Features
Not without honour…..except here
By SIMONE COHEN SCOTT Several Wednesday nights ago, June 22nd to be exact, I attended a launching here in Winnipeg, at the Whodunit Bookstore to be exact, of Celia Rabinovitch’s book, “Duchamp’s Pipe; a Chess Romance.” Actually, the book has been launched in a few places, mostly via zoom. Readers of this paper may even remember that I reviewed her book a while back.
(Ed. note: It was actually December 2020, Simone – and your review is on our website at http://jewishpostandnews.ca/8-features/640-new-book-by-noted-art-expert-celia-rabinovitch-explores-many-themes.)
Anyway, the event back in June was delightful. The evening was basically a conversation between Dr. Michael Bumsted, proprietor of the store, and Celia Rabinovitch, internationally celebrated, locally barely known, artist, writer, and cultural historian. They were well-matched, the extremely erudite Dr. Bumsted, educated in Scotland, and Celia, Director of University of Manitoba’s Fine Arts Department, 2002-2008; scholar-in-residence at universities in North America, Europe, and Israel; her paintings appearing in art centres throughout Canada and the United States albeit seldom here. His questions about the book were incisive and penetrating, her answers thoughtful, informative, interesting, and amusing. She is a wonderful raconteur and his method encouraged her to tell of the many adventures that went into the researching and writing the book. It was apparent he had read the book carefully and had had fun doing so.
Of course they talked about pipes, but also about bohemian life in various cities throughout two continents during the war-dominated decades of the early 20th century, travelling via tramp steamer, partying with the privileged, barely eking out a living. Histories at several levels are revealed through the medium of chess tournaments, against the backdrop of a not so unlikely friendship, that of George Koltanowski, a passionate chess playing phenomenon who practically breathed the game, (Good heavens, he could play several opponents at once, blindfolded, and win!), and Marcel Duchamps, the sophisticated chess aficionado, who had already made his name initiating a startling genre into the world of art with his ‘Nude Descending a Staircase’. The central character is the pipe; it provides the theme connecting the two men who, in fact, spend just scraps of time with each other over the decades-long era their stories cover. Both Bumsted and Rabinovitch are well versed in many aspects of early 20th century histories in several locales. The audience, seated on metal folding chairs in the centre of the store, half-emptied platters of goodies behind them, had their horizons broadened. There was a flurry to buy the book after this presentation.
My own friendship with Celia began through a mutual friend, actress Terri Cherniak. Celia was to spend a couple of weeks as scholar-in-residence at the Israel Museum, lecturing on Dada art, and Terri knew I had an apartment nearby. She put us in touch. We were roommates for two weeks, we hit it off, and a friendship grew. Celia is, to me, a citizen of the world. She has an aura about her that makes one feel something special is going on. She is aware, always, of the spiritual connection between people, their settings, the objects they love, and she perpetuates the idea that the love passes along with the object. This informs her paintings, and this is the story of the pipe. The thread of love connection permeated every aspect of its journey as the gift from Marcel to George and beyond, (George re-gifted it), until finally, because it was Duchamp’s pipe, it was auctioned off for tens of thousands of dollars. Perhaps the pipe is laughing now.
A second perspective of the thread of love, binding the souls of the two men, is the game of chess, which accounts for the rest of the book’s title, ‘a Chess Romance’. One feels as one reads the book that little wisps of je ne sais quoi are whirling about in the atmosphere, twirling themselves around your mind, giving it ideas. Of course, anyone familiar with Celia’s previous book, entitled “Surrealism and the Sacred: Power, Eros, and the Occult in Modern Art”.wouldn’t be surprised by this mystic quality. One senses it in her art as well. An unidentified quote sums it up thus: “Her luminous paintings evoke mood, atmosphere, and ambiguity, leading to a sense of the uncanny.”
The Whodunit Bookstore has a story too. It was founded as an activity for Michael. Bumsted’s father when he retired. As a mystery buff’s oasis, it thrived. My own introduction to “Whodunit” happened when I began to winter in Israel; I asked the elder Mr. Bumsted to find me mysteries set there. The several he found for me added greatly to my grasp of the neighbourhoodsof the country. Mr. Bumsted was an historian and customers flocked to his evenings of readings and discussions, to hear his stories and to buy his recommendations. Soon Mrs. Bumsted, also an historian, was needed to help in the business.
