Daniel Adam Mendelsohn

To his siblings Shmiel wrote only in German, although it was never the language they used to speak to one another, which was Yiddish, nor was it the one they used to the Gentiles of their or other towns, which was Polish or Ukrainian. For them, German always remained the high, official language, the langage of the government and of primary school, a language they learned in a large single schoolroom where once (I have learned) there had hung a large portrait of Austro-Hungarian emperor Josef I, which was replaced, eventually, by one of Adam Mickiewicz, the great Polish poet, and then by one of Stalin, and then of Hitler, and then of Stalin, and then – well, by that point there were no Jägers left to go to the school and see whose picture might be hanging there.
(page 24)