The Cenders' family portrait was the last photo they posed for together. The woman standing in the middle tries to smile through clenched lips. The men on the sides lean their heads towards her. Both are wearing jackets, pullovers and light-coloured striped shirts, with ties under their necks. The older one has round glasses and short-cropped, auburn hair. His wife is dressed in a blouse with a collar and added drapery. She pulled her hair back. Their son's face is serious and tense, full of suppressed emotions.
Max Cender was born on 11 May 1899 in the village of Nowy Świat near Poddębice, his wife Maria (née Berkowicz) and son Henryk in Zduńska Wola. From 1927 to 1933, Max ran a grain and flour wholesaler in Bojanowo, while also leasing a steam mill in Rawicz. In 1933, he left with his family to Leszno, then to Poznań. Shortly before the outbreak of war, he settled in Kalisz. There, as a reservist, he was called up to the Polish army and took part in the September Campaign. After his release from the prisoner-of-war camp, he was sent to the Łódź ghetto, where his wife and son had previously been incarcerated. Together with Henryk, he was sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and then to a branch of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp in Görlitz (APL, Bojanowo City Files, file no. 106, pp. 113–114; letter from the management of the Gross-Rosen State Museum to D. Czwojdrak, Wałbrzych–Rogoźnica, 3 November 2000).
After the war, he and his son settled in Łódź. There he opened a small commercial company. In October 1945, his wife and two sisters returned from Bergen-Belsen. After the tragic death of his son in March 1947, the distraught father declined in health. He died in April 1950. Maria Cender had to leave Poland a few months after her husband's death due to an earlier application to go to Israel. She resides in the Ramat Aviv neighbourhood in Tel Aviv. She died in the early 1990s. (Letters from Paula Fedrich to D. Czwojdrak, Lüneburg 8 March 1997, Lüneburg, May 1997).