The Jewish émigré Edith Jacobson is known not only as one of the most important psychoanalysts of the 20th century, but also because of her participation in the left-wing resistance group “New Beginning” and her sentencing to a long prison term. Personal notes from the first days of her imprisonment were thought to have been lost, but survived in private households for almost 80 years. This so-called “black booklet” contains poems and essay fragments on the effects of imprisonment on female prisoners and on the technique of psychoanalysis of paranoids. The essay addresses the prison records, the circumstances of Jacobson's detention, and the history of finding these notes.