© The Author(s) 2020 11

S. Bardgett et al. (eds.), Beyond Camps and Forced Labour,

The Holocaust and its Contexts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56391-2_2
Mengele at Auschwitz: Reconstructing
the Twins
Paul Weindling
Auschwitz saw the largest number of victims of the murderous and disabling
coerced medical experiments conducted by Nazi doctors. There
were at least 3835 Jewish and 104 Sinti and Roma victims of medical
experiments at Auschwitz: these experiments included the chemical sterilisation
series at Block 10, X-ray sterilisation experiments, as well as smaller
clusters of victims of pharmacological, infectious disease and wound
research.1 Since the mid-1980s, the best known group of Auschwitz medical
experiment victims has been that of the twins (Jewish and Sinti and
Roma) researched on by SS doctor Josef Mengele. Yet until news of
Mengele s death broke in 1983 the twins were largely overlooked, and the
Federal German government denied them compensation on the mistaken
basis that Mengele only took measurements rather than conducting experimental
interventions.2
Mengele s selections on the ramp (a wide and long arrival platform
used from May 1944) at Auschwitz-Birkenau and murderous selections
12
among the sick and exhausted inmates meant that he has become an iconic
figure as a genocidal physician. He used his position in selecting new arrivals
for forced labour or immediate death by poison gas to identify twins for
medical experiments. Yet wide differences remain in the historical literature
on the overall numbers of twins and the extent to which the twins
survived. Moreover, Mengele has been associated with reproductive, surgical
and pharmacological experiments, which were in fact often conducted
by other doctors. Estimated numbers of twins have varied
immensely between 3000 (or more) and a lower count of around 700
twins; whether most of the twins or just a smaller proportion were killed
has also divided historians.3 Depictions of Mengele s conduct have varied
as regards the extent to which twins and other prisoners of genetic interest
were murdered. The resourcing of Mengele s experiments remains an
open question as Mengele s research apparatus and the funding of his
research appear neither in SS records of any of its agencies (such as the
SS-Ahnenerbe) nor (apart from a single mention) in the records of the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation).
Finally, timing of the twin research requires clarification in relation to
Mengele s role as doctor to the Zigeunerfamilienlager (Gypsy family
camp) and his conducting genocidal selections on the so-called ramp.4
1 Mengele s Activities in Auschwitz: Three Phases
During the first phase (31 May 1943 to ca February 1944) as doctor to
the so-called Gypsy family camp, Mengele researched soft facial tissue and
the problem of Noma or Wasserkrebs , or necrotising fasciitis. In the
Gypsy family camp Mengele ruled over a large staff estimated to consist of
thirty prisoner physicians and fifty assistants, to some of whom he allocated
research. Once Noma had clinically developed, Mengele became
interested in its causes and manifestations, so it is likely that the research
developed from around December 1943. In the final months of the Gypsy
camp, a small group of Sinti and Roma twins (out of nineteen twin Sinti
and Roma identified by the historian Helena Kubica) were researched on.5
These twins were killed in early August 1944, at the time of the liquidation
of the Gypsy camp. Mengele was aware of genetic anomalies such as
the different coloured (heterochromic) eyes, known to be present among
the Mechau family of Sinti from Oldenburg, including a pair of twins.6
The second phase concerns Mengele s interest in twins among the so-called
Theresienstadt family camp inmates. This camp was a holding
13
installation in case of a Red Cross inspection prior to the killing of
Theresienstadt deportees. That some Czech twins survived a major killing
of family camp inmates on 8 9 March 1944 shows Mengele s intention to
retain the twins in the special Kinderblock (children s hut) for research.
The assembled twins survived the final liquidation of the Theresienstadt
family camp on 10 12 July 1944.7
Phase III commenced from 16 May 1944 with the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA, Reich Main Security Office) transports
of Hungarian Jews, who were earmarked for death. Danuta Czech, the
author of an impressive chronological calendar on Auschwitz, has noted a
series of Hungarian twins admitted to the camp, beginning with girls from
26 May and boys from 27 May.8 The hundreds of Hungarian twins collected
by Mengele meant a new phase began in terms of sheer scale as well
as in active research. Mengele researched on Gypsy twins (all killed on 2 3
August), and prisoner pathologist Miklós Nyiszli recorded his discussions
with Mengele over the twelve pairs of murdered twins.9 In his genocidal
selections of new arrivals on the ramp, Mengele selected Jewish twins and
persons with presumed genetic disabilities, such as dwarves and others
with growth defects.
During June 1944 Mengele improvised an extensive research infrastructure.
Mengele s prisoner assistants included a range of medical specialists,
as well as artists and anthropologists. He resourced not only the
housing of the twins but also an elaborate prisoner-research staff, particularly
the pathology laboratory. Mengele drew on other medical resources
such as the Hygiene Institute of the Waffen-SS, which was located at the
subcamp of Raisko, where a horticultural institute was also located.
Mengele studied body shape, soft tissue, organs and bones. He directed
the supply of body parts from Auschwitz, including blood, bones and
heterochromic eyes, to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology
(KWIA).10 The documentation needs to be set against the extensive narratives
of surviving twins. Wider issues include Mengele s academic links as
well as evidence for how his research was supported.
2 When Did the Twin Research Begin?
According to the geneticist and historian Benno Müller-Hill, Auschwitz
was an external research centre (Aussenlager) of the KWIA.11 This provocative
statement is based on Mengele s return to Berlin for rehabilitation
from the SS frontline Wiking Division. Mengele was in Berlin from

