Isabella Leitner

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Isabella Leitner (1921–2009) was born and raised in Hungary. On her twenty-third birthday, she was deported to Auschwitz along with her mother, four sisters, and brother, an experience she wrote about in her acclaimed memoir Fragments of Isabella, which was published in 1978 and named an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. A motion picture based on the book was produced by the Abbey Theater in Ireland. In 1945, the author immigrated to the United States and married Irving A. Leitner, who served in a US Air Force bomber squadron during World War II. The mother of two sons, Peter and Richard, whom she considered “her greatest victory over Hitler,” Leitner also wrote Saving the Fragments: From Auschwitz to New York and The Big Lie: A True Story.