Isaac Slariknik: “I will bequeath to you school”

Ashley Davis28/04/2025

0 227 8 minutes read

In 1999, the Waldheim school, which is one of the oldest educational institutions of the region, was given the name of Honorary Citizen EAO Isaac Abramovich, a man who worked in it almost all a conscious life: first a teacher, and then the director. Thus, his contribution to raising children and the development of the education system of not only his native Birobidzhan district, but also the entire EAO, was once again noted. After all, nominal schools can be counted on the fingers of one hand. So what did the director deserve such a high honor, for which people loved him, and why the Valdheim school is known far beyond the borders of autonomy – in the material of IA EaMedia.

Nonalnium Far East

Isaac Abramovich was born on December 17, 1920 in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He grew up there, received his education in Smolensk, and in the difficult 1937, having graduated from the pedagogical college, he arrived in the Far East. Where else was it at that time to go to a young specialist who is perfect in Yiddish's language? Of course, in Birobidzhan, where thousands of Jewish immigrants from all over the country and even from abroad built a house on the Far Eastern land-a Jewish autonomous region.

The official biography says that he was then seventeen years old. In fact, Isaac will celebrate its seventeenth anniversary here, four months after arrival, in the village of Valdheim near Birobidzhan, where it was sent to work. Here he will first cross the threshold of the school as a teacher and will remain for many, long years.

The school principal will be appointed on May 15, 1941, a month before the start of the war. All war years he will remain here the only man-pedagog, will conduct Yiddish and German lessons, teach physical education and labor. For economic affairs, for concern for the daily bread, it will not forget that even in the war the muses are not silent. The school will create an agitbrid who will speak to collective farmers with concerts, theatrical productions. The villagers will especially be remembered by the play “Partisan detachment” (6+), which young artists will play in Yiddish – the director himself will become the director of the performance.

Leave to return

In August 1950, Isaac the Sarkolnik will be dismissed by the director due to departure to study in Khabarovsk. In Waldheim, he will return with a red diploma of a teacher of history and social science. And again the school team will be headed – now at almost the end of his long life.

– When I am on business in Khabarovsk or Moscow, I imagine that I am the director of the school named after the Semolik from the EAO, they answer me that we have heard about our school, they are interested in how we live now. This is worth a lot, ”says the former director of the Waldheim school Andrei Byalik.

The schoolboy, by the way, is a rare surname, one might say, unique. In vain, the current teachers and students tried to find Isaac Abramovich and his relatives in the World Wide Web. Nothing. Therefore, maybe there is a legend in the village of how he, having decided to become a teacher, added the prefix “at” to his surname for solidity. Many, by the way, have no doubt that this is not a legend, but a past.

Many memories of the gearbox, which the fellow villagers carefully store in their memory are involved in such stories. For example, about how the young director spent a day at school in the clock and every cold night he tossed the stoves so that in the morning the children would come to warm classes. In fact, he often left school after midnight, but in the morning he was in a hurry to come early and trace whether everything was in order with warmth. If the stoker was sick, then the director really drowned the furnace, boiled water and watered students who came from the frost in the morning with hot tea.

So it was in an old school, from which today there were memories and a birch grove, planted by teachers and students before the war. The birch alley leads to knowledge and current students. They say that the director had a special, reverent attitude towards these trees. Perhaps they reminded him of his childhood, their native places in Ukraine, where the white -barrel beauties grew under each window.

Many in the village believed that Isaac the Slaritolik is a special person, not like everyone else. God really did not offend his talents, and only he himself worked a lot on himself, developing what was given by nature. When in Valdheim in the mid -fifties they decided to build a new school, the director had to show the talents of the architect and builder. Although the project was developed by professionals, Isaac the Slaritop added a lot of his own – and such a special school as in Valdheim, there is no longer anywhere in the region. He went to a construction site, like a job. He demanded that the cement to the solution be added more, so the foundation and walls to this day are so strong that their jaws does not take. For more than sixty years, the school building stood without overhaul.

Hero Sholom Aleichem

There is no free room for the museum room at school today, so its whole story is located on the corridor walls of the second floor. In the center is a large portrait of Isaac of a gear.