14
February to May 1943 when he visited the human geneticist Otmar von
Verschuer at the KWIA where Verschuer was director from 1942 to 1948.
Mengele intended to complete a habilitation thesis under Verschuer, and
here Auschwitz represented a unique research opportunity in the field of
clinical genetics. Massin described Mengele as Institutsdirektor of the
Aussenstelle Auschwitz of the KWIA.12 The empirical evidence, however,
indicates both a looser and later connection to the KWIA.
On 30 May 1943 Mengele began his duties in Auschwitz. He was stationed
there until January 1945. Researchers following Müller-Hill have
inferred that Mengele began his research on twins almost immediately
upon arrival in Auschwitz. The problem is that key sources have been
destroyed, including Verschuer s letters to Mengele, KWIA papers, and
Mengele s own research notes and papers are missing, either destroyed or
concealed.13 After the war, Mengele s family, who supported him financially
while he was on the run in Europe and then in South America,
appears to have dissipated whatever papers they held or were received by
them on Mengele s death. The surviving evidence of twins collected for
research in Auschwitz by Mengele indicates that the research on Jewish
twins began only a year after Mengele s arrival.
Crucial evidence has to be reconstructed from sources held in Auschwitz
as well as from legal depositions, compensation files and testimonies.
Helena Kubica of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum has
meticulously combed through Auschwitz sources, identifying some 293
twins. She additionally consulted records of the Soviet Commission on
German crimes and self-documentation of the US-based CANDLES
Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Kubica did not consider depositions
for a trial being prepared by the Hessen state prosecutor in 1981, a
mock trial held in Jerusalem in 1985, extensive and complex compensation
documents or interviews with survivors including those held in the
Visual History Archive of the USC Shoah Foundation and by the US
Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, Centro di
Documentazione Ebraica Contemporanea (CDEC) in Milan, and museums
in Australia.14 This child-survivor evidence forms a distinctive group
of oral history sources, which is often very vivid in terms of what was
experienced but understandably hazy as regards the overall dimensions of
the research and its wider context.
Mengele was the physician in charge of the Gypsy family camp (BIIe),
remaining in this capacity until its dissolution and the killing of the majority
of inmates in early August 1944. Research was not part of his official

15
duties, but his duties on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, which he carried
out meticulously, provided an opportunity for large-scale clinical
research. He developed racial research agendas by selecting several hundred
persons of scientific interest. Chief Auschwitz physician Eduard
Wirths s assessment by 1944 was that [Mengele] has used every free
moment to educate himself further as an anthropologist. 15
Mengele engaged in three sets of research: on Noma , heterochromic
eyes and twins. The Noma research may have been of longer duration.
The disease was ethnically specific with Roma children suffering loss of
facial tissue. But no KWIA link was evident, although Mengele s doctorate
was on the genetics of cleft palate.
His research on heterochromic eyes establishes that the long-running
connection between Mengele and his Doktorvater Otmar von Verschuer
continued while Verschuer was Director of the KWIA. SS Doctor Liebau
moved from the KWIA (from December 1942 to October 1943) to
Auschwitz and brought the Sinti Mechau family to the attention of the
KWI researcher Karin Magnussen in May 1943. The Mechaus were
imprisoned in the Gypsy family camp under Mengele. After they were
killed, Mengele sent their eyes to Karin Magnussen at the KWIA. 16
Mengele sent eyes from at least three other pairs of twins (it remains
unclear if they were Roma or Jews) in addition to those from the Mechaus.
The date of the killing of the Mechau family is unclear. It has been established
that nineteen twins were in the Gypsy family camp with the Mechau
twins.17 Mengele used several for research, and finally all were killed. The
research on Jewish, Sinti and Roma twins thus overlapped.
3 The Czech Jewish Twins and the Bucci Sisters
The Czech twins arrived over a protracted period and remained fewer in
number than the Hungarian twins. The twins Jiří and Zdenek Steiner
arrived in Auschwitz on 7 September 1943, and Hana and Milan Seiner
were deported from the Theresienstadt ghetto to the so-called
Theresienstadt family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 1 December 1943.
Their mother Milada at first looked after them, although in the event she
did not survive. Hana was later held in the women s camp and Gypsy family
camp.18 Rene and Renate (Irene) Guttman arrived in Auschwitz on 16
December 1943, along with their mother Ita with whom the twins first
saw Mengele. Jaroslav and Zdenek Oppenheimer arrived on 19 May
1944.19 Jiří Steiner remembered encountering Mengele only on 4 March

