by Sarah Tutle-Singer
This is Bernard Leon Singer and Goldryn Malka Singer nee Blonder and their daughters, Maida and Judy, In their little matching checkered dresses, both cute as a button.
Maida is the one with the wonky smile and the little round glasses with her eyes closed. She was famous for closing her eyes in family photos. Judy is the one with the blunt bangs her mother cut with the kitchen scissors. Judy takes family picture posing very seriously.
They lived in Chicago on Fairfield Avenue. They had a backyard with a plum tree, and a train set that looped through the living room and the dining room.
Maida loved to read. Judy loved to climb trees.
Bernie and Goldryn looked like movie stars. When they went on their honeymoon there was a sign in front of the hotel that said “no dogs and no Jews.”<
Maida and Judy were born during WWII, but all the way across the sea from Europe, safe from the Nazis who threw the rest of their family into the hungry maw of Auschwitz, where their cousins and uncles and aunts were devoured and sucked dry — where the Nazis tossed their corpses like simple afterthoughts into big bureaucratic ovens, where they threw their bones and teeth and sinew into jagged pits (but kept the gold fillings from their teeth, their diamond engagement rings and silver Sabbath candle sticks to send home to their pretty wives.)
This is what separates animals from monsters. Humans can behave like animals. The Nazis were monsters.
This picture was taken shortly after WWII, but long after the last of the letters from their Cousin Rena and Uncle Jacob stopped suddenly out of nowhere.
Bernie and Goldryn and Maida and Judy were my grandparents and my mom and her sister
They were safe in Chicago in Fairfield Avenue back then in this picture, living the American dream with their backyard and plum tree and the train in the living room and the dining room and their silver Sabbath candles – and they lived and died in that rare pocket of time when people were a little more quiet about hating Jews.
