Isabella Leitner > Quotes

“Does staying alive not only for yourself, but also because someone else expects you to, double the life force? Perhaps. Perhaps. Rachel,”
― Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz

“Sometimes I was resentful. Must she care about everyone in this world? Look at me! Praise me! I want to be the most important! Why do you care so much about so many things? But now, so many years later, I say: Thank you, Mother, for being what you were, for trying to develop me in every way. Kisv”
― Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz

“I curse you, even from the distance of these many years, for keeping me so hungry that if affected my brain and subordinated me to your evil. And my apologizes to the animals for comparing you to them, because surely animals are more humane.”
― Isabella Leitner

“Six million is only a number. But each was somebody's mother, someday's child, somebody's lover, somebody's bride. Potyo was just thirteen; she was my sister. She had the wisdom of a child of war. She was full of fear, yet tiptoed with tenderness, laughter, and love in a world of madmen. She was a weeping willow, a song of sorrow, a poem of infinite beauty.
"Why does Hitler hate me? Why does he love hate, Mama?"
I am only thirteen; I have songs yet to learn, games yet to play. Give me time to live, give me time to die. Mama, how can I do all the living in just an inch of time?”
― Isabella Leitner, Isabella: From Auschwitz to Freedom

“The day we arrived in Auschwitz, there were so many people to be burned that the four crematoriums couldn’t handle the task. So the Germans built big open fires to throw the children in.”
― Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella: A Memoir of Auschwitz