They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland before the Holocaust

by Mayer Kirshenblatt, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett

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 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.

The Judah L. Magnes Museum

Genres: Art, Poland, Jewish

411 pages, Hardcover

First published August 25, 2007

Reviews

[Ruth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading the book feels like my grandparents are telling me about their childhood in Poland.
My grandmother liked to tell stories.
My Grandfather lips were sealed.

From the author Mayer Kirshenblatt:
It is with my painting that I have found the greatest acceptance of all. ..I feel that my painting expose a whole new world that nobody knows except me, the friends of my youth ... and people from my town who survived the Holocaust....
What I'm trying to say is "Hey ! There was a big world out there before the Holocaust."
There was a rich cultural life in Poland as I knew it at the time.

[Eli Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the kind of book it's better to own and come back to over a long period of time, at least for me, so I'm taking it back to the library even though I never finished it and would like to do so. Very very interesting stories and charming paintings.

[Penny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two months ago, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett gave a Zoom talk through JewishGen, which is how I heard about the book. Like most genealogists, I'm always curious about everyday life in Eastern Europe. When it arrived at the library, the book surprised me, both because it's almost 400 pages, and because I had expected to see only Mayer's artwork (and captions).

Usually I'm comfortable with a 300-pg read, yet I was captivated! I see now that a book solely of Mayer's paintings would not have delivered the depth of experience I took away. The paintings trigger his lively, tell-it-like-it-is memories.

Because I'm a literary geek, I read notes, acknowledgements, etc. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett's Afterword tells the story of how the book came to be. Though her description of deciding on a voice is lengthy, it did help add to my reading list! And we see another side of her father here.

Pleasant read if you also crave descriptive shtetl life---visual and literal--in post-WWI Poland. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett sums it up as: "(t)he truth of Mayer's way of knowing the world, his way of giving shape to his experience in words and images," which to me is a more complete story than only images or only text.

[FL · Rating 5 out of 5]

The second author (the daughter) is known for her work writing about Jewish museums, so I was interested to see how she presented her own family's heritage. The format of the book---just her father's side of conversations---reminds me of hearing my (recently-deceased) grandfather talk with my mother, and sometimes with myself, except about the actual old world of Poland rather than the new Jewish-American old world of New York City. A worthy read for anyone interested in Ashkenazi history.

[Leora Wenger · Rating 4 out of 5]

In addition to the wonderful paintings of the shtetl of Apt, the authors, a father-daughter team, interweave hundreds of stories about living in this little town in Poland. For example, there is the story of the teenage girl who fell in a military latrine in World War I. Later, when she wanted to get married, too many men had heard of her tale. She finally did get married. Another tale is of how when the author (the father) left Poland, a non-Jewish classmate in a bureaucratic position questioned him: Why are you leaving your homeland? He responded, because you have a job, and I do not. In general, economic life was extremely difficult for the Jews of Poland. I particularly enjoyed the painting of Kiddush Levana, the blessing of the New Moon. My husband pointed out that the moon the author painted was large and looked full, unlike a new moon. My father countered that Kiddush Levana often gets delayed until later in the month, and sometimes even when it is new, it looks full. I greatly admire how the daughter, who seems to be a professor of folklore at NYU, encouraged her father both to paint and to tell the story of his childhood.

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I beckoned our families' ghosts throughout this afternoon and evening as I sat, enthralled and often in tears, and learned everything about the village of Apt, Poland between the years of 1896-1929.

Sent this book of original paintings, combined with a forty-year interview or "listening with love", I was smitten and simultaneously knocked for an emotional loop. What I thought was going to be an interesting compendium of primitive art turned out to be the intimate journal of a family, a village, a life. My grandchildren are in for it now--years of page-turning with their Baba. Never forget.

[Jennifer Krieger · Rating 5 out of 5]

For a while i just glanced through the book, looking at pictures and reading bits. Once I read it through I was hooked. Imagine a Jewish slant on a combination of the Foxfire books and the Little House books, written form the perspective of a Tom Sawyer type.

[T P Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A most interesting book. It consists of naive painting of a Jewish town in Poland based on the artist's memories of his childhood. This is accompanied by his childhood memoirs (which are somewhat less interesting). It's a curiosity but well worth a reading detour.

[Morandia · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wonderful way to tell stories - through painting your memories. It brings to life the ghosts of the past in a way no words can express. The fact that his daughter is doing the interviewing lends an even stronger sense of family to this work - connecting the generations