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THE FOLLOWING DAY, a batch of e-mails arrived from Sandra. She had gone through Emil’s albums and found several photographs of Rita, she wrote, but only one of Leon (an image of him with Rita and my mother taken on a Paris street in the 1950s, a photograph that my mother has in her album).

I opened Sandra’s e-mails with trepidation. The photographs might help explain the silence that had fallen over this period. The photographs were black-and-white, eight of them, undimmed by the passage of time. I’d never seen any of the photographs of Rita, the ones that Sandra had sent. Each was unexpected.

The first was a studio portrait of Rita, in soft focus. She smiled, glamorous in a way that I’d not previously noticed. She was beautiful, her face carefully made up, with strong and striking lipstick.

The next photograph offered a greater surprise. Taken on a date unknown, it was an image of Rita with Leon’s mother, Malke, which must have been one of the last photographs ever taken of my great-grandmother. It seemed familiar. Malke was elegant, eyelids long, sloping, slanted like Leon’s. She wore a dark shirt with simple buttons, silver hair brushed back. Her face had a faded dignity and calm, before she knew what was to come.

Rita and Malke, Vienna, ca.1938

Yet there was something strange about the photograph, which I half recognized. Then I realized that I had seen it, but only a half of it, the side that showed Malke. My mother has a copy of that half, torn down the middle, so the other side, with the smiling Rita, has been removed. Only now, with this more complete version, did I see that in the original Malke was not alone, that Rita was with her.

The next photograph, the third, showed Rita lounging in a deck chair in a garden, in spring, or maybe summer. A fourth had her standing in a striped jumper, in formal shoes, alone in a garden. Perhaps the same garden.

The final photographs came in a group of four. They seemed to have been taken on the same day, again in a tranquil garden. The leaves on the trees and bushes were filled with life, young and vibrant. It felt like spring. The individuals looked peaceful and relaxed. In one, Rita sat alone on a bench, three women and Emil Lindenfeld lay on the grass behind her. They were smiling and laughing, talking. Each looked toward the camera and the unknown photographer, carefree.

Rita and Emil, on the right, with unknown man, Vienna

The next photograph showed Rita on the same bench, wearing a hat. A third showed an unknown woman on that bench, with a man in a hat and in lederhosen, wearing the Weißstrümpfe (white stockings) that were a sign, as I have learned, of sympathy toward the Nazis. Context was everything, and that knowledge gave the socks a sinister feel.

The last image showed Rita, standing between two men. I did not recognize the one to her right, but on her left was Emil, in lederhosen and white stockings, his arm entwined with Rita’s. She smiled, elegant and peaceful, more beautiful than I had ever seen her. (Later I would show the photograph to my aunt, who had the same reaction: “I never saw her looking like that, not ever.”) Emil stood with his hands in his pockets. He had a mischievous air, head tilted back, a faint smile as though caught out unexpectedly.

Rita wore a dark flowery dress. Looking closely, but the image was not too clear, I could see a wedding ring on her right hand, presumably the one I wear today.

When were the photographs taken? Perhaps they were taken before 1937, before Rita and Leon married, innocent images. Or they could have been taken after January 1939, when Leon left Vienna for Paris. I had often imagined that period, Rita alone in Vienna, without daughter or husband, looking after her mother. That was the reason she stayed behind, we were told, a time of darkness, of overwhelming unhappiness. Yet the photographs conveyed a serenity, not consonant with the times, as war raged and the Jews of Vienna found themselves on the rack, in ghettos, or on the road to extermination.

—

Did the four photographs have a date? Sandra said they were stuck onto the pages of the album. She could peel them off but worried she might damage them. Come and visit, she said, next time you are in New York.

“We can peel them off together.”