DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN

by CHILDREN OF THE FLAMES

  I recall marching across big fields, and hearing shooting. To this day, I can still hear the sound of these gun shots. Since that time, I have fought in many wars, and I have heard many different kinds of shootings, but I still remember this shooting more clearly than any other.

  We kept marching and hearing these shots in the background. We came to a big river between two hills, and we were told to run. And so we ran.

  There was only one soldier, with only one machine gun, and he was shooting at us as we ran.

  And today, I live with this memory, and I am ashamed. I ask myself how could we have been so stupid? Because today I realize there was only one SS man doing the shooting, and hundreds-maybe thousands-of people who were running, terrified of this one, solitary SS man.

  The twins who evaded the Death March remained at the largely deserted concentration camp. There was neither food nor water. With no guards in sight, those still at Auschwitz plundered any storerooms still left standing. Hoping that the rumors the Russians were on their way were true, Mengele’s children waited to be rescued.

  PETER SOMOGYL: We were terrified the Nazis would come back. Even without German soldiers, there was no sense of security.

  We were very hungry. There was no food, no food at all.

  One morning, I decided to go out and hunt for food. I walked around the deserted camp. But all I found was a big warehouse filled with cases of bottled water. And so I picked up some bottles and brought them back to the twins.

  Several of the male twins were together, and our Twins’ Father was still with us, watching over us. He wanted to leave immediately and go east. He, too, was afraid the Nazis would return and take us prisoner-and we’d have no second chance.

  Then one day we looked up to see the first Russian troops…

  On January 27, 1945, at three o’clock in the afternoon, Russian soldiers marched into Auschwitz. They found the twins huddled inside one of the barracks. They were cold and hungry. Many were suffering from typhoid fever and dysentery. Their frail, emaciated bodies still bore needle marks from the blood tests and injections that had been administered up to the end.

  But they were alive! Mengele’s twins were among the only children to have survived Auschwitz.

  The first thing the Russians did was to distribute clothing and blankets. The twins were given the camp’s striped uniforms, which they had never had to wear before. The jackets and trousers were so big the children had to stuff layer after layer of clothing to keep them from falling off.

  That night, there was a big party to celebrate the liberation. The emaciated women of Birkenau discovered longlost sources of energy within their frail bodies. In their joy, they danced all night with the Russian soldiers. Mengele’s twins stood by happily, watching the adult goings-On.

  The next day, the dazed children were marched out of the camp.

  The scene was captured by Russian cameramen as part of a propaganda film that would show the world how the Russian Army had rescued Jewish children from Fascist hands. The twins had to roll up their sleeves and show their tatooed numbers for close-up shots. They were led out of Auschwitz several times, until the director was satisfied the liberation scene looked sufficiently authentic.

  As they passed through the gates of Auschwitz, twins clutched each other tightly. Amid the euphoria of the liberation was the aching sadness felt by all the children, knowing they were leaving Auschwitz without the families with whom they had arrived. The camp lay behind them like a vast cemetery, filled with the unmarked graves of their loved ones.

  Journalists descended on Auschwitz in the immediate aftermath of the liberation, demanding to get the story that had eluded them for so many years: the story of the Nazis’ systematic slaughter of millions of Jews in one cold and forsaken corner of Poland. Menashe Lorinczi, a twin who had worked as Mengele’s messenger boy, volunteered to be their tour guide. Menashe took both reporters and Russian soldiers through the maze of buildings and barracks that made up AuschwitzBirkenau, pointing out the various facilities. To his pride and delight, he became an instant hero, the first child survivor to be interviewed and quoted in newspapers around the world.

  MENgele LoRINGzI: Right after talking with the journalists and touring Auschwitz with them, I collapsed. The Russians put me in an infirmary they had set up at the camp.

  I lay in bed for months, suffering from one illness after the other.

  My teeth fell out. I developed a lung infection, then tuberculosis.

