Marijampolė printing house and bookshop „Dirva“
The learning of the Lithuanian language and its usage in everyday life was quite a big problem for a long time. The Jews wanted to learn the language but there were no teachers or textbooks. In the third decade of the 20th century there were only few Lithuanian textbooks in non-Lithuanian schools but in the fourth decade this number began to grow. This was related to the Law on Primary Schools and the Law on Middle Schools passed in 1936, which defined that the Lithuanian language had to be taught as a separate compulsory subject in non-Lithuanian schools.
The first textbooks for Jews were published in Kaunas in 1921-1922, except for two – probably prepared and published in Marijampolė. Marijampolė printing house, which belonged to Abraomas Aguševičius (he was a printer from Raseiniai and the founder of the printing house; after his death his son, Aronas, took over), published a textbook-dictionary ‘‘Extraordinary verbs“ by A. Mar in 1922. The textbook contained the explanation on verb building as well as their translation to Hebrew and Yiddish. These were more difficult verbs of the Lithuanian language and the explanation and translation allowed the Jewish children to learn Lithuanian. Some more difficult or unusual verbs were taken from the chapter ‘‘Extraordinary verbs“ in the textbook ‘‘Lithuanian language grammar‘‘ by P. Kriušaitis and Rygiškių Jonas (Jonas Jablonskis). „Dirvos“ bookstore, located in Marijampolė, 13 Piliečių square ( now-Basanavičius square) sold ‘‘Extraordinary verbs‘‘ and other textbooks for Lithuanian language learning. The second textbook was published in Marijampolė branch of ‘‘Dirva‘‘ company (it was open 1919-1941).
It was printed in 1928 and signed by the initials A. J. – ‘‘A.B. for a Jewish school (ABC book)“. The author of the textbook with a circulation of 2000 copies was Albinas Iešmanta (1887-1988), the graduate of Rygiškių Jonas gymnasium, who was the Lithuanian language teacher there as well as in Marijampolė Jews gymnasium. Thus, he knew about the shortage of Lithuanian textbooks for the Jews.
