I Am My Family: Photographic Memories and Fictions

I Am My Family Photographic Memories and Fictions Rafael Goldchain

With an essay by Martha Langford Princeton Architectural Press, New York

Contents Imagined Memories On Rafael Goldchain’s Family Album Martha Langford

10

Artist Statement 16

Plates 25

Appendix Sketchbooks, Production Stills, and Family Trees 129

Archival Photographs 153

My paternal grandfather [page 154 top] was a revered figure in our household. His premature death of lung cancer at age fifty-nine, when I was six years old, left the family grief-stricken. Motl Yosef was what his Buenos Aires uncles and cousins called him in the 1920s. In Chile, he was known as Don Marcos José Goldchain Liberman, and at home, my brother and I called him Zeide José.1 He was born in Bolimow, Poland, the site of a major 1915 World War One battle between Germans and Russians, to Mendl Goldszajn and Hinda Liberman. My memories of him come mostly from photographs and home movies shot by my father between the early and late 1950s. In these images and films, he appears as an older man wearing a beret, dark overcoat, and scarf around his neck. While looking at archival images of Polish Jewish children, I thought of him for the first time as having had a childhood and adolescence, and decided to represent him as a schoolboy back in Warsaw. I used a period Canadian Forces uniform as a reasonable facsimile of a Polish high school uniform. The shape of the Canadian military hat had to be modified, and the hat pin bearing the Polish eagle, a Polish national symbol, was digitally composited from a Canadian Forces regimental pin, and an image of the Polish eagle downloaded from a website.

1 The portrait titles reflect the change of my ancestors’ names from their original Polish form and spelling (as spelled in English) to the Spanish spelling and formal naming conventions. For example, Motl Yosef Goldszajn Liberman (as a Polish schoolboy) becomes Don Marcos José Goldchain Liberman after his emigration, according to Spanish naming conventions that place the maternal after the paternal family name. The Spanish prefixes Don and Doña are used as signs of respect for adult individuals. In the Spanish form a married woman can keep her maiden family names and add her husband’s paternal family name to the end of hers, as in Doña Aida Precelman Ryten de Goldchain or Balbina Baumfeld Szpiegel de Rubinstein. Names originally only written in Hebrew acquired many forms when written in Polish. For example, Goldszajn, Goldshtayn, Goldszayn, Goldschain, Goldchain, Goldstein, Goldschein can all be traced to one original family name that would have been pronounced Goldshine. In the same manner Rubinsztajn evolves to Rubinstein, and Ryten becomes Ritten.

In many instances, the maternal family name is missing, as it is not currently known. I wanted to record as many of the family names as possible in keeping with my desire to reverse the erasure of memory caused by historical events and the passage of time and generations. There is also a tradition in historical Latin American painting to include the full formal name of the subject of a portrait as part of the painting.

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Self-Portrait as Motl Yosef Goldszajn Liberman (Schoolboy) b. Warsaw, Poland, 1902 d. Santiago de Chile, 1959

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Self-Portrait as Don Marcos José Goldchain Liberman (Glasses) b. Warsaw, Poland, 1902 d. Santiago de Chile, 1959

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This image is based on several photographs of my paternal grandfather taken by my father in the early 1950s. According to my late uncle Mauricio Goldchain Precelman [page 157 bottom], the name change from Goldszajn (pronounced in English as Goldshine) occurred when my grandfather Motl Yosef arrived in Uruguay in 1924. Since Spanish does not have a soft “sh” sound, the immigration official changed it to Goldchain.1 Motl Yosef Goldszajn and his wife, Aida Precelman [page 154 bottom], had decided to emigrate to South America because they were both barred from entry to university according to the “numerus clausus” policy affecting Jewish students in prewar Poland, and to avoid my grandfather’s impending conscription to the Russian Army—not a good place for young Jewish men at a time of rampant anti-Semitism.

