Anti-Semitism
Due to the small size of the Jewish community in Sudbury, most of the children attended local public schools. Some complained of being the only Jew in their class or even their school. Some of the children found it easy to make friends and viewed their school years as a positive experience. Dorothy Moses indicated that there wasn't much anti-Semitism in town and that Sudbury was very cosmopolitan. She stated that any problems that the townspeople may have had with the Jewish citizens, "wasn't that obvious."
Others, like Judy Feld-Carr, had a very different experience. Judy attended a Catholic school and experienced a great deal of anti-Semitism from the other students as well as the teachers. She asserts the nuns and students viewed her as the "Christ killer." In addition to not being invited to play dates and birthday parties, she was subjected to regular bullying. She describes one encounter where some of the local children assaulted her and knocked out some of her teeth. Judy was reluctant to return to school after the incident, but her father insisted that she remain strong and show the culprits that she wasn't afraid of them.
One other member of the community who noted a problem with anti-Semitism in Sudbury during her youth was Goldie Greenspoon. She indicated that her mother had heard from friends that a local priest gave a sermon at his church which expressed the message that the children should stick to their own kind and not play with Jewish kids. Her mother decided to contact the priest and told him that they weren't living in Germany in 1939 and that he didn't have the right to instigate this type of distrust and hatred. She subsequently instructed him to give another sermon in order to retract his previous statement. When he informed her that he couldn't do that, she threatened to tell members of his congregation, many of whom came to her for assistance in the form of translations, referrals for doctors and lawyers as well as other requests, that he was wrong. Ultimately, the priest capitulated and retracted his anti-Semitic statement to his congregation.
