What Do We Learn From the Twin Children of the Holocaust?

It has been 75 years since the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg took place (1946–1947). Accusations of criminal activity were directed at 23 individuals, mostly doctors, for the brutal medical experiments they conducted on concentration camp prisoners. Missing from the trial was the infamous Auschwitz physician, Dr. Josef Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death” for his experiments on twins, dwarfs, and individuals suffering from various genetic anomalies. Institutions around the country, such as Yale University, Georgetown University, and Millersville University, have organized symposia around the themes of Holocaust and genocide.

There is another anniversary date that has received less attention but deserves to be acknowledged. It has been nearly 80 years since the June 27, 1945, liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. It has also been nearly 40 years since the June 27, 1985, event that brought the Mengele twins together for the first time for a four-day visit to the camp, followed by a three-day public hearing on Mengele’s war crimes, held at Yad Vashem (A Memorial and a Name), in Jerusalem, Israel. As a Jewish twin and as a psychologist, I felt compelled to attend.

Photographs of the Twins

Now, in 2023, I feel honored and gratified to have published an annotated collection of the photographs I took at these events. How did this book come into being? I was on sabbatical leave from my university during part of the COVID-19 lockdown and came across files of these photographs that few people had seen. The pictures capture the twins and the activities we shared in Poland, in Israel, and beyond since I remained in contact with some of the twin pairs over the years.

When Mengele’s death by drowning was announced in June 1985, I traveled to Terre Haute, Indiana, for an Inquest, organized by one of the twins, to review the forensic evidence along with experts in psychology, Holocaust studies, and special investigation. Some twins who attended refused to believe that Mengele had died, believing that his death was a mere hoax. I have photographs of the Inquest, as well.

I am not a photographer, but I learned that one can sometimes work miracles with a state-of-the-art Nikon camera. Many of the pictures I took are excellent in quality, some are not, but as I looked through them, it was clear that their quality was not their most important feature. Most important was that these photographs were a faithful record of the aftermath of a tragic period in human history, one that should never be repeated. I prepared a prospectus and forwarded it to several publishers. An editor at Academic Studies Press, an independent publisher of books on mostly Jewish and Slavic studies, viewed the proposed work favorably. The Twin Children of the Holocaust: Stolen Childhood and the Will to Survive will be released on March 21, 2023.

The picture on the cover is of particular interest. I took it at Birkenau—the part of the camp built after Auschwitz where the twins were housed. The backdrop is a black-and-white still scene from the Soviet-made film of the twin children being escorted from the camp by their liberators. The two children in the front who are clearly visible are then-9-year-old identical twins, Eva and Miriam Mozes. Standing before this image are the same twins, now adults—49-year-old Eva Kor (L) and Miriam Czaigher, each pointing to their childhood likeness. This image conveys the determination, the resilience, and the will to survive—as expressed in the title of the book—that enabled this photograph to be made.

Horrific Medical Experimentation

Many people are unaware of the horrific medical experimentation that occurred across many of the death camps. Even those who do may be unfamiliar with the actual tests and procedures performed on the twins, as well as on others of medical interest to Mengele. A family with seven dwarfed children was sequestered for specific experiments. These entertainers, founders of the Lilliput Troupe in Hungary, were forced to dance naked for the pleasure of the Nazi officers and had their teeth and feces collected for study. A gentleman with polydactyly, a condition in which the hand has more than five fingers, was of great interest to Mengele who became visibly upset when the man passed away.

Thus, the book serves an important educational purpose—as I indicated earlier, exposing this wrongdoing is a step toward preventing its occurrence in the future. Moreover, given that a segment of the population in the United States and elsewhere denies that the Holocaust ever took place, it may be that personal stories will have greater impact in opening their minds than historical accounts.

Twin Research Today

There is further justification for publishing this book at the present time. Twin research is a well-respected method for examining genetic and environmental influences on behavioral, physical, and health-related traits. The information twin studies provide helps explain individual differences in general intelligence, Alzheimer’s disease, and athletic skill in the nontwin population.

Understanding Twins Essential Reads

"The Accidental Twins" and "Peter and Erik"

The Unique Development of Twin Language

However, many people do not understand how twins are used in scientific studies. In fact, the logic behind this method is simple and elegant: The degree of similarity shown by identical twins is compared with that of fraternal (nonidentical) twins. Identical twins share 100 percent of their genes, whereas fraternal twins share 50 percent of their genes, on average. Therefore, greater resemblance between identical twins than fraternal twins is consistent with genetic influence on the trait under study. However, findings of genetic influence on behavioral traits was not popular in the 1950s and beyond, largely due to Mengele’s criminal use and abuse of the twin method. Not until the 1980s did the twin method make a comeback, explained by advances in human genetics and research results that could not be explained solely with reference to experiential factors.

Twin research has proliferated among researchers from diverse disciplines, including behavioral economics and political science, and has kindled additional interest among members of the traditional fields of psychology and medicine. The Behavior Genetics Association and International Society for Twin Studies attract large numbers of scholars and students to their annual conventions. The official journals of these organizations—Behavior Genetics and Twin Research and Human Genetics, respectively—are prestigious outlets for research findings.

However, in the minds of some people, Mengele left an indelible stain on scientific studies with a genetic bent. Mengele was clearly aware of what twin research could accomplish, but his perverted applications of the identical–fraternal twin comparison set twin studies back for some time. A distinguished panel at the Yad Vashem hearing that included historian Yehuda Bauer, the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, and the late geneticist Arno Motulsky, among others, concluded that the experiments had no scientific merit or guiding principles. They were performed solely at the whim of the doctors, sometimes in conjunction with physicians at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute in Berlin, with whom Mengele collaborated.

Use of Personal Data

We are in a climate in which confidentiality and privacy of personal data are often jeopardized. As such, administrators, ethicists, and attorneys are directing greater efforts toward protecting the rights and welfare of human research participants. In contrast, there were no controls or safeguards at Auschwitz-Birkenau, allowing Mengele and the other Nazi doctors to freely conduct experiments of any kind.

Given the inhumane treatment of the twins and other inmates, it is reasonable to ask if the data collected then could be useful today. Various scholars have addressed this question, but the twins’ voices have been largely silent. I raised this topic with some of the twins at the November 1985 Inquest where I heard a variety of viewpoints. Some twins felt that using the data was unthinkable, whereas others felt it might justify their suffering. This is a dialogue that is important to consider—because some researchers might reason that gathering data in unacceptable ways may be forgiven or forgotten years later.

I see each of these twin pairs as a fresh take on human nature. Their separate stories are poignant, but also informative. They show us the importance of having a close social partner in order to survive their unimaginable surroundings—in a perverted form of co-twin control, Mengele injected one twin with typhus before eventually having both twins killed to compare their organs. Having their twin by their side also helped them weather the uncertainties they faced following liberation. Twins and twin relations have a universal appeal, no doubt explaining why twins and other multiples are often featured in the media and in the arts. Perhaps this is because most people strive for the understanding and acceptance that is the hallmark of most identical twinships.

The twins were among the youngest of the concentration camp inmates—most children did not survive, but twin children were kept alive longer because they were valuable to Mengele for his cruel and misguided experiments. A number of the twins I met in 1985 are no longer with us, but each life story and image remain precious. Working on this project has truly shown me the enormous power of pictures.