György Kun: Survivor of Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz - The Jewish Chronicle

György Kun, who has died aged 93, was one of the last surviving victims of the cruel experiments carried out by Josef Mengele on twins at Auschwitz.

In fact, Gyorgy – known as Gyuri – and his brother Istvan, or ‘Pista’ were born 11 months apart, but Mengele’s belief that they were twins probably saved their lives.
Gyuri was born in 1932 in the Hungarian countryside, son of Jewish parents Márton Kuhn and his wife, Piroska. Eleven months later, his brother, István (Pista), was born. The brothers were very close, Gyuri remembered it as “the good life”, playing ourside, eating his mother’s homemade donuts and attending a local school in the village and than a Jewish school in a neighbouring town.

Life became increasingly difficult for the family. Schoolchildren often tried to attack Gyuri on his way home from school. In 1944, his family was evicted from their farm and sent to a nearby ghetto, and from there to a brick factory in Székesfehérvár. “My parents couldn’t imagine where we would end up, so my mother kept repeating that we should always stay together,” Gyuri recalled. “No matter what, the family must not be torn apart.”

Brick factories were the last stop for many Hungarian Jews before deportation, and in May 1944, the family were loaded onto a train headed for Auschwitz. On arrival, “Mom was holding our hands,” Gyuri remembered. “Dad was walking next to us. Then he was separated from us.” Márton Kuhn would eventually end up at Dachau concentration camp.

The brothers and their mother were brought face to face with Mengele. “He asked my mother one word,” Gyuri recalled, “ ‘Zwillinge [Twins]?’ My mother did not speak German, but instinctively she replied, ‘Ja.’ ” Their mother’s one-word answer to Mengele’s question “meant life for us,” Gyuri said, for the boys were immediately separated for experimentation. Their mother, however, was sent in a different direction. “My last memory of my mother is that she is holding my hand and we are separated. We were simply torn apart: we, one way and she, the other. I had that picture with me a long time, and I know my brother did, too.” Piroska Kuhn perished at Auschwitz.

During registration, the boys gave their true birth dates. But the adult inmates were led by a 28-year old, Ernő Spiegel who with his twin, Magda, was the oldest of the twins deported to Auschwitz and was trusted by Mengele with the care of 80 boy twins. Spiegel falsified Pista’s registration so that his birthday matched his brother’s. “Then the numbers were tattooed on our arms,” Gyorgi said. “I became A-14321 and my brother, A-14322.”

Kun later recalled the constant fear they lived with: “We were especially afraid because we weren’t twins. Only Spiegel and a few other children knew… They told us if it was discovered, our lives would be over.”
The boys endured numerous experiments, including photographs, X-rays, hair and eye examinations, injections, and frequent blood extraction. In the winter of 1944, they narrowly escaped death when Mengele’s rival, Dr. Heinz Thilo, selected the youngest twins for execution. Spiegel risked his life to alert Mengele, who reclaimed them as subjects for experimentation.
The boys survived Auschwitz and reunited with their father. Gyorgi worked as a mechanical technician in Budapest.
During the 1956 revolution, Pista left Hungary for the United States and settled in Oklahoma City, where he studied to be an architect. He died in 1962.

Gyuri remained in Hungary. After marrying in 1960, he and his wife, Ágnes, had a baby girl and settled in Budapest. He suffered from post traumatic stress disorder and other ailments that he believed stemmed from his experience in the Holocaust.

Throughout his life, Gyorgi reminisced about Ernő Spiegel: how he risked his life more than once to save others; how he led the twins towards home when Auschwitz was liberated; how he appointed older boys to get the younger boys home when it was time to part ways and how he helped the boys hope “that maybe, one day, life would be joyful again.” Spiegel built a new life in Israel, and had two children, he died in 1993.

An American documentary film about Ernő Spiegel and the Hungarian Jewish twins of Auschwitz, including the Kun brothers’ story, is set to be released later this year.
Gyorgi Kun is survived by his daughter, Andrea Szőnyi who is a Holocaust educator and the director of the Zachor Foundation for Social Remembrance, an educational NGO in Hungary. She is an expert member of the Education Working Group of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and a Holocaust Education Fellow of the Imperial War Museum in London.

Born January 23, 1932
Died February 5 2025

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