We’re releasing this video interview with Richard Lowy, author of “Kalman & Leopold – Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz” and son of Leopold Lowy, on Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day – for a reason.

While the January liberation of Auschwitz has become widely recognized internationally, Yom HaShoah remains a distinctly Jewish day of remembrance with deep historical significance.

It is also our 30th anniversary of Remember.org, preserving and sharing the stories of survivors and their children.

Today, on this solemn day of memory and reflection, we remember the extraordinary journey of Kalman and Leopold – two individuals who exemplify what surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz truly meant.

When I first encountered their story, narrated to Richard K. Lowy, I was struck by its understated power.

Unlike many Holocaust narratives that have entered our collective consciousness through dramatized films and emotional retellings, this account offers something different – a quiet, clear-eyed testimony of two individuals whose paths crossed in one of history’s darkest corners.

Two Hungarian Boys, Two Sets of Twins

Kalman and Leopold were both Hungarian Jews, each born as part of a twin pair. When the Nazi occupation of Hungary began in March 1944, neither knew that their status as twins would both endanger and save them.

The Hungarian deportations happened with stunning efficiency – within weeks, entire communities that had existed for centuries were emptied.

Their residents were packed onto trains bound for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where most deportees faced immediate selection upon arrival.

Those deemed unfit for labor – the elderly, young children, pregnant women, the visibly ill – were sent directly to the gas chambers.

But twins were set aside for a different purpose, one that would bring Kalman and Leopold together.

Surviving Mengele’s “Scientific” Interest

Dr. Josef Mengele had secured for himself a unique position at Auschwitz. While functioning as a camp doctor who participated in selections, he also ran what amounted to a personal research laboratory focused primarily on twins.

What’s often overlooked in discussions of Mengele is that he wasn’t a scientific outlier, but rather the product of a respected academic lineage.

The eugenics movement that shaped his research began in earnest in the 1880s with Sir Francis Galton, Darwin’s cousin, who coined the term “eugenics” and advocated for “improving” human populations through selective breeding.

By the early 20th century, eugenics had gained scientific legitimacy across Europe and the United States, with research institutes, academic journals, and even laws supporting its principles.

Mengele studied under Dr. Otmar von Verschuer at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt, who in turn had studied under Eugen Fischer, one of Germany’s leading racial anthropologists.

Fischer’s 1913 studies on mixed-race populations in German Southwest Africa provided a scientific veneer for theories of racial hierarchy decades before the Third Reich.

This academic pedigree gave Mengele’s work at Auschwitz a façade of scientific legitimacy that was recognized within German scientific circles of the time.

Far from being a lone madman, Mengele represented the logical, horrific endpoint of ideas that had been developing in respected academic settings for decades.

In our conversations with Holocaust educators, we’ve found that surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz remains one of the less thoroughly documented aspects of the Holocaust.

This makes firsthand accounts like that of Kalman and Leopold particularly valuable to our historical understanding.

As Leopold matter-of-factly noted in his conversations with his son Richard, he sometimes called Mengele the “Angel of Auschwitz” – not out of any reverence, but because being selected for Mengele’s experiments meant not being sent immediately to the gas chambers.

The reality of these experiments was far from angelic. Twins in Mengele’s program endured regular blood draws, injections of unknown substances, measurements of every physical feature, and comparative studies of their reactions to diseases.

Finding Each Other

What makes the story of Kalman and Leopold unique is that they weren’t related to each other – they each had their own twin siblings.

They were strangers who met through the cruel circumstance of Mengele’s twin program.

In the dehumanizing environment of Auschwitz, where prisoners were reduced to numbers and every aspect of life was designed to break human connection, they formed a bond that would endure for decades.

Their day-to-day survival wasn’t marked by dramatic acts of resistance.

Instead, it consisted of small, consistent gestures of mutual support – sharing food, warning of dangers, providing a moment of distraction through conversation or humor.

When students ask what helped people survive the camps, often these ordinary but crucial human connections provided reasons to continue when all logical reasons were stripped away.

Separation and Rediscovery

When liberation came in January 1945, Kalman and Leopold lost track of each other amid the chaos of the war’s end.

The postwar years presented their own challenges – displacement, immigration restrictions, the struggle to rebuild lives from nothing, and the often impossible task of locating lost family and friends across a transformed Europe.

For 56 years, they lived separate lives, each carrying memories of their time in Auschwitz and of each other. The odds against their ever reconnecting seemed insurmountable.

Yet through an almost impossible series of coincidences – the airing of a documentary called “Leo’s Journey” about Leopold Lowy’s life – they found each other again after more than half a century.

Their reunion bridges not just physical distance but the psychological expanse of decades lived in the aftermath of trauma.

Why This Account of Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz Matters Now

When teaching the Holocaust to today’s students, we often struggle with how to present the enormity of the event without overwhelming.

Individual stories like that of Kalman and Leopold offer a way in – they allow us to understand the broader historical context through the experiences of real people who lived through it.

Their account of surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz is particularly valuable because so few of his twin subjects have shared their stories.

Most of Mengele’s subjects did not survive the war, and many who did found it difficult to speak about their experiences.

The matter-of-fact way that Kalman and Leopold describe what happened to them – without sensationalism or melodrama – makes their testimony all the more powerful as a teaching tool.

For educators working with middle and high school students, “Kalman & Leopold – Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz” provides an entry point to discuss not only the historical facts of the Holocaust but also more universal themes.

The story also offers a counterpoint to the more commonly taught narrative of Anne Frank.

While her diary ends with arrest, Kalman and Leopold’s story continues through liberation, separation, and eventual reunion.

Beyond Victimhood

Perhaps most importantly, this book presents Kalman and Leopold not simply as victims, but as complete human beings who experienced one of history’s greatest atrocities and somehow maintained their humanity. Their story isn’t told with the swelling music and dramatic close-ups of a Hollywood film, but with the quiet dignity of lived experience.

In my conversations with Holocaust survivors over the years, I’ve often been struck by their pragmatism and lack of self-dramatization when discussing their experiences. The horrors they witnessed need no embellishment, and their survival required a focus on the practical rather than the emotional.

“Kalman & Leopold – Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz” captures this quality, making it an authentic and valuable addition to Holocaust literature. For educators, researchers, students, and anyone seeking to understand this chapter of history through the lens of personal experience, this book offers a rare glimpse into an aspect of the Holocaust that few survivors have documented.

It stands as testimony not only to what happened, but to the enduring connections that helped two young men survive – and reconnect against all odds many decades later.

“Kalman & Leopold – Surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz” is available for educational institutions and can be incorporated into Holocaust studies curricula for high school and university-level courses. This rare testimony of surviving Mengele’s Auschwitz provides educators with a valuable primary source that brings history to life through authentic personal experience.