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Fragments of Isabella

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Isabella Leitner cannot forgive the German and Hungarian people for their silence during the atrocities that were perpetrated upon the Jews during the Holocaust. As a Jew living in Hungary, she wass ubjected to constant racial hatred by the townspeople and the sadistic behavior of the brutal Hungarian gendarmes. Isabella's family is thrown into a ghetto and forced to live in a small, confined area with many other families. When the SS men round up the Jews, Isabella's family is forced out on to the streets where her mother is severely beaten. Isabella's nightmare begins at this point. Isabella's father attempted to earn his family their freedom from the anti-Semitic Hungary but government officials impeded their release. At every juncture, the father was unable to secure his family's exit from Hungary. Isabella and her family feared for their lives because they knew that their Hungarian neighbors could not be trusted to protect them from the SS. In fact, Isabella believed that her neighbors "would be Hitler's willing accomplices" when the bell tolled for the Leitners. On May, 29, 1944, Isabella's worst fears were realized. The SS rounded up the Jews to take them to the camps as the Hungarian townspeople watched. These good people stood by as the Germans marched in and led many of their neighbors to their death. The Gentiles knew what Hitler and the SS were doing to the Jews, Isabella believes. The Gentiles felt a

camaraderie, a oneness with Hitler, she says. Hitler exploited their hatred of the Jews and they remained silent while six million were sent to their death. Isabella lost her mother in the concentration camp. Her mother was too weak and frail to fight after the guards had beaten her during the round-up. Yet the Leitner girls formed a bond during their stay at Auschwitz. They kept each other alive and forced the others to fight against disease, lethargy, and the destruction of the soul. The concentration camps bonded them to each other and they maintained that bond throughout their lives. After spending time in the Auschwitz camp, the sisters were moved to Birnbaumel and then on to Prauschnitz, where the Jewish prisoners mingled withthe townspeople in this small town. Yet no town resident would help the Jews. They remained silent as the SS guards paraded them through the town. Isabella realizes many years later that "you will not find a single German who lived in Prauschnitz who ever saw a single one of us." These German people ignored the atrocities because (in their minds) the Jews were dirty animals who deserved extermination, she says. Leitner cannot forgive these people for ignoring the pleas of these prisoners. The Prauschnitz citizens allowed Isabella and her sisters to be tortured by the German guards. For Leitner, there is no forgiveness. Isabella lost her sister Cici during this time. When the sister

escaped from the unsuspecting guards, Cici was the only one to remain with the SS guards. Isabella learns many years later that Cici was "dragged for three long weeks on the death march to Bergen-Belsen where she was killed." Not one German person helped her sister. In 1960, Isabella and her husband traveled through Europe but Isabella wanted to avoid anything that would remind her of the German people and their silence during her internment in the camps. Yet she cannot avoid the Germans because the German people are now the main group of tourists who travel through Europe. When Isabella sees them, she reports, she bristles but ignores them, and says she doesn't mind the young ones so much because they are an innocent generation. It's the older ones. At Pere-Lachaise, Isabella comes face to face with her worst fears. She encounters a group of German people. These German people laugh and carry on, to her horror. When she discovers that they are truly

Germans, she recoils in horror as if "acid had been hurled in her face." She knows that any one of the men could have been her jailer. She knows that "they are the ones." For Isabella, these Germans are the same as the ones that stood by and watched as six million Jews were led to their death. Isabella cannot forgive them or the Hungarians who remained silent as her family was systematically destroyed. She leaves Pere-Lachaise with the knowledge that she can never forgive the silent citizens who were accomplices to Hitler's reign of terror. Leitner's memoir is a harrowing testament to the horrors of the Holocaust.

This was the best account of life in a German concentration camp that I have ever read. Once I started reading it I could not put it down. The reader gets so ingrossed in the book that you not only feel for the characters, but you feel as if you are one of the characters. This book is a must read for any reader who enjoys Holocaust books, or a reader who is just looking for a book that won't let you put it down.

This real-life account of a young girl in a Nazi concentration camp brought to mind Eli Weisel's Night. While lacking the philosophical questions that Weisel raises, Littner fills in the details that might seem insignificant but create a touchpoint for most young girls - the long description of losing her hair, the shoes and clothes she was given, the attempt to create beauty in the midst of ugliness- this book broke my heart even more than Night.