The office of the school director, in which Isaac a Schoolnik lived and worked for more than twenty years, surprises with modesty. The director loved not material values, but people. He appreciated the shots, treated his colleagues with great respect. But if I saw that the teacher was indifferent to the profession, he was serving a term of the school as a punishment, gently advised him to change his profession. He was a director, secretary, and a personnel officer in one person, while remaining a teacher with a capital letter. At his lessons, it was allowed to argue, express his opinion, but when he explained the new material, the class died down, moving along with the teacher to the past. It is no coincidence that for many students a story was a story.

The director appreciated the experience of other teachers, supported their desire to introduce something new, to get away from routine and standards. It was from him that at school the tradition of keeping the classes of classes during lessons open. Passing silently along the corridor, the director stopped near the doors if he was fascinated, and listened with pleasure to the teacher.

The Slaritopik was very worried when his beloved Yiddish stopped teaching at school – a language that he knew flawlessly. And when in the EAO they again spoke of the revival of Jewish culture, he literally perked up. In the early nineties, a Jewish branch of the Institute of National Problems appeared in Birobidzhan. And his employees, first of all, decided to create an Yiddish textbook for the schools of the region.

“And then Isaac Abramovich Schoolnik came to the rescue,” says Tatyana Fayn, who was at the origins of the creation of the branch. – He was both a good adviser to us and a strict editor. For three years, while working on the book, we closely recognized this extraordinary person, a teacher whom I would put on one board with Vasily Sukhomlinsky and Anton Makarenko. And there was something in him from the heroes of Sholom Aleicham-and folk Jewish wisdom, and the ability to joke over themselves. We loved to visit Isaac Abramovich and Eva Moiseevna, we learned so much interesting from them.

By the way, Isaac and Eve got married during the war. Their family union turned out to be very durable, and the general profession of the teacher only strengthened him: they understood each other at a glance and never reproached each other for sometimes giving the school more strength than the family. They raised worthy children – their son and daughter, who retain a good memory of parents, keep constant connection with the school.

“I will bequeath to you school”

Not everyone still believes that under Isaac the Grace, the school in Valdheim had 150 hectares of land, and the school production brigade was called an additional – fifth – brigade of the Ilyich Testament Order -bearing collective farm, the central estate of which was in Valdheim. The crops of potatoes and vegetables in the Fifth Brigade sometimes received higher than in collective farm. There was also their own experimental site, where schoolchildren raised new varieties of agricultural crops, which were then introduced on collective farm fields. The school director maintained both business and friendly relations with the collective farm chairman, the hero of the social law and the full gentleman of the orders of Glory Vladimir Peller Peller. The Slarikoprotnik entered the board of the collective farm, Peller into the school council. One day a week, girls from high school were spent on a collective farm, and boys in repair workshops. These were the lessons of agricultural work.

The unique experience of the Valdheim’s rural school in labor education of children was summarized at the country's level, the Minister of Education himself came to Waldheim in order to make sure of this. In the Far East, the school has been considered the best for many years and still continues to remain in advanced positions. The foundation laid down by the first director is strong in direct and figurative meanings.

Today, not only rural guys study here – children from Birobidzhan come for knowledge in Valdheim. The city students are attracted by strong knowledge that the school gives, and the school itself, a family atmosphere, preserved from Isaac of the Hymen. Many teachers of the Waldheim school became honored teachers of Russia and excellent students of public education. He received the title of Honored Teacher and a Schoolnik. But besides this, he was awarded medals “For Labor Distinction” and “For Labor Valor”, as well as the Order of the Red Banner of Labor.

Isaac Abramovich left the post of director of the Waldheim school in 1982. But for almost ten years he taught children of his favorite story. “I will bequeath to your school.” He finished with these words, speaking to teachers and students, his farewell speech. In 1994, he was awarded the title of Honorary Citizen EAO, and two years later Isaac Abramovich passed away.

Probably, someday in Valdheim will be built a new modern school. And this will be another story. But we believe that Isaac Abramovich Schoolnik will remain forever part of this story. Can it be otherwise? After all, she will also have the name of the legendary director and teacher.

Ashley Davis28/04/2025

0 227 8 minutes read