  Months after the liberation of Auschwitz, I was still sick, still in the concentration camp, with my twin sister at my side.

  Some of the twins who were well and did not require hospitalization were bundled out of Auschwitz and taken to a large monastery in the Polish city of Katowice. There, for the first time in years, they were given plenty of food, clothing, and even toys. Best of all, they were free to roam the city. There were joyful rides on the streetcar, where they merely had to show the tattooed number on their arm for the driver to let them on without exacting a fare. At the monastery, the only discipline the nuns imposed on the children was requiring them to come back in time for meals, which were served promptly three times a day.

  EVA MOZES: I will never forget that monastery. The first night, Miriam and I were put in a beautiful room with a large bed, covered by the whitest sheets I had ever seen. The room was filled with toys. I had no idea what to do with all those toys. I felt so filthy and dirty-no one had bothered to give us a bath, you see. I had lice crawling all over me.

  And so, that first night, I removed the sheet from the bed and fell asleep on the bare mattress.

  Zyl Spiegel, who at thirty was one of the oldest of Mengele’s twins, the one they had lovingly called

  “Twins’ Father,” was reminded of a promise he had made during the dark days of the mass exterminations.

  He had sworn to take all the boys home.

  TWINS’ FATHER: The twins were very excited. They were like little bees buzzing around me. They kept saying,

  “You promised you would take us home, Twins’ Father. You promised.” It was true-I had promised this.

  But it had only been to make them happy. I had never believed it myself One of the older prisoners wanted me to run away with him.

  “We’re free-let’s get out of here together,” he kept telling me. But I decided that I had to take the twins home. I felt an obligation toward them.

  I left Auschwitz on January 28, 1945, with thirty-six children in tow.

  I made a list of all their names, their ages, and where they were from.

  Before we started the journey, I gathered the children for a lecture.

  I laid down the rules, just as if they were troops I might have commanded in former years in the Czech Army. I told them they had to stick together and keep up with me, or else I couldn’t be responsible for them.

  PETER SOMOGYL: We begged Twins’ Father to take us with him because we were so fearful of remaining at Auschwitz. We knew we were free, but we were constantly afraid the Nazis would somehow make their way back to the camp.

  “What if the Germans return and kill us?” we kept wondering.

  Even with the Russian Army there, feeding us, taking care of us, we still worried about the Germans.

  With Twins’ Father leading the way, we left Auschwitz and started marching east, toward Krakow.

  It was bitter cold. My twin brother and I carried these little knapsacks I had sewn from a blanket. In mine, I carried all my worldly belongings: a small crust of bread and some of the bottles of water I had found in the deserted storeroom. When I was “packing” to leave Auschwitz, I found I had nothing to take with me-no clothes, no food other than the little piece of bread-so I stuck these bottles of water in my knapsack. I figured they might come in handy.

  I remember, as we walked, feeling icicles in my pants and legs. It was so cold that the bottles had exploded, and the water had frozen around my body.

  We walked and walked-but we didn’t allow o
urselves to stop. We were very afraid of turning back. And even though we were freezing, Twins’ Father would tell us to keep going.

  TWINS’ FATHER: It took us three days just to get to Krakow. On the way, we passed soup kitchens set up to feed Russian soldiers. We would beg the Russians to let us eat their food. Sometimes they’d say yes.

  Other times, they’d shoo us away, and we had to continue walking.

  Along the way, we kept picking up camp survivors. First, we ran into a group of twelve women. They were from Birkenau and were trying to get home. These women thought that by traveling with a group of children, they might, somehow, find their own kids. They kept hoping other child survivors would join us-perhaps their own.

  I took down their first and last names, their date of birth, their hometowns, even their barracks number at Auschwitz, and added them to my list. I gave these women the same order I’d given the twins: to stick together and keep up with the group. By the time we got to Krakow, an additional one hundred male survivors had also joined our group.

