They called me Mayer July : painted memories of a Jewish childhood in Poland before the Holocaust
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
They called me Mayer July : painted memories of a Jewish childhood in Poland before the Holocaust
（S. Mark Taper Foundation imprint in Jewish studies）
University of California Press : Judah L. Magnes Museum, c2007
- : cloth
Available at 4 libraries
Note
"This book is published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Judah L. Magnes Museum. Judah L. Magnes Museum, Berkeley, September 9, 2007-January 13, 2008. The William Bremen Jewish Heritage Museum, Atlanta, Spring 2009. The Jewish Museum, New York, May-September, 2009. Joods Historisch Museum, Amsterdam, 2009. Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, 2011."--Colophon
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Intimate, humorous, and refreshingly candid, this extraordinary work is a remarkable record - in both words and images - of Jewish life in a Polish town before World War II as seen through the eyes of an inquisitive boy. Mayer Kirshenblatt, who was born in 1916 and left Poland for Canada in 1934, taught himself to paint at age 73. Since then, he has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, 'lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived'. This volume presents his lively paintings woven together with a marvelous narrative created from interviews that took place over forty years between Mayer and his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett.
Together, father and daughter draw readers into a lost world - we roam the streets and courtyards of the town of Apt, witness details of daily life, and meet those who lived and worked there: the pregnant hunchback, who stood under the wedding canopy just hours before giving birth; the khayder teacher caught in bed with the drummer's wife; the cobbler's son, who was dressed in white pajamas all his life to fool the angel of death; the corpse that was shaved; and the couple who held a 'black wedding' in the cemetery during a cholera epidemic. This moving collaboration - a unique blend of memoir, oral history, and artistic interpretation - is at once a labor of love, a tribute to a distinctive imagination, and a brilliant portrait of life in one Jewish home town.
Table of Contents
Storehouse of Memories 1. My Town From the Ancient City Gate Along the River The Jewish Street Opatow Competition Was Keen Getting Around 2. My Family Dominoes, Cheesecake, and Cigarettes A Turkey as Big as a Calf Rivke the Cossack The Soup Pot Never Left the Stove The Courtyard Going Bankrupt 3. My Youth Robbed of My Youth Teasing Snails from Their Shells A Place to Belong No Future in Apt 4. My Future A Cold and Stormy Crossing A Heavy Heart A Daughter's Afterword Note on Language Acknowledgments List of Illustrations Index
by "Nielsen BookData"