by Jarmila Turnovsky (Author)
Ruptured Lives: How Hitler's Final Solution Decimated My Family and Stalin's Iron Curtain Tore It Apart
A baby left behind. A family nearly destroyed. A daughter's search to reclaim a silenced past.
When Hitler's Final Solution swept through Czechoslovakia, Leo's entire Jewish family was deported to Auschwitz. He was the sole survivor.
After the war, as Stalin tightened his grip on Eastern Europe, Leo escaped again, leaving behind his infant daughter. She would grow up behind the Iron Curtain, essentially orphaned, never knowing the father who had fled.
Decades later, Leo's younger daughter embarks on a journey to uncover the truth of her fractured family. Born in England, raised in Jamaica, and living in Germany, she pieces together a legacy shaped by genocide, exile, and silence-ultimately leading to an unexpected reconciliation between two sisters divided by war, distance, and time.
Spanning continents and generations, Ruptured Lives is a powerful true story of survival, identity, and how history can tear a family apart-and love can begin to heal it.
"A riveting and deeply moving memoir-not the usual Holocaust story, but something far more personal, layered, and unforgettable."
-Amazon reviewer
See also: https: //rupturedlives.wixsite.com/rupturedlives
https: //search.worldcat.org/title/1506900159
https: //ajr.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/6704-AJR-Journal-July-2025-v7-WEB.pdf Pages 14 - 15