Customer Reviews

Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book is slimmer than the volume which came out in 1994, combining and somewhat updating this and the sequel 'Saving the Fragments,' but in a way it has more of an emotional impact, even considering a lot of the powerful vignettes of Isabella and her by then two remaining sisters after the liberation are completely left out. Because it's so short, it has more room to leave a deeper emotional impact; it didn't really dawn on me until rather recently that this, the most powerful book I've ever read, offers up relatively little details about daily life in the camps or seemingly important events and rituals the then-four remaining sisters would have gone through, like mealtime, beatings, the superiors in their barracks, the type of "work" they were forced to do, and their boarding of and ride in the icy halftrack from Auschwitz to Birnbaumel in November 1944. We get some events that took place in both camps, but not, as in other Shoah memoirs, long detailed passages and chapters accounting for every day, week, or even month spent there. What has made this book so powerful to me over the years aren't the details but rather the truly touching and genuine bond between Isabella and her sisters, how they stayed alive and together for one another, because of one another, even when it would have been easier, particularly for the youngest remaining sister Regina (called "Rachel" in this book because she wouldn't let Isabella use her real name in print at the time), to go the way of the smoke. We don't even know the ages of the four sisters, which makes it harder to picture the full dynamics of this relationship (the oldest sister, the one who was caught during their eventual escape and never reunited with them, dying shortly after Bergen-Belsen was liberated, was actually almost 30 years old, I've since discovered). These are fragments in the truest sense of the word, which Isabella wrote on scraps of paper, in her native Hungarian, shortly after she'd arrived in the States in May of 1945, whenever the images and memories forced themselves to the forefront of her mind and she needed to get them out of her system, however temporarily. Although in the updated volume, this account is told in the present tense, which makes it seem even more gripping than when told in the past tense in this original book.

There are also some passages in this original volume that were left out in the updated one, like how Isabella's mother, whose death she never stops mourning or thinking about, had taught her the very important lesson of listening to her heart and the small inner voice within her dictating what was right, as well as describing how her only brother, Philip, temporarily hid as his family, friends, and neighbors were being herded to the cattlecars, but reappeared a moment later, unwilling to desert his family and not share in their fate too. (Interestingly, I happened upon the ID cards the US Holocaust Memorial Museum's webpage has for Isabella, her mother, her baby sister, and her oldest sister, and discovered that Philip may have been the only surviving brother in a family of five sisters, but wasn't the only brother they ever had; after Potyo [whose real name was Helen] was born, there were apparently born twin boys who died at 8 months of age.) There's also an interesting switch in the passage talking about how Isabella would put down her shovel and stop digging whenever the Nazi guards looked away in Birnbaumel, since her mother had told her not to aide her enemy; in this book it says "I honored her and kept myself alive" as opposed to, in the updated version, "I honored her and tried to keep myself alive." Reading the original unchanged passages makes it more emotional. And though even years later this book haunts me so much that I feel as though I had lost my own sister, nothing compares to the experience of reading it the very first time and receiving the stunning blow that Cipi, the oldest of the four sisters left, was caught and did not survive, having assumed she was with them in America and had survived too, even that maybe they'd found her even decades later. One feels the same way Isabella does, that had she known she would have tugged at her sleeve or run holding her sister's hand or arm. This volume also contains the very powerful closing line that is completely left out of the updated volume, "Mama, I make this vow to you--I will teach my sons to love life, respect man, and hate only one thing--war."

Although the length of this book is not great, the meaning behind each word is. Isabella Leitner, a Holocaust survivor, wrote this on her experiences in her life as a Jewish woman in Europe during WWII. Leitner was transported to a concentration camp. She writes many of her obstacles as if she were writing a journal. I liked this book, but is not the best I have ever read. What made me give it four stars was that it is true. The person who experienced this wrote it down. It makes me admire Leitner because she went back to this time and wrote about it on paper. I did not give it five stars because I felt I needed a deeper understanding of what I was reading. I would suggest that someone be about sixteen before they read it, unless they were very mature. I would not recommend this book to someone who likes things to be concise. This is best for a patient reader who searches for a deeper meaning. All together, Fragments of Isabella is a great book for the dedicated reader.