16
1944 (significant given the first liquidation of the imprisoned transfers
from Theresienstadt, shortly after this).20 This provides evidence that from
March 1944 Mengele had become interested in studying twins who
arrived in the camp.21
The Theresienstadt family camp saw a massive liquidation on 8 March
1944. That twins survived gives the first indication of a decision to retain
twins. The twin Ji Steiner pointed out that only after the March liquidation
did any research begin.22 When the final liquidation of the
Theresienstadt family camp came on 10 12 July 1944, Mengele was
among those conducting selections of the prisoners, so that the Jewish
twins were retained for research. By this time the Czech Jewish twins were
being used for medical experiments. Hana Seiner remembered injections
and blood extraction.23
Andra (Alessandra) and Tatiana (Liliana) Bucci were arrested on 28
March 1944 and deported from Trieste, along with their cousin Sergio de
Simone. Tatiana was born on 19 September 1937 and Alessandra on 1
July 1939 so they were four and six years old when they eventually arrived
at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 4 April 1944.
The Bucci sisters looked alike. Their father was Christian and they had
been baptised. Under the Italian racial law the sisters were Jews, but under
Nazi racial laws they were mixed-race, or Mischlinge, and as such would
not have been subject to deportation to an extermination camp. As
Mischlinge their status in Auschwitz was an anomaly. Their mother protested
vehemently about not being Jewish. Whether the mother claimed
her daughters were twins is unclear.24 In some cases prisoners prompted
mothers that such a declaration was advantageous to survival. The sisters
were consigned to the Kinderblock in the Theresienstadt family camp,
thus joining the Czech twins.
As groups of twins were gathered, the little Italian girls were kept with
the newly arriving twins later remembering how they communicated in
German to play with the other children, but also acquiring Czech as their
preferred language of communication between each other. Their cousin
Sergio, who was also in the Kinderblock and like his cousins baptised with
a Catholic father, was an anomaly. Tragically, Sergio accepted Mengele s
duplicitous offer of leaving the camp to go to see his mother: this meant
having to go with a group of Jewish children to Neuengamme where he
was part of Kurt Heissmeyer s tuberculosis immunisation experiment.
Although not foreseeable, Sergio was killed in the cellar of the Bullenhuser
Damm school in Hamburg along with the others in his group.25 Other

17
Jewish children deported from Auschwitz for yellow fever research at
Sachsenhausen were due to be killed, although prisoners intercepted and
concealed the order.26
The Bucci sisters were held as twins. There were further fake pairs of
twins, including the Kuhn/Kun brothers, György (born 23 January 1932)
and his younger brother István (born 17 December 1932). László (also
called by the first name of Laci) and Ephraim Reichenberg were similarly
brothers who were declared to be twins. Sarolta Libor (later, Goldman
and Feuerman) claimed to be triplets with Hanna and Josef Goldman; her
siblings, who were actual twins, died in Auschwitz. Sisters who pretended
to be twins included Margit Freiberger (with Berger/Fabian as family
names) with her elder sister Jolan Fabian (who had also the family name of
Freiberger), and Anna Fettmann (Cziment Sámuelné as later family
names) and Leona Fettmann (with Révész and Sandorné as her later family
names). There were Dutch sisters Beppy and Hetty Abrahamson.
Cousins who pretended to be twins were Therese Bojtar (with Krausz/
Buchhalter as later family names) and unknown and Tamar Lascinsky with
Rivka Mintz (alternatively spelled Minz, and Vered as a later family
name).27 In all there were twenty-three fake twins.
As with the Jewish twins, Andra and Tatiana remember being scientifically
measured in meticulous detail, and blood being taken from them.
Both interventions were a strain for the children. They survived, as did
their mother who had been transported from Auschwitz as a forced
labourer. Therefore it might be claimed that among the first of the Jewish
twins were those who were neither Jews nor twins.
4 The Hungarian Arrivals
and Improvised Research
Hungarian Jews as well Jews from Hungarian-annexed areas since 1939,
so formerly Czech or Romanian arrived in Birkenau from 15 May 1944.
Mengele used his position on the so-called ramp, firstly to meet labour
quotas and to send the often large surplus to be killed by poison gas. The
arrival of thousands provided a unique opportunity to select twins and
persons with disabilities. Rapidly Mengele found a few hundred twins
among the Hungarians being disgorged from the trains. The twin Ernst
(later Zvi) Spiegel from Munkács in Carpatho-Ruthenia was designated by
Mengele to look after many of the twin boys.

18
On 31 May 1944 Mengele intercepted two similar looking Hungarian
women (one an apothecary and the other a physician) and found out they
were indeed twins. Judit and Veronika Hajdu/Sreter were born on 1 July
1931. Their grandmother was separated from a group to be sent to the gas
chamber. Their father, Árpád Hajdu, was a physician, and their mother,
Margareta, was also on the transport. Mengele took an interest in the family
group as it offered him the opportunity to study heredity over three
generations.28
Twins did not have to do forced labour and could wear their own
clothes. Mengele improvised a large research staff and made extensive use
of camp facilities such as the laboratory of the Hygiene Institute of the
Waffen-SS at Raisko. Mengele was briefly mentioned by Verschuer in a
report to the German Research Foundation. The Reich Research Council
record card of expenditures mentions a twin camp (Zwillingslager) on 7
September 1943.29 This is taken to be a camp for German twins organised
at Stavenhagen in Mecklenburg by the anthropologist Eugen Fischer and
psychologist Kurt Gottschaldt.30 This was a likely model for Mengele s
twin collection, but there is no evidence for equipment supplied to
Mengele or indeed for external finance to sustain the burgeoning number
of twins collected in Auschwitz. Where Mengele acquired the Swiss
anthropological measuring instruments used by anthropologist Dr Martina
Puzyna for over 2000 measurements is unclear, although the KWIA was a
possible source.31
Pathologist Miklós Nyiszli arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau on 29 May
1944 and was given prisoner number A-8450.32 He was transferred at the
end of June 1944 from the IG-Farben Monowitz camp to a newly improvised
pathology laboratory under Crematorium 3. In June 1944 Mengele
recruited Nyiszli. Although Nyiszli had studied medicine at Cluj
(Klausenburg, or Kolozsvár), he had also studied at Kiel and Breslau,
where he specialised in forensic pathology. He thus fulfilled Mengele s
need for a German-trained pathologist.33
Mengele demanded that Nyiszli carry out seven autopsies per day
(about forty minutes per post mortem) whereas Nyiszli insisted that he
could only complete three autopsies per day.34 Mengele accepted the lower
number. This raises the intriguing possibility as to an estimate of how
many twins were killed as part of the twin research: if three bodies were
dissected each day over five months, it would mean ninety autopsies overall.
This number would need to be further reduced, as Nyiszli explained in

