Hot Off the Press!

A blog post by associate director Anita Kassof.

This past Monday, I traveled to Cheverly, Maryland with the Fleischmann family and Amy Freese, designer of Lights & Shadows, Arnold Fleischmann’s memoirs. Lights & Shadows, which I edited, is Arnold’s account of his family’s flight from Nazi Germany, his service with the U.S. Armed Forces, and his participation in the postwar transfer of power in Germany. The book is lavishly illustrated with historical photos and documents that trace Arnold’s journey.

Those photos and documents were one of the main reasons we traveled to Cheverly, home of Mosaic Press, which is printing the book. We wanted to make sure that as it came off the press, the photographs printed well, the colors were true, and the reproduction quality was consistent.

So, what does a press check consist of? Fortunately, Arnold’s son, Alan, snapped some photos of the process.

Arnold Fleischmann, the author, with Chief Quality Control Expert (his granddaughter, Natalia), waits in the “hospitality lounge” at Mosaic. He’s looking at PDFs of the book, which Mosaic had produced for Amy Freese and me to review before things went on press. A couple of weeks ago, she and I checked these proofs to make sure all the text and photos were in place, and the pages were in the right order.

Here’s Arnold with one of the first press sheets. (Though it came off the press first, these pages are actually in the middle of the book.) Groups of pages are printed more or less at random, cut down, and put in the right sequence. The press sheet is in a light box that enables you to see the colors as accurately as possible.

After approving the first press sheet (it looked great, though we did ask them to add a little more varnish to the photos to really make them “pop” off the pages), we toured the press room. With several huge machines running at once, the racket was quite something. Mosaic operates its presses 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Here’s a sheet about to come off the press.

The pressman checks a sheet at random as it comes off the press to make sure the colors have remained consistent.

I’m standing in back next to Arnold, and Alan is in front, next to the press. Dafna Tapiero, Alan’s wife, holds their daughter, Natalia. Amy Freese, the book’s designer, is on the right.

Dafna, Natalia, and Arnold with some “make ready” sheets. Make readies are the first sheets to come off the press on a given print run, and they’re generally discarded because sometimes the color isn’t consistent. I sure hope these folks recycle!

This is a cutting machine. Once all the big sheets come off the press, they are collated, cut, folded, and then sent to the bindery where they’re bound and finished. And then . . .

We celebrate! Please join us at the Museum on November 9, from 6 to 8 p.m. for a book signing event with Arnold Fleischmann and see for yourself what a beautiful book we’ve produced.

Secret Lives of Interns: Lloyd Street Synagogue Children’s Book in the Works

A blog post by Rachael Gilman.

Yep, that’s right; the JMM is in the process of creating a children’s book showing the history of the Lloyd Street Synagogue. I got pretty excited when I found out about this project the second day of my internship. I have some experience working with children and writing children’s literature, so I made a few suggestions. Suddenly I was a part of the project team, much to my delight.

The synagogue finally gets to tell its story.

The children’s book project team consists of Anita, Jenn, Deborah, Avi and myself from the JMM. There are a few other team members I’ll introduce in a moment.

“Long before your grandparents’ grandparents were babies, before they walked or talked or tied their own shoes, I was built with shovel and pail, hammer and nail, brick and stone.” (make the quote stand out in some way-italics? Block quote?)

This is the very beginning of the story, which was written mostly by Anita with suggestions from the rest of the team. After 10 drafts, the text has pretty much been finalized. The story is told from the synagogue’s point of view and describes children and events in the 165 year life of the building.

Here’s a peek at a sketch of one of the book’s illustrations.

A picture book needs pictures so author and illustrator Jonathon Scott Fuqua (who also did the illustrations for the videos in The Synagogue Speaks) is part of the project team. Scott has been very flexible as we’ve worked to finalize the story. The JMM staff tries to give Scott everything he needs to create beautiful and accurate illustrations. Jenn and I have hunted down descriptions and pictures of fashions, cars and other buildings from the various time periods covered in the book to send to Scott to use as references. He’s already made some wonderful sketches for us.

The project team sat down in the middle of July to work out the layout for the book. After studying the layouts of other picture books, playing with the text, and doing just a little arguing we had sketches showing the placement of words and text for the picture book. We also added four spot illustrations for Scott to create.

LSS photoshoot!

On July 20, we had a photo shoot at the synagogue so Scott could get specific reference pictures with models. Scott’s son along with some of his friends served as models. Various staff, volunteers and even we interns were adult models for Scott. Other JMM staff and their children have been models for Scott in the past. If you take a close look at some of the people in “The Synagogue Speaks” videos you’ll see several familiar faces!

Scott’s daughter Calla Grace Fuqua was the model for Ella
in both The Synagogue Speaks and the children’s book.

