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The Canadian Jewish News, Thursday, February 14, 1980 - Page 11
By SHELDON KIRSHNER
TORONTO —
Jack Kuper, slim and silver-haired, flips on his video cassette recorder arid images of skin care:^ products, electronic gadgetry. chocolate bars and tennis shoes leap onto the TV screen.
The ads-are bright and slick, symbols of the great North American consumer dream. Kuper, who packaged_them for_^a mass television audience, is a graphic designer and filmmaker. He ~ is one of Canada's best-know-n packagers of TV 'ads..; .
But when his day at the office ends, when he is through with promoting other people's products, Kuper goes home-and creates entirely different images. '
Bentover a note pad, the words flow. The words are of another time and of another place. The words Jare about the Holocaust, redolent of' -survival, redemption and, finally, reunion. The wordsaregritty. real. The subliminal sales pitch, the stuff of which his ads are made, has hd place in Kuper's Holocaust kingdom, which dwells in the recesses of his mind.
A good looking, soft-spoken man. Kuper is a survivor, and a messenger. "1 was saved to tell a story," he says of his experienceis in wartime Poland, where he was born.
KupeJr is the author of a 1968 best-seller. Child of the Holocaust, now being published in thie U.S. by New American Library and in Britain by Futura. And these days, he is busy, with two projects connected with its publication.
Having Written a screenplay based on his critically acclaimed autobiography, Kuper is in the midst of negotiations that could well turn the memoir into a movie. "It will be a Canadian production, with locations shots in Yugoslavia. It'll be an adventure story, not a 'woie is me' tale, a, very positive, kind of statement about survival and human relations,
At the same time. Kuper is writing a book about a touching reunion, that between himself and his father. It is tentatively entitled Search for my Father, and it's an inspirational account by any yardstick.
Kuper's father. Zelik Kuperblum, bade his family farewell after the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. As a Jew ahd a Communist. Kuperblum realized that he would be one of the Nazis' first victimis. Disguised as a Polish soldier, he fled to Russia. His son was seven when Zelik Kuperblum escaped the clutches of the Germans.
The Germans marched off his mother and brother like cattle and Kuper was left to fend for himself. A Catholic neighbor in Pulawy— "a small, sleepy town with a hiige Catholic church and a scruffy synagogue" — took him in. Kuper tended to co>as in exchange for room and board.
Knowing that some Gentiles were harboring *Jews. the Germans issued an edict commanding every farmer employing a Jew' to bring him to Gestapo headquarters or be shot. Kuper was
Jack Kaper —vchild-^of—4he Holocaust.
forced to flee, and Child of the Holocaast is a
description of his odyssey as a hunted human being.
Search for my Father, by contrast, is a journey of discovery.
After the.Second World War, Kuper made a seriesofinquiries about his father's whereabouts. ■ In the early 1950s, he received a letter from Israel informirig him that his father was alive. A few years elapsed and kuper discoveried that he had been arrested during the Stalinist purges and "clapped into a Siberian jail, accused of stealing leather.
-Kupersaw his father, face to iface. in 1967 when the Russians allowed him to visit Canada. He rushed to Montreal tomeet him at the^airport. "1 turned around and there facing me was a little . man bearing two bags wrapped in newspaper. One held a samovar; theother, a mandolin. He dropped (everything aiid we fell into each other's .arms.''';■. .
Zelik Kuperblum returned to Russia six months later. Kuper's struggle to arrange his emigration continued. He wrote countless letters to the Soviet embassy in Ottawa but received unsatisfactory replies. Last spring, Kuper's lawyers asked Senator Keith Davey and the . Department of External Affairs for help. . ■ :
Within two weeks, good news was on the way. The Russians had Released Zelik Kuperblum and his second wife. Zelik, 73, and his wife live in Brooklyn. "He's a vegetarian, the picture of health, a philosopher and a poet," Kuper says;
As poignant as the reunion has been, Kuper confesses he and his father are sorriewhat like striangers. "It's sad, but it is difficult to pick up the pieces after so many years. We speak to each Other Oil the phone occasionally, yet it's hard tp regard him as my father."
Kuper, the father of four, including a married daughter, was brought to Canada in 1947 by the Canadian Jewish Congress. He was supposed to
go to Montreal, but ended up in Toronto, arriving with a nearly empty cardboard suitcase, a violin and a fountain pen. He was only 15.:
• For two and a half years, he roomed with a TorontO'famiiy. Harold and Lillian Sumberg, tb; whom he dedicated Child of the Holocaast. taking up the frayed.strands of his life, Kuper started to. stitch theni together by>studying. . '
Art was his forte, but drama was a close second. In 1952 he appeared in an amateur production, and his role in Tennessee William's The Rose Tattoo earned him the accolade of best supporting actor at the Dominion Drama Festival that year. He decided to be an actor, and in the early days of the CBC Kuper appeared in a dozen dramas.
