Yehudit and Lea Csengeri
“When we arrived at Auschwitz we were only seven years old and it was a sight that we will never forget.
We didn’t realize it in real-time but we entered into the gates of Hell. Loud shouts in German, SS soldiers holding attack dogs that wouldn’t stop barking, thousands of terrified people, and the feeling of great calamity.
From all of the chaos around us, our mother heard someone shouting in german ‘Zwillinge’ (twins in german) and didn’t really know what to do. She asked people around her if it’s worthwhile to say she has twins with her and the answer was that she has nothing to lose. We were taken to Twins block and in an instant, we were transformed from Humans beings to the guinea pigs of the “death angel” of Auschwitz, Dr. Josef Mengele.
Mengele believed that if he could unlock the secrets of heredity he would be able to help German women to produce Aryan twins who were sure to be blond and blue-eyed, and by doing that the future of the Nazi regime could be saved.
We lived under constant anxiety because we never knew when will be taken to medical experiments and if will ever survive them. We saw that most of the twins didn’t come back together so we held hands constantly and even slept on the same bunk which helped us to lower the constant existential anxiety we faced.
We survived Auschwitz mainly because of our mother who was our guardian angel. She would have risked death by Sneaking into our shed and bringing us the little food she had. She would bathe us even in the snow and comb our hair with a thick comb so we won’t get Pediculus – a disease that in Auschwitz could have sent you to the gas chambers. She was so brave that once while we were subjected to a cruel experiment she barged into the laboratory and begged Mengele to stop it. In response, Mengele gave her a shot that made her blackout for two weeks.
The fact that we had one another is one of the things that helped us survive. our connection is almost mystical and the world is much more pink (optimistic?) when we are together. For us, Auschwitz taught us that family is the most important thing in life. These are the people that will stick by you in fire or water (probably there is a better expression for this) and these are the people that will do everything in their power to get you out, even from the jaws of hell.”