The latest addition to the children’s book project team is Paula Bogert, a graphic designer. She will help us pick out background colors, fonts, text size, etc. Paula created the graphics for the “Voices of Lombard Street” and “The Synagogue Speaks” exhibitions and has designed a number of books.

At our last team meeting Scott brought in about a dozen pencil sketches on watercolor paper to get our approval before he started painting them. Anita, Jen, Deb and I looked them over to see if we liked them and for historical accuracy. We found some hairstyles and head coverings we have to double check with more research. But Scott has tentative approval to start painting 5 illustrations.

We’re getting closer to finally sending our children’s book to the publisher! Once the publisher has the book it will take several weeks to print and bind the number of books we plan on ordering. The children’s book should be available for purchase early next year (keep your fingers crossed).

I feel honored to be a part of this project and I can’t wait to see how the children’s book turns out!

Lights & Shadows: Excerpt II

Chapter 2: The Nazis ascend to power and begin
to persecute and discriminate against Germany’s Jews.

Arnold Fleischmann with his mother, Nelly.

My mother’s bridge club was made up primarily of the non-Jewish women with whom she had gone to school. Most were the wives and daughters of German military officers who were stationed near Bayreuth. Mutti had known some of these women for her entire life, and she enjoyed their company. The women got together twice a week, frequently at our house—where I enjoyed snitching chocolates as they played cards.

It must have been 1933, around the time the Nazis rose to power, when some of the women came to my mother and said, “Mein Mann, mein Vater, mein Bruder, sie haben Bedenken.” (My husband, my father, my brother, they have concerns.)

“What are their concerns?” my mother asked.

“They say we should not associate with Jews,” my mother’s friends told her. “I’m afraid we cannot have you as part of our bridge club any longer.” The ladies were tearful and expressed regret, but like many German women at the time, they were subservient to their husbands. Almost overnight, my mother’s friends seemed to disappear.

New Book from the JMM: Lights & Shadows

Arnold Fleischmann was a schoolboy in Bayreuth, Germany, when Hitler came to power in 1933. For nearly seven years, his family endured the cruelties of Nazism before fleeing to the United States and resettling in Baltimore. At eighteen, Arnold returned to Europe with the U.S. Army, determined to help defeat the regime that had destroyed life for Jewish families like his own. He saw combat in the Battle of the Bulge and served as an interpreter and deputy security officer with the U.S. occupation forces in Berlin, positions that allowed him to witness and actively participate in the wartime and postwar transition of power.

Arnold’s story is one of loss, but it is also one of redemption and renewal. It is a poignant account of a child’s confusion over seeing his world fall apart, a young refugee’s desire to settle the score with a homeland that cast him out, and a patriot’s service to his adopted country.

But most of all it is a story of family. Arnold can trace his family tree back centuries in Germany. The strength and tenacity of this extended family enabled many of its members to survive the Nazi onslaught, organize their flight to the U.S., and succeed in the painstaking ordeal of rebuilding their lives. Since transplanting itself to these shores, the family has continued to grow, setting down roots that promise to run as deep as they once did in Bavaria.

Lights & Shadows is an intergenerational collaboration between Arnold and his younger son, Alan. It is inspired by Arnold’s remarkable experiences and nurtured by Alan’s dedication to preserving and telling the family’s story.

Arnold Fleischmann was born in Bayreuth, Germany in 1925 and settled with his family in Baltimore in 1940. He was married to Laura Buxbaum from 1960 until her untimely death in 1988. They raised three children: Steven, Nicole (Niki), and Alan. For many years, Arnold ran a thriving law practice. Now retired, he lives in Baltimore County, Maryland. He travels frequently and enjoys spending time with his children, his and five grandchildren, and his longtime loving companion, Rosalie Rosenzwog.

Excerpt from chapter 1: Arnold returns to his childhood home in Bayreuth. His family fled the Nazis in 1940 and as soon as he was old enough to enlist, Arnold enlisted in the US Army and went back to Europe as a GI.

Arnold Fleischmann in the garden at Badstrasse

I was not quite twenty on that summer day in 1945 when I stood in front of Badstrasse 30 in Bayreuth, the house where I was born. I remembered mychildhood there, hours spent sliding down piles of hay in the barn, playing with my toy steam locomotives, conducting amateur chemistry experiments that once almost cost me my eyebrows. I pictured the changes that had taken place—in myself and in the world—since my family had left the house and fled Germany five years earlier, and thought about how it felt to leave my homeland and return as an American GI.

My reverie was interrupted when an old woman with a gravelly voice touched my shoulder. “Bist du nicht Fleischmanns Arno?” she said to me. I was dumbfounded. There I stood, an American in an Army uniform with a .45 caliber pistol strapped to my side. How could I possibly be recognizable as the young boy who used to chase chickens in the yard? But the scratchy-voiced woman had known me since my birth. Frau Strössner had apparently weathered the Second World War in our house.

Keep your eyes on the blog for more excerpts from this great publication!