  I felt as if I were leading a small army: 153 men, women, and children, to be precise. I know the exact number because I continued to keep a neat list. I am not sure why preparing those lists was so important to me in the middle of all the chaos and confusion. I suppose it was my own way of maintaining some form of control. Even at the camp, I was obsessed with maintaining lists and keeping the children in order. I felt it was the key to our survival. And I have kept those lists even to this day.

  My system helped convince Russian authorities to let us through the various roadblocks. Wherever we stopped, Russian Army officials would interrogate me as to who I was and what I was doing. I’d show them the lists, which impressed them. They were generally understanding, and gave me official documents authorizing me to lead the twins home.

  PETER SOMOGYL: On the last leg of the trip between Auschwitz and Krakow, a Russian truck picked us up and gave us a ride. When we got to Krakow, we found an abandoned house-it had no furniture, no heat, nothing.

  All the twins slept together on the floor.

  Twins’ Father found a Red Cross center that would feed us once a day.

  For the rest of our meals, we had to beg strangers for food.

  I remember going around Krakow, marching from house to house every day asking for a slice of bread. Some of the Poles were nice to the twins.

  But many were very mean. Even though they knew we were survivors from the death camp, they told us to go away.

  We got very little from the Russians. There were no provisions for people other than those in the Russian Army.

  At one point, Twins’ Father tried to get the Russians to give us a vehicle so he could take us home more quickly, but he couldn’t arrange it. I guess they had other problems on their minds than the fate of a bunch of the Jewish war orphans.

  TWINS’ FATHER: The trip home was a nightmare. All of Europe was in disarray. The rail system had been completely destroyed. We would board a train, then another train, and get absolutely nowhere. At times, we would take a train, and it would take us in the opposite direction from where we wanted to go.

  When we got to the Hungarian border, I decided I needed a system to make sure everyone could get home as quickly as possible. I was most concerned about the children, of course. I decided to divide them into little groups, splitting everyone up by where they were going.

  I assigned older twins to be in charge of younger ones. I gave the senior boys my addressI assumed I was returning to my old house and told them to let me know how the trip went. Then, I set out with a small group of my own toward Munkacs, my native village in Czechoslovakia.

  PETER SOMOGYL: My brother and I and a few other twins boarded a train bound for Budapest. Before hugging us good-bye, Twins’ Father made sure we were going in the right direction.

  There was no regular source of food, so once again we were forced to beg. We asked Russian soldiers on the trains to give us some bread.

  We finally arrived in a small town inside Hungary, not far from Budapest. There were Jews living there who had somehow survived the war. They invited us into their home, and gave us some very greasy chicken soup. These Jews were very kind to us. But it had been so long since we’d eaten a real meal, we got very sick. We were ill for days, unable to move.

  It took Us a few more days to get to Budapest. Someone at the train station-I am not sure who-directed us to a Jewish orphanage.

  We were the very first survivors of a death camp to come back to Hungary, and our arrival made big news in the Budapest Jewish community.

  Although the Hungarian Jewish community had been decimated by the Nazis in the last months of the war, many Jews in the capital had survived without being deported. Budapest hadn’t been emptied of its Jewish population, as was the case with smaller Hungarian cities and towns. A lot of them had remained in hiding. Several Jewish families had even managed to remain intact.

  One of my mother’s cousins heard about us. He came to get us, and together we began the journey back to our hometown of Pecs.

  Back at Auschwitz, Mengele’s experiments claimed their last victim.

  For much of her stay at the camp, Ruthie Rosenbaum had been desperately ill. She had remained alive only because of the relentless efforts of her twin sister, Judith, and their mother. By the time the Russians arrived, she was dying. Hoping to save her, Russian doctors quickly administered powerful medications. But despite their efforts, she died on March 3, 1945, her six-year-old body worn out from the tests and fear, hunger, and pain-and the Russian drugs, which ultimately proved to be lethal.

