Mengele had once stated that his patients were calmer and more cooperative when he fed them sweets, lollies, offered them clothes and introduced himself as Uncle Mengele. The children perceived him as a father figure since most of the Jewish prisoners lost all of their relations on arrival at Auschwitz. Older twins are not tricked by his kind façade and recognise it as deception. A twin spoke with me before he was about to enter Mengele’s laboratory. He queried me about his brother. His voice rings loud in my ears. 

“Dr. Mengele has always been more interested in Tibi. I am not sure why-perhaps it is because he is the older twin. Mengele made several operations on Tibi. One surgery on his spine left my brother paralysed. He could not walk anymore. They took out his sexual organs. After the fourth operation, I did not see Tibi again,” he stated matter-of-factly. “I can’t tell you how I feel. It is impossible to words into how I feel. They have taken away my mother, my father, my two older brothers- and now my twin.”

I’m changing, I can tell. It’s this place, this living nightmare that’s driving me insane. In my dreams, I hear the shrieks and yelps of pain that escape the mouths of innocent children. I witness the doors of the gas chambers opening, the bony bodies of starving prisoners, despondent facial expressions and the sight of mangled bodies everywhere. I’m having trouble differentiating between reality and my imagination anymore.