Kor and Miriam Mozes were born January 31, 1934, in the village of Portz, Transylvania, Romania. Their family was the only Jewish household in this rural area without electricity or running water. Their parents’ marriage had been arranged according to local custom. Their father was wealthy for the area; their mother, considered an “old maid” at 23, was educated and kind. The twins had two older sisters: Aliz, artistic with green eyes and black hair, and Edit, known for her kindness.

Their mother loved dressing the twins identically in burgundy, blue, and pink dresses made by a seamstress, placing tags on them to tell them apart. Kor notes the last dresses their mother commissioned would save their lives.

Kor’s father, a religious Jew who wanted a son, could distinguish the twins by personality. Kor was the outspoken leader; he often told her she should have been a boy. Their frequent arguments, Kor reflects, toughened her for future trials. Her mother taught the girls to care for their community and read them stories. The family befriended everyone, including Luci, the Christian minister’s daughter.

Though antisemitism existed in Romania, the family remained unaware until 1940. In 1935, Kor’s father and Uncle Aaron were jailed on false charges by the antisemitic Iron Guard, a far-right, fascist paramilitary group. After their release, they visited Palestine. Aaron emigrated there, but Kor’s mother refused to leave, unwilling to uproot the children or abandon her ailing mother, believing persecution rumors were exaggerated and that their remote location kept them safe.

In summer 1940, Hitler gave northern Transylvania to Hungary. Hungarian troops occupied Portz without violence, and after the commanding officer stayed at their home one pleasant evening, Kor’s parents felt reassured. However, they secretly listened to radio broadcasts about Hitler in Yiddish.

When Kor and Miriam started school in autumn 1940, two new Hungarian teachers introduced antisemitic propaganda books and films, including one titled How to Catch and Kill a Jew. Classmates began taunting, spitting on, and beating the twins. In 1941, other students falsely accused them of putting bird eggs on a teacher’s chair. The teacher forced them to kneel on hard corn kernels for an hour while classmates jeered. Their parents insisted they endure the persecution, believing Nazis would ignore one remote family.

Teenage Hungarian Nazi Party members regularly surrounded their house for days, shouting obscenities and throwing rocks. In September 1943, the family attempted a nighttime escape to non-Hungarian Romania but were stopped at gunpoint by Nazi youths guarding their farm. Kor reflects that her parents’ secrecy taught her not to always trust adults, preparing her for what lay ahead.

On the twins’ 10th birthday, January 31, 1944, there was no celebration—their mother remained severely ill with typhoid fever. A hired Jewish woman cared for her while the girls did extra farm chores. Though watched by authorities, they were not under house arrest and continued attending school.

In March 1944, two Hungarian gendarmes—paramilitary police officers—ordered the family to pack within two hours for relocation. The entire village, including their friend Luci, watched silently as they were marched away. Years later, Kor learned Luci had hoped an adult would intervene but felt powerless as a child.

The family was taken to a ghetto in Şimleu Silvaniei, a fenced field holding over 7,000 Jews. The commandant falsely reassured them that their stay would be short and that they would be taken to work in labor camps in Hungary. With no shelter except the commandant’s headquarters in an abandoned brick factory, they built a tent. The commandant cruelly forced them to dismantle and rebuild their tents across a river repeatedly in the rain. Kor’s mother’s health worsened. Guards tortured her father for hours—whipping him and burning his fingernails—trying to extract information about hidden valuables. Her mother became withdrawn and depressed, blaming herself for not emigrating to Palestine.

In May 1944, guards announced they were being taken to a Hungarian labor camp. The family was packed into a cattle car with 80 to 100 others. Her father was made responsible for the car on threat of death. For days they traveled without food, water, or sanitation. A guard extorted five gold watches for water but wasted most of it. Someone died, but guards refused to remove the body.

On the third day, a guard responded in German, revealing they had entered German territory. Hope vanished—they were not going to a labor camp but likely to their deaths. On the fourth morning, the train stopped. Kor’s father made his daughters promise that if any survived, they would go to Palestine. The doors opened to SS guards ordering everyone out.

On the selection platform, Kor was overwhelmed by a foul odor like burned chicken feathers and the chaos of screaming families being torn apart. Her father and older sisters were separated from her in the confusion, and she never saw them again. An SS guard recognized the twins, confirmed it with their mother, and tore them away. Kor watched her mother being thrown into another group—the last time she ever saw her. She says this was the last time she cried in Auschwitz, marking the end of her childhood.

