In My Brother's Image: Twin Brothers Separated by Faith after the Holocaust [Paperback]

Eugene L. Pogany (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2, 2001

Eugene Pogany's father and uncle, identical twins, were born in Hungary of Jewish parents but raised by them as devout Catholic converts until World War II unraveled their family. Miklos, the author's father, was sent to Bergen-Belsen, a hell that led him to denounce Christian passivity in the face of the Holocaust and return to the Judaism of his birth. Gyorgy, a Catholic priest, was sheltered from the war in an Italian monastery by the renowned and saintly friar Padre Pio. Their mother, also interned as a Jew, walked into the Auschwitz gas chamber holding a crucifix to her breast.

In My Brother's Image eloquently portrays how the Holocaust destroyed these brothers' close childhood bond. Each believing the other a traitor to their family's faith, they remained estranged even after emigrating to America, where they lived and worked only miles from each other. Filled with extraordinary scenes such as Miklos's Passover celebration with fellow prisoners in the camp, this tragic memoir encapsulates the drama of a family torn apart by the historical rupture between Jews and Catholics--even as it trains a wider, impartial lens on its causes and on the history of Hungary's Jews.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here is an eloquent memoir of a family ripped apart by the Holocaust. Born into a Jewish family, Pog ny's grandfather, B?la, converted to Roman Catholicism before WWI so he could work in the Hungarian civil service. A few years later, his wife, Gabriella, and their six-year-old twin sons, Mikl?s (the author's father) and Gyuri, were also baptized as Catholics. Gabriella took her new religion more seriously than her husband and was delighted when Gyuri became a priest. At the outbreak of WWII, he was in Italy living with Padre Poi, a noted Catholic mystic, and he remained there for the duration of the war. Initially, their status as converts protected Gabriella and Mikl?s (B?la died in 1943) from the Nazis, but not for longAMikl?s was interned in Bergen-Belsen and Gabriella died at Auschwitz. After the war, Mikl?s settled with his wife in the U.S., where, revolted by the passivity of Christians during the Holocaust, he returned to Judaism. A few years later, his brother also arrived in the U.S. and became a parish priest in New Jersey. But as Pog ny, a clinical psychologist, movingly explains, the war created an unbridgeable emotional gulf between the brothers: Mikl?s couldn't forgive Gyuri, who could not, or would not, acknowledge the savageness of the persecution of the Jews, not only by the Nazis, but by Hungarian Christians as well. Gyuri, in turn, considered Mikl?s's return to Judaism to be a betrayal. Pog ny deftly conveys the power of the brothers' feelings as he relates this tragic story. Author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Primarily an account of the author's Hungarian grandparents between 1910 and 1945, this Holocaust survivors' story brings the profound emotional effects of the trauma to life. Although from secular Jewish families, they converted to Roman Catholicism and raised their three children in that faith. Nevertheless, they were all regarded by their neighbors as Jews during the 1930s and 1940s and were treated accordingly. The couple's twin sons had very different experiences of the Holocaust. One, who had been ordained a priest, was sheltered in a southern Italian friary during the war and always refused to believe that the leaders of his Church could have failed to combat the horror. The other (the author's father) had remained in Hungary and saw most of his family transported to concentration camps; he later turned to secular Judaism. Both brothers immigrated to America, but their different experiences of the Holocaust drove a permanent wedge between them. This is also the story of the author's attempts to learn about his family, since much was not discussed when he was a child. Based primarily on interviews and conversations, this moving tale of faith and acceptance belongs in most general collections.AMarcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (October 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0141002247
• ISBN-13: 978-0141002248
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #464,973 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #87 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Historical > Holocaust

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Powerful, Beautifully Written Book, November 19, 2000

By 

Lewis Janowsky (Newport Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In My Brother's Image (Hardcover)

While probably every survivor of the holocaust has a unique and compelling story to tell about the experience of the holocaust, the author of In My Brother's Image, who is the son of a survior, has written a fascinating account about the impact of the holocaust on the relationship between his father, and uncle, a Jew who became a priest.