19
his autobiographical memoir, because he had a variety of other autopsies
to conduct. Mengele gave Nysizli a reason for accepting the lower figure,
since he required time-consuming scientific detail. Nyiszli recorded
Mengele stating: I require top-quality documentation, because it is going
to the Institute of Anthropological, Biological and Racial Research in
Berlin-Dahlem. 35
Mengele recruited trained scientific staff from within the Auschwitz
camp complex. Kubica notes that pathology was at first carried out in the
Gypsy camp by the French pathologist, Yancou Vexler. 36 There was a team
of prisoner assistants. The three pathologists under Nyiszli (Doz. Denis
Görög, also an anthropologist, Adolph Fischer from the Prague
Pathological Institute of the German University and Joseph Kolner from
Nice and previously Strasbourg, who had been in Auschwitz for some
years). Tadeusz Śnieszko, a prisoner physician in the Gypsy camp, took
blood and made measurements. The prisoner physician and father of
twins, Arpad Sreter, was allocated the task of mapping twin births. 37 There
were four artists (Dinah/Dina Gottliebova, Mausi Hermann, Lajos
Bacsi and Vladimir Zlamar).38 There was a team of prisoner anthropologists
(Martina Puzyna, who mentioned prisoner assistants, Erzsébeth
Fleischmann and Jadwiga Praěmowska). Maria Hanel-Halska, who worked
in the prisoner dental clinic, reported on the twins mouths about which
she also made models.39 Sustained support came from the SS Hygiene
Institute at the nearby Raisko subcamp where blood, urine and sputum
were analysed. Vaclav Tomasek, a prisoner bacteriologist from Brno
(Brünn), was among the skilled analysts there.40
Nyiszli described how he had to conduct autopsies on four pairs of
twins from the Gypsy camp. They were killed with lethal chloroform injections
and their organs were extracted. Nyiszli recorded: They were then
appropriately packed and sent off through the post. In order to make
them reach the Institute faster, the parcels were stamped: Urgent, contents
important for the war effort . 41
Twins underwent anthropometric, morphological, serological and psychiatric
evaluation. They were X-rayed, photographed in immense detail
and drawings were made. There were hearing and dental tests and plaster
casts of their mouths were taken. Finger and sole prints were taken. Ears
and eyes were meticulously compared in each twin pair against charts.
Sometimes the tests were painful. Brain fluid was extracted. Eva Mozes
Kor experienced the testing procedures and being naked for hours in front

20
of guards as dehumanising. Similarly, Liza Abelsova remembered the constant
measuring of their ears and nose, intrusively but not painfully.42
Mengele asked older children about their families and home life. The
Heilbrunn sisters felt they were Mengele s insects .43
Types of experiments included eye drops and eye examinations, X-rays,
detailed measurements, foot and hand prints, hair classification and hearing.
There were blood analyses, blood transfusion and injections which
twins claimed caused fevers and weakness. Eva Mozes Kor vividly recounted
these injections, demanding an explanation as to whether these were for
research purposes.44 A psychological schema was also devised.45 Twins
have testified concerning details of extraction of blood and of blood transfusions
between twins, leaving them severely weakened. Occasionally parents
cared for their twins and were themselves objects of experiments.
Babies were especially vulnerable. A mother, Hanni Schik, explained that
all infant twins of one year old and under died within six to ten weeks. Her
own children, Josef and Hedi, died from the massive extraction of blood.46
Mengele injected his prisoner guinea pigs with infective agents to compare
their effects, and cross-injected spinal fluid, causing immense pain. He
caused fatal lameness by a brain operation on the twin brother of Moshe
Offer. Eva Mozes Kor underwent the dangers of an injected infection,
representing a lethal danger for her and her demoralised sister. Mengele
would help himself to body parts, a testicle or a penis.47 Eva Mozes felt we
were replaceable. Disposable. 48
Mengele was fascinated by skin tone and eye colour and continued eye
colour experiments. Irena Zisblatt remembered how they put drops in
our eyes . . . they closed the door, it was pitch dark. She had no idea how
long she and her fellow prisoners were in the dark. We were under experiment
. . . later on we found . . . experiment to change the colour of our
eyes . . . All kinds of injections, examinations, measuring, blood extraction
. . . reactions heat, dizziness. 49 Prints of the hands and soles of the feet
were taken.
5 Twin Numbers
Estimates of the number of twins collected by Mengele vary immensely in
the historiography. Fragmentary anthropological listings by Puzyna list
111 named pairs of Hungarian twins, 125 Czech and Hungarian twins

