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When the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz death camp 70 years ago many of the prisoners had been killed or marched away by the retreating Nazis. But among those left were some twin children - the subject of disturbing experiments by Dr Josef Mengele.

Vera Kriegel and her twin sister Olga were just five years old when they were taken from their village in Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz.

Transported in cattle cars which were so tightly packed that the dead were still standing, she recalls the "sheer terror" of arriving at the camp and treading on "dead people like steps" as she left the train.

New arrivals at the camp were sorted into the weak, who would be gassed straight away, and the strong, who would be made to work. But Mengele and his assistants were there too, looking for twins.

Vera, her sister, and her mother were taken straight to SS Captain Josef Mengele. He was intrigued, she says, by what he described as her mother's "perfect Aryan features" and blue eyes, while Vera's and her sister's were brown.

Mengele selected them for experimentation.

Another woman who remembers her arrival at the camp is Jona Laks, who was taken as a teenager from the Lodz ghetto. She was not immediately recognised as a twin and was initially sent off in the direction of the gas chamber - when her sister told Mengele they were twins he had her brought to his laboratory.

Josef Mengele was an assistant to a well-known researcher who studied twins at the Institute for Heredity Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt - he started working at Auschwitz in May 1943.

There he had an unlimited supply of twins to study, and he wouldn't get in trouble if they died.

According to Prof Paul Weindling of Oxford Brookes University, author of Victims and Survivors of Nazi Human Experiments, hundreds of children were used in Mengele's experiments.

"I found a record of a prisoner doctor and bacteriologist who was forced to work for Mengele that there were 732 pairs of twins," he says, and suggests the doctor was interested in genetics. "I think Mengele might have been interested in the inheritance of the propensity to having twins."

He believes many of the twins survived Auschwitz, although he thinks Roma twins were almost certainly killed.

Some of the children, now elderly, have little memory of the experiments, others have memories that may not be 100% accurate.

Jona Laks says Mengele removed organs from people without anaesthetic, and if one twin died the other would be murdered. Vera Kriegel says that he killed people with an injection to the heart, and then dissected them.

She remembers being ushered into his laboratory. "I was looking at a whole wall of human eyes. A wall of blue eyes, brown eyes, green eyes. These eyes they were staring at me like a collection of butterflies and I fell down on the floor."

The first experiment she was subjected to involved being kept in a small wooden cage with her sister and being given painful injections in her back - she doesn't know why, but thinks it may have been an attempt to change the colour of her eyes.

In another experiment, she says, the pair of them and more than 100 other twins were given injections of bacteria that cause Noma disease - an infection of the mouth or genitals, which causes boils and often turns gangrenous.

Some twins became feverish, and some died, she says. She also remembers Mengele reacting angrily when twins went missing - once when this had happened she stared him out to prove he could not completely dominate her.

As well as twins, Mengele experimented on dwarves, giants and Romas.

Moti Alon, who arrived in Auschwitz aged nine in 1944, remembers being forced to watch a dwarf and a Roma woman being made to have sex.

He remembers having a number tattooed on his arm. The same happened to his brother, though the tattooist made a mistake. "Instead of writing 17 they wrote 10 so they erased it and did some dots," he says.

For Menachem Bodner who arrived at the camp with his brother as a three -year-old, this number became his identity.

When he left the camp in 1945, he had no idea who he was.

With the help of Israeli genealogist Ayana KimRon and a Facebook page set up to help, he has recently discovered that his real name is Elias Gottesman and that he and his brother, named Jeno, were born in a small town east of Munkacs, then part of Hungary, now in Ukraine (and known as Mukacheve).

KimRon also discovered that his father had died in a camp and that his mother, Roza, had returned to Hungary following a death march from Flossenburg concentration camp - only then to be murdered in her home town in 1946 during an anti-Semitic riot.

Now aged 74, he continues to search for the twin brother he last saw when the camp was liberated in 1945.

On 26 January 1945, Vera Kriegel remembers, the guards "were in a big panic. So they poured petrol over the barracks and tried to destroy all the evidence."

Grabbing a big pack of family photos, Vera, her mother and sister, fled the camp, only to be caught and beaten and thrown back into the barracks.

The following day, Soviet troops entered Auschwitz. The soldiers, she says, "brought these striped coats and told us to put them on and roll up our sleeves, so we could show our numbers.

"They filmed us, the children. They wanted to know what happened to us [and] Mengele's experiments. Everything was written down."

As for Mengele, he fled West and was arrested by the US Army. But he had no SS blood group tattooed on his arm so he was released by a unit that was unaware that his name was on a list of major war criminals.

He worked as a farmhand in Bavaria before escaping to Argentina in 1949.

Though the West German authorities issued a warrant for his arrest in 1959, Mengele remained in South America before his death from drowning following a stroke at a holiday resort in Brazil in 1979. He was buried in Sao Paulo under the name Wolfgang Gerhard.

The children coped with the appalling ordeal of Auschwitz and Mengele's experiments in different ways.

Moti Alon, his mother and twin, eventually made their way back home, arriving in Budapest on 5 May 1945. He now lives in Israel. "I have no traumas, not from this," he says.

Vera Kriegel emigrated to Israel with her mother after the war, where she lives today. Seventy years later, she still has nightmares.

Jona Laks became an activist, the head of a group of Mengele twins. She has been back to Auschwitz many times, and says what she experienced there has never left her mind.

Menachem, the boy with no name, eventually returned to his home town in Ukraine.

"I told the driver to stop and got out of the car, and something was familiar to me, very familiar.

"I remembered the road, I remembered two Gestapo approaching or arriving from my right side... and then they come to my home."

Above all, he recalled his parents, carefree before the war and the Holocaust.

"It was noon. my mother wore a green skirt with white flowers... I remember her from the back, not the front.

Watch Newsnight's report on the twins of Auschwitz - or watch a longer report on BBC World News at 23:30 GMT on Friday 30 January.

Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox.

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When the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz death camp 70 years ago many of the prisoners had been killed or marched away by the retreating Nazis. But among those left were some twin children - the subject of disturbing experiments by Dr Josef Mengele.

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German Invasion Of Russia - June 1941 (1941)

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Russia, Soviet Union (USSR). Panning shot along road of advancing German troops passing retreating Russian prisoners. Various shots of German infantry advancing through smoke and rubble strewn town. Various shots of German tanks advancing through town (possibly Minsk) and across the bridge. Several shots of the German tanks advancing across Russian farmland.

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Auschwitz: Genesis of Death Camps

After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, implemented a policy that came to be known as the "Final Solution." Hitler was determined not just to isolate Jews in Germany and countries annexed by the Nazis, subjecting them to dehumanizing regulations and random acts of violence. Instead, he became convinced that his "Jewish problem" would be solved only with the elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Romas, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany.

Did you know? In October 1944, a group of Auschwitz "Sonderkommando," young Jewish males responsible for removing corpses from crematoriums and gas chambers, staged a revolt. They assaulted their guards, using tools and makeshift explosives, and demolished a crematorium. All were apprehended and killed.

To complete this mission