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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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Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says
Atomic symbol and USA and Iranian flags are seen in this illustration taken, September 8, 2022. Photo: REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
Iran and the United States agreed on Saturday to task experts to start drawing up a framework for a potential nuclear deal, Iran’s foreign minister said, after a second round of talks following President Donald Trump’s threat of military action.
At their second indirect meeting in a week, Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi negotiated for almost four hours in Rome with Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, through an Omani official who shuttled messages between them.
Trump, who abandoned a 2015 nuclear pact between Tehran and world powers during his first term in 2018, has threatened to attack Iran unless it reaches a new deal swiftly that would prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which says its nuclear program is peaceful, says it is willing to discuss limited curbs to its atomic work in return for lifting international sanctions.
Speaking on state TV after the talks, Araqchi described them as useful and conducted in a constructive atmosphere.
“We were able to make some progress on a number of principles and goals, and ultimately reached a better understanding,” he said.
“It was agreed that negotiations will continue and move into the next phase, in which expert-level meetings will begin on Wednesday in Oman. The experts will have the opportunity to start designing a framework for an agreement.”
The top negotiators would meet again in Oman next Saturday to “review the experts’ work and assess how closely it aligns with the principles of a potential agreement,” he added.
Echoing cautious comments last week from Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, he added: “We cannot say for certain that we are optimistic. We are acting very cautiously. There is no reason either to be overly pessimistic.”
There was no immediate comment from the US side following the talks. Trump told reporters on Friday: “I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific.”
Washington’s ally Israel, which opposed the 2015 agreement with Iran that Trump abandoned in 2018, has not ruled out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the coming months, according to an Israeli official and two other people familiar with the matter.
Since 2019, Iran has breached and far surpassed the 2015 deal’s limits on its uranium enrichment, producing stocks far above what the West says is necessary for a civilian energy program.
A senior Iranian official, who described Iran’s negotiating position on condition of anonymity on Friday, listed its red lines as never agreeing to dismantle its uranium enriching centrifuges, halt enrichment altogether or reduce its enriched uranium stockpile below levels agreed in the 2015 deal.
The post Iran, US Task Experts to Design Framework for a Nuclear Deal, Tehran Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says Fate of US-Israeli Hostage Unknown After Guard Killed in Israel Strike
Varda Ben Baruch, the grandmother of Edan Alexander, 19, an Israeli army volunteer kidnapped by Hamas, attends a special Kabbalat Shabbat ceremony with families of other hostages, in Herzliya, Israel October 27, 2023 REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
Hamas said on Saturday the fate of an Israeli dual national soldier believed to be the last US citizen held alive in Gaza was unknown, after the body of one of the guards who had been holding him was found killed by an Israeli strike.
A month after Israel abandoned the ceasefire with the resumption of intensive strikes across the breadth of Gaza, Israel was intensifying its attacks.
President Donald Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff said in March that freeing Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old New Jersey native who was serving in the Israeli army when he was captured during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks that precipitated the war, was a “top priority.” His release was at the center of talks held between Hamas leaders and US negotiator Adam Boehler last month.
Hamas had said on Tuesday that it had lost contact with the militants holding Alexander after their location was hit in an Israeli attack. On Saturday it said the body of one of the guards had been recovered.
“The fate of the prisoner and the rest of the captors remains unknown,” said Hamas armed wing Al-Qassam Brigades’ spokesperson Abu Ubaida.
“We are trying to protect all the hostages and preserve their lives … but their lives are in danger because of the criminal bombings by the enemy’s army,” Abu Ubaida said.
The Israeli military did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Hamas released 38 hostages under the ceasefire that began on January 19. Fifty-nine are still believed to be held in Gaza, fewer than half of them still alive.
Israel put Gaza under a total blockade in March and restarted its assault on March 18 after talks failed to extend the ceasefire. Hamas says it will free remaining hostages only under an agreement that permanently ends the war; Israel says it will agree only to a temporary pause.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it hit about 40 targets across the enclave over the past day. The military on Saturday announced that a 35-year-old soldier had died in combat in Gaza.
NETANYAHU STATEMENT
Late on Thursday Khalil Al-Hayya, Hamas’ Gaza chief, said the movement was willing to swap all remaining 59 hostages for Palestinians jailed in Israel in return for an end to the war and reconstruction of Gaza.
He dismissed an Israeli offer, which includes a demand that Hamas lay down its arms, as imposing “impossible conditions.”
Israel has not responded formally to Al-Hayya’s comments, but ministers have said repeatedly that Hamas must be disarmed completely and can play no role in the future governance of Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to give a statement later on Saturday.
Hamas on Saturday also released an undated and edited video of Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot. Hamas has released several videos over the course of the war of hostages begging to be released. Israeli officials have dismissed past videos as propaganda.
After the video was released, Bohbot’s family said in a statement that they were “deeply shocked and devastated,” and expressed concern for his mental and physical condition.
“How much longer will he be expected to wait and ‘stay strong’?” the family asked, urging for all of the 59 hostages who are still held in Gaza to be brought home.
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Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks
FILE PHOTO: Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said gives a speech after being sworn in before the royal family council in Muscat, Oman January 11, 2020. Photo: REUTERS/Sultan Al Hasani/File Photo
Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq al-Said is set to visit Moscow on Monday, days after the start of a round of Muscat-mediated nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
The sultan will hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, the Kremlin said.
Iran and the US started a new round of nuclear talks in Rome on Saturday to resolve their decades-long standoff over Tehran’s atomic aims, under the shadow of President Donald Trump’s threat to unleash military action if diplomacy fails.
Ahead of Saturday’s talks, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi met his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow. Following the meeting, Lavrov said Russia was “ready to assist, mediate and play any role that will be beneficial to Iran and the USA.”
Moscow has played a role in Iran’s nuclear negotiations in the past as a veto-wielding U.N. Security Council member and signatory to an earlier deal that Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018.
The sultan’s meetings in Moscow visit will focus on cooperation on regional and global issues, the Omani state news agency and the Kremlin said, without providing further detail.
The two leaders are also expected to discuss trade and economic ties, the Kremlin added.
The post Oman’s Sultan to Meet Putin in Moscow After Iran-US Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.