The Holocaust postcard I found in Salzburg

After witnessing a virulent anti-Israel rally, I was about to give up on Salzburg, a beautiful city in Austria. Then, I wandered into an old used book store and I found the most stunning thing.

I asked the book store owner in Yiddish (because Yiddish and German are similar and it’s super useful when traveling in areas where folks don’t speak fluent English!) if he had any Jewish books.

He said he didn’t think he had any, but that if there were any, they’d be downstairs in the history section.

I picked up a Jewish book published in Germany in the 1960s:

Then as soon as I opened the book, the most surprising and magical thing happened. A postcard of fourth-grade girls from 1937 – in the midst of the Holocaust – fell out of the book!

On it, there are some names written in cursive on the front. And on the back, even more names, some hard to decipher and written in pencil.

On the back of the card, someone presumably named “K. Schloemer Schwartz” wrote “everything is shit”. And if these girls, pictured below, were in fact Jewish and living in Austria or Germany during the Holocaust, you can understand why K. Schloemer Schwartz would think the world was shit. Probably very few, if any, survived.

To say this was “bashert” – or “meant to be” – is an understatement. This book could have sat in this bookstore for years untouched and unexamined. It could’ve been thrown out, along with this intriguing postcard. I felt honored that it had found me.

Since finding the postcard, I’ve shared it with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the National Library of Israel. I want to make sure this postcard can make its way to any of these survivors or their descendants. If you have any contacts at other institutions like Yad Vashem or Jewish genealogical resources, please don’t hesitate to comment below or contact me with any information.

Until then, the card remains a mystery. A mystery I intend to solve and that I’m happy ended up in my hands.

These innocent girls, now perhaps in their 90s if they’re alive, deserve to touch this piece of their past.

At a time of increasing antisemitism yet again, when it seems like the world has lost all sense of sanity and has forgotten the lessons of the Holocaust, this postcard is a reminder of Jewish humanity. It’s a reminder that our lives mattered then and they matter now – even if so many in the broader society demonize us for no reason.

We survived evil many times in our history and we will overcome it yet again.

May the memories of these young girls I discovered in Salzburg be for a blessing. And I hope, with your help, to find their families to offer a bit of comfort.

Am yisrael chai – the Jewish people lives. Now and forever.