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Isabella

by Isabella Leitner
It’s a real story, like an autobiography, but it’s only about a part of her life.
The main characters are Isabella and her four sisters, Rachel, Chicha, Cipi and
, who dies very early.
Isabella has a strong will for life and they stick very close together whatever happens to them.
Isabella Leitner was born 1931 in Kisvárda, Hungary. At the age of 13, she was deported to Auschwitz. Isabella survived, left Europe and went to the USA. She’s still living there.
She’s married to Irving A. Leitner and has two sons, Peter and Richard.
This book was published by Ravensburger in 1993, but it was written in 1978.
The story is set in 1944 and takes place mostly in Auschwitz.
Isabella lives in a ghetto in Kisvárda. When she walks through the streets, she’s insulted as a dirty stinking Jew. She feels that most people hate her. Live isn’t perfect, but at least the don’t have to suffer from hunger.
SS- men watch them all the time. Most people from the ghetto see the SS as brutal and bloodthirsty.
On Isabella’s birthday they hear that they’re going to be taken away.
Her mum smiles at her when it’s time to leave. And Isabella smiles back. But both know that they won’t meet again.
In the street there’re a lot of people. An SS- man reads out the names.
Mrs. Katz, Isabella’s mum has to take a step forward because it’s her turn. Somebody of the SS hits her with a whip.
On the 29th of May 1944 the ghetto is evacuated. The Jews have to go to a huge train station to get deported.
They are loaded into cattle trucks with barred windows. There’re so many people in one wagon that they can hardly breathe.
After a long and exhausting journey they arrive in Auschwitz. It’s an extermination camp. Dr. Mengele, the camp- doctor, chooses who is allowed to live and who has to die.
Isabella and her three sisters are allowed to stay alive, but their mother not. During the day many people are burnt in the crematory. So many, that the crematories are crammed full.
There’s no room for the children and so they’re just burnt in huge fires on the ground. Isabella’s little sister is one of them.
All the prisoners are shaved.
Dr. Mengele decides by putting up his left or right thumb who’s a “Muselmann” and who’s not.
Good news for the prisoners: It is said that the Russians will invade soon. The prisoners are going to be deported to another concentration camp. More and more people are killed in die crematory while the others have to stay outside during a cold night in November.
The next day they come to a new concentration camp: Birnbäumel in the east of the German Empire. There the prisoners have to eat sawdust and drink urine.
Isabella is happy because there isn’t a crematory. They must build traps for tanks there.
Isabella doesn’t like this work. She stopps digging when the German aren’t watching her.
Isabella becomes boss of a section, called KAPO. She uses her authority to help her sisters. All 3 get a kind of better work: Rachel has to clean the water closets, Chicha the tents and Cipi has to help her sisters.
Isabella has to look after the other prisoners. She has to hit everybody who wants to get away from the concentration camp. Isabella shouts and shouts and tries to sound very strict. And she pretends to hit people. But the SS takes note, that Isabella only hits the walls of the tent.
She looses her position, but at least she isn’t killed.
After a while Isabella gets Typhus. She has to go to some kind of a hospital in a concentration camp.
There she has to sleep on the cold floor under terribly conditions.
Chicha, Rachel and Cipi visit their half- dead sister every night.
Later they leave Birnbäumel and stop in Prausnitz. Chicha is able to escape during the journey, but she returns because she doesn’t want to live without her sisters.
In Prausnitz everybody has to sleep in a barn.
Many prisoners hide in the straw, but the SS- men cook potatoes in the morning. Everybody is hungry and comes out of their hiding- place to get some food.
Only 1000 of them can walk further. The rest has died during the journey.
Isabella, Rachel and Chicha are able to get away. Cipi isn’t with them.
They find food and are found by American soldiers and brought to the USA.
The three sisters find out that Cipi died in Bergen- Belsen, which is in Germany.
Isabella survives the war, but she is still suffering from depressions until today.
But now she tries to suppress them.
Years later she travels with her husband, Irving, and her two sons, Peter and Richard, to Paris.
In a small café she suddenly recognizes some prison officers from her concentration camp.
She gets totally upset and the family leaves the café.
Peter takes a piece of paper and writes down the names of the concentration camps: Auschwitz, Bergen- Belsen, Dachau.
Irving brings them the piece of paper on a silver tray.
Auschwitz
Auschwitz’ Motto was: “Arbeit macht frei”.
This extermination camp was a symbol for terror.
Auschwitz was built in 1940 and occupied by the Germans.
The village’s name was originally Oswiecim, but they changed it to Auschwitz.
At the end of the second world-war the SS destroyed the gas chambers to cover the traces.
1,5 million people died in Auschwitz.

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