Fay Silverberg, an 86-year-old retired retailer from West Chicago who helped her family avoid capture by the Nazis, died Friday, Oct. 27, of complications from diabetes in Rush North Shore Hospice, Skokie. “My brother and I are very thankful for the principles she taught us, the love of retail and the love of the customer,” said her son Gene, who along with sibling Joe ran the menswear chain Bigsby & Kruthers for almost 30 years. “She definitely influenced us, in that persistence and honesty were the two things that guided her life.” Mrs. Silverberg was born in a small town in Poland in 1914, one of seven children. After completing high school, she opened a grocery store and made maps of the area for travelers, her son said. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, Mrs. Silverberg rallied her family and led them east. Her knowledge of the region’s geography and sense of timing proved invaluable for eluding the Nazis, her son said. Mrs. Silverberg moved to Chicago with her husband, Fivel, and her oldest son, Joe, in 1950. She worked on a television assembly line, and with her husband, began selling wares, from jewelry to bundled socks on Maxwell Street. “Her quote used to be `Anything you can buy for nine cents and sell for 10,'” her son Gene said. She became known as “the chicken lady” after starting to sell the birds in a store near 47th Street and King Drive on the South Side. Gene Silverberg recalled how his mother used to take the broad sheets of paper that were generally used to wrap poultry and draw maps of her native country from memory. Other times, he said, she would use them to help him with his multiplication tables. Mrs. Silverberg encouraged her son Joe to open the first Bigsby & Kruthers at 3135 N. Broadway in 1970. Mrs. Silverberg also is survived by six grandchildren. The Silverbergs will be sitting shiva Sunday at Gene Silverberg’s Glencoe home from noon to 6 p.m.
