Objects

This is the last one in the series of zoology notebooks kept by Felicja Blumental, a 5th-grade student of Cecylia Goldman-Landau’s Girls’ Gymnasium. It is a continuation of the zoology notebook (MPOLIN-A30.3.2) in the following term (in 1923). The students were then studying crustaceans, including the detailed (and depicted in colour pencil) anatomy of the European crayfish, the duck mussel (freshwater mussels), cephalopods including the predatory cuttlefish. The latter fascinated Felicja so much that she added an explanation to the drawing devoted to it: “The upper specimen defends itself against a shark by throwing out the contents of the ink gland, the lower one grabs a crab with its arms.” | These three notebooks: MPOLIN-A30.3.1, MPOLIN-A30.3.2 and MPOLIN-A30.3.3 entertain us and please our eye, while providing a unique and rare evidence of school education. We may also ask ourselves how they survived. Did Felicja have them with her during the war wandering? Or perhaps it was her parents, proud of their daughter’s talents, who carefully preserved them? This can be confirmed by Felicja’s “Diary of the Saddest Period of my Youth” where, under the date of 31 January 1932, we find the following note: “In the morning, Mummy took out my Zoology and Botany notebooks from the 4th and 5th grade. (...) Such beautiful drawings. It’s a pity I was looking at them without Mareczek (Markus Mizny). He would have quite some fun. I will show him these notebooks when we see each other” (see MPOLIN-A30.3.4). | Renata Piątkowska