That is when the merchandise begins to reach beyond thrillers. As Mrs. Bumsted would include books for her grandchildren in some of her orders, one day when a few were inadvertently left out on the counter, they were noticed and ultimately sold. It made sense; since people who like books have children and grandchildren – make it convenient for them. So children’s books were stocked, and then one thing led to another. When the space next door became vacant, Whodunit expanded to twice the size.
By this time, son (and recent PhD) Dr. Michael Bumsted had returned from Scotland. A career in a book store was not, I suppose, his intention, but hey! It turned out to be a good fit. As the range of books filled the shelves, his eclectic interests were being met. As I’ve already mentioned, I was impressed with erudite remarks and penetrating questions with which he drew out Celia’s fascinating anecdotes, and the ensuing discussion. If the evening sessions discussing books that he facilitates at Whodunit are as engrossing as the one I attended, you’ll see me at more.
A week and a half prior to this event, Celia spoke at the Manitoba Museum about the exhibit she curated there, of photographs taken by Nick Yudell, a first cousin of Celia’s once removed. Left in the possession of a family member, they were really a gift to Canada prepared for us by this young photographer – fated to die in WWII as an RAF pilot. Whereas a less sensitive person might have left them in their carefully labelled boxes, seeing how much love went into the taking of these photos, as one artist to another, Celia undertook to prepare them for display, to be shared with the world. At a point when we were together in one of the rooms of the display, Celia confided to me that she had wanted to convey the fact that although Nick’s photos feature his own community, which was Jewish, the story he is telling is about the every-man in Canada during the wartime period, that is, a story of patriotic men of courage and of strength. We who were children then, remember them. She surely succeeded; staff and patrons got it. The exhibit, originally meant to end August 1st, has been held over to December 18th.
Features
“No Jews Live Here” – new book tells poignant story of Hungarian survivors of the Holocaust
Review by JULIE KIRSH (former Sun Media News Research Director)
In 1950 my parents made the decision to leave Hungary, the country of their birth and ancestors. Both were Holocaust survivors. My father survived Auschwitz and was liberated from Buchenwald. My mother hid with false Christian papers in Budapest during the war. Most of their families perished. Coming to Canada without language, money or family support took courage. I am the lucky recipient of their strength, optimism and resilience.
In journalist John Lorinc’s book, No Jews Live Here, his parents and maternal grandmother, Ilona, arrived in Canada in 1956, the second and larger wave of Hungarian refugees. Many were Jewish Holocaust survivors.
Hungary was unique in the east European countries. Lorinc provides an excellent historical overview of Jewish life in Hungary before World War Two.
However the author emphasizes that freedom to succeed in Hungary came at a cost. Lorinc explains why many Jews became Christian converts. In Budapest, an enclave for a thriving Jewish population, Jews constituted 5% of Hungary’s total population. By 1941, over 17% of Budapest’s Jews had converted.
Lorinc’s grandparents who came from wealthy Jewish families converted in the 1920s. However it is important to note that the converts were not saved from the mass deportations in Hungary in 1944. Jews and converts died together in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Over the course of less than 3 months, with the complete cooperation and enthusiasm of the Royal Hungarian Gendarmerie, 440,000 Jews were murdered. Lorinc’s grandfather was ordered to join a forced labour unit. He marched off wearing a white armband signifying that he was a converted Jew.
One of Lorinc’s poignant stories is his own father’s history as a slave labourer in the copper mines of Bor in Serbia. Often the labourers, of which many were middle class Jewish Hungarians who had never held a tool other than a writing pen in their hands, were starved, tortured and killed. The Hungarian overseers were especially cruel, according to Lorinc’s father.
Chapter 10 is titled Aftermath and although the Russian army liberated the surviving Hungarian Jews, the horrors of the Red Army soldiers are described relentlessly. Women and girls were raped. Looting was prevalent. Lorinc relates that it was not unusual for a Russian soldier to have 4 or 5 watches on his arm.
Ilona, ever the resilient survivor, along with other survivors in Budapest came up with creative ways to feed her family and at the same time, wrangled with legal authorities and her in-laws for the return of their farm and property. The feud between Ilona and her mother-in-law became much more than logistical. It was tangled with betrayal, grief and financial desperation, a classic family conspiracy theory.
