Customer Reviews

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

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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!

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.

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

A true story of a holocoaust survivor as told to the author, who is a friend of mine. It's her best work.

SURVIVING THE ANGEL OF DEATH has been nominated for the 2010 Rodda Book Award sponsored by the Church and Synagogue Library Association (CSLA), an international organization serving congregational libraries of all faiths. CSLA's Rodda Book Award is named for Dorothy Rodda Sargent, a lifetime member and one of the founders of the organization. This award recognizes a book which exhibits excellence in writing and has contributed significantly to congregational libraries through promotion of spiritual growth. The award is given to books for adults, young adults, and children on a three-year-rotational basis. The 2010 Rodda Book Award focuses on books for teen/young adult readers and this year's winner will be announced at the CSLA annual conference to be held at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Houston, Texas, July 25-27. To learn more about CSLA and the Rodda Book Award go to www.cslainfo.org.

In World War II, there is only one man who could be argued to be more evil than Adolph Hitler -- a Nazi medical doctor who exploiting concentration camp victims in hideous medical experimentation. "Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz" is a memoir reflecting on Eva Mozes Kor and how she and her sister had to struggle for their very lives under the sadistic experiments of Josef Mengele, a man who gained the not-so-flattering title of Angel of Death. A testament to the resilience of a child, "Surviving the Angel of Death" is a fine addition to any Holocaust collection.

Eva and her sister Miriam were selected at the platform at Auschwitz for Mengele's twin experiments. Despite the horrid conditions and terrifying experiments, both Eva and her sister survived the holocaust. Written for young adults, this book does a wonderful job of educating while telling a story. Moving and heartfelt, Eva and Miriam's story is one of never giving up. I believe that any young adult would not only enjoy reading this book but be moved by the difficult subject.

There are many stories from the Holocaust. Each of them pulls at your heart as you hear the firsthand accounts of the horror within the concentration camps. Surviving the Angel of Death: The Story of a Mengele Twin in Auschwitz by Eva Kor and Lisa Rojany Buccieri is the account of a young child's survival under the experimentation of Dr. Mengele. It's a story that will have you holding your child close to you.

Dr. Mengele was notorious for experimenting on the prisoners of Auschwitz. Twins were his main focus though he was not averse to using pregnant women and those that had deformities or unusual physical features. Cutting open those that were still alive, infecting subjects with various diseases and experimenting with drugs was common procedure under Dr. Mengele who became known as the Angel of Death. He wanted to multiple the Aryan race quickly. Twins could be the way to achieve that goal. How were twins created? What made them so unique? How could he manipulate them to create the perfect Aryan? He would do anything including killing twins with various diseases so that he could autopsy them immediately and compare their organs.

This book is a story of Eva and her sister, Miriam. At the age of 10, these young girls were torn from their parents and older sisters that they never saw again. Eva relates how they struggled to survive against diseases, unsanitary conditions, and starvation and managed to find freedom through the Soviet soldiers. But her story goes further than that into her teenage years and as a young wife and mother in America. She dives into the subject of forgiveness of the doctors that experimented on her, including Dr. Mengele, forgiving her parents for not protecting them, and forgiving herself for harboring resentment.

This was a quick read and is designed for children ages 12 and up. I found myself in tears reading certain passages and thought of how horrible it would be if I had lost my children and had them under the hand of a monster who experimented on their bodies. This is a book that you need to read if you have any interest in the Holocaust. It would be a great resource for anyone in middle school and high school to get a firsthand account of what it was like to live in a Nazi concentration camp.

Note: This book was supplied to me by the publisher upon my request.

Eva Kor writes a heartfelt account of her time of suffering in Auschwitz. This book is well worth the read. It is one of those books that should be included in school curriculums.

I believe the story to be well written. The vocabulary used is not to difficult for the middle grades. Lisa did a phenomenal job translating this book. The length of the book I feel is just right. It provides enough details without being overly graphic. I do not want to say that I enjoyed this book as it is difficult to enjoy reading something so horrifying. I did find it an interesting testimony of love, strength and determination to survive against all odds. With the message that Eva spreads we have a book that could have left us depressed but instead leaves us a message of hope. It is an astounding testimony that dreams can come true if we never give up and that forgiveness does not mean forgetting. It means moving forward in love and remembering for peace.
* I received this book for review. I received no compensation for this review. All opinions expressed are my own.*
** Complete review is on my blog.**