Along with a group of young people, I had been discussing the necessity of setting up night courses for adults. With this thought in mind, we approached the school director Ayerov. He took our suggestion to the board, which strongly supported our proposal, promising to give us their full support, classroom space, teachers, etc.

I began conducting a quiet "propaganda campaign" among the Jewish workers in the leather factory, that the should enforll in these night courses. And the first one to come forward was our scatter-brained Hennekhl, the "artist", who had recently become my steadfast protector in the factory. He also helped me to convince a number of other workers, who were still wavereing. It was long before Yaroslal had her first, illegal night courses.

Various classes were set up...one group learned reading and writing; a second, Yiddish literature; a third, Jewish history; and a fourth, natural science. My hear swelled with pride, that we were doing something so worthwhile, to help drive away the curse of ignorance from the common working people.

Before long, the school was looking more like a union hall than a school. Quietly, alone or in pairs, people would show up every evening after work....and late at night, they would just as quietly depart, so that the the local police should God forbid not take notice of them. The school became the center for dozens and dozens of run-away workers.

Thise was the place they came to meet. This was where friendships were forged between young men and young women. The Jewish library, which was located in the school, gained new readers. Before and after class, small circles would gather where people discussed the state of the war, the Jewish condition, and general political questions.

There gradually appeared at the forefront of these discussions a group of more-or-less experienced workers, who had already been through a kind of revolutionary "school". A few of them had previously worked with Gedaliah Solodukhen in the leather factory in the so-called "revolutionary" city of Smargon, which the bloody war had completely wiped from the face of the earth. Those workers had for years been members of a uniong, or secret party members of the Bund or the Poalei Zion. They brought a certain level of excitement to the discussions. With their knowledge and experience in questions relating to the working class, they commanded a certain respect on the part of the other workers, who also felt a certain pride, that among their ranks could be counted such, who could hold their own in a discussion with even the greatest intellectual.

It wasn't long before there started to appear, as though from under the ground, illegal pamphlets, books, magazines and brochures in Yiddish and in Russian, which started to circulate from hand to hand. The intelligent workers would gather in small groups of trusted friends to read these essays to each other.

The sympathetic principal, Ayerov, would often ask me to be careful, to make sure that everything was in order. Because if the police should find out, it would be a great danger not only for the teachers, but also for the workers and the whole existence of the school. I understood the dangers well, and kept my guard up at all times. I was the middle-man between one group of workers and the next: picking up the illicit material from one and passing it on to another.

Those cultural and political eventings made a deep impression on me. I took advantage of every opportunity to learn. Like a bee, that flies from flower to flower collecting the sweet nectar, so did I flit from one group to a second. I was constantly soaking up new ideas, whether I was reading new books or just listening in on conversations. My view of the world was broadened. I had never before met such workers, with black callussed hands, who possesed such a profound intelligence, and a powerful desire to learn, to grapple with Jewish problems and world issues. They carried in their hearts a burning faith in redemption, in solving the problems of manking, including those of the Jewish People. In the heated political debates which took place between the covert Bundists, S.S.’ers and Poalei Zionists, I saw in each point of view an element of truth. Indeed, although by nature I was drawn to Zionism, I still felt that "the words of God were alive" in all of them.

In those days, even though I never had any money to spare, my heart was always filled with joy and hope. It seemed that we were standing on the verge of great events, that would shake the world. And that from the terrible blood-bath that had begun in the dark year of 1914, there would yet emerge a better world for everyone. You just had to believe, to hope and to wait.....

This optimism was widespread in the leather factory as well, among the hundreds of workers of all nationalities:

This first "ABC" of the socialist "Bible", I learned not from a book, but rather from my own experiences, from my own daily contact with the life of the worker. And therefore I resolved that it would be my life’s ideal, to advance the cause of the working class: to struggle together with them on behalf of all the workers of the world, and in so doing, to help bring about the ancient dream of our Prophets, "and it came to pass in the End of Days..."