Jutta Levy / Jutta Salzberg (F / Germany, 1926-2013), Holocaust survivor

Jutta Levy / Jutta Salzberg (F / Germany, 1926-2013), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Germany> <Refugees> <United States>

Biography

Jutta Salzberg was born in 1926 in Hamburg, Germany. Fled with her family.

Book : The Year of Goodbyes (2010), by Debbie Levy

• Debbie Levy, The Year of Goodbyes: A true story of friendship, family and farewells (2010)

"This book tells the true story of what happened to a 12-year-old girl named Jutta (Debbie Levy's mother) in 1938. Actual entries in a posiealbum (autograph book) serve as stepping stones in a crucial year in history, when people of Jewish ancestry in Germany and Austria were systematically stripped of their rights, subjected to violence, and arrested without cause. Jutta was one of the lucky ones who escaped to America before the rising tide of violence erupted into World War II and the tragedy of the Holocaust. Remembrances from Jutta's friends and relatives introduce chapters, written in verse form, that describe her experiences--many of them typical of any teenager anywhere--and report some of the history of the era. Debbie wrote these verses in consultation with her mother to reflect her voice, feelings, and thoughts as she was living through this memorable year. The book also includes excerpts from Jutta's diary. Together the poesie writings, verses and diary entries reflect a year of change and chance, confusion and cruelty. Most of all, they describe a year of goodbyes."--Publisher description.

Obituary: The Washington Post (October 2, 2013)

Jutta S. Levy, a Washington wholesale costume jeweler whose childhood diary of her family’s flight from Germany on the eve of the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom became the basis of a children’s book written by her daughter, died Sept. 4 at her home in Rockville. She was 86.

The cause was complications of lung cancer and renal failure, said her daughter Debbie Levy, author of “The Year of Goodbyes,” which was published in 2010.

Jutta Lieselotte Salzberg was born in Hamburg, Germany, to parents who had emigrated from Poland. As Nazi persecution of Jews began accelerating in the fall of 1938, her father booked passage for the United States on the Queen Mary, sailing from Cherbourg, France.

The family needed to leave Hamburg by Nov. 7 to board the ship on time. This was the same day as the assassination by a Jewish student of an official of the German Embassy in Paris, the event that triggered the anti-Semitic Kristallnacht attacks a few days later.

The Salzberg family managed to catch the midnight train from Hamburg to Cologne. They subsequently learned from a housekeeper that police had come to their home looking for them six hours later.

They arrived in New York later that month and soon settled in Washington. Jutta graduated from Roosevelt High School in February 1945. All of their relatives who stayed behind died in the Holocaust.

She attended George Washington University, then worked about a dozen years in the family business, Edward Salzberg Jewelry. In the 1960s she was a saleswoman at Fredland’s Jewelers in Silver Spring. In the 1970s and 1980s, she was an agent with travel businesses in Washington, Silver Spring and Wheaton.

On Nov. 8, 1998, the 60th anniversary of her family’s pre Kristallnacht flight from Hamburg, Debbie Levy wrote an article in The Washington Post about their escape and her mother’s childhood as a Jew in Germany in the 1930s. It was based on Mrs. Levy’s childhood diary, which her daughter had only recently discovered.

The article led to her book, which Kirkus Reviews called “an immensely powerful experience that needs to be read with an adult.”

The Post article was read by two of Mrs. Levy’s classmates from the Jewish School for Girls in Hamburg, who also had survived the Holocaust. They had not known they had a classmate nearby. They managed to contact other former students at the Hamburg School and seven of them got together for a 2000 reunion, which for most was their first get-together in 62 years.

Mrs. Levy was a volunteer patient advocate in the Holy Cross Hospital emergency room. She had done fundraising for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Her husband, Harold Levy, whom she married in 1952, died in 2003. Survivors include two daughters, Debbie Levy of Potomac and Sharon Ricucci of Sterling; and two grandchildren.