A Family’s Hidden History and the Fragments of a Legendary Book

Uncovering a Family’s Past: The Discovery of Noble Fragments

When Michael Visontay’s mother passed away in 2020, he stumbled upon a treasure trove of family documents that revealed both familiar and startling details about his heritage. Among the papers were stories he already knew, such as his father Ivan’s deportation to Auschwitz as a teenager and the tragic death of Ivan’s mother in the same camp. However, the documents also raised new questions and mysteries, particularly about a woman named Olga, his grandfather’s second wife, who had never been mentioned before. Another puzzle was the source of the money that allowed his family to migrate from Europe to Australia after World War II and start anew.

Driven by curiosity, Visontay, a journalist based in Sydney, embarked on a journey to uncover the truth. His investigation led him down a complex and winding path, spanning centuries and continents, and involving a cast of characters that included book dealers, Holocaust survivors, and even a notorious act of literary destruction. This extraordinary story became the foundation of his book, Noble Fragments, a title that reflects both the fragmented nature of his family’s history and the fragments of a legendary book that played a pivotal role in their journey.

The Enigmatic Gabriel Wells and the Gutenberg Bible Controversy

As Visontay dug deeper, he discovered that Olga was the niece of Gabriel Wells, a Hungarian immigrant who became one of the most prominent antiquarian booksellers in the United States during the early 20th century. Wells was a larger-than-life figure, known for his vast knowledge, flamboyant personality, and high-profile clientele, which included celebrities, aristocrats, and business tycoons. He was also a passionate admirer of Honoré de Balzac, even saving the writer’s Paris home from demolition, which is now a museum.

However, Wells’s career was not without controversy. In 1921, he made headlines for dismantling a rare two-volume Gutenberg Bible—one of only 41 complete copies in the world—and selling its individual pages as “noble fragments.” Bound in expensive morocco leather, these fragments were marketed to collectors and institutions as pieces of history. While the practice of breaking up rare books to sell their pages was not unheard of, doing so to a Gutenberg Bible, one of the first books printed with movable type in the 15th century, was considered a scandal. Many deemed it an act of vandalism, or as Visontay put it, “a crime against history.”

Wells defended his actions by claiming the Bible was already damaged and missing 50 of its 643 pages. He argued that by selling the fragments, he was helping other institutions complete their own copies of the Gutenberg Bible and making history more accessible to the public. However, this justification was met with skepticism, as the Bible was relatively complete with 593 leaves remaining. The real motivation, critics suggested, was profit. Selling the fragments brought Wells a fortune and cemented his reputation in the rare book trade, though it also earned him widespread criticism within the industry.

A Holocaust Survivor’s Journey and the Legacy of the Fragments

The money generated from the sale of the Gutenberg Bible’s pages had an unexpected ripple effect on Visontay’s family. When Gabriel Wells died in 1946, he left a substantial portion of his estate to his nieces and nephews, including Olga. This inheritance allowed her Hungarian cousins, who had been devastated by the Holocaust, to start anew. Visontay’s father, Ivan, and his family had lost their delicatessen in Hungary not once but twice—first to the Nazis and then to the Russians. With the money from Olga’s inheritance, they were able to emigrate to Australia and open a new shop in Sydney.

The shop, which specialized in Eastern European delicacies, became a hub for the immigrant community in Kings Cross, a bohemian neighborhood in Sydney. For Ivan, however, the story of Olga was more complicated. She had married his father shortly after the war, but her presence in their lives was fraught with tension. Ivan harbored deep resentment toward Olga, viewing her as an outsider who had disrupted their family’s fragile unity. When Olga died, her cousins even sued for the return of her inheritance, further straining the family’s already fragile relationships. Over time, Olga’s role in their lives was nearly erased from the family’s collective memory.

Bringing Olga Back into the Light: The Fragmented Family History

For Visontay, the process of uncovering his family’s history became a deeply personal journey. Olga, once a hazy figure on the fringes of their story, emerged as a crucial link between the fragments of their past and the fragments of the Gutenberg Bible. In his book, Visontay weaves together the histories of his family and the book, highlighting the way both were fractured and dispersed across the globe.

Visontay’s research took him around the world, as he tracked down 120 of the 593 leaves from the Gutenberg Bible that Wells had sold. Along the way, he immersed himself in the arcane world of rare book scholarship and encountered a wide range of characters, from collectors to historians. The more he learned about the Bible’s fragments, the more he saw parallels between their dispersal and the dispersal of his own family. Just as the fragments of the Bible had given people around the world a piece of history, the fragments of his family’s story gave him a deeper understanding of their resilience and survival.

The Power of Serendipity and the Richness of Life Beneath the Surface

Visontay’s journey also underscored the importance of serendipity and the unexpected connections that shape our lives. He never set out to write a family memoir but found that the stories of his family and the Gutenberg Bible were inextricably linked. Both had been fragmented by history—his family by the Holocaust and migration, the Bible by Wells’s act of “disseveration.” Yet, from these fragments emerged a larger narrative of loss, resilience, and renewal.

In the end, Noble Fragments is not just a book about a family or a book; it’s a testament to the surprising richness of life that lies just beneath the surface, waiting to be uncovered. For Visontay, the project became a way to honor the forgotten figures in his family’s history, like Olga, and to bring light to the stories that had been hidden or erased. It’s a reminder that even the most fragmented lives can be pieced together to reveal a coherent and meaningful whole.