DEKEL, LUCETTE MATALON LAGNADO SHEILA COHN Read Free Page A

Alex’s hunt to find Mengele, I could no longer ignore the major theme of his life.
    “Live now,” I had urged him. “Remove that tattooed reminder from your arm,” I begged. “Remove my arm,” was Alex’s response. Would I have married him if I had known how his life would be consumed by this obsession?
    Yes, I know I would have.
    That fateful summer of 1983, we were planning to go to Israel, where a high-ranking intelligence contact had promised Alex access to Israel’s file on Mengele. Before that, the man arrived in New York in June, and when Alex returned home after meeting his plane, I noticed he was distracted, talking of many things but not about Mengele. Nor was he feeling well. He brushed aside my pleadings to go to the hospital when he complained of pain in his left arm. His lack of concern for his own well-being was irresponsible but typical. He always felt immune from the ravages of time and fate-after Auschwitz, what else could happen to him?
    When Alex died suddenly after suffering a massive stroke and heart attack, I realized retrospectively what his contact must have told him that night; what the Israeli government already knew: Josef Mengele was dead. I could not help but feel that the hunted had finally caught up with the hunter. This knowledge surely must have broken Alex’s heart, dissolved his resolve to live.
    after Alex’s death, I resolved to carry on his mission. I met Lucette Lagnado, whose own interest in Mengele and his child victims paralleled Alex’s. Many events took place in the course of writing this book, including the discovery of Mengele’s remains on June 21, 1985-two years to the day after Alex’s funeral. Their destinies would remain inextricably intertwined in death as they had been in life.
    “I am sad and heartbroken,” Elie Wiesel had telegraphed me from Washington when He heard of Alex’s passing. “He was one of our most devoted companions. Few have endured his agony. Few have lived with it as deeply.
    For myself and all the members of the United States Holocaust Council, we shall always remember him.” As I sorted through Alex’s papers to gather material for this book, I came across this fragment repeated throughout his notes: Tell your children of it, And let your children tell their children, And their children another generation.
    -Joel 1:3 It is this spirit that has guided me in completing his work.
    -SHEILA CoHN DEKEL New York City TwINS FATHER: Born 1915 in Budapest, Hungary. Real name: Zyl Spiegel. Family moved to Munkaks, Czechoslovakia. Was twenty nine years old when he and twin sister, Magda, were deported to Auschwitz. Assigned by Dr. Mengele to be in charge of the twin boys. The children called him
    “Zvilingefater” or “Twins’ Father.”
    MAGDA SPIEGEL: Twin sister of Zyl Spiegel. Married with a seven-year-old son when deported to death camp. Worked as Mengele’s cleaning woman.
    HEDVAH AND LEAH STERN: Identical twins. Born in Hungary in 1931. Age thirteen and a half when sent to Auschwitz with their mother. The Stern sisters, as they became known in the camp, are virtually indistinguishable from one another. They speak in one voice, agree completely with what the other says, feel what the other feels, think as the other thinks.
    MOSHE OFFER: Born 1932 in small town in Hungary (now a part of Soviet Union). Deported to Auschwitz at age twelve, along with his twin brother, Tibi, parents, and five brothers. Entire family, except for twins, sent immediately to the gas chambers.
    zvl THE SAILOR: Born Zyl Klein in Galicia. Not quite thirteen years old when he and identical twin brother, Ladislav, were deported to Auschwitz, along with extended family. All but the twins perished.
    Brothers estranged since the war.
    EVA MOZES: American founder of CANDLES, the international organiZation of Mengele twins. Launched drive in 1984 to find and reunite all the twins and publicize their story. Born in Cluj, Romania, in 1935.
    Deported to Auschwitz in the