  Mrs. Rosenbaum and Judith began the long journey to their native Cluj, in Romania. The trip through devastated Eastern Europe, as thousands of other survivors were groping their way home, took months. But mother and daughter both hoped for a happy reunion.

  JUDITH YAGUDAH: When we got to Cluj, there was a list at the train station of the Jews who had returned. From our entire family, only one uncle had made It back. He had learned we were coming, and that only one twin had survived. But he didn’t know which one-me or Ruthie.

  His first question to my poor mother was,

  “Who came back, Judith or Ruthie?”

  We learned from him that most of our family had been killed in the war, that most of the Jews of Cluj had died.

  PETER SMOGYL: We came home only to find there was no home. We quickly learned that not a single Jew from our town had returned: They had all died in the concentration camps.

  My family’s house had been vandalized, our furniture burnt by townspeople or soldiers to keep warm. But I had seen so much destruction that I took the destruction of my own home very matter-of-factly. During our march out of Auschwitz with Twins’ Father, we had gone through a town where there wasn’t a single house still standing. When you see an entire town in ruins, what can you say to the fact that your own little house is no more?

  TWINS’ FATHER: When I finally arrived in Munkacs, I went straight to my old house.

  But I found there were strangers living there. The new owners were scared to see me. You see, they’d simply taken it over after the family was deported. They went out of their way to treat me nicely.

  They even gave me mail I’d received. There were letters from several of the twins, telling me they’d gotten home safely. There were even “reports” on how they’d accompanied their younger charges without any problems.

  Inside the house, I didn’t see very much of our old furniture. Only a big mirror we used to own.

  It was awful-awful-simply awful.

  I stayed in Munkacs exactly one day and one night. Then I ran away. I couldn’t bear to live in my own village anymore.

  The twins who were still at Auschwitz under the Russians’ care or in the monastery at Katowice had only one desire-to get home as quickly as possible and meet up with relatives. Some children set off alone.

  Others found adults willing to accompany them for part of the journey.

  For most,
the long-awaited return home ended in bitter disappointment.

  Nearly all were orphans, many the sole survivors of their entire families, even of their whole village.

  EVA MOZES: For almost a year, we had lived for the moment when we would go home.

  At the monastery, we were told we could be taken to Palestine. But my sister, Miriam, and I wanted to go back to Romania and see who had survived. We thought we would get home and there would be someone to greet us-that someone besides us must have survived the war.

  Because of our adventures riding the streetcars, we knew of a displaced persons’ camp in Katowice where several people we had known at Auschwitz were staying. There, we found the mother of a pair of twin girls who was from our hometown.

  She agreed to come with us to the monastery and sign papers for our release. Together with her daughters, we began the journey home.

  As we approached our old house, I was still hoping against hope that someone would be there. We reached the gate. The house looked neglected. There were tall weeds around it. It did not look at all as I remembered it.

  Only our old dog, Lilly, was still there. It was the only familiar face. I guess the Germans had not deported Jewish dogs.

  It was so different from what we had expected our homecoming to be. I was heartbroken. Miriam and I started running. We were both crying hysterically.

  By the time Mengele’s twins were liberated, the SS doctor himself had made his way to another concentration camp, Gross Rosen, in Poland’s Upper Silesia. Several hundred kilometers from Auschwitz, it promised a temporary reprieve while the Russians advanced. There, Mengele slipped easily into the familiar routine of camp physician.

  At thirty-four, he was a veteran death-camp hand. He made inspection tours of the camp and signed death certificates. Alas, his duties at Gross Rosen included neither experiments nor selections. When it became known the Russians were close to overrunning Gross Rosen, Mengele prepared to vanish again. He left Gross Rosen just before the Russians reached it on February 11, 1945. After Gross Rosen, Mengele’s route is unclear. However, he was spotted by some of his twins in yet another death camp, Mauthausen, in the no-man’s-land of Czechoslovakia.