Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz | 
 enlarge | Authors: Lucette Matalon Lagnado, Sheila Cohn Dekel
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
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Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 161814
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 0.7
ISBN: 0140169318
Dewey Decimal Number: 940
EAN: 9780140169317
ASIN: 0140169318
Publication Date: May 1, 1992
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Product Description
During World War II, Nazi doctor Josef Mengele subjected some 3,000 twins to medical experiments of unspeakable horror; only 160 survived. In this remarkable narrative, the life of Auschwitz's Angel of Death is told in counterpoint to the lives of the survivors, who until now have kept silent about their heinous death-camp ordeals. 8 pages of photographs.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 title is misleading, but content is excellent February 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book takes us from the youths of of Josef Mengele and his victims (briefly) to Auschwitz to the Nazi-hunting of the post-war period to the late 1980s. It tells these stories in alternating voices, stressing how necessary it is to do so: these stories are inextricably linked.
The title is a bit misleading; this is perhaps weighed more on the side of a brief biography of Mengele, with emphasis on postwar activities. The stories of a group of twins break into the narrative in italicized bursts, fracturing it-- and thus reminding us all of how the horrific events of World War II fractured individuals, families, communities, nations.
The book is an oral history of Auschwitz, told by those who survived it. Certainly, it is well researched (especially when it comes to the information about Nazi hunting and war tribunals), but the information in the "spotlight," so to speak, are the unsilenced voices of the twins. Do not expect pages of historical detail about what types of experiments were performed, reviews of medical cases, lengthy discussions of what occured in labs; that information is not there. This is a book about a handful of people and their stories, and while the book tells Mengele's for him, the twins tell their own. Particularly on the part of the twins, it is more a psychological study than a historical one (we could go into how psychology and history are intertwined, but it would be best for the reader to reach his or her own conclusions after reading the book).
The text is deeply moving, often shattering. The voices that shatter the narrative of Mengele's life, denying the murderer any seamless biography, are vivid and alive. The authors picked a unique and, ultimately, extremely effective way to deliver biographies of oppresser and oppressed.
 Excellent book! October 8, 2007
This book exceeded my expectations. The way the author goes back and forth between survivors' accounts and factual information about Mengele was a great way to keep the book interesting. I was intrigued from beginning to end. A lot of books that just rehash the past can be boring but this book was truely great. I learned a lot of factual information but also was deeply drawn to the survivors' stories. Highly recommended!
confusing the reader July 7, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is a very good book with factual accounts from some of the youngest twins. What I found confusing is the way the author wrote the book. There seems to be some jumping around, comparisons of sorts. This book thoroughly explains how the surviving twins got together and met with the author, as well as the founding of their organization. This book does not go into great detail as to what specific types of horrific experiments were done, as most of the survivors able to tell their stories were very young at the time, and/or they have repressed their memories of the horror. It does give second-hand accounts of the 'goings-on' of Mengele by those that survived.
Testament to suvivors of horror April 19, 2007
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
This harrowing book traces both the life of 'the angel of death', the psycopathic monster, Dr Josef Mengele, and his victims who survived.
Mengele carried out a range of horrific experiments on a range of people, mainly twins. particularly Jewish and Gipsey children, and various others.
As Mengele's life is described, so is the life of the survivors, the horrors that they experienced at Auschwitz and how they lived in the decades afterwards.
"Most of the twins began their descent into Auschwitz by witnessing their entire families being led away from them to be killed. In their special barracks, located just yards away from the crematoriums, they observed the Nazis' extermination of Jews at close range. Twins as young as five and six years of age endured torture, daily blood tests and starvation diets, as well as facing exposure to epidemics of cholera, tuberculosis and other deadly diseases that were rampant because of unsanitary conditions. Worst of all, of course, were the Mengele's barbaric pseudoscientific experiments. But as horrific as their lives were the twins enjoyed a special privileged status, for they were regarded as "Mengele's children". And as such they were spared the random selections and march to the gas chambers that threatened every other Auschwitz inmate'.
The testimony of a handful of survivors illustrates the horror of Mengele and Auschwitz, and the scars of the experiences suffered by his victims, and how they experienced them through their lives.
In the testimony of Moshe Offer, who was twelve years old at the time: 'When they opened the doors to our cattle cars, there were lots of dead children. During the trip, some mothers couldn't bare to hear the sound of their hungry babies-and so they killed them. I remember two blond, very beautiful children in my car, whose mother had choked them to death because she could not stand to watch them suffer'.
Eva Mozes, who was nine years old at the time, recounts how, at Auschwitz-Birkenau, she and her twin sister were packed into filthy, rat infested barracks, together with hundreds of other little girls.
She remembers seeing three dead children on the ground. Later they would always be finding dead children on the floor of the latrines.
From their barracks they could see huge, smoking chimneys rising high above the camp. There were glowing flames rising above them. ' " Why are they burning so late in the evening?" I asked the other children. "The Germans are burning people they answered".
Twins Hedvah and Leah Stern. who were thirteen years old at the time, recount how Mengele tried to change the colour of their eyes:' One day we were given eye drops. Afterwards, we could not see for several days. We though the Nazis had made us blind.
We were very frightened of the experiments. They took a lot of blood from us. We fainted several times, and the SS guards were very amused.
We were not very developed. The Nazis made us remove our clothes and they took photographs of us.
The SS guards would point to us and laugh. We stood naked in front of these young Nazi thugs, shaking from cold and fear, and they laughed."
The first few chapters of the book deal with Mengele's role in Auschwitz itself, and the rest of the book relates Eichmann's experience in hiding in South America, and the way the surviving twins built up lives and families for themselves, most of them in Israel, while the nightmare of Auschwitz would scar and effect them forever.Most of the twins longed to emigrate to the Land of Israel, then the British Colony of Palestine.
They soon found that the Communist rulers of their former homes in lands like Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania, were hostile to the Jewish people too, and pesecuted those who wanted to go to Israel and those who wanted to hold onto their Jewish faith, as 'Zionists'. Thus developed that form of Leftist anti-Semitism known as anti-Zionism, which was incubated by the Soviet Union, and is endemic among the international left today.
The rest of the book deals with how Mengele dwindled in exile into a neurotic and bitter non-being. The surivors describe their lives in Israel and elsewhere, after the war, their often fearful behaviour, their nightmares and their treatment, and also how they built up new lives and families, which live on in the Jewish homeland.
Mengele died after suffering a stroke and drowning in 1979, in Brazil.
Historical correction January 6, 2007
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
Dr.Mengele's actual history has been full of inaccuracies and speculations. This book attempts to clarify many issues. It is a must reading for anybody doing reseach about the holocaust.
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