They called me Mayer July

the long version

"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 paintings woven together with a narrative created from interviews that took place over forty years between Mayer and his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. This collaboration - a unique blend of memoir, oral history, and artistic interpretation - is simultaneously a labor of love, a tribute to an imagination, and a portrait of life in one Jewish hometown."--Jacket.