The Folkingestraat Synagogue in Groningen has been given a unique poetry journal, which belonged to Jetta Slager from Winschoten who was murdered in Sobibor in 1943
Translated by Adriana Dancu
More than seventy-five years after it was placed in safekeeping, the poetry album (also called “oracle” in some cultures, such as the Romanian culture) belonging to Jetta Slager, a Jewish resident in Winschoten (Groningen), was made public by donating it to the Folkingestraat Synagogue Foundation in the city of Groningen. From 1938 the album was filled with poems by Jetta’s classmates, who were alsomainly Jewish and from all over the province of Groningen.
Just before her deportation in 1943 to Westerbork (Drenthe) and eventually Sobibór (an extermination camp in Poland), Jetta gave the journal to her friend and fellow Winschotenaar Winschotaar Alie Prak for safekeeping. Jetta did not return, and Alie cherished the journal until her death last year. Her son recently donated it to Stichting Folkingestraat Synagogue in Groningen on January 21, just before International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on January 27.
Henriëtte Frederika (Jetta) Slager (Winschoten, 1925 – Sobibór, 1943) lived at 45 Liefkensstraat in Winschoten. She was the daughter of Louiza Bargeboer (Winschoten, 1897 – Sobibór, 1943) and Bernard Slager (Winschoten, 1895 – Winschoten, 1941). It is believed that the journal was probably given to Jetta by an aunt and uncle in 1932. Six years later, in 1938, Jetta asked her friends to write in her journal.
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