LETTER FROM TRIESTE

On the first Sunday in Sept., a ceremony took place in the gymnasium of the Scuola Elementare Morpurgo-a private Jewish elementary school in Trieste, which resurrected for most of those present vivid memories of Italian Fascism. Prof. Adolfo Steindler, in his early 70s, handed out year-end examination grades to a group of people. The grades were 45 years old & Prof. Steindler, the retired headmaster of the Liceo Scientifico Oberdan, remarked that he had used his bureaucratic clout to extract them from the educational archives. The recipients-11 men & women in their early 60s-were members of the last graduating class of the Scuola Media Ebraica, a secondary school that had been organized in 1938, in the same building as the Scuola Morpurgo, to teach Jewish students who had been thrown out of the public high schools by the Mussolini govt. Steindler, who taught mathematics at the Ebraica, recognized a number of his former students. Tells about his recollections. 75 students & 9 teachers were present. Writer met Raffaello Camerini, the cochairman of the reunion. He said that during the 5 years of its existence the school had enrolled 41 teachers & 198 students, including many who stayed for only a few months. They lost 9 students & 4 teachers during the war. Although most of the Ebraica alumni still live in Italy, there was a sprinkling of emigres among them. Tells about the high academic level of the Ebraica & gives history of the Trieste Jewish community. When the war ended it turned out that the Triestine Jews had one of the highest urvival rates in Europe, a statistic that can be ascribed to education, prosperity, practical planning & a certain sophistication in dealing with the Germans.

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