21
and the list of Jewish orphans (twins) who survived after medical experiments
by Germans , which was produced by the Anti-fascist Committee
Moscow on 15 May 1946.50
These partial lists contrast to claims of far higher numbers of Jewish
twins. The twin Eva Mozes Kor gave an estimated number of 3000 twins.51
More cautiously (yet still extrapolating beyond the available evidence) the
historian Benoit Massin suggested a minimum of 900 twins based on the
mistaken presumption that Mengele immediately began research on twins
on arrival from June 1943, when he researched on 200 twins in his first
year at Auschwitz; yet there is no evidence whatsoever for this speculation.
Nikolaus Wachsmann states that there were more than a thousand twins.52
In addition to the often cited figure of 3000 twins is the figure of only 200
survivors, which predicates a massive killing of thousands of twins for
research purposes.53 The figure of 200 twins derives from a Soviet head
count at the time of liberation, but does not include older twins who had
been sent out on death marches. Although they had varied experiences
regarding survival, that many did survive makes the figure of 200 survivors
significantly low. This would mean that overall numbers of a thousand and
more twins are too high and of 200 survivors as far too low, so resulting
in an exaggerated estimate of Mengele s scientifically motivated killing of
twins (Mengele s genocidal selections with tens of thousands of victims
are beyond doubt). Mengele s biographer Ulrich V lklein gives a figure of
350 pairs of twins (an estimate which is in line with evidence given by
prisoner witnesses).54 The twins were held in improvised holding and
research facilities in a series of Blocks. Zwi Spiegel looked after the male
twins as an Ersatz father (his twin sister, Magda, was Mengele s cleaner).55
Speculative accounts of research motives have been given by the twins:
one idea was to increase the birth rate by raising the propensity to have
twins. Another idea was that Mengele was devising a technique to have a
blue-eyed race or developing a technique of human insemination. More
convincing was Mengele s own comment that he was developing scientific
understanding of body formation.56
Regarding overall numbers, the typescript of prisoner physician Lucie
Adelsberger s memoir cites a figure of 732 twins.57 Martyna Puzyna kept
records on 650 twins, of whom 250 were Hungarians.58 El bieta Piekut-Warszawska
suggested 700 twins.59 Maria Zombirt, a medical clerk in
Birkenau, recollected a capacity of 700 individual twins in the Birkenau

22
twin block.60 This was already a high number of children to sustain in the
Auschwitz context. Helena Kubica has provided a detailed listing of 293
twins as well as 11 dwarves.61 The CANDLES Museum twins listing identifies
397 twins , including a set of triplets (and several dwarves).62
To date 226 Hungarians and 42 originally Romanian twins (all from
Hungarian annexed Northern Transylvania) can be identified, which confirms
Puzyna s recollection. The Romanians were born in Transylvania
under Romanian rule between the wars, so from the same region. Eighty-one
Czechoslovak twins can be identified with an additional fifty-two from
Czech territory annexed by Hungary. Most came through the
Theresienstadt ghetto, although some were deported from the Carpathian
region seized by the Hungarians.
Numbers and procedures can be gauged from the tests which Mengele
ordered to be carried out from Raisko. This evidence yields 558 twins as
given in Table 1.
Post-war sources include compensation records, interviews and biographical
accounts. In all, 558 Jewish twins and dwarves can be identified
by name or number to date, plus 24 Sinti and Roma twins, providing an
overall number of 582 individually identifiable twins.
Table 1 Total twins, 18 dwarves and 12 relatives: 558
Nationality Numbers of identified twins
Austrian 6
Czechoslovakian 81
Czechoslovakian from territories annexed by Hungary in
1938 1939
53
Dutch 10
French 2
German 21 (incl. Triplets)
Greek 2
Hungarian 226
Italian 2
Polish 17
Romanian (from territories annexed by Hungary in 1940) 42
Yugoslav 2
Unknown nationalities 64
Total 528 including 23 fake
twins .

23
6 Twin Selections
From May 1944 the Jewish twins were held partly on the terrain of the
camp clinic (Abschnitt BIa) in Barrack 22 of the women s camp in
Birkenau. In July 1944 Mengele expanded the research, and most twins
were transferred to the Wooden Block 1. Only mothers with twins aged up
to two remained in Block 22. Twelve mothers or other relatives of twins
can be identified.63 Older male youths and men were in Barrack 15 of the
men s clinic in Birkenau (BIIf). Also here was Mengele s laboratory with
facilities for radiology, dental surgery and ophthalmology. Locations
included Barrack BIIe 29 and 31, Barrack BIa 22 and 1 and Barrack
BIIf 15.64
Mengele was known to be interested in dwarves, giantism, club foot,
hunchback, and other abnormalities. He not only selected but received
reports when twins and others with what he deemed pathological anomalies
appeared. Perlach Ovitz recollected the selection, when the dwarves
were ordered, don t move until I return with Dr Mengele .65 On occasion
Mengele selected a child specimen for racial features, irrespective of not
being a twin, as was the case with the little boy Aleks Dekel retained for his
Aryan features.66
Mengele figured in the DFG funding of hereditary pathology obtained
by Verschuer for the KWIA.67 The funds covered human genetics and
pathology, focusing on blood proteins. Auschwitz solved all the difficulties
of locating twins that posed difficulties for human geneticists since the
1920s. Mengele s approach was rooted in the phenogenetics prevailing at
the KWIA. Here a focus was on blood proteins, using precipitin reactions
for racial diagnosis. A body s physical characteristics and diseases were to
be explained in terms of genetic mechanisms.68 Mengele was thus working
within Verschuer s paradigm of the doctor oriented to hereditary health
the Erbarzt . For this reason he sent 200 blood samples of different
races to the KWIA in 1943.69 There was a sense that disease was racially
specific as shown by Noma among gypsies. Jews were regarded as susceptible
to specific diseases such as diabetes. The propensity to have twins
was also regarded as a Jewish racial characteristic, as was shown by the
Hungarian twin map prepared by the prisoner-physician Árpád Hajdu.70
Pearl Herskovitz recollected how Mengele needed pictures of the twins,
who were taken from the camp to the town of O wiec im for photographs
in a studio. They took pictures of us from every conceivable angle. We
were naked of course, different angles, from the side, back to back, sitting

