When Peter Somogyi arrived at Auschwitz in July 1944, his mother made an unlikely choice that would save his life.
Peter and his twin brother, Thomas, had spent three miserable days in a cattle car with their mother, Erzsebet, and their sister, Alice, riding the rails to the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland.
Whilst children were normally sent straight to the gas chambers – as part of the Nazis' campaign of mass murder which led to the deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust – the Hungarian twins were spared by their mother's actions.
When the infamous 'Angel of Death' Dr Josef Mengele - known for the horrendous experiments he carried out on inmates - came around to examine the new arrivals, he asked if there were any twins.
Knowing that her choice might be her sons' only hope of survival, Erzsebet reluctantly opted to step forward. Along with her daughter, the mother was murdered soon after being separated from her sons.
Peter, who is now 88, recalled: 'They threw us out of the cattle car, I saw a lot of German soldiers with guns drawn, and I saw the prisoners and guards already.
'And that's when we lined up, along came Mengele asking for twins, behind him were two other soldiers.
'Three times Mengele came around; the first time my mother didn't say anything, the second time she didn't say anything, but the third time she said she had twins.'
Mengele was intrigued by the Somogyi because they were so young being but so big. He also appreciated that they spoke German – a language they had learnt from their nanny.
Incredibly, both Peter and Thomas escaped death having any brutal experiments performed on them, but instead had their bodies meticulously measured.
'I was a very lucky one,' said Peter. 'We didn't have the bad experiments that Mengele did at the beginning, but measuring the face, measuring our size, blood-taking, and mostly measuring every part of the body.'
When Peter and Thomas Somogyi (pictured with their sister Alice and mother and father ) arrived at Auschwitz in July 1944, his mother made an unlikely choice that would save his life. When the infamous 'Angel of Death' Dr Josef Mengele came around to examine the new arrivals, he asked if there were any twins – in the hope that he could carry out horrendous experiments on them. Knowing that her choice might be her sons' only hope of survival, Erzsebet reluctantly opted to say that she did
Peter and his twin brother, Thomas, had spent three miserable days in a cattle car with their mother, Erzsebet, and their sister, Alice, riding the rails to the death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland
Mengele was nicknamed the Angel of Death because of his role at Auschwitz deciding which new arrivals would be killed immediately and which would be kept alive to work. But he's perhaps most notorious for his deadly experiments on prisoners – unnecessarily amputating their limbs and injecting them with disease. He was especially interested in twins
Born into a Jewish family in Pecs, Hungary, Peter and Thomas spent the early war years safe from the Nazis' worst excesses, thanks to an uneasy alliance between Germany's dictator Adolf Hitler and Hungarian regent Miklós Horthy.
The ten-year-old twins were even protected from tidings of war by their parents.
'The only thing I knew about it was from reading a little bit of the newspaper,' said Peter.
'It was a little bit beyond my comprehension.'
But life changed overnight when the alliance collapsed and the Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944.
'First of all, my father, Josef, was immediately taken away,' Mr Somogyi said.
'Within a month we had to go into a ghetto, and within two or three months we were put into cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz.'
Less than an hour after the boys were separated from their mother, Peter learned that they had seen her – and their sister – for the last time.
'The two soldiers behind Mengele grabbed us, put us into an ambulance and drove us into F-Lager in Birkenau,' said Peter.
'Mengele put one of the older twins, Zvi Spiegel, in charge of the twins.
'And the first thing I asked him was 'when can I see my mother?'
'And he said "look outside over there at the chimneys" and he said "that's where your mother is."
'Immediately I knew, I would never see her again.'
Mengele was nicknamed the Angel of Death because of his role at Auschwitz deciding which new arrivals would be killed immediately and which would be kept alive to work.
But he's perhaps most notorious for his deadly experiments on prisoners – unnecessarily amputating their limbs and injecting them with disease.
Some witnesses described him performing vivisection without anaesthesia and even sewing people together. Twins were his favourite test subjects.
Peter and Thomas were lucky, however.
They arrived at Auschwitz late in the war and were mostly subject to blood tests and having their measurements taken.
Before they were parted, Erzsebet had advised the boys, then 11, to pretend they were only nine, hoping that their younger age would see the family kept together.
Although they escaped having any horrendous experiments conducted on them, they were far from safe.
'Every night I went hungry,' said Peter.
'It was just enough food to keep us alive. We were not starving but I was constantly hungry.'
He continued: 'One day, I think it was mid-October, another Nazi officer came around and they did a selection.
'They selected us, and we were locked into another room, and waited for a truck to take us to the gas chamber.
'Except Mengele got wind of it and says 'no, I will decide when these people will die'.'
Mr Somogyi heard the other officer was sent to the Russian front as punishment.
Today, Peter is certain he wouldn't have survived if he wasn't a twin.
