History lives in silence, so much so that a Mengele Auschwitz firsthand account is rare, and precious.
For decades, Holocaust survivors like Richard Lowy’s father kept their experiences locked away, carrying unimaginable trauma without burdening their children with the horrors they had witnessed.
As Richard recounts,
“Father had the numbers on his arms, and we all knew that he survived World War Two, but we had no idea.”
It wasn’t until after his twin sister Miriam’s death in 1999 that Leopold Lowy finally agreed to share his story—the story of being a Mengele twin at Auschwitz, where he and Kalman witnessed and survived one of history’s darkest chapters.
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In this powerful excerpt, we witness October 7, 1944, through the eyes of two teenage boys who survived Dr. Josef Mengele’s cruel experiments.
Remember.org is proud to present this exclusive chapter from “Kalman and Leopold: Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz,” a testament to human resilience, with a Mengele Auschwitz firsthand account bearing witness. As fewer survivors remain with us each year, these firsthand accounts become ever more precious in our commitment to remember—and to ensure such atrocities are never repeated.
The following excerpt is printed with permission from Richard K. Lowy.
Find more learning tools at their site, where you can reach the author.
All Rights Reserved. © 2025 Richard K. Lowy
Kalman
Saturday, October 7, 1944: The uprising
The day grow worse, and so do our physical conditions. The weather is deteriorating. In this first week of October, people are dying faster. Our lives mean less. Selections are more frequent. Instead of twice a month, they’re now once a week. The machine is speeding up.
We continue on with another miserable routine workday in the guard shack. I’m busy with a pair of army boots and Lipa is wiping the floor around the coal stove in the duty room. He’s at the front and I’m in the last bedroom at the end of the shack.
In the middle of our workday there is a tremendous explosion. The whole guard shack shudders.
I run into the corridor and Lipa is running towards me. We hunch together in the corridor.
We look at each other and realize the explosion came from behind the guard shack, the crematorium. A few moments later we hear the rapid rat-tat-tat of small-arms fire. Jawohl, Fritz, Müeller, and the other guards understand immediately, grabbing their guns and running out the door.
On his way out, Red-Nose yells, “Verschwinde! Verschwinde von hier! [Get the hell out of here!]” and they’re gone.
We’re left alone.
Lipa grabs me by the collar, says, “Come,” and pulls me outside around to the back, cautioning me, “Be careful of the fence.” We stand between the electrified fence and the guard shack in awe and watch.
It’s total mayhem.
Crematorium IV is on fire, smoke is billowing out, the whole thing is an enormous heap of rubble. Small flames sprout out, there is a lot of gunfire, people are running everywhere, machine guns fire from the distant guard tower, it’s madness. We watch as a group of pajamas rush out of the building, overtaking several guards.
This is an uprising.
The Germans are surprised.
Someone in the crematorium must’ve had the wherewithal to say, Look, we’re going to die very soon. Let’s do something against these people.
Whoever arrives to Auschwitz is already a psychologically dismantled person. Their worlds are disrupted and churned up during the several stages of arrival: the ordinances, ghettos, starvation, dehumanization, and the insufferable transports. Uprisings may have occurred in the minds of a few indomitable souls, but the other 99.9 percent are the majority, and they are submissive souls.
Uncle Lajos told me of this group, the Sonderkommandos, a special unit of some comparatively better-fed Jews whose job it is to drag the bodies out of the gas chambers and put them into the ovens. Some had to do this to their own parents, their own children.
Then they had to clean the ash created by the bodies out of the ovens. I’ve heard rumours the Sonderkommandos are liquidated every quarter—they know too much. The Germans call them Geheimnisträger, the bearers of secrets. They work in the heart of the machine and are separated from the main population, the rumours insist. From their point of view, and wisely so, the German command cannot afford any of these groups to remain in the job more than a few months, lest the secrets of Birkenau get out to the world.
Several minutes later a host of military trucks comes tearing up the road and stops right in front of us. Soldiers jump down and line up. One yells orders and then, firearms drawn, they set off toward Crematorium IV. Within minutes the large group of soldiers is shooting back, trying to quell this resistance. Lipa and I—two little mice, forgotten by everyone— stand between the electrified fence and the guard shack and watch.
No one is looking at us. They have more urgent things to worry about. Another explosion tears an opening in the electrified fence. Sparks fly and pajamas race out, running toward the woods.
Soldiers chase after them, machine guns in hand, firing left, right and center. It looks completely mad. Undirected. Guards from the distant tower continue raining down fire with their machine guns, shooting at anything that moves.
A fair amount of time later, when the place is full of guards and soldiers, the firing stops and everybody who could be caught is killed.
There’s no stopping and asking questions; any running pajama is shot. Bodies lie everywhere. It looks like they all died, but not before they blew up Crematorium IV and forced the killing machine to stop.91 It is a small dent in this seemingly unstoppable machine.