In 1956 after the revolution in Hungary, Lorinc’s parents along with many other Hungarian refugees found themselves in Vienna. Choices to leave Europe were dependent on how easy it was to get an exit visa. The entry gates to Canada had been opened and the lineup at the Canadian embassy permitted applicants to stand in a foyer instead of waiting outside.
Toronto in the mid-50s was a “closed” city on Sundays. Even the swings in playgrounds were chained up to discourage children’s use. Italian men were hounded by police to prevent gathering on the sidewalks of Little Italy.
Like many other immigrants, Lorinc’s parents found jobs and gained a foothold in the security of Canadian life.
The author explains that as a child, he and his sister were baptized at a United Church, a classic “just in case” move for the still traumatized survivors.
Then at age 10, Lorinc’s father told him that he was Jewish but didn’t explain why this was a secret. The need to understand Jewish history in Hungary was planted at an early age.
The author goes on to describe his family’s life in the Toronto suburbs of the ‘70s and ‘80s.
A frequent visitor at the family home was his grandmother Ilona, colourful, dramatic and stubborn. She was consumed with “vanities and accusations” and insisted on wearing high heels and fashionable clothing well into old age. Ilona deeply harboured old family disagreements over ownership of the farm in Hungary.
Ilona’s obsession with her fading looks and the family history of betrayal never left her. Hungarian “Jewish Christmas” with Ilona became a battlefield of wounds and grievances.
After she died, Lorinc reflects that her stubborn character still influences his own world perspective, blurring the line between the life of the author and his grandmother’s story.
Lorinc recounts in detail the need for conversion and hiding one’s Jewishness in an historical context. Before the war, Hungary’s Jews looked the same and had the same freedoms as non-Jews. Seeing themselves first as loyal Hungarians didn’t save converted Jews from persecution and the gas chambers. In fact Lorinc argues that conversion contributed to anti-Semitic theories.
Finally Lorinc and his wife make a trip to Bor, the mine and labour camp where his father was interred. The author’s dedication to telling the story of his family’s tragedy and survival is admirable. Readers will find themselves savouring every word, looking within their own family history as part of the saga of human survival.
No Jews Live Here
by John Lorinc
(Coach House Books), 2024
Features
Former Winnipegger Solly Dreman looks back on his life growing up in Winnipeg and living in Israel since 1964
Introduction: Over the years we’ve had many articles about Solly Dreman. Solly comes from a well-known Winnipeg family and, as he explains in the following article, he could have emulated his father Joe and his brother David by fashioning a career as an investment dealer had he stayed in Canada.
Instead, Solly chose to make aliyah to Israel in 1964.
Solly still has a very close connection to the city where he was born – often having returned here – to lecture and to help raise money for various causes, including an organization known as “Ezer Mizion,” for which he organized a very successful dinner here in 2019.
From time to time Solly and his wife Orly have contributed very thoughtful pieces to The Jewish Post & News. What follows is a speech that Solly gave recently on the occasion of Simchat Torah when he was honoured as “Chatan Torah” (the person who recites the last chapter of the Torah):
I was born in Winnipeg Canada to a Zionist family. My parents visited Israel dozens of times before I made Aliyah to Israel. Winnipeg was called the “Jerusalem of Canada” and during the Six Day War in 1967 contributed more per capita than any other city in North America even though the Jewish community was not a wealthy community. My father Joe was a very successful businessman. He was a grain and investment broker and when he passed away at age 90 there was a minute of silence in commodity exchanges all over Canada in commemoration of his life achievements. I was an athlete and was my club Junior golf champion. I also played tennis, hockey, football and, like my father who was city and provincial chess champion, I played chess.
Academically, my first degree was in business administration and I received an Honors Degree in Commerce in 1960. I subsequently worked with my father for a year but the competition was too tough since I was competing not only with my father but with my brother David, who also studied Commerce and today is rated as one of the five most successful investment dealers in the world. For years he wrote a successful column for Forbes as well as several books on the psychology of the stock market.
I realized that the world of finance was not for me and that my major love was people and caring for others, so in 1964 I made Aliyah to Israel to pursue a degree in Clinical Psychology. My doctoral thesis, in fact, was on the subject of altruism and giving to others – something that has characterized much of my personal and professional life.