After a brief stay in Uruguay, Motl Yosef and Aida arrived in Argentina in 1924, where they received a warm welcome from uncles and cousins already living in Buenos Aires [page 161]. My father Emilio and uncle Mauricio were born in Buenos Aires in 1925 and 1928, respectively, and in 1930 the family moved to Santiago de Chile [pages 160 and 162 top], where my grandparents participated actively in Jewish intellectual life. They frequently hosted visiting artists and writers and enjoyed performing in the theater and singing a secular Yiddish repertoire. My grandfather was also a writer of Yiddish short stories, which were originally published in 1949 and posthumously translated into Spanish as Desde Un País Lejano (From a distant land) [page 162 middle].2 Don Marcos José was always seen wearing a beret and a scarf. In my image I wanted to capture his imposing profile and larger-than-life persona. While working on this portrait, my collaborator Adrian Fish and I suddenly realized that I was starting to look vaguely like an Italian New Wave filmmaker. Adrian started calling me Giuseppe, and that is how he made me smile for this image.

1 There is a famous Canadian story about a Jewish man arriving in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, after a long passage aboard a ship, and after a sleepless night of anticipation and drinking. Upon being asked for his family name by the Canadian immigration officer he has a mental block and in dismay he says “ich farguesn,” which in Yiddish means “I forget.” That was the beginning of the illustrious Ferguson family of Glace Bay, Nova Scotia.

2 Fifty years later, one of his stories was translated into English by Alan Astro and included in a 2003 book titled Yiddish South of the Border: An Anthology of Latin American Yiddish Writing.

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Self-Portrait as Don Marcos José Goldchain Liberman (Older) b. Warsaw, Poland 1902 d. Santiago de Chile, 1959

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This image is based on a portrait of my paternal grandmother made by my father in the early 1950s. Affectionately known by my brother and me as Bobe Aida, she arrived in South America with her husband, Don Marcos José Goldchain Liberman, in the early 1920s, and moved with him and their two young children to Santiago de Chile in 1930.

Aida’s sister Chana and her husband Avraham Laks died young (of tuberculosis), leaving their two sons David and Manuel orphaned. Manuel arrived in South America with José and Aida and became a distinguished violinist with the Santiago Symphony. Sadly, he died prematurely in 1938 of untreated appendicitis, leaving behind a heartbroken bride.

His younger brother David, who had remained in Poland living with his PrecelmanRyten grandparents in Lublin, emigrated to Paris, France, at age fourteen, where he made a living by selling pornographic images to tourists in Montmartre and was quasi-adopted by the local prostitutes. He later moved to Brussels where he met Miriam (Mira) Feller, his future wife, in the ranks of the communist youth. Shortly after Manuel’s death, Doña Aida sent Miriam and David passage to Chile, where they arrived in 1939, thus being saved from the Shoah [page 163]. David and Miriam became my godparents, and their children Jane and Julio my beloved cousins.

Doña Aida was a restless soul, and after my grandfather passed away, she moved back to Buenos Aires, and later to Israel, where she met her second husband, known as Don Aaron. She returned to Chile with him briefly when I was a teenager.When he died, she moved to my uncle Mauricio’s house in Washington, D.C. In the late 1970s she found descendants of her uncle Julius (Jacob) Ryten living in the Detroit area and, shortly thereafter, married her first cousin Manny Ritten [page 162 bottom]. Despite being close to eighty years old at this time, Aida was energetic and vibrant, teaching the Yiddish language to young children and Yiddish songs to seniors in a local Jewish community center several times a week. Manny’s death in 1984 was a big blow to her and not long after, in 1986, she passed away with her family around her.

In order to transform myself into her, I rented body padding in addition to wardrobe and a wig. I also hired a glamour makeup artist who coached me in posing in a stereotypically feminine way. Having known my grandmother as an older bubby or “Bobe,” it was challenging to imagine her as a younger, glamorous woman.

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Self-Portrait as Doña Aida Precelman Ryten de Goldchain b. Warsaw, Poland, 1902 d. Southfield, Michigan, United States, 1986

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