History of Sorts

The picture is of a page in a poetry album which belonged to a friend of Hedi Metzger.

The text is in German and it says. “Forget me not, trust in G-d. Speaking is silver, and silence is gold. This from your memories, Hedi Metzger, Amsterdam 19-4-1939.”

Less than 2.5 years later she would be murdered in Auschwitz.

Hedi was born in Berlichingen on 24 December 1926. She was murdered 80 years ago in Auschwitz on 26 September 1942 at the age of 15.

Hedy and her brother Lothar came to the Netherlands in January 1939. They first stayed in the Zeehuis in Bergen aan Zee, then in the Burgerweeshuis in Amsterdam, and in January 1940 moved in with a foster family in Amsterdam. Their parents were Lylli Gutmann, born in 1900 in Ohlhausen, and Simon, born in 1892 in Berlinchingen. Both perished in Riga in 1943.

In the orphanage…