The Year of Goodbyes
by
Debbie Levy
Call Number: J 811.6 L668Y
ISBN: 9781423129011
Publication Date: 2010-03-16
Like other twelve-year-old girls, Jutta Salzberg enjoyed going to school, playing outside, celebrating holidays with friends, and visiting relatives. In Germany in 1938, these and other everyday activities were dangerous for Jews. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were in power, and the tide of anti-Semitism had risen to perilous levels. Jutta and her family tried their best to lead normal lives as they were systematically stripped of their rights. But when public persecution of Jews increased and neighbors and friends began to disappear, they knew they had to escape- if that is, they could find another country to take them in before it was too late. Throughout 1938, Jutta had her friends and relatives fill her poesiealbum- her autograph book- with inscriptions, verses, and drawings. Her daughter, Debbie Levy, has used these entries as a springboard for telling the true story of the Salzberg family's last year in Germany. It was a year of change and chance. It was a year of confusion and cruelty. It was, as the poesie writings make poignantly clear, a year of goodbyes.