24
down, bending down, they did studies of every minute detail of our bodies.
He was taking all kinds of shots every day. Teeth, the tongue, the eyes
were a little different, pupils. 71 The twins underwent a series of detailed
observations hair, hand palms and soles of feet.
The records of the Raisko Hygiene Institute record the reasons for
tests, who was tested and when. Normally the Institute provided routine
diagnosis for sexually transmitted diseases and infections such as malaria
and typhus, sputum for TB, and analysed excreta for infections and worms.
The SS doctors (and certainly Mengele) still referred to these tests by the
names of Jewish medical scientists, notably Wassermann (for syphilis),
Weil and Felix (for typhus, or Fleckfieber) and Aschheim and Zondek (for
pregnancy). The tests on twins stood out as exceptional as they were
mostly not diagnostic. Some twenty twins were only known by their camp
number, and some were unnumbered. The test records mostly marked
whether the person was a twin or dwarf , and they indicate the timing
of the research, on whom the research was carried out and when. The tests
show a clear transition from the research on Sinti and Roma children to
eight or ten twins. Blood proteins were analysed, and multiple tests were
ordered on urine to check kidney function. Levels of albumen, Takata Ara,
sodium (Rest N and Na Cl) and vitamin C tested liver functioning. The
Gruber-Widal tests were carried out on dwarves extracted blood by all
accounts the amounts drained were so large as to be debilitating and on
some occasions deadly.72
Mengele (who fathered a son in 1944) tolerated a high-spirited twin,
who remembered: I was not well behaved and not afraid of Mengele. . . I
had OK relations with Mengele symbiotic, he got information and I got
food, symbiotic . . . I gave Mengele trouble any way I could. Mengele
amassed a vast human museum of racial pathology. The Ovitz/Ovicz family
of dwarves and the related Slomowicz family were deported from the
Maramure region of Transylvania. They were the largest family of dwarves
ever recorded. Twelve family members from a fifteen-month-old baby to
a fifty-eight-year-old woman entered Auschwitz on 12 May 1944 and
survived intact.73 Mengele realised just how unique and exceptional the
family was. He was interested in how the family included both dwarves
and taller members. Eleven other prisoners claimed to be their relatives,
and Mengele moved all of them together, so that he could study the complete
family group. Mengele obtained hygienic living quarters for the
extended family, so they could be monitored, as well as providing them
with better rations to keep them healthy. The Ovitzes had bone marrow

25
extracted, teeth pulled and hair analysed to find signs of hereditary disease.
They had hot and cold water poured in their ears and they were blinded
with chemical drops. Eighteen-month-old Shinshon Ovitz was exhaustively
examined, and blood was drawn.74 All the twins confirm that large
amounts of blood were taken twice weekly. Blood samples were sent to the
KWI for Biochemistry. Verschuer and the biochemist Adolf Butenandt
showed indifference to using body parts and fluids supplied from concentration
camps.75
7 Twin Killings
Katerina Laniawska stated that one hundred twins were killed for research.
This would coincide with the estimate (given above) based on Nyiszli s
capacity for conducting autopsies on a maximum of ninety bodies. Given
Mengele s role in operationalising genocide, a pathology laboratory piled
high with bodies would have made no sense as it would have impeded
meticulous research.
Mengele s aim of comparative pathology included both external and
internal features, notably of internal organs. This led to targeted killing,
especially when a sibling died. Some twins lost their sibling. Ephraim
Reichenbach described the killing of his gifted brother Tibi.76 The toddler
Pepicek (so young that he forgot his name and home address) lost his
sister, never knowing her fate. Pepicek became scarred by experimental
injections. He, his sister and mother had been transported from
Theresienstadt on 18 May 1944.77 Illness of a fellow twin thus posed a
mortal threat. Eva Mozes (as she then was) describes her care for her sister,
feeling how she was at risk of becoming a pathological specimen.78
8 Conclusions
The twin experiments were conducted in a shorter time period than often
assumed: the research intention was indicated by the twin survival rate of
the Theresienstadt family camp killings in March 1944. The research came
later, from June 1944 to the end of November 1944. Mengele ordered
targeted scientific killings but more twins survived than were killed.
Mengele ceased research at the start of December 1944. He left Auschwitz
on 17 January 1945. He did not give a final order for the twins to be
killed. Earlier on he had contradicted the order of a rival SS doctor, Heinz
Thilo (1911 1945), for the younger male twins to be killed.79 Older twins

26
left on the death marches, and not all survived. Elisabeth Abeles stated
that her better nourishment gave her an advantage during the forced
march.80 Younger twins survived as well. After liberation came a staged
photo and filming of some 200 smaller twins for the Soviet documentary
film unit.
One can only speculate why Mengele as perpetrator of genocidal killings
allowed the twins to live. Unlike the tragedy of the twenty Jewish
children transported for TB experiments and subsequently killed in
Hamburg, the twins were not killed as a result of having been research
subjects. Whether this was because Mengele stuck to a policy of no unnecessary
killings for his research subjects, a preoccupation with his own
escape, a calculation that in an eventual prosecution living witnesses might
testify in his favour, affection for his subjects or a hope that he could somehow
later complete his gargantuan human genetic research is simply an
unresolved historical enigma.

