Judy Salamon ( née Daisy Edith Giuditta Salamon), born on April 30, 1947 in Budapest, Hungary; died on July 24, 2013 of a gunshot wound, in Oakland, CA.

Judy Salamon was a woman of great passions. Most of those who knew Judy in her later life knew of her passion and love for animals. But she embraced many things with passion:   she loved to be out in nature – skiing in the winter and hiking and water-skiing in the summer. Her soul would sing looking down from the top of a ski slope at the sparkling beauty of a sunny winter’s day.  Anyone who got into a political debate with Judy, immediately learned that she was passionate about social justice and supporting policies that would make the world a better place for all of humanity. She also enjoyed several passionate romances and close friendships.  But it was music that was her solace.  Opera was her greatest musical passion (indeed, she was named after the opera Giuditta by Franz Lehar) and she knew the words to all the great arias. She loved the drama and pathos of opera. Accomplished at the piano, Judy not only played beautifully but wrote haunting melodies with lyrics that revealed her deepest emotions: the happiness of love, and the melancholy of betrayal.

Born to Holocaust survivors shortly after World War II, Judy’s early life was peripatetic. When she was a two year old toddler her parents decided to flee the communist regime in Hungary and immigrated to Canada living in five different Canadian towns and cities over the span of a decade.  At 17, Judy lost her mother, and decided to study at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem where she got a BA in literature. After graduating, she spent time in Amsterdam and other European cities before settling in Barcelona, where she learned Flamenco dancing and became a professional Flamenco dancer. There she met her first husband.  She returned to Canada in the early 1970s where she completed an MA in Comparative Literature at Carleton University in Ottawa, got married and continued her studies towards a PhD at the University of Toronto, while working as a teaching assistant and translator: Judy was multi-lingual, fluent in 5 languages.

 It was her marriage to her second husband some years after an amicable divorce from her first that brought Judy to the Bay Area in California in the mid-1980s.  After her second divorce, she settled in Oakland, having bought a house the Maxwell Park area which she shared with her cats and wonderful Chihuahua named Echo. During her 20 year residency in Maxwell Park, Judy volunteered in her community to make it safe, active in neighborhood watch and other safety organizations. 

Over the years Judy held jobs in marketing and later re-trained as a computer analyst, landing a good job in that field.  However, like many others, the economic downturn of 2007 left Judy jobless. With few prospects she decided to follow an early passion of hers, training dogs. She volunteered with the humane society, studied dog training and fostered abandoned dogs. She had an uncanny ability to communicate with animals; she loved them and they loved her, but above all they respected her and obeyed her commands.  Judy slowly built up a business around this avocation, along the way acquiring a legion of friends, both two legged and four legged to add to her core of long-term friendships that she nurtured through her caring personality.

Like her beloved opera heroines, Judy’s life ended tragically just when things were once again moving along the right path and she was happier than she had been for a long time.

Judy is survived by her older sister Agi, three nieces, four grand-nieces and grand-nephews in California, four grand-nieces and grand-nephews and an aunt and uncle in Montreal.

By Agnes Meinhard