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Max Solomon, dressed for participation in a pre-lent Carnival as president of the the Kleinen Kolner Klub, or Little Cologne Club, pre-1933. (Courtesy Laura Chanin/JTA)
JTA Looking over an old family scrapbook several years ago, Laura Chanin saw a puzzling photograph of her paternal great-grandfather, Max Solomon, wearing women’s clothes. She had questions.
“What is this? Why is he in drag?” Chanin, the 53-year-old mother of one from California, asked about the experience.
The discovery led Chanin, who works at a logo printing business, to discover that Solomon was among the founders of the first Jewish group to officially participate in the Carnival of his native Cologne.