Russian Contemporary Art

 by Tamara Semenova, St. Petersburg

Masha Zeiring and with Muriel Wood, both Directors of our Los Angeles/St. Petersburg Sister City Committee was the team that prepared and took over 200 pieces of art from the Los Angeles Unified School District for display during the Master Class White Nights Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia this past June-July. Masha’s parents are celebrated artists in St. Petersburg and Masha has started a web page for them and to provide an expanding representation of the best in contemporary art from that artistic center of Russia. The web page is called The Art Addiction.

I think this initiative of Masha’s is going to grow into a recognized center of contemporary Russian art in the city of Los Angeles.

The Jews of El Paso

 Popular Dry Goods

Someone ought to write a book about the Jews of El Paso. When I grew up in that Texas border town, I was very aware of the Jews. My mother bought our shoes at Given’s Shoe Store. Some of the leading Jews were 32^nd  Degree Masons, as was my dad. The top department store was Popular Dry Goods founded in 1902 by the pioneer Adolph Schwartz. From a small village in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he landed in New York in 1883 with fifteen cents in his pocket and somehow made it to El Paso and opened the Popular.  As a high school student I worked on Saturdays in the Popular, manning the Boy Scout Department, and working for Willy Wildstein and Ed Smallberg.  But there were Jews before Schwartz.

Adolph Krakauer migrated from Bavaria to New York in 1865 and 1869 moved to San Antonio, Texas, where he went to work for Louis Zork, a leading merchant. He moved to El Paso in 1875, at a time when the town’s population was listed as seventy-five Mexicans and twenty-five Anglos. There he clerked in the firm of Sam Schutz and Son and became manager when the business was sold; later he became a partner. In 1885 he sold his interest in the firm and organized the firm of Krakauer, Zork, and Moye with his brother-in-law, Gustave Zork. That firm was the main hardware store in El Paso my entire life there. It also was a main source for arms to both sides in the Mexican Revolution as you may read about in my family story of that time, “Dos Gringos.” My grandfather, Friedrich Müller (not Jewish)was the salesman and I used to have pictures of him in Mexico with the Villistas with their sombreros and guns. Krakauer was voted Mayor of El Paso, but could not take office as he had neglected to become an American citizen.

There were many others. The Jews made their mark and were important contributors to the success of that town on the Rio Grande. When I visit El Paso today, I stand across from where the Popular was, in the square with the fountain where the alligators used to be, and I miss the Jews, who made that border town so livable. In fact there have been several accounts of the El Paso Jews: See The History of Jewish El Paso

Russian Corruption of Olympic Proportions

  The allegations of extreme corruption in the Russian 2014 Sochi Olympics have got everyone talking, but so far we hear of no corrective action being taken. The media is full of it. The Moscow Times, The Christian Science Monitor and the Novaya Gazeta have covered it well. This speaks of incredibly negative public relations for Russia amidst the world community.

Of course, corruption in the Olympies is not new. But after the efficient and relatively clean Olympics in Vancouver, the mishandling of such a visible international affair as the Winter Olympics forecasts a great loss of prestige for a nation trying to establish itself in as a world leader. As the Christian Science Monitor reported, the Transparency International’s annual corruption perceptions index currently ranks Russia No. 146 out of 180 countries, down from No. 82 a decade ago. A financially corrupt Sochi games will simply highlight that national sickness. And it colors the entire reputation of this honorable historic event. Not much is expected from Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s publicized investigation into the affair.

Why would a country’s leadership allow or support such a demeaning thing to happen? The answers may be deep and hard to heal. To some, civil and moral disobedience is not the issue. Getting caught is the offense to avoid. We won’t know the fallout of this for some time. Heads may roll, but pockets will be filled. But, as the Russians often say, “Let’s hope for the best.”