Shalom magazine - The Atlantic Jewish Council

arouNd our regioN: Cape
Holocaust Survivor Claire Baum
Recounts Her Time as a
“Hidden Child” in Holland
Holocaust survivor Claire
Baum lived for three years
as a “hidden child” during
the second world war. She was one of
more than 3500 Dutch Jewish children
who were given away by their parents
in a desperate attempt to allow
their offspring to survive the Nazi
onslaught.
Baum, now a resident of Toronto, was
the guest speaker at the 10th annual Yom
HaShoah observances at the Temple Sons
of Israel on April 11th. She was born in
Rotterdam three years before the start
of World War 2 as war clouds gathered
and the persecution of Jews grew. The
Nazis invaded The Netherlands in May
of 1940, and the Dutch capitulated a few
days later. Two years later Baum and her
younger sister were placed into hiding.
by Jack Columbus
Guest Speaker Claire Baum with Mark
Eyking, MP Sydney-Victoria
Her father had decided the family had to
be split up if they were to have a chance
of surviving the conflict. Of the many
Jewish children who were placed with
non-Jewish families, only about 1500 were
Page 52 Tishre 5771 - Vol 35 No. 2
alive when the war ended.
At first, Baum and her sister were put
into a stranger’s home, but fear of being
betrayed by a Nazi sympathizer prompted
the Jewish resistance to re-locate the girls.
They were then placed with a 28 year old
married woman who had no children of
her own. Baum said, “We had to hide our
childhood, and we had to live a constant
lie in order not to be betrayed”.
After the war had ended, Claire said, a
strange man and woman knocked on the
front door of the home she and her sister
were staying in. The strangers turned out
to be her parents. But the little girls, who
had not seen them for three years, failed
to recognize them.
The family emigrated to Canada in 1951,
settling in Toronto.
Cape Breton University Professor
Launches New Book
by Jack Columbus
Cape Breton University
Professor, Mark Silverberg
launched his new book, ‘The
New York School of Poets and the Neo-
Avant-Garde: Between Radical Art and
Radical Chic’, Friday, March 26th in
the CBU Art Gallery.
Silverberg,a resident of Sydney, is the
Associate Professor of American Literature
at CBU. His essays on twentieth century
literature and culture have appeared in
anthologies and journals such as English
Studies in Canada, Literary Imagination,
and Contemporary Literature. He is also a
published poet.
In his book, Silverberg examines New
York City in the 1950s and 60s and its
cultural and artistic rebirth. He highlights
the family resemblances between the
New York School poets, identifying
the aesthetic concerns and ideological
assumptions they shared with one another
and with artists from the visual and
performing arts.
Silverberg notes: “This is a book about
one of the most exciting moments and
locations in modern American art. New
York in the 1950s and 60s was rather
like Paris in the 1920s—it was the place
where young artists gathered to make the
future.”
The New York School of Poets and the
Neo-Avant Garde, also looks at the way
these poets re-conceptualized avant-garde
art, at a time in the United States when
what was once “radical art” was being
appropriated and repackaged as “radical
chic.”
Silverberg’s in-depth analysis of the
strategies the New York School poets used
to confront the problem of appropriation
tells us much about the politics of taste
and gender during the period, and
suggests new ways of understanding
succeeding generations of artists and
poets. He received his BA from York
University, BEd from the University of
Toronto, and MA and PhD from Dalhousie
University. Dr. Silverberg specializes in
American Literature, Interdisciplinary
Arts, and Poetry and Poetics.