By NORMAN RAVVIN, Special to The Canadian Jewish News
Thursday, 24 April 2008
They Called Me Mayer July by Mayer Kirshenblatt and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (University of California Press/ Judah L. Magnes Museum) is a remarkable and necessary book on a number of fronts. Its subtitle, “Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood Before the Holocaust,” reflects only one key aspect of the volume.
The painter is Mayer Kirshenblatt, whose visual memory of his childhood in the central Polish city of Apt is incomparable.
Kirshenblatt came to think of himself as a painter late in life, once he’d retired from his paint and wallpaper store in Toronto. But They Called Me Mayer July also includes the substantial, detailed texts that resulted from interviews Kirshenblatt gave to his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, who is an ethnographer and Jewish social historian of the first rank.
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