My cousin 1957

What a stunning picture from 1957 of my cousin (ok, my second cousin) taken by her father David Rosenberg.  Delaware.  I started kindergarten in 1957 and she was a few years younger.  Though I didn't see her much at all when we were children as we were the cousins who lived in the fabled California..not back east like everybody else.

Wait, wait, kindergarten, did I just write the commonly used word kindergarten meaning the first year of school?  A clearly German word.  According to wikipedia, started in Bavaria in late eighteenth century.  My mother's family came from Bavaria in the mid- nineteenth century.  You think that they included children from the Jewish communities?  Did Maier Zunder (1829-1901) attend a kintergarten?   Likely not.  Underneath the lovely little girl picture is a picture of a kindergarten in Germany in 1954 only three years earlier than my kindergarten attendance. You think there's any Jewish children in that picture?  In 1954?

A beautiful dark haired little girl gazes up at the lighted menorah.  The hope for the future of Jewry.  Yet only 13 years previous, the death camps in Germany were in full swing, slaughtering Jewish children.

The little girl?  My second cousin?  Known to me as Susan Rosenberg.  Now goes by Flash Rosenberg, a Manhattan based performance artist and photographer.  Hard working and hilarious.  And still beautiful.