Quote:
Originally Posted by jblum315
I do remember right after WW2, when I was in second grade, we had a new little girl whose family I think were called "displaced persons." Now they would be immigrants. I think she was from Poland. She knew very little English, and we bullied her unmercifully. Not physical, just teasing and being really mean. I'm still ashamed of it.
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We had a similar incident at our elementary school , also with a girl from Poland (after World War II). I was just telling my husband about it (again, as he's heard it a zillion times)........
We might have been in sixth grade; back then it went up to eighth grade..........however, she was SIXTEEN YEARS OLD to our younger ages.
Definitely should have been in high school, but back then they did not have teachers who taught English as a Second Language or any of the other English courses taught to those without a command of English.
It was not the GIRLS at all, but the BOYS..........who would surround her in the schoolyard and make fun of her "endowments", her "clothes", her inability to speak English very well (broken English).......it was sad.
We all knew it was wrong. But no one broke up these boys' verbal attacks on her.............she was the nicest girl.
I still remember her name. Wanda Demianek. It stays in your memory; these childhood incidents.
My mom's parents came from Austria-Hungary (of Ukrainian / Rusyn descent) and my husband's grandparents also came from Poland.
That group of immigrants could not speak English upon arrival so relied on their children (who were born in this country) to enter the school system and learn the language.........
At age 7, my mom also had to go to Ukrainian school after public school ended for the day, in order to learn the Cyrillic alphabet so that she could READ the Ukrainian newspapers to my grandmother.
I imagine that group of children (the children of immigrants) might also have been teased by those who had been in this country a longer time.