The Twins of Auschwitz

"The Twins of Auschwitz" is Eva Mozes Kor's firsthand account of surviving Auschwitz-Birkenau as a child subjected to Josef Mengele's medical experiments on twins. Written with Lisa Rojany Buccieri, the book traces Eva's life from her early years in the Romanian village of Portz through deportation, imprisonment, liberation, and the decades that followed. It stands as both a personal memoir and a broader testimony to the horrors inflicted on twins during the Holocaust.

The narrative opens with a portrait of Eva's childhood in a small Jewish farming community, where her family faced antisemitism even before the war escalated. This grounding in ordinary life makes the abrupt transition to persecution and deportation all the more stark. Eva and her twin sister Miriam were ten years old when they arrived at Auschwitz in 1944, separated from their parents and older sisters, who were sent to the gas chambers almost immediately. The twins were instead selected for Mengele's experiments, a fate that spared their lives in the short term while subjecting them to unimaginable suffering.

Much of the book focuses on daily existence in the twins' barracks, where children lived under constant threat of death, disease, and cruelty. Eva describes the medical procedures performed on her and Miriam, including injections whose contents were never explained, and the psychological toll of watching other twins die during or after experiments. She recounts a period when she became gravely ill, likely from one such injection, and her determination to survive so that Mengele would not achieve what she saw as a victory over her death. This resolve becomes a recurring theme throughout the book, illustrating how willpower and sheer stubbornness shaped her survival.

The memoir does not end with liberation in January 1945. Kor extends the narrative into the postwar years, addressing the long road toward rebuilding a life after such trauma. She and Miriam eventually emigrated to Israel, where Eva served in the military before relocating to the United States. The book touches on the physical and emotional aftereffects the twins carried for the rest of their lives, including Miriam's kidney damage, later attributed to the experiments, which ultimately contributed to her death in 1993.

A significant portion of the later chapters addresses Eva's controversial decision to publicly forgive the Nazis, including Mengele himself, and her subsequent advocacy for Holocaust education and reconciliation. This choice generated considerable debate within Holocaust survivor communities and beyond, and the book presents her reasoning and personal journey toward this stance without shying away from the controversy it provoked. Kor frames forgiveness not as absolution for the perpetrators but as a means of reclaiming personal power and freedom from the emotional grip of hatred.

The writing style is direct and accessible, reflecting the book's origins as an account intended to reach younger readers as well as adults. Sentences are clear and unembellished, allowing the events themselves to carry the emotional weight rather than relying on elaborate prose. This straightforward approach makes the book suitable for readers encountering Holocaust history for the first time, including students, while still offering depth for those already familiar with the period.

Kor founded CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) to locate other twin survivors and to educate the public about Mengele's experiments, and this advocacy work informs the book's later sections. The memoir serves not only as a personal history but as an act of remembrance for the many twins who did not survive the experiments and whose stories might otherwise remain unknown.

"The Twins of Auschwitz" succeeds in combining an intimate personal narrative with a wider historical record of one of the lesser-documented aspects of Holocaust atrocities. It offers insight into resilience, the complexities of survivor psychology, and the varied paths individuals take toward healing. While the subject matter is inherently difficult, the book handles it with clarity and restraint, making it a valuable addition to Holocaust literature and a testament to one woman's determination to bear witness.