The twins joined a group of 13 twin sets from their transport, including Mrs. Csengeri and her eight-year-old daughters from their town. After half an hour, guards led them to a processing building. They were ordered to undress and given short haircuts, which Kor considered a privilege compared to the shaved heads of other prisoners. Their fumigated clothes were returned with large red crosses painted on the backs to mark them.

During tattooing, Kor struggled, kicked, and bit a guard, demanding her mother. A guard lied that she would see her mother tomorrow. Four guards held her down while her number, A-7063, was burned into her arm; her struggling blurred the numbers. Miriam received A-7064 without resistance; her tattoo was clear.

They were marched to their barracks in Camp II B, a filthy horse barn housing hundreds of twins aged 2 to 16. Hungarian twins already there showed them to a triple-decker bunk. At the first meal of dark bread and fake coffee, Kor and Miriam refused to eat the non-kosher food and gave their bread away. The other twins warned them they must eat everything to survive.

Other twins explained they were in Birkenau and pointed to flames from crematorium chimneys. Kor learned the smoke and smell were from burning people—prisoners deemed unable to work were sent to gas chambers upon arrival. She realized her family likely met this fate but held onto hope. A twin explained they survived only because Dr. Mengele used them for experiments.

That night, Kor screamed upon seeing huge rats on the floor. When they went to the filthy latrine, Kor saw three naked, dead children on the floor. At that moment, she realized she and Miriam could die there and made a silent pledge to ensure they both survived. She resolved to always visualize them walking out alive.

A whistle signaled the morning routine. A barracks supervisor called a Pflegerin (nurse) ordered the children to prepare for roll call, which lasted up to an hour. Everyone had to be present to be counted, including the dead, whose bodies were returned from the latrine to their bunks for Dr. Mengele’s count.

An SS guard announced Mengele’s arrival. He entered, elegantly dressed with an entourage of eight, including an interpreter and another prominent Nazi researcher, Dr. Konig. Upon seeing the three dead children, he raged at the guards that he could not afford to lose any subjects. He briefly stopped at Kor and Miriam’s bunk before moving on. After he left, they received morning rations. Kor learned the fake coffee was boiled water and safe to drink.

The twins marched to labs in Auschwitz. In a large brick building, they were forced to undress and sit naked with other twin boys and girls. Kor learned the boy twins lived separately under better conditions, supervised by a prisoner named Zvi Spiegel, whom Mengele allowed to provide them with extra food and activities.

For six to eight hours, doctors meticulously measured every part of their bodies—skulls, earlobes, nose bridges, lips, eyes—comparing each twin to the other. A photographer and artist documented everything. The nudity and scrutiny from laughing SS guards were deeply dehumanizing for Kor. Doctors observed their responses to determine which twin led, or was more dominant than the other.

Back in the barracks, the supervising nurse—nicknamed Snake by the children—forced them to sing a derogatory German song about being “disgusting Jews” and constantly taunted them that they would all be killed. Kor and Miriam realized crying was useless and that they survived only because they were Mengele’s experimental subjects.

Within two weeks, the twins’ heads were shaved to combat severe lice infestation. Once weekly, they had the privilege of showering while their clothes were disinfected with Zyklon B—the same chemical used in the gas chambers.

Mengele established a routine: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays involved marches to Auschwitz labs for intensive studies; Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays were spent in Birkenau blood labs. Every morning, he inspected their barracks, calling them meine Kinder (my children), though Kor feared him.

In the blood lab, doctors drew multiple vials from Kor’s left arm while simultaneously injecting five shots into her right arm. She coped by turning away and counting the shots, refusing to show pain. She viewed cooperating as the price of survival.

Kor later learned Mengele infected twins with diseases to test cures and conducted other experiments, including transfusions between boys and girls and castrations on older twins. Twins who died were simply replaced with new arrivals from transports.

Their burgundy dresses wore out and were replaced with oversized women’s clothing tied with string. To pass time, older girls taught them to knit using sharpened barbed wire for needles and yarn from an unraveled sweater.

One day, a cart of dead bodies passed. A girl saw her mother’s corpse and wailed. The sight confirmed for Kor that her own mother likely met the same fate. She forced herself to stop thinking about her family, believing that seeing herself as a victim would lead to death. She speculates this may have been partly due to the bread, which supposedly contained a sedative called bromide to make prisoners lose memories of home.

Mrs. Csengeri convinced Mengele she could provide information about her twins, allowing her to stay in the women’s barracks and occasionally sneak in food for her daughters. Kor envied them for having a mother.

Kor focused on surviving day by day, only thinking about getting through the next experiment.