Today I am the proud father of four children, thirteen grandchildren and married to Orly, who you know has contributed much to our local community. The ten years from 1965 to 1975 were the most productive of my life. I completed my Masters and Doctoral Degrees by 1975 and when the Yom Kippur War broke out in 1973 I was recruited to the Jerusalem Brigade, which was deployed to the Suez Canal.
When it was discovered that I was a doctoral student at the Hebrew University I was appointed as the brigade psychologist of the Jerusalem Brigade, which numbered over 2500 soldiers. I was bestowed officer status and lectured and treated many soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress, depression and other difficulties. I also treated their families on the home front who were suffering, amongst other things, from the “Missing Parent Syndrome,” which many families are suffering from today in our current prolonged and horrific war.
In my professional life as a full professor specializing in clinical psychologiy I have dealt with many of the problems that characterize mainstream life in Israel, such as war and terrorism, post traumatic stress, immigration of Russian and Ethiopian Jews, violence in the family, divorce, and other family crises, including death and dying.
In 1977 I was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for academic excellence, which allowed me to engage in a post doctorate internship at the University of California Medical School in San Francisco, where I lectured and treated patients. Over the years I have written several books and articles on my clinical work and have also lectured abroad extensively, in Europe and North America.
As for philanthropic endeavours, Orly and I have been extensively involved with two major organizations and have contributed significantly to their efforts to help others. We have supported several golf tournaments for Ezer Mizion, a non profit medical organization in Israel which has saved over 5000 cancer patients internationally through its stem cell registry, which is the largest Jewish stem cell registry in the world.
Ezer Mizion offers both physical and psychological care on both the civilian and military fronts. In addition to its stem cell registry, it has a hotel called Oranit in Petach Tikvah, which hosts – free of charge, cancer patients and their families who live far from treatment facilities in central Israel and who cannot afford to travel on a daily basis for treatment. Ezer Mizion is also intensively involved in the present war effort, caring for and transporting wounded soldiers and their families, and providing meals for them when they are hospitalized.
The Zaka organization identifies bodies of people killed in unnatural deaths caused by terrorism, war, earthquakes and similar incidents. They were intimately involved in identifying corpses following the horrific massacre of October 7th last year in southern Israel.
In closing, I would like to refer to our current war and the prevailing national trauma. My father once said that there were two major principles for life he learned from chess:
- There are no positions so bad that you can’t eventually win.
- There are also no positions so good that you can’t eventually lose.
The first principle is relevant to our present national trauma and so I bring today a message of hope. In spite of the present difficult situation and imminent threats we face, we as a people and nation have survived millenia in the face of overwhelming threats and we shall continue to persist and survive!
Features
“The Goddess of Warsaw” – recently published novel weaves story of Warsaw Ghetto resistance with modern-day Hollywood intrigue
Reviewed by BERNIE BELLAN Here’s a recipe for a great novel: Take one part story of an aging Hollywood former screen star, add in a second part World War II backstory revolving around the Warsaw Ghetto, and finish it with a third part Jewish revenge on Nazis story (remember Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglorious Basterds”) – and you have all the makings of a fabulously good read.
Such is the case with a recently released novel titled “The Goddess of Warsaw,” by American Lisa Barr.
According to the bio on her website, Lisa Barr is the “New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of, in addition to THE GODDESS OF WARSAW , WOMAN ON FIRE, THE UNBREAKABLES, and FUGITIVE COLORS. Lisa served as an editor for The Jerusalem Post, managing editor of Today’s Chicago Woman, managing editor of Moment magazine, and as an editor/reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. Among the highlights of her career, Lisa covered the famous “handshake” between the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat, and President Bill Clinton at the White House. Lisa has been featured on Good Morning America and Today for her work as an author and journalist. Actress Sharon Stone has optioned rights to adapt WOMAN ON FIRE for film.”
I was looking for a recently published book by a Jewish author that had an interesting storyline, but since I had never read anything by Lisa Barr prior to reading “The Goddess of Warsaw,” I wasn’t quite sure what to expect.
After all, here is how Amazon describes the book: “the harrowing and ultimately triumphant tale of a Jewish WWII assassin turned Hollywood star …
“The Goddess Of Warsaw is an enthralling story of a legendary Hollywood screen goddess with a dark secret. When the famous actress Lena Browning is threatened by someone from her war-time past, she must put her skills into play to protect herself, her illustrious career, and those she loves, then and now.”