From the outset of the book, I was connected with the characters on an emotional level, notwithstanding the fact that the book is not a work of fiction. The historical back drop of Jewish life in Hungary from the early 20th century through the holocaust was enlightening in many respects. While there is no shortage of books about the Jewish community in Germany and Jews in Poland prior to the World War II, this book captures the life of the Hungarian Jewish community in particular. Until I read this book, I had no idea about the significant number of Hungarian Jews who converted to Catholicism. The Jews of Berlin were not unlike the Jews of Budapest, highly assimilated. non-observant etc. The book is so powerful because it deals with so many emotional issues through the very real lives of the author's family: the silence of the Catholic church in Hungary during the holocaust, the relationship between the Jews who converted to Catholicism and their fellow Jews, the "lesson" from the holocaust that it is impossible for a Jew to take on another religion or identity,no matter what efforts a Jew may take to do so, how can one believe in God after experiencing the holocaust etc.

There is a personal and human element to this book that sets it apart. It is a literary "docudrama," if you will, that I could not put down reading; I found it to be compelling on so many different levels.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating New Book, January 10, 2001

By 

Nancy L. Segal "nsegal" (Fullerton, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: In My Brother's Image (Hardcover)

This book is riveting in a way that a novel never could be. We follow a real family's struggle to survive the appalling hostilities and unspeakable tragedies to which Hungary's Jewish citizens were subjected in the years prior to and during World War II. Pogany's unique work is a sensitive and insightful portrayal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary times. It is also a moving account of a child's desire to understand the people and events that shaped the lives of his grandparents, his parents, his uncle, his brother and sister and himself.

Conversion to Catholicism was chosen by some Jewish people as a means to circumvent their surrounding atrocities. (This ultimately proved otherwise and Jews who converted were treated as brutally as those who did not.) Pogany's father and uncle (identical twins) followed their parents' route to the Catholic church, with one brother becoming a priest and the other eventually rediscovering his Jewish roots. The psychological interplay of these identical twins is marvelously revealed. The striking similarities, amazing differences and social connection of these twins will captivate and challenge everyone. Their life histories cannot help but deepen our fascination with how we come to be who we are.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I've met the author!, January 4, 2005

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In My Brother's Image: Twin Brothers Separated by Faith after the Holocaust (Paperback)

I remember reading about this real-life story a number of years before this book was actually published; I still have the clipped article from the Boston Globe in one of my scrapbooks. Then, when I was a student at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Mr. Pogany came to our Hillel one Friday night and after services and dinner read from his book and spoke to us about the story behind it. Having met the author makes reading a book even better!

I've very interested in what befell Hungarian Jewry during WWII, possibly because it's so painful and haunting to realise that they were the last nation to be invaded by the Nazis, the final Jewish community in Europe still pretty much fully intact, but for the men who had been drafted into labour battalions or sent off to work camps several years earlier. It's an even more interesting and unique story because the family became Catholics shortly after WWI ended, and they were very devout, so much so that the author's uncle Gyuri eventually became a priest, and his father, Miklós, had seriously contemplated becoming one too. Because of a painful health condition, Gyuri got permission to recover his health in Italy, which was a stroke of luck, since he got out before things really began getting worse and worse, even before the arrival of the Nazis. Though the twins' mother was deported and murdered, the rest of the family did not live in the small town she did, and because they were in Budapest did not suffer the fate of the other Hungarian Jews in smaller towns and cities, who were packed into ghettos and then deported. The Budapest Ghetto wasn't erected until very late in the War, and when Miklós and his wife Muci (also a distant cousin of his) were finally deported, they were "only" taken to Bergen-Belsen as opposed to one of the death camps in Poland like the majority of their Hungarian co-religionists had been.

Because he was tucked away safely in Italy, a place which only lost about 19% of its prewar Jewish population, in the care of the holy mystic Padre Pio, Gyuri was not subject to anything like his twin brother and the rest of their family were. He could never understand why his beloved twin had lost faith in Catholicism and Christianity, how he could go back to Judaism, the religion they'd left as small boys and had never even really been very much of a part of in their early years before they all converted. Many people both then and now have made apologies for the collaboration, either active or through silent complicity, of ordinary citizens in allowing the Shoah to take place, much like Gyuri did, but Miklós and Muci had seen firsthand what had happened to them. Despite nearly thirty years of being a good Catholic, he was not protected from even the "good" labour brigade for converts. In the eyes of the Nazis and ordinary Hungarians, his family were still Jewish. The local parish priest arranged for their mother Gabriella to be taken from the ghetto to his church every day to hear Mass before she was deported, but he still didn't try to hide her or protect her from deportation. This book explores the complex relationship between not only the brothers who were separated by faith but also how the Church failed to protect its members, all members, and to speak out against what was going on, and how something of such a large scale could never have happened without the kind of hatred and collaboration from the common folk that the Poganies saw breaking through the surface after the Nazis and Hungarian fascists came to power.