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Claire Golomb, Holocaust survivor and scholar of children’s art and dreams, dies at 95
(JTA) — Claire Golomb was 10 years old and living in Frankfurt, Germany when, early one morning, there was a loud knock at the door.
Nazis had come to take her father away. She, her mother and her older sister soon fled to Holland, where they would hide until the end of the war.
“You could say that I woke up with a bang during these years,” she told an interviewer for a 2008 oral history. “That’s the end of my childhood, I would say, around the age of 10, and I had a very realistic assessment of what the conditions were.”
If her own childhood ended there, her interest in the psychology of children — especially their creativity and intelligence from an early age — never waned. After making her way to Israel and later to the United States, Golomb became a psychologist and scholar whose work focused on children’s art, make-believe play, story construction and the role of gender in those pursuits.
In works such as her 2011 book “The Creation of Imaginary Worlds,” Golomb explored how children perceive fantasy and fact and are able to tell the difference.
“Being master of an imaginary universe (in art, play, dreams, and stories) can be a source of great satisfaction as it empowers the child, gives expression to often vaguely understood feelings, provides compensation for feeling helpless or powerless, and joy for having invented a world on its own,” she said in her publisher’s interview for that book.
Golomb, a professor emerita in the Department of Psychology at the University of Massachusetts Boston for more than 40 years, died in her home near Boston on July 26. She was 95.
In the oral history interview, Golomb drew a connection between her childhood and her work.
“The events of the Holocaust and its effect on my family and my community no doubt influenced my decision to choose a career of service, a desire to improve upon the world in some ways,” she said. “Because clearly I had to find meaning in my life and I had to make the fact that I survived sort of a response, a positive response to what had happened in some ways. I couldn’t just go back to existing, certainly not with the kind of mindset that I had in terms of looking for meaning and for change.”
Claire Schimmel was born on Jan. 30, 1928, in Frankfurt, the second daughter of Fanny Monderer Schimmel, a homemaker, and Chaskel Schimmel, a businessman who devoted himself to reading Hebrew literature and to Talmudic studies.
Her father was arrested in October 1938, shortly before Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Nazis and their collaborators burned and looted synagogues and Jewish stores throughout Germany and Austria in what was seen as the start of the Holocaust. The women of the family fled to the Netherlands, where their father briefly joined them. After the Nazis occupied the country in 1940, he was arrested again and sent to a concentration camp, where he was killed.
At the end of the war, after years of hiding, Claire became involved in the Zionist Youth Organization, devoting time to youngsters who had lost their families. In 1948, she arrived in what would soon become Israel — illegally, according to the British who were in charge of immigration there — and served in the new state’s army for about one year. She lived on a kibbutz for a time before attending Hebrew University — passing the entrance exam despite not having completed her high school studies in Holland.
In Israel, she met Dan Golomb, a survivor of Auschwitz who was studying physical chemistry. They married in 1954 and shortly thereafter moved to the United States, where Dan got a postdoctoral fellowship at Rutgers University in New Jersey and Claire attended the New School for Social Research in New York.
Dan Golomb, a professor emeritus of environmental, earth, and atmospheric sciences at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, died in 2013. The couple’s daughter Dr. Mayana Golomb, a psychiatrist, died of cancer in 2006. Another daughter, Anath Golomb, a psychologist, lives in Durham, New Hampshire.
Claire Golomb studied with a number of psychologists in a field in which Jewish scholars, including refugees from Europe, were prominent — including Solomon Asch, Eugenia Hanfmann, Ulric Neisser and Abraham Maslow. She was especially influenced by Rudolf Arnheim, the first professor of the psychology of art at Harvard University.
In 1969, she received her Ph.D. in psychology from Brandeis University. Before coming to UMass Boston in 1974, she was an instructor in psychology at Wellesley College from 1969 to 1970. From 1971 to 1974 she was an assistant professor at Brandeis University.
All of her relatives on her mother’s side were killed during the war. In October 2019, Golomb returned to the Netherlands to witness the placement of “stumbling blocks” — brass sidewalk markers — commemorating four of her family members killed in the Holocaust.
Asked how her experiences during the war shaped her life and career, Golomb spoke in the oral history interview of her “willingness to question authority, even authority that I myself found imposing or impressive.”
She added, “It had a much deeper effect in terms of questioning authority, and this is what you might say I have done in my professional life.”
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Ilhan Omar Slapped With Ethics Complaint From Conservative Watchdog Over Holding Rally With Ex-Somali PM
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) participates in a news conference, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 10, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Jim Bourg
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been slapped with an ethics complaint by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative watchdog group, for holding an event with former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire.
Last weekend, Khaire took the stage with Omar in support of her reelection campaign. AAF argued Khaire’s presence at Omar’s campaign rally constituted a violation of the US Federal Election Campaign Act and demanded the congresswoman step down from office.
“We are deeply concerned by Ilhan Omar’s illegal campaign rally with the former prime minister of Somalia. Omar already has a long history of statements indicating her disdain for America and allegiance to Somalia, but this goes beyond statements,” the AAF wrote.
“Now her campaign has taken action to involve a foreign leader in an American election. She must resign immediately and return every dollar raised for her at this disgraceful rally,” the watchdog continued.
The organization argued Omar potentially committed two infractions against the Federal Election Campaign Act.
First, AAF alleged that the congresswoman “knowingly accepted former Somalia Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire’s services at her campaign events.” They asserted this action exceeded the “limited volunteer services permitted by a foreign national and involves impermissible decision-making.”