The story seemed kind of formulaic – as I noted in my introductory paragraph – a gorgeous femme fatale sort of story, I thought.
But what I thought at first might be a piece of fluff actually turned into an engrossing – and very harrowing read. Sure, the very first chapter sets the scene by describing an aging Lena Browning (the former Hollywood sex goddess) meeting with a young female star by the name of Sienna Hays, who is anxious to play the part of Lena Browning in a biopic that will not only star Sienna, it will be written and directed by her. Sounds like any number of other similar stories of an aging Hollywood star whose true story is not what had been created for her – right?
But quickly thereafter the story takes us to Warsaw in 1943, at a time when the Nazis had already begun the mass deportation of Warsaw’s Jews to Treblinka, ultimately leading to the deaths of almost all of Warsaw’s prewar Jewish population of 400,000.
We learn that Lena Browning’s real name was Bina Blonski, and she was the daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman who had been murdered by Nazis right in front of her eyes when she was a young teen. Bina, it turns out, is a very talented actress. Not only that, she has all the trademarks of the prototypical Aryan superwoman: tall, blonde, gorgeous figure who, in this case, while not speaking German, speaks perfect Polish.
To Lisa Barr’s credit, however, she has clearly done quite a bit of research about what life was like in the Warsaw ghetto – and her writing does not spare the reader from any of the horrors that became commonplace aspects of life there.
I was somewhat afraid that the story would go back and forth between wartime and the present – which is 2005 in this case, when Sienna first meets Lena. I’m no great fan of trying to keep events in mind that happened several chapters back. But Barr, it turns out, is a masterful storyteller who, while she does engage in leaps back in time to help explain how certain things turned out the way they did, concentrates for the most part on Bina’s time spent in the Warsaw Ghetto.
There is a love story as part of the novel, and it revolves around Bina’s being in love with one man, Alexander, while she is married instead to his brother, Jakub. What happens to both Alexander and Jakub provides many surprises through the course of the book.
It is Bina’s story throughout, however, that continues to pull in the reader. As others around her come to realize, her talent as an actress lends itself fully to the mission that the leader of one group of Jewish Resistance fighters in the ghetto has planned for her, which is to send her out of the ghetto and find guns and bomb making material that can be smuggled back into the ghetto.
Bina is able to come into contact with a faction of the Polish Resistance whose leader, as fate would have it, is a longtime actor friend of Bina’s. The dangerous missions upon which Bina embarks are as good as any I’ve read in any spy novel, with the difference being that, according to Lisa Barr’s website, many of which are based on true events.
One particularly gut-wrenching episode though – and one which also stems from something that actually occurred during the latter stages of the Warsaw Ghetto’s existence, involves 93 young Jewish women – most of whom are in their teens, who are taken by the Nazis to be their sex slaves. Bina is instructed by Zelda, the leader of the Jewish resistance, what she has to do as a result. It’s hard not to read the description of what happens without your stomach ending up in knots.
Since we know from the start that Lena, a.k.a. Bina (also Irina, when she has to impersonate a Polish woman while she is living outside the ghetto) will survive the war, the question becomes: How did she go from being a Jewish refugee to a Hollywood actress of great fame – and talent?
Barr fashions a believable scenario that is not beyond the realm of possibility for explaining how Bina Blonski is able to transform herself into Lena Browning, but what I found a little hard to believe is how someone whose face would have become familiar to millions of movie fans around the world – and who had not undergone any plastic surgery to change her appearance, would have gone unrecognized throughout her film career?
Still, that’s a minor quibble – and hardly enough to get in the way of what is ultimately a riveting story.
With a combination of excellent research and an admirable talent for storytelling, Lisa Barr has fashioned a compelling book that should appeal to readers of all ages and genders.
Since so much of the action takes place at a time when Bina Blonski is a very young woman and many of the characters with whom she has connections in the Warsaw Ghetto are only teens themselves, I would think that The Goddess of Warsaw is a novel that might also appeal to teen readers. Some parts might be awfully difficult for younger readers to read , such as what happens on a day-to-day basis to children in the ghetto, but in the end, this book is so compelling that I would recommend it to anyone.
The Goddess of Warsaw
By Lisa Barr
368 pages
Published by HarperCollins
May, 2024
Available on Amazon
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