LEITNER, Isabella

PUBLICATION

Memoirs

Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz. 1978.

Saving the Fragments: From Auschwitz to New York. 1985.

Isabella: From Auschwitz to Freedom. 1994.

Other

The Big Lie: A True Story (for children). 1992.

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Media Adaptations:

Fragments of Isabella (film), 1989; Fragments of Isabella (stage play), produced St. Petersburg, 1993.

Critical Study:

"'What Happened'? The Holocaust Memoirs of Isabella Leitner" by Adrienne Kertzer, in Transcending Boundaries: Writing for a Dual Audience of Children and Adults, edited by Sandra L. Beckett, 1999.

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Isabella Leitner was born Isabella Katz on 28 May 1924 in the Hungarian town of Kisvárda. Located near the Czech border, Kisvárda had a population of about 20,000, of whom 4,000 were Jews. With four sisters and one brother, Isabella came from a long line of Hasidic rabbis and had a religious upbringing. Her father was a dealer in wine and spirits and had lived all of his life in the anti-Semitic atmosphere of Hungary. As the vicious tide of Nazism continued to rise throughout the 1930s, he was astute enough to see what was coming. Thus, in 1939 he went to the United States to obtain immigration documents for his wife and six children. He tried for months and then for years to obtain the papers necessary to save his family, but it was to no avail. Once Hungary declared war on the United States on 8 December 1941, it was too late for him to return home, and he spent the war in the United States.

On 29 May 1944 Isabella and her family were swept up in the storm of the deportation of the Hungarian Jews. They arrived in Auschwitz on 31 May. Her mother and youngest sister, Potyo, were sent immediately to the gas chambers, leaving Isabella, Chicha, Rachel, Cipi, and their brother Philip. Except for Cipi, the oldest sister, who was murdered in Bergen-Belsen, all survived. In November 1944 Isabella was transferred to Birnbaumel. After being liberated by the Soviets on 25 January 1945, Isabella and her two sisters made their way to Odessa. They convinced the authorities that their father was alive and living in United States, and they were able to obtain passage on a ship. On 8 May 1945, the day the war in Europe ended, Isabella and her two remaining sisters became the first survivors of Auschwitz to set foot on American soil. Some days later the three sisters were reunited with her father, who was now a book dealer. Their brother Philip did not reach the United States until six months later.

In 1956 Isabella married Irving A. Leitner, a veteran of World War II whom she had met in upstate New York, and they had two sons. Leitner, a writer and editor, worked with his wife in editing her memoirs. Her first book, Fragments of Isabella, was first published in 1978 and met with high critical acclaim. In 1989 the Irish producer Michael Scott and the director Ronan O'Leary made the memoir into what became an award-winning film. In 1985 she published a sequel to the memoir, titled Saving the Fragments: From Auschwitz to New York. Her husband's stage production of Fragments of Isabella had its premiere in St. Petersburg in 1993, and in 1994 the husband-and-wife team combined the first two works, as well as additional material, into a single volume under the title Isabella: From Auschwitz to Freedom.

Living in New York, Leitner has been active not only in efforts to preserve the memory of the victims of the Holocaust but also in numerous community service activities.

—David Patterson

See the essay on Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz.