Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz [Hardcover]

Eva Kor (Author), Lisa Rojany Buccieri (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2009

Eva Mozes Kor was 10 years old when she arrived in Auschwitz. While her parents and two older sisters were taken to the gas chambers, she and her twin, Miriam, were herded into the care of the man known as the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele's twins were granted the privileges of keeping their own clothes and hair, but they were also subjected to sadistic medical experiments and forced to fight daily for their own survival, as most of the twins died as a result of the experiements or from the disease and hunger pervasive in the camp. In a narrative told with emotion and restraint, readers will learn of a child's endurance and survival in the face of truly extraordinary evil. The book also includes an epilogue on Eva's recovery from this experience and her remarkable decision to publicly forgive the Nazis. Through her museum and her lectures, she has dedicated her life to giving testimony on the Holocaust, providing a message of hope for people who have suffered, and working toward goals of forgiveness, peace, and the elimination of hatred and prejudice in the world.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 6 Up—Kor relates memories of life in the village of Portz, Transylvania (Romania), where she was raised on a large farm, "never aware of the anti-Semitism [that pervaded the country] until 1940, when the Hungarian army came." Six-year-old Eva and her identical twin, Miriam, the only Jewish children in their small mixed-grade classroom, suddenly found themselves taunted and beaten by once-friendly classmates. At 10 years of age, the twins and their family were forced to live among seven thousand other Jews in a fenced-in field, protected from the elements only by tents made of their own blankets and sheets and by the clothes on their backs. They were soon taken on a four-day train ride to Auschwitz, standing all the way, with no food or drink. There the sisters were "selected" to be victims of Dr. Josef Mengele's medical "research." Eva's amazing fortitude and her desire to protect her sister helped her to survive a horrible disease brought on by an injection. Both twins endured a terrifying daylong separation during a forced march between camps; the remaining Auschwitz prisoners were liberated by Soviet soldiers, and the girls found a way to go home in search of family survivors. Kor's straightforward first-person narrative is unusual because it details life in the concentration camp through the eyes of a child who lived among children. In an eight-page epilogue, the author talks about her discovery, 50 years after liberation, of the importance of forgiveness ("a seed for peace"), and of what she has done to teach young people the positive lessons of life garnered from her horrific experiences.—Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH
(c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Review

"This book is an essential purchase for libraries with a Holocaust collection, but it would also be a valuable addition to any library with young impressionable readers." — VOYA

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 141 pages
• Publisher: Tanglewood Press; 1st edition (October 14, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1933718285
• ISBN-13: 978-1933718286
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #173,782 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #67 in Books > Science & Math > Experiments, Instruments & Measurement > Experiments & Projects

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard topic deftly handled, October 8, 2009

By 

Mary Marks (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz (Hardcover)

This is a book that could easily win a Newbery Medal. The difficult subject matter was presented with sensitivity and grace.

The temptation in writing a book about children in the Holocaust would be to give in to righteous indignation and melodrama. Instead, the authors focus on the remarkable character of Eva, a twin who was determined to keep herself and her sister alive, even while undergoing severe physical abuse. The reader learns what it felt like to be a Jewish girl in a deadly environment, but is not overwhelmed by despair. We admire Eva as she finds numerous ways to survive, relying on unusual strength, determination, and luck.

Although it would be understandable, there is never a hint of the overriding bitterness one might expect to hear from a survivor. Instead, the reader comes away with the feeling that even in the midst of the unspeakable, people can survive and go on to live satisfying lives.

I think Rojany-Buccieri did an outstanding job of taking Kor's memories and translating them into a story that will fascinate junior readers. Bravo!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking, but uplifting. A must-read story!, August 7, 2011

By 

Heidi - See all my reviews

This review is from: Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz (Hardcover)

Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz is adapted from Eva Mozes Kor's self-published memoir, Echoes From Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele's Twins, The Story Of Eva And Miriam Mozes. This first-person account is intended for readers in grade six and up.

On January 31, 1934, Eva and Miriam Mozes entered the world as identical twin sisters. The twin girls, along with their parents and older sisters Edit and Aliz, lived in the village of Portz in Transylvania, Romania. As the only Jewish family in the community, they increasingly became more and more aware of the growing anti-Semitism pervading the culture. When Eva and her sister began school in 1940, two new teachers were brought into the city by the Nazis. With them, they brought books containing caricatures of Jews and propaganda films. Their classmates began to see them as "Dirty Jews" and turned against them. Things progressively got worse until finally, in 1943, their father decided it was time to try to leave their home and escape to the safety of Romania. Unfortunately, they were too late. The Hungarian Nazi youth had been stationed outside their home to make sure they did not escape.

The year that Eva and Miriam turned ten, they, along with the rest of their family, were transported in a cattle car to Auschwitz. Dressed identically since birth, the girls were quickly identified in their matching dresses. With a flick of Dr. Mengele's baton, they were separated from the rest of their family. Because they were identical twins, they were of particular interest to Dr. Mengele. Dr. Mengele wanted to learn how to create perfect Aryan babies and interred twins, along with giants, dwarfs, the handicapped and gypsies became his human guinea pigs. Eva, the stronger of the twins in spirit, refused to give in to the Nazis. She realized from the beginning that she must survive so that her sister is able to survive. Subjected to horrific experiments and left for dead, Eva will not let her sister down. They will survive Auschwitz together.

In the epilogue, we learn that Eva has forgiven Dr. Mengele. She explains that anger and hatred are seeds of war, while forgiveness is the seed for peace. 1n 1984, Eva and her sister Miriam founded CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors).

I feel that this book is truly remarkable. The atrocities of WWII are difficult to explain to younger individuals, but the particular atrocities of Dr. Mengele are that much more difficult. The authors did an amazing job at toning down the subject matter enough to allow a younger audience to learn from Eva's experience. I read this book with my 10-year-old daughter and although some parts of the book brought tears of sadness to both our eyes, we also shed tears of relief and admiration for this amazing woman and her sister. Although I've read many other books about WWII, I still learned from this book, as did my daughter.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surviving the Angel of Death, April 13, 2010

By 

Jewish Book World Magazine (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz (Hardcover)

Eva and Miriam Mozes were just 10 years old when their family was sent to Auschwitz. When their parents and older sisters were sent to the gas chambers, their lives were spared and because they were twins, they became subjects of Dr. Josef Mengele's experiments. In Surviving the Angel of Death, Eva recounts the harrowing ordeals she and Miriam faced. She provides plenty of detail, though there are gaps she cannot fill in - for example, she was deliberately infected with a disease Mengele expected to be fatal so that he could kill Miriam when Eva died and compare the healthy body to the diseased one. She survived, though she still does not know what illness he gave her. Even after the camp was liberated, Eva and Miriam did not have an easy time. They eventually went to Israel, and then to America. Eva describes her difficult early years in Indiana and the anti-Semitism she faced. In 1984, Eva and Miriam founded a support group for people who had been victims of Mengele's sadistic experiments, and in 1995 Eva opened a Holocaust museum in Terre Haute, Indiana. (She is also known as the subject of a recent controversial documentary entitled "Forgiving Dr. Mengele" which highlights her ideas about justice, revenge and the possibility of healing through forgiveness.) Kor and Buccieri include maps to help readers place the events and photos to help make the people seem more real. Though painful to read, Surviving the Angel of Death provides an informative first-hand account of the harrowing experiences of one set of twins at Auschwitz. For ages 14 and up. Marci Bloch