Objects

Another scene which the artist remembered from his childhood and early teens in Opatów, offering an insight into both specific events and the town’s residents and topography. Kirshenblatt depicts a crowd watching the performance of an acrobat. He was called ‘The Human Fly’ because he was able to scale the wall of a house unprotected and unassisted, climb onto the roof, perform various stunts, and safely get down. As the author recalls, this ‘trick’ was possible thanks to the construction of the building’s front wall – the corner was decorated with large stones protruding beyond the surface of the wall, providing support for the climbing man’s feet and hands. Kirshenblatt mentions as a sidenote that the tenement house which the acrobat scaled belonged to Lejzer Mandelbaum, a local entrepreneur, owner of a soap factory. It was the most impressive tenement house in the town, located at former 2 Łagowska Street, at the eastern edge of the town square. Lajzer’s son, Mieczysław Mandelbaum, took over his father’s business and increased production – among others, the factory produced the ‘Słoń’ [Elephant] soap, which in the 1930s was marketed as the best in the country.

Małgorzata Bogdańska-Krzyżanek