Josef Mengele is one of the Nazis whose name is synonymous with the atrocities of the Hitler regime. He was not only personally responsible for sorting prisoners at Auschwitz but also conducted horrifying experiments in his camp clinic.
One of his “projects” was an attempt to understand the nature of twins. Because of this, twins had a slightly higher chance of survival—not being sent directly to their deaths—even if they were unfit for labor in the camp. However, Mengele never considered them human and subjected both adults and tiny children to monstrous experiments. To him, they were nothing more than test subjects.
Eva Mozes Kor was one such twin, destined to die so that Mengele could observe how it would affect her sister. But against all odds, Eva survived. After the war, she wrote her memoirs about her time in that hell.
Eva lived with her family in Transylvania when the war arrived. Her father wanted to escape to Palestine, where Jews were beginning to build their own state, but her mother couldn’t bring herself to leave everything behind and take the children into the unknown. Because of this, their once well-off family was among the first to experience the hatred and cruelty of their former neighbors. And when they finally decided to flee, it was already too late.
The entire family was deported to Auschwitz in 1944, where they were almost immediately separated. Most likely, Eva’s other relatives—her father, mother, and two older sisters—were executed shortly after arrival. However, she and her twin sister, Miriam, were selected for a special barrack reserved for twins like them. The barrack housed children of various ages. And while it was technically considered a “privileged” section (since Mengele wanted to keep his test subjects alive), in reality, their lives were no better than those of the other prisoners. They were not forced into labor, but they lived worse than animals. Survival was a daily struggle—one that was nearly impossible for small children.
According to Eva herself, she developed an incredible will to survive for a ten-year-old girl. She was clearly the stronger of the two, so it fell on her to not only fight for her own survival but also to keep her sister Miriam alive.
Out of the two sisters, Mengele chose Eva for a lethal injection. When one twin died, the other was also killed so that their bodies could be autopsied and compared for differences in their internal organs. Eva understood that if she died, Miriam would not live either. And by some miracle, she managed to survive the injection—one that had killed most others before her.
In 1945, the camp was liberated, and the surviving twins were first sent back home before eventually moving to Israel.
Eva dedicated most of her life to telling the truth about fascism. She founded a museum focused on the topic of Nazi experiments and traveled to Poland every year for educational purposes.
Her account of life in the camp is relatively short, but it highlights two sides of war: not only the inhumanity of Auschwitz and the horrific conditions in which children were forced to survive, but also the cruelty and unchecked aggression of former neighbors and “friends” when official propaganda begins to dehumanize certain groups in society.
I knew what to expect from a book like this, but even for me, it was difficult to read how calmly and matter-of-factly Eva described life and death in the camp. Adults, in one way or another, were still adults, but children were helpless. And because of that, some people in the camp did try to help them—not everyone, but those who could. Helping prisoners was almost always punishable by death, yet some still took the risk.
Eva and Miriam lost their entire family in a single day, endured unimaginable horrors, yet managed to survive to tell their story. And perhaps the most astonishing thing is that, by the end of her life, Eva forgave everyone responsible for the Holocaust. Some criticized her for this, but it was her choice. She personally lived through it all, and it is not for us to dictate whom she should forgive and for what.
The book is heavy, but it is absolutely worth reading—especially since it is so short.
My rating: 4/5
