PBS: 'The Last Twins,' Erno Spiegel, Holocaust Hero Saved Kids in Auschwitz from Nazi Dr Mengele Medical Experiments

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Full Documentary, (1 hr. 20 mins), April 13, 2026.

Discover the extraordinary story of Erno 'Zvi' Spiegel, an unsung hero of the Holocaust who risked everything to protect the most vulnerable in Auschwitz - dozens of young boys, many of them twins, targeted by Dr. Josef Mengele for brutal medical experimentation. Through courage, compassion and ingenuity, Spiegel shielded these children from death and unimaginable harm...
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-last-twins-tm2qax/
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- The Last Twins, Erno Spiegel Documentary, PBS, Forward, April 12, 2026. He saved dozens of kids in Auschwitz — and kept it a secret for nearly the rest of his life.
The PBS documentary ‘The Last Twins’ tells the story of Erno Spiegel, who was targeted by Josef Mengele and protected the young people subjected to the Nazi doctor’s experiments.

Erno “Zvi” Spiegel was 29 years old when he was deported from Hungary to Auschwitz along with other members of his family, including his twin sister Magda. As a twin, Spiegel was selected to be a subject for Mengele’s scientific experiments, where he injected subjects with diseases and cancer cells to study their effects on the human body; due to their shared genetics, one twin could serve as a control for the experiment.

If one died from the procedure and the other didn’t, the surviving twin would still be killed and subject to an autopsy to understand why they lived. Mengele also assigned Spiegel to look after the other young people he was experimenting on, whose lives Spiegel would end up saving multiple times.

The PBS documentary The Last Twins, directed by Perri Peltz and Matt O’Neill, captures the deep and unexpected relationship Spiegel had with his charges through interviews with the surviving sets of twins from Mengele’s lab along with Spiegel’s family. Uncle Spiegel, as the twins called him, was the only adult that many of the kids trusted during their imprisonment...
https://forward.com/culture/film-tv/817846/the-last-twins-erno-spiegel-documentary-pbs-judith-richte/

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1. DR JOSEF MENGELE

Last edited Tue Apr 14, 2026, 04:17 AM - Edit history (1)

Wiki. Josef Mengele ; 16 March 1911 – 7 Feb.1979), often dubbed the "Angel of Death" (German: Todesengel), was a German military officer and physician during World War II at the Soviet front and then at Auschwitz during the Holocaust.[2]

He conducted research and experiments on prisoners at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp, where he was a member of the team of doctors who selected victims to be murdered in the gas chambers.[a]..

.. Twin research was of particular interest to Mengele. One twin could serve as a subject with the other as the control.[61]

Mengele viewed the opportunity to undertake twin research at Auschwitz as unique, as it is normally difficult to locate and study a significant number of subjects.[62] The research was conducted on behalf of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology and the German Research Foundation.[63] Most of the twins he studied were children between the ages of two and sixteen. Historian Nikolaus Wachsmann estimates Mengele may have studied as many as a thousand sets of twins.

Some were siblings who passed themselves off as twins to avoid being killed.[64]

The research largely involved taking dozens of physical measurements and recording the characteristics of various anatomical features. Each examination could take several hours.[65] Mengele generally ordered the twins to undertake weekly physical examinations.[66] Nyiszli and others suggested that twin studies may have been pursued to uncover strategies for 'racially desirable' Germans to produce more twins.[67][56] The actual purpose of Mengele's twin research is unknown.[68]

In his 1945 deposition, Nyiszli testified that he watched Mengele kill 14 twins in a single night, first by injecting evipan to induce sleep, and then by injecting their hearts with chloroform.[44] Nyiszli described it differently in his book; there, he said that he smelled chloroform in the hearts of twins he dissected. He added that he feared Mengele might have him killed for knowing this secret.[69]... More,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josef_Mengele

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2. "I SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST TWIN EXPERIMENTS, THIS IS THAT STORY"

- Eva Mozes Kor, b. 1934. (14 mins).