, I was released from further service in the Austrian army.

14. A short break.

After being discharged from the army, in the autumn of 1909, I received a nomination from the National School Council in Lwów as a substitute teacher of mathematics and physics at the gymnasium in Drohobych.

However, I decided to resign from this nomination and asked the School Council for a position in one of the university towns of Galicia, namely Lwów or Kraków, justifying this by saying that I myself would like to continue my education. The school authorities responded positively to my request and in April 1910 I received a nomination as a substitute teacher of mathematics and physics at the 4th gymnasium in Kraków. A substitute teacher was called a "suplent" for short, and his position a "suplentura".

I spent the time before taking up this position in Grodzisk. The poverty in the Galician countryside has already been mentioned. In some villages, Dairy Cooperatives were organised at that time, which was to some extent a means of counteracting the poverty of the time. Together with my Uncle Wojciech, we devoted several months to organising meetings, lectures and agitation for the establishment of such a cooperative in Grodzisk. And finally, in 1910, the Dairy Cooperative in Grodzisk was established, soon expanded to the entire village and exists to this day.

15. Supplementary work in Kraków.

In April 1910, I started working as a supplementary at the 4th Gymnasium in Kraków on Krupnicza Street. The professor of mathematics and physics at that school was Dr K Kraft. I have already written above that I was not satisfied with my studies in Lwów, because there were no lecturers there and some areas of mathematics were not taught at that time. Therefore, I looked with admiration at Professor Kraft, who already had a doctorate, and I tried to get closer to him to learn about his knowledge and teaching methods.

After some time, I learned with astonishment that Professor Kraft was not a doctor of mathematics, as I had assumed, but a doctor of all medical sciences. I would like to add that a doctor earned about five times more than a high school teacher in those days. I also asked Dr Kraft the question "Why aren't you a doctor?" He answered me as follows:

I studied medicine thoroughly, passed my tests and exams with very good progress. When after four years of studies I received the title of doctor of all medical sciences, I came to the conclusion that in front of every patient who came to me for advice, I had to pretend to be wise, although I would usually have doubts. Since I don't like pretending, and I was interested in physics and mathematics, I signed up for these subjects after medical school and now I am a teacher.

This explanation was evidence of Dr Kraft's high moral standard. I would like to add that during World War I Dr Kraft was in the army, where he served as an ophthalmologist, and after the war he did not return to teaching, but worked as an ophthalmologist in his own school.

From my first job, I remember the following event. At that time, I lived near the Planty park, about 300 m from my school, which was also located close to the Planty. The headmaster of the secondary school demanded punctuality from teachers and students. I woke up once a few minutes before 8 a.m., on a day when I started classes at 8 a.m. I immediately jumped out of bed, pulled on my clothes and ran through the Planty to school, finishing getting dressed on the way. After entering the secondary school building, I notice that it is already quiet, which means that classes have started. I went to the door of my classroom, where I was supposed to have a lesson. There was also silence. I slowly opened the door and saw that there was no one in the classroom. I looked at my watch and saw that it was only after 7 o'clock. So I was wrong by a whole hour.

At the end of June 1911, the school authorities transferred me to a gymnasium in Bochnia. The principal of each secondary school published a printed report on the school's activities in a given school year. These reports could contain articles and essays from various fields of knowledge. The Report of the Principal of the 4th Secondary School in Kraków, published at the end of June 1911, included my essay entitled: "First Principles of Non-Euclidean Geometry", which was the reason why my stay in Bochnia did not last long. This article was read by Professor Kazimierz Żórawski of the Jagiellonian University of Kraków while I was already in Bochnia. He assessed it positively and offered me a one-year scholarship from the Academy of Arts and Sciences to travel abroad for further studies. I accepted this offer with great pleasure. I finished my work at the Bochnia gymnasium in June 1912 and after arriving in Grodzisk I began preparing to go abroad in the autumn.

Mathematics had reached a high level of development in these times in France and Germany. After receiving a scholarship I had the choice of going to the Sorbonne in Paris or to Göttingen in Germany. I spoke German better than French, but despite this I decided to go to France to learn French better there.

The youth of Grodzisk, studying in secondary schools outside Grodzisk, had been planning to establish a brass band for several years and had been collecting funds to buy instruments. If my memory serves me right, it was during the holidays in 1912 that the goal was achieved and then the "Grodzisk Village Orchestra" was established, which still exists today.

In September of that year I received a full annual scholarship of 800 French francs from the Academy of Arts, of which 2/10, i.e. 160 francs, I decided to take with me for a two-month stay in Paris, and I left the rest with my uncle with a request to send me 80 francs every month.