Second, the watchdog claimed that Khaire was possibly “compensated by a prohibited source.” The organization suggested that Ka Joog, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that focuses on “empowering Somali American youth,” organized and funded Khaire’s trip to America. AAF argued that Omar likely “knowingly accepted a corporate contribution associated with Mr. Khaire’s travel and lodging costs” with the goal of boosting voter turnout among Minnesota’s Somali-American community.
During Omar’s campaign rally in Minnesota last weekend, Khaire gave an impassioned speech, urging the audience to vote for the congresswoman.
“Support her with your votes, tell your neighbors and friends, and anyone you know to come out and support Ilhan Omar,” Khaire said. “And knock on every door you can so that she can be re-elected.”
Khaire then added, “Ilhan’s interests aren’t those of Minnesota or the American people but those of Somalia.”
“No one is above the law — even members of the Squad” of far-left lawmakers in the US House, AAF president Thomas Jones wrote in a statement. “Not only were Khaire’s comments about Omar deeply disturbing, but the rally was also a blatant violation of US election laws. Omar must resign immediately and return every dollar raised by Khaire for her campaign.”
Omar’s campaign counsel David Mitrani denied that the congresswoman violated any elections laws.
“This ethics complaint is another attempt by the far-right to smear the congresswoman,” Mitrani told the New York Post.
“Congresswoman Omar’s campaign had absolutely no involvement in requesting, coordinating, or facilitating Mr Khaire’s appearance or his comments, and accordingly there was no violation of law,” he continued.
Khaire’s claim that Omar’s “interests” are with Somalia rather than the American people raised eyebrows, with critics pointing out that she has previously criticized the American Jewish community for supposedly maintaining “allegiance” to the government of Israel.
“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Omar said during a 2019 speech in reference to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying organization aimed at fostering a closer US-Israel relationship.
“Accusing Jews of harboring dual loyalty has a long, violent, sordid history,” said Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, in response to Omar’s comments.
During her five-year stretch as a US representative, Omar has emerged as one of Israel’s fiercest critics, repeatedly accusing the Jewish state of enacting “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. She has supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, an initiative which seeks to economically punish and isolate the Jewish state as the first step toward its elimination.
The congresswoman came under fire after waiting a whole two days to comment on Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter of over 1200 people across southern Israel. Despite slow-walking a condemnation of Hamas’ atrocities, she was one of the first congresspeople to call for Israel to implement a “ceasefire” in the Gaza strip.
Omar enraged both Democratic and Republican lawmakers after she referred to Jewish college students as being either “pro-genocide or anti-genocide” while visiting Columbia University in April.
The post Ilhan Omar Slapped With Ethics Complaint From Conservative Watchdog Over Holding Rally With Ex-Somali PM first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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California Jury Convicts Neo-Nazi Who Brutally Murdered Gay Jewish Teenager
Samuel Woodward, recently convicted of the hate crime murder of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein, a gay Jewish teenager from California. Photo: Orange County Sheriff’s Office
A jury in Orange County, California on Wednesday convicted a neo-Nazi of the hate-crime murder of a gay Jewish teenager he lured to the woods under the false pretense of a furtive hook-up.
According to court documents, Samuel Woodward — a member of the Neo-Nazi group the Atomwaffen Division — stabbed 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania student Blaze Bernstein over two dozen times in 2018 after pretending in a series of Tinder messages to be interested in a first-time homosexual encounter.
Bernstein was unaware of Woodward’s paranoiac and hateful far-right ideology, however. The now 26-year-old Woodward had withdrawn from college to join the Atomwaffen Division — whose members have been linked to several other murders, including a young man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents — idolized Adolf Hitler, and would spend hours on Grindr searching for gay men to humiliate and “ghost,” ceasing all contact with them after posing as a coquettish “bicurious” Catholic.
“I tell sodomites that I’m bi-curious, which makes them want to ‘convert’ me,” Woodward said in his diary quoted by The Los Angeles Times. “Get them hooked by acting coy, maybe then send them a pic or two, beat around the bus and pretend to tell them that I like them and then kabam, I either un-friend them or tell them they have been pranked, ha ha.”
In another entry, Woodward wrote, “They think they are going to get hate crimed [sic] and it scares the s— out of them.”
On the day of the killing, Woodward agreed to drive Bernstein to Borrego Park in Foothill Ranch, where he stabbed him as many as 30 times and buried him in a “shallow grave,” according to various reports. He never denied his guilt, but in court his attorneys resorted to blaming the crime on his being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and feeling conflicted about his sexuality, LA Times reported. As the trial progressed, his attorneys also made multiple attempts to decouple Woodward’s Nazism from the murder, arguing that it was not a hate crime and that no mention of his trove of fascist paraphernalia and antisemitic and homophobic views should be uttered in court.
“No verdict can bring back Blaze. He was an amazing human and humanitarian and a person we were greatly looking forward to having in our lives, seeing wondrous things from him as his young life unfolded” the family of the victim, who has been described by all who knew him as amiable and talented, said in a statement shared by ABC News. “From this funny, articulate, kind, intelligent, caring, and brilliant scientist, artist, writer, chef, and son, there will never be anyone quite like him. His gifts will never be realized or shared now.”
With Wednesday’s guilty verdict, Woodward may never be free again. He faces life in prison without parole at his sentencing on Oct. 25.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post California Jury Convicts Neo-Nazi Who Brutally Murdered Gay Jewish Teenager first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Opinion: The folly of pro-Palestinian protesters screaming at Jewish teenage girls playing softball in Surrey, B.C.
Did the protesters even realize who would be on the field when they showed up?
The post Opinion: The folly of pro-Palestinian protesters screaming at Jewish teenage girls playing softball in Surrey, B.C. appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.