Notes
1. Weindling, Paul, Anna von Villiez, Aleksandra Loewenau, Nichola Farron.
2016. The victims of unethical human experiments and coerced research
under National Socialism. Endeavour 40(1): 1 6. A database has gathered
details of all life histories and experiments. As the research is still in progress
the numbers are not absolute but represent verifiable biographies
to date.
2. Simon Wiesenthal to Bundeskanzler Kohl 29 November 1985,
Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BAK) B126/121487.
3. Massin, Benoit. 2003. Mengele, die Zwillingsforschung und die Auschwitz-Dahlem
Connection. In Verbindung nach Auschwitz. Biowissenschaften
und Menschenversuche an Kaiser-Wilhelm-Instituten. Dokumentation eines
Symposiums, ed. Carola Sachse, 201 254. Die Gottingen: Wallstein, 2003.
See also Kor, Eva Mozes. Heilung von Auschwitz und Mengeles
Experimenten, in Sachse, ed. Verbindung, 63. For the figure of 3000, see
also https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org/learn/mengele-twins.
html
(retrieved 9 June 2019).
4. Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. The unloading ramp and
selections, http://auschwitz.org/en/history/auschwitz-and-
shoah/
the-unloading-
ramps-
and-
selections/
(retrieved 18 June 2019).
5. Kubica, Helena. 1997. Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen im
Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hefte von Auschwitz 20:
369 455.

27
6. Hesse, Hans. 2001. Augen aus Auschwitz. Ein Lehrstück über nationalsozialistiscen
Rassenwahn und medizinische Forschungen. Der Fall Dr. Karin
Magnussen. Essen: Klartext.
7. Kàrny, Miroslav. 1997. Das Theresienstädter Familienlager in (BIIb) in
Birkenau. Hefte von Auschwitz 20: 133 237, 191, n121.
8. Czech, Danuta. 1990. Auschwitz Chronicle, 1939–1945. New York: Henry
Holt, 634 635.
9. Nyiszli, Miklós. 2012. Auschwitz. A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account. London:
Penguin, ch. 23, 92 94.
10. Puzyna testimony, London 31 October 1972, Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv
(HHSTA) 461, Bl. 17.
11. Müller-Hill, Benno. 1984. Tödliche Wissenschaft. Hamburg: Rowohlt.
Müller-Hill, Benno. 1999. The Blood from Auschwitz and the Silence of
the Scholars. The History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 21: 331 365.
12. Massin, Benoit. Mengele. In Verbindung nach Auschwitz, Sachse, ed., 236.
For criticism see Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. 2005. Grenzüberschreitungen,
Das Kaiser-Wilhelm-Institut für Anthropologie, menschliche Erblehre und
Eugenik, 1927–1945. Göttingen: Wallstein, 478 479.
13. For the dissolution of the KWI for Anthropology see Schmuhl,
Grenzüberschreitungen, 526 527.
14. Grodin, Michael, Eva Mozes Kor, Susan Benedict. 2011. The Trial That
Never Happened: Josef Mengele and the Twins of Auschwitz. War Crimes,
Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity 5: 3 89.
15. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 690 91.
16. Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 454 455.
17. Kubica s listing does not include the Mechau twins.
18. HHSTA 461, Bl 171 175.
19. HHSTA 461, Bl 177.
20. Re Jiri Steiner. Kàrny, Miroslav. 1997. Das Theresienstädter Familienlager
in (BIIb) in Birkenau. Hefte von Auschwitz 20: 133 237, 191, n121. For
Czech twin testimonies, see Heller, Stephanie and Ruth Elias in Grodin
et al., 28.
21. Weindling Paul. 2014. Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments.
Science and Suffering in the Holocaust. London: Bloomsbury.
22. Kàrny, Miroslav. 1997. Das Theresienstädter Familienlager in (BIIb) in
Birkenau. Hefte von Auschwitz 20: 133 237, 191, n121.
23. Ibid.
24. Bucci, Andra and Tatiana Bucci. 2018. Noi, bambini ad Auschwitz, La
nostra storia di sopravvissute alla Shoah. Rome: Mondadori.
25. Schwarberg, Günther. 1980. The Murders at Bullenhuser Damm. The SS
Doctor and the Children. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, trans.

28
German edition 1980. Schwarberg, Günther. 1996. Meine zwanzig
Kinder. Göttingen: Steidl.
26. Regarding hepatitis experiments see Ley, Astrid and Günter Morsch. 2007.
Medical Care and Crime, The Infirmary at Sachsenhausen Concentration
Camp 1936 1945. Berlin: Metropol, 329 42.
27. These individuals are listed with sources in the database of victims of Nazi
medical experiments.
28. Bundesarchiv Koblenz (BAK) B 126/27772 Ungarn 91 105.
29. Weindling, Paul. 1989. Health, Race, and German Politics from National
Unification to Nazism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 560 561.
30. Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. 2008. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology,
Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927 1945. Crossing Boundaries, Boston,
306 307.
31. Posner, Gerald L and John Ware. 1987. Mengele. The True Story, London:
Futura, 36, 37.
32. Czech, Auschwitz Chronicle, 636.
33. Nyiszli, M. 1992. Im Jenseits der Menschlichkeit. Ein Gerichtsmediziner in
Auschwitz. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.
Nyiszli, Nikolaus. transl Thaddeus R. G bert, Ich war Prosektor bei Dr.
Mengele im Krematorium Auschwitz , Typescript. NIOD Archief 250d
Kampen en Gevangenissen inv. No. 722. Weindling, Paul. Blood and
Bones from Auschwitz: the Mengele Link. In Medicine and the Holocaust:
New Studies on Victims, Perpetrators and Legacies for the 21st Century, ed.
Sabine Hildebrandt, Miriam Offer, and Michael Grodin, in press.
34. Nyiszli, Mikl s, ed. Piper. 2010. I was Dr Mengele s Assistant: The Memoirs
of an Auschwitz Physician, Oswiecim: Frap Books.
35. Nyiszli, Mikl s, ed. Piper. 2010. I was Dr Mengele s Assistant: The Memoirs
of an Auschwitz Physician, Oswiecim: Frap Books, 5.
36. Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 404.
37. BAK B 126/27772.
38. BAK B 126/27772 Ungarn 91 105.
39. Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 396.
40. Regarding Tomasek, see Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen.
41. Nyiszli, Mikl s, ed. Piper. 2010. I was Dr Mengele s Assistant: The Memoirs
of an Auschwitz Physician, Oswiecim: Frap Books, 47.
42. Elizabeth Ruzena Abelsova (later Elizabeth Marlin). Shoah
Foundation 41418.
43. Annetta Able. Shoah Foundation 21978.
44. Weindling, Paul. 2012. Sonstige Personenschäden die
Entsch digungspraxis der Stiftung Erinnerung, Verantwortung und
Zukunft. In Die Entschädigung von NS-Zwangsarbeit am Anfang des 21.