• Acting was not lucrative, so Kuper fell back on his talent for.creating graphics. CBC hired him and he stayed for 13 yearis, winning awards for many of the graphics he churned out. He left CBC in 1965 and drifted into advertising. By 1971. after a highly successful career, he was into business for himself.
He had, in the meantime, married a dancer named Terrye Lee Swadron;
: Surp"s*n8'y' Kuper's plight during the wiar years.did not embitter him."It didn't give nie a pessimistic outlook on life," he explains, "though 1 don't expect much from people. I'm an upbeat person and 1 surround myself with a lot of joy. The world is alright and things are not as bad as they rnight seem!"
"I treat people as individuals,", he adds, "and several of my friends are Germans and Poles. I don't bear hate, though I would find it very difficult to visit Germany, or to buy German goods."
He'd like to visit Poland, particularly because.
he would like to pay his respects to a woman who sheltered him during the war. But he hasn't gone, tp date, because he has mixed feelings about that country. Those feelings are summed up on a scrap of paper, a possible passage from Search for my Father: "A sadness planted itselfwithin me* and I couldn't shake it frpm.its ropts. The very thing I had escaped from, 1 ripw realized I aisp loved. Even those who had abused me, whp dispised me, wanted to destrpy iiie. had left their imprint pn my spuH".'-. .
Kuper is of two minds about the torrent of books on that period. ■
"There's a lot pf it I don't like. So many of the. books are baldly written. The' authors haven't turned their experiences into art. They just wanted to show how nasty the Nazis were, or how they suffered: You have to gp beypnd facts."
Kuper believes that pne of the finest books on the Holpcaust is The Wail by John Hersey/but even his work is"just a spit in the ocean."
As generations go by,writers will have a better appreciiation of the Holocaust, Kuper thinks. "The subject is still too, close. In 100 years from now there'll be better books about the Holocaust." ■ .
mnewserws
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Cakes made & deco.rated especially for ypu I! Unusual, Cakes Our Specialty Make Great Birthday Gifts Too : Ask about our party catering division.
Due to the increasing postage rates. Israel issued, on Jan. 15 a IL. 50 stamp as part of the Sixth Definitive Series. This multicolpured stamp, with graphics by A. Glaser from a photograph by I. Amit. was printed in sheets of 15 with five tabs by E. Lewin-Epstein Ltd.
■———s^T"—. ........ ■——■-
stamps
BvCHAIM YEHUDA
using the phptplithog-raphy method.
The Sorek Cave is an interesting geological phenomenon, discovered by accident in I960 during blasting operations at the Har-Tuv stone quarries on the western slopes of the Judean Hills.
Scientists tell us that
more than a million years ago, most of the area of Palestine was under a hot and shallow sea. The bpt-tpm pf this sea became covered with. carbPnated sediments cpnsistihg mainly pf the skeletpns pf varipus marine creatures, which siplidified intp limestone dplpmite rocks. These rocks are composed of closely-packed crystals which virtually prevent water from penetrating, but as the layers were displaced and folded, cracks were forriied allowing water to enter and dissolve some of the rock.
The sea eventually re,-treated and the ground
water level was Ipwered. The dissplution of the rock ceased and as drops of water, saturated with limestone solution reached the ceiling pf the cave, carbpn dipxide escaped and the limestpne that was left crystallized.
The. limestpne is preci-pitatedin the form of ring upon ring creating stalactites of up to 80 to 100 centimeters in. length. When the path of the dripping water is blocked, cone-shaped stalactites are formed which can reach 4 to 5 meters iii length.
Stalagmites "grow" when the rate of water
drippin;g is faster than the rate of diffusion of the carbon dioxide, and as the drops fiall, the rest of the carbon dioxide is diffused crystallizing the limestoiie into stalagmites.
While the stalagmites come in a great variety of shapes, the stalacites are usually very thin and smooth. A number of stalamites and stalactites meet and fuse into a pillar known as "stalagnates". Occasionally several stal-agnatcscpnnect into "cur^ tains" which divide the cave into a number of secondary chambers.
The Sorek Cave has become a major tourist
attraction which, while tiny in comparison with similar cayeis throughout the world, has the advantage of compressing within a small area a great variety of exciting shapes and forms created pVer the past five millipn years.
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