Newsroom
- Oct 22, 2020
- 5 min read

The Mengele Twins Project

By Zoya Singh

In the Summer of 1943, Germany began suffering terribly in the second world war. The Camp Auschwitz- Birkenau reached its killing peak, with 600 Jews gassed per day.

A grim-looking Nazi pushed his way among the crowd for selection, calling out for twins all the while. Two little girls clung to their mother, hoping they wouldn't be noticed.

Suddenly, a guard stormed right up to them, and asked, ' Are they, twins ?'. The mother asked him, 'Is that good?'

The guard smirked and nodded.

In the blink of an eye, the twins were pulled to the right, and the mother to the left, never to be seen again.

The Holocaust

The Jewish Holocaust of 1941 - 1945 was by far the most spine-chilling and horrifying genocides and ethnic cleansings in history. The systematic slaughter of Nazi Germany rid the world of over 6 million Jews. Victims also include Polish, Roma, transgenders, physically disabled/ deformed, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals, and Catholic priests.

A few years later, disturbing photos of the concentration camps resurfaced shortly after the end of the war. Few of them included identical-looking children, bald, sickly and starved. Aside from mass murder, forced labour, torture, gassing and being targets for weapons testing, a series of these photos led to the reason to believe that experiments were being conducted on Jewish twins. This gruesome programme came to be dubbed as the 'Mengele Twins Experimentation '.

Angel Of Death

Infamous doctor Joseph Mengele worked at the Auschwitz concentration camp as an educated medical researcher. Before this, he was an assistant to a well-known researcher who studied twins at the Institute for Heredity Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt. In May 1943, he was stationed at the Auschwitz- Birkenau extermination camp.

He was fascinated with the secrets of heredity. He aimed to remove 'undesirable' traits and create genetically 'perfect' Aryan features [such as blonde hair and blue eyes] as per Hitler's objective of a 'perfect Aryan race'. The medical program turned thousands of twins at camp into medical subjects. These children were exposed to infection, disfigurement and torture on the pretext of ' research'. Only about 200 children survived. Not only this, but he was even a selector on 'the ramp'. With a flick of his finger, he would decide whether a person would go left or right - to the gas chamber or into hard labour. Additionally, he was also responsible for concocting the gas for execution, which was a cyanide-based pesticide named Zyklon-B. His charming disposition but psychopathic mind gave him the title 'Angel Of Death '.

Upon selection, twins were kept in separate barracks from the other prisoners and were the only people which had privileges. For starters, they would get a decent breakfast in the morning, were allowed to play and didn't need to to work. The younger children wouldn't fear Mengel as he had pockets full of candy and would sometimes even play with them. They had the best conditions in the camp until they were transported to the test labs.

What happened to the twins?

Eva Mozes Kor, a survivor of the Holocaust narrated her tale in Aushwitz in an interview in September 2017. She is the most notable survivor as others could not be located, or had passed away due to the experimentation.

She, her twin Miriam and her family were deported in May 1944 by a cattle car at age 10. She stated that she was used in two types of experiments. Three times a week, she and many other twins were stripped of their clothes. Their body parts were measured and compared to their respective twins. This lasted up to 8 hours a day. The second experiment on alternate days was even more harmful. The doctors would 'tie her arms to restrict the blood flow, take a lot of blood from her left arm and give her 5 injections in the right arm'. After one such transfusion, she got a high fever. After checking her temperature, Mengele casually said,' too bad, she is still so young. She only has a week or two to live ". Thankfully her fever broke and she survived. Three weeks later when she recovered fully, her twin Miriam refused to tell her what the doctors had done to her while Eva was sick. And it remained secret.

On January 12th 1945, their camp was liberated by the Soviet Army. Years later, Miriam confessed that multiple injections had been given to her that day that made her feel extremely ill.

Upon expecting her first child in Israel, Miriam's kidneys began deteriorating. On her second pregnancy in 1963, the condition of her kidneys was so severe that the Israelian doctors had to study her. They discovered that her kidneys never grew larger than the size of that of a ten-year-old child. A third childbirth made her kidneys fail. Eva generously donated her kidney for a transplant saying ' I had two kidneys and one sister, so it was an easy choice'.

After the kidney transplant, however, Miriam developed cancerous polyps in her bladder. The doctors believed these problems were a result of the experiments and asked desperately for their Auschwitz files.

All experiments, records of injections and their contents were logged and even filmed by the doctors. During the liberation, however, the Nazis had frantically destroyed them by burning down the labs.

The contents of those injections were unknown then and still unknown now.

Another survivor, Jona Laks who was deported in her teen years, fared far worse with her twin at Auschwitz. She claimed that she saw Mengele remove organs from people with no anaesthetic. Twins were given shots in the back or directly in their eyes in hopes of turning them blue. This later led to infections and even permanent blindness. In an alternate trial, she claims that the children were exposed to Noma disease [ a gangrenous infection aimed to damage mouth and genitals ]. If one of the pair died of sickness, they would kill the other and be dissected for 'further study'. Unhealthy children were subjected to the same fate. Other extreme scenarios included stitching twins to try and obtain Siamese twins, forced insemination, malpractice of eugenics, amputations and sterilisation.

Later on, many aged survivors chose to speak up about their experiences, but many doubt after 70 years if their narration is accurate.

Holocaust Memorials [optional]

CANDLES [Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors] is a non-profit organisation founded in '83 by Eva Mozes Kor. It's objective is to locate other surviving Mengele twins to hear their stories. She starred in a 2006 documentary 'Forgiving Dr Mengele'.

Through their eyes and 'Holocaust Lens', audiences learn about possible dangers and why it's important to prevent mass murder today.

In 2003, by ill hap, the CANDLES museum was burned down by an arsonist.

USHMM [ United States Holocaust Memorial Museum ] is one of the most prominent memorials where frequent exhibitions are held including stories forms survivors, written anecdotes and historic articles found at camps.

Yad Vashem, a memorial founded in Jerusalem devoted to preserving the experiences of Jewish victims.

The deadliest concentration camps, such as Dachau have been turned into historical sites, open for all after 1961.

...

A lot can be learned from the Holocaust besides the brutality and the plight of victims, but even how collaborators, who once were friends and neighbours with these people, were also the ones responsible for their death.

The Nazi twin experiments have shown by far the worst of what people can do. Then why is murder, rape, torture continuing with no end? Because someone prays to a different God? Because someone is part of a minority? Because someone isn't heterosexual? The Holocaust, especially these ghastly twin experiments reveal exactly what bigotry and hatred can do.

Sources - Links

The Mengele Twins Project

The Mengele Twins Project

The Holocaust

Angel Of Death

What happened to the twins?

Holocaust Memorials [optional]

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