"This book - the book you have in your hands - tells the story of what happened to my mother and her family in 1938. The actual poesiealbum entries by my mother's friends and family (translated here into English) serve as stepping stones through the months of this crucial year."
Once started you will finish this book before you are content to put it down. It is an especially compelling way to bring the events of the Holocaust to younger readers. The 'year of goodbyes' recounts Debbie Levy's mother's experiences through an especially trying year in Germany. It came to life when the author read the entries made in her mother's friendship book and talked with her about the memories that they evoked. It was full of messages from her friends as they experienced together a terrifying year living in Hamburg. Each chapter begins with an inscription, written in the friend's best handwriting. It is followed by a free verse poem in which Jutta makes observations about each entry.
The voice is strong and rings true...a frightened Jewish girl who, at eleven, is learning too much about the hatred and prejudice that runs amok in her country. The chapters move seamlessly one to the next, always tense and tentative. Jutta is not sure what will happen to the family and expresses her uncertainty in heartfelt entries that keep the reader moving forward. Reading them gives the reader pause to consider those who wrote in the album, and wonder what happened to them when Jutta was no longer there.
Jutta's treasured album was one of the few things that the family was able to take with them when they fled Germany in 1938. Because she protected it, her daughter has fashioned this stirring portrait of ordinary people living quite ordinary lives in an unthinkable time. As they were forced to flee and leave family members and good friends behind, the family could not know what would happen to those who did not, or could not, find safety from the Nazi onslaught.
In a poignant afterword, Debbie Levy tells of her research and recounts the fate of each of the writers in her mother's poesiealbum. Some were able to escape to safety and freedom, too many were transported to concentration camps and died at the hands of the Nazis, and some have never been found. Seven women from the 'Jewish School for Girls' in Hamburg were able to reunite in 2000 in Washington, D.C. Two had written in Jutta's album.
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