After the uproar winds down, we walk back into our workplace. Shortly thereafter our six hosts return, all very serious, and Jawohl directs them, “Resume your positions.”
He looks at us and says, “No more work. Get lost.” We stand at attention. “Jawohl!”
Collecting our bits and pieces from the storage room, Lipa and I leave and walk back to our barrack. It’s rare we return in the middle of the day. As soon as we enter, everybody descends on us. Now we are the source of information.
We’re bombarded with questions in seven languages—Hungarian, Czech, Greek, Polish, Russian, Yiddish, and German. “Here, talk to me. What happened? What did you see?”
Everyone wants to know. They could hear but not see what was going on outside the barrack. We can’t report much, but what we do is infinitely more than what anyone else saw. We tell them the Sonderkommandos rebelled and blew up the crematorium, there was a gun fight, and most of them died. Those who understand and speak multiple languages start translating to others. Fear rips through the barrack. We all know someone will pay the price for the Sonderkommandos’ actions.
Footnote
On October 7, 1944, Jews in the Sonderkommando at Auschwitz-Birkenau organized the biggest and most spectacular mutiny and escape attempt of the camp’s history. They set fire to one of the crematoria, causing serious damage, and attacked SS men in the vicinity.
Some of the prisoners escaped through the fence and reached the outside, but the SS managed to pursue and surround them, murdering all. A total of approximately two hundred fifty Jews died fighting. A few SS were killed and a number more wounded.
After several minutes, the kapo barks, “That’s it, back to your bunks!” I look around and Lipa’s already gone.
Returning to my bunk, Uncle Lajos is waiting for me and quietly says, “Sit. Now tell me what happened. What did you see?”
I report to him in as much detail as I can. We’re anxious about what will come as a result. By late afternoon the barrack returns to its normal affairs. Uncle Lajos and I sit on the bunk and nibble yesterday’s rations.
Leopold
Saturday, October 7, 1944: The uprising
I’m working in the guard shack when there’s a huge explosion outside, followed by shooting and hollering. The guards run out; I follow to see what’s happening.
Fighting has broken out between the prisoners and the guards. About a hundred and eighty young men called Sonderkommandos are assigned to the crematoria. I understand they do the gassing and load the ovens. They knew when they were assigned this detail that it was a death sentence. They know too much, see too much. Rumours say the Germans burn these guys every four months so there are no eyewitnesses to the internal workings of the crematoria. The Germans can’t take a chance of even one of them escaping.
The Sonderkommandos have overpowered their guards. It’s an uprising. A few guards are killed and some Sonderkommandos take their uniforms. Truckloads of soldiers start arriving with machine guns. The Sonderkommandos don’t have a chance. There’s no point of even considering a win—it’s a losing situation.
After the uprising, our guards come back. There’s no more work for us today, and they send us back to our barrack.
Later in the afternoon, I hear the kapo call out, “A1295,” which is unusual. If I’m going for a medical check, it’s always been in the morning. I’m taken by a Red Cross van to Crematorium II and into a big medical room with two large stone tables with drains for blood. I remember the rumour of the dissections.
There’s no discussion, no notice.
I’m cleaned up and laid out on one of the tables.
On the other, already lying down, is an SS guard.
He must have been injured in the uprising, brought here for medical treatment.
A doctor takes my arm and puts a needle with a tube in me. The other end of this tube also has a needle and is put into the SS. They start transferring my blood. Lying here I’m scared, not batting an eyelash, getting weaker, shaking, so frightened. Nothing is said to me.
For over an hour they drain me dry to save his life. I don’t see the SS guard’s face. He doesn’t see mine. Just two tables, side by side with two tubes, me to him.
When there’s no more to give, they take the tubes out. I am so weak I can’t get off the table. I’m picked up and carried out to the van then literally dropped in front of my barrack with an extra piece of bread. I wonder if I’m going to die right here.
Barely alive, I crawl into the barrack. Some of the other twins help me to my bunk.
I never know what the day will bring, if I will be returned. If I’ll be brought back with a limb missing, with something done to me. I don’t know when a real experiment will happen, when I’ll be harmed physically, and that will be it.
The following excerpt is printed with permission from Richard K. Lowy.
Find more learning tools at their site, where you can reach the author.
All Rights Reserved. © 2025 Richard K. Lowy
In this powerful excerpt, we witness October 7, 1944, through the eyes of two teenage boys – Mengele Auschwitz firsthand accounts – who survived Mengele’s cruel experiments.
Remember.org is proud to present this exclusive chapter from “Kalman and Leopold: Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz,” a testament to human resilience and the vital importance of bearing witness. As fewer survivors remain with us each year, these firsthand accounts become ever more precious in our commitment to remember—and to ensure such atrocities are never repeated.
Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz: The Story of Kalman and Leopold