Jahrhunderts, ed. Constantin Goschler, Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, vol.

2, 197 225.
45. Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 392 93.
46. Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 397.
47. Vera Kriegel, Endlich den h chsten Berg gefunden , Sachse,
Auschwitz, 76 82.
48. Eva Mozes Kor, Lisa Buccieri, The True Story of a Mengele Twin in
Auschwitz, 2009.
49. Weindling. Victims and Survivors, 161. Shoah Foundation interview 7832.
50. These listings are held by the Auschwitz Museum.
51. Sachse Die Verbindung nach Auschwitz.
52. Massin in Sachse, Die Verbindung nach Auschwitz, 236, 84 (statement by
Moshe Offer). Wachsmann, Nikolaus. 2016. Die Geschichte der nationalsozialistischen
Konzentrationslager, Munich: Siedler Verlag.
53. Rosenberg, Jennifer. Mengele s Children: The Twins of Auschwitz. https://
isurvived.org/2Postings/mengele-AUSCHWITZ.
html (accessed 3
January 2020).
54. Völklein, Ulrich. 2000. Josef Mengele. Der Arzt von Auschwitz. Göttingen:
Steidl, 146.
55. Heller, Yoav. 2013. The History of Zvi Spiegel: The Experience of Mengele
Twins and Their Protector During the Holocaust and its Aftermath. Royal
Holloway University of London, Doctoral dissertation.
56. Vera Kriegel statement, BAK B126/61146.
57. Lucie Adelsberger, unpublished manuscript NIOD. The book appeared
without the chapter on Mengele as Adelsberger, Lucie. 1956. Auschwitz:
Das Vermächtnis d. Opfer f. uns Juden u.f. alle Menschen. Ein Tatsachenbericht,
Berlin: Lettner.
58. Puzyna testimony, London 31 October 1972, HHSTA 461, Bl. 16.
59. Kubica, Dr. Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 86.
60. Cited by Klee, Ernst. 1997. Auschwitz: die NS Medizin und ihre Opfer.
Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 488.
61. Kubica, Mengele und seine Verbrechen, 369 455.
62. https://candlesholocaustmuseum.org/learn/mengele-twins.
html
(retrieved on 9 June 2019).
63. Names can be found in the Medical Experiment Victim database; see
Weindling, Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments.
64. Kubica, Helena. 1998. The Crimes of Josef Mengele. Anatomy of the
Auschwitz Death Camp, eds. Yisrael Gutman and Michael Berenbaum,
Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 317 37.
65. Koren, Yehuda and Eilat Negev. 2004. In our Hearts We were Giants: the
Remarkable Story of the Lilliput Troupe. New York: Caroll Graf.
30
66. For Aleks Dekel, see Lagnado, Lucette and Sheila Dekel. 1991. Children
of the Flames. New York: William Morrow and Company, 14.
67. Müller-Hill, Benno. 1984. Tödliche Wissenschaft. Hamburg: Rowohlt.
68. Schmuhl, Hans-Walter. 2008. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology,
Human Heredity and Eugenics, 1927–1945. Crossing Boundaries. Boston:
Springer, 2.
69. Müller-Hill, Benno. 1999. The Blood from Auschwitz and the Silence of
the Scholars. The History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, vol. 21,
331 365. Trunk, Achim. 2003. Zweihundert Blutproben aus Auschwitz.
Ein Forschungsvorhaben zwischen Anthropologie und Biochemie (1943–1945).
Berlin: Research Program History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft in
the National Socialist Era .
70. BAK B 126/27772 Ungarn 91 105.
71. Fortunoff Video collection, HVT-3027, Yale University Library.
72. Weindling, Victims and Survivors, 562 63.
73. Koren and Negev, In our Hearts We were Giants.
74. Ibid.
75. Weindling, Health, Race, and German Politics.
76. Reichenbach, Ephraim. 2003. Meine wahre Familie , In Verbindung
nach Auschwitz. Biowissenschaften und Menschenversuche an Kaiser-
Wilhelm-Instituten.
Dokumentation eines Symposiums, ed. Carola
Sachse, 73 75.
77. Sarid, Yossi. 2008. Pepiczek. He Didn’t Know his Name. Jerusalem:
Yad Vashem.
78. Kor, Eva. 2012. Surviving the Angel of Death: The True Story of a Mengele
Twin in Auschwitz. Tanglewood.
79. Regarding Thilo, see Grodin et al., Trial, 68.
80. Ruzena Abelsova now Elizabeth Marlin, Shoah Foundation interview
41418.

P. Weindling (*)
Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK
e-mail: pjweindling@brookes.ac.uk