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Saving the Fragments

A touching, haunting and beautiful work - a worthy companion to Isabella Leitner's Fragments of Isabella" - Gerald Green, author of the famed `TV series "Holocaust"

ISABELLA LEITNER came to the United States in 1945. She lectures frequently about her experiences, in addition to being a vice president of the American Gathering and Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a board member of the juvenile Diabetes Foundation. She is married to Irving A. Leitner, an author and freelance editor.

Saving the Fragments

From Auschwitz to New York Isabella Leitner with Irving A. Leitner Introduction by Howard Fast

Isabella Leitner was a young woman in May 1944 when she, her four sisters, her brother, and her mother were rounded up - along with the other Jews - for deportation to Auschwitz death camp. There they were scrutinized by the immaculate Dr. Josef Mengele who, with a whistle and flick of his thumb, indicated who would live (for the time being) and who would die.

Isabella's memories of this nightmarish episode in her life were distilled in her critically acclaimed classic of Holocaust literature, Fragments of Isabella. Now with the same immediacy and passion, she continues her heart-wrenching, and ultimately inspiring, story of her emancipation from the death camps and her struggle to become human again. Returning to the moment of liberation at Auschwitz, she vividly recreates what happened to her when the Allies advanced through the smouldering ruins of Hitler's Reich to save thousands of broken and emaciated souls from certain death. She recalls, with searing intensity, the conquering Russian Army, encounters with Polish anti-Semites, sympathetic interludes with American and British soldiers and, finally, the five-week trans-Atlantic odyssey that took her and her two sisters through submarine-infested waters to the promise of New York.

This powerful and poignant work is Isabella Leitner's haunting testament to the Holocaust survivors' indomitable courage to forge a new life from the fragments of civilization's most shattering experience.

SBN: 0-453-00502-0
$12.50($16.50 in Canada)
NAL BOOKS
This book is currently out of print.

Also Available on Film: Fragments of Isabella

This riveting film based-on the Pulitzer Prize-nominated book by Isabella Leitner, recounts the true story of a young Hungarian Jew and her sisters interned in Auschwitz, their struggle to survive, and their daring escape from a death march to Bergen Belsen. In 1944, Isabella and her family were arrested and deported by cattlecar to Auschwitz where they encountered Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called "Angel of Death." He condemned Isabella's mother and youngest sister to death "by a flip of his thumb," but Isabella, her brother and three remaining sisters were spared to suffer until their miraculous escape.
The left¥motif of this extraordinary film is love not hate, the love that sustained Isabella and her sisters through the horrors of the Holocaust. Performed by Gabrielle Reidy of Dublin's Abbey Theatre, this is a lyrical testament to the soul of a young woman yearning to transcend her fate.

- London International Film Festival, 1994
- Jewish Film Festivals, Boston, Toronto, 1994

80 min. Video. Sale $195. Rental $75. Isabella Leitner is available for speaking engagements.