Yehudit and Lia Csengeri
Yehudit and Lia Csengeri
Holocaust survivors, the twins of Auschwitz.
“When we arrived at Auschwitz, we were less than seven years old, and it was a sight that we will never forget.
We didn’t realize it in real time, but we entered 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 thought she had nothing to lose, and so she said we were twins. We were taken to the 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 we be taken for medical experiments and if we would survive them. We saw that most of the twins didn’t come back together, and that frightened us very much. 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 risked herself by sneaking into our bracket and bringing us the little food she had. She would bathe us even in the snow and comb our hair so we won’t get lice, 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 an injection that made her black out 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 brighter 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 through thick and thin and will do everything in their power to get you out, even from the jaws of hell.”