We really had a very limited space--
not only the actual living space,
but also the limited outside space.
And that ghetto was keeping us very much together,
and, in a way, it brought us together as well.
We would try to establish semblance of a social life,
semblance of an intellectual life.
For example, there were no schools,
and my younger sister was very young, and I knew that she needed education.
So I established a clandestine school.
And the girls would come to my room--
I can't call it an apartment--
and they would be in groups of five or sixes,
and they would come every hour on the hour,
and we would-- I would conduct classes with them,
and I would spill out of my head...
whatever I remembered having learned in my school.
And the most incongruous subject matters.
I would teach them Latin vocabulary.
I would teach them geography. I would teach them anything I knew.
As a matter of fact, I wrote an essay,
which I call "Gone with a Dream,"
because one of the things I read most recently...
prior to establishing this school...
was the Polish translation of Gone with the Wind.
And when the girls came, and they were so solemn and so sorrowful.
And they would say, "Please, please tell us a story."
I would say, "Okay. Today I'm going to tell you-- or take you--
to an altogether different world."
And I took them away to a Southern plantation in Georgia,
and I was talking to them about Tara and about Melanie...
and about Scarlett and Rhett Butler.
And their eyes would open, and they would dream about it.
And I remember one girl especially, green-eyed girl,
who I would have thought would have looked just like Scarlett.
I said, "Good-bye, Scarlett," and she would say, "No. I'd rather be Melanie."
So we were dreaming together.