"I paint these scenes as I remember them as a child," writes Mayer Kirshenblatt in the introduction to the beautiful book, "They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust" (University of California Press, $40 hardcover) which is co-authored with his daughter, Yiddish folklorist Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. "That's the reason why, in my early paintings, the rooms are so huge and I am so small."
Kirshenblatt, a self-taught artist who began painting in later life as much to relieve an oppressive depression as to recapture a storehouse of youthful memories, recedes as the illustrative details, as carefully wrought as they are remembered, come to the forefront. He recreates life in the small Polish town of Apt, the town where he grew up before immigrating to Canada with his parents in the mid-1930s, in meticulous strokes enlivened with vivid color. His first painting, grudgingly completed at the urging of his wife and daughter, is a charming rendering of his mother's kitchen, a large, very clean and orderly room, with a tiny boy playing the violin in the middle of a vast wooden floor, an equally tiny girl seated at the table and an aproned mother, hair neatly plaited down her back, standing over the stove.
From the kitchen, Kirshen-blatt moved on to other scenes in the house, then outside.
"When I am about to start a new painting," he writes, "I think about it. I lie down and daydream about it. Memories keep flooding in, and I just keep going."
His memories are as exact as his brushstrokes, his perceptions as piercing as his sharp eye. The book, divided into four sections - My Town, My Family, My Youth, My Future - is not simply a sentimental repository of idyllic scenes from a small Polish village, but also a vibrant chronicle of the lives of those who lived there. Included in the collection is a painting of the pregnant hunchback, who stood under the wedding canopy just hours before giving birth; of the teacher caught in bed with the drummer's wife; of the cobbler's son, who was dressed in white pajamas all his life to fool the angel of death.
Even an early painting of Kirshenblatt returning home from market with a herring wrapped in paper captures the brine dripping from the head and tail and the hungry boy's longing to lick it.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett had been encouraging her father to paint for years, later encouraging him to write as well. She says in the book's afterword that her father had always had artistic tendencies - painting their home in vibrant hues, making wooden toys, stenciling Valentines - but was reluctant to put brush to canvas. But his first effort, the image of his mother's kitchen, seemed to allay his fears, and he began to paint and paint. His confidence grew with the burgeoning interest in his work and the requests to buy his paintings. His daughter insisted that they be preserved as an original collection with only limited-print editions made available for sale.
The writing developed from what Kirshenblatt-Gimblett describes as a collaborative process that melded her growing academic interest in Yiddish folklore with her parents' past. It began with a child's insistent questions about the Old Country and her father's entrancing stories. It grew into a more formalized interview process, spanning 40 years that she describes as "listening with love."
Writes Kirshenblatt-Gimblett of the endeavor, "Mayer's capacity to describe in detail is matched by my own fascination with the fine grain of his memory. I am my father's daughter."
More books
Israel Helms offers a first-person account of yet another place and time in Jewish history. "On Both Sides of the Iron Curtain, The Story of a Russian Refugee in America" (Tate Publishing, $11 paperback) is as rough-hewn as "Mayer July" is artfully polished, yet its appeal is in its honesty and intensity. Helms, who now lives in Bullhead City, was born in Moscow in 1933, earned a doctorate in engineering in 1957 and immigrated to the United States in 1977. His slim book is both an indictment of Communist oppression and an ode to the blessings of freedom. "History (is) the best teacher you can find," he writes, warning of today's clashes between good and evil.
Helms, like Kirshenblatt, began writing when faced with a personal crisis, an impending divorce and a diagnosis of Parkinson's. He says his writing saved him.
Noting that "not too many people read memoirs of unknown writers," Helms makes a case for the relevance of his book, particularly as an expression of profound appreciation for the privilege of U.S. citizenship.
"It can't be more timely," he says.
Gary Fidel takes the reader to the same part of the world, same time period, offering a fictional account of three young people struggling to escape from Stalin's Russia as the Nazis invade their country. "The Blue Rider, A Novel" (xlibris, $22 paperback) is a quick read, as Rachel, a young Jewish sculptor; Stephen, her soccer-star brother; and Lily, his girlfriend; attempt to flee to freedom. Based on a true story told by a woman who survived the war years, Fidel, a New York lawyer, whose brother, Noel, is a former Arizona Court of Appeals judge, weaves an engaging story.
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