(Jewish Group) My German-Jewish grandmother's childhood autograph book survived the Holocaust.

[Behind the Aegis]

My German-Jewish grandmother’s childhood autograph book survived the Holocaust. It is one of the few that did.

In 1916, in the picturesque German village of Heinebach, a 14-year-old girl named Elisabeth Schmidtkunz penned a sweet message in her classmate Jenny Katz’s autograph book.

“Jenny! Get to know people,” wrote Elisabeth. “People are changeable. Some who call you a friend today, might talk about you tomorrow! With love from your classmate, Elisabeth.”

One hundred and five years later, Elisabeth’s 84-year-old daughter Johanna was astonished to read her mother’s words for the first time. “It was a very special joy and surprise for me,” she said in German. “The sight of that page touched me very much.”

Jenny Katz Bachenheimer was my grandmother. Jenny’s autograph book, known in German as a “Poesiealbum,” accompanied the family when my mother and grandparents escaped the Nazis in the 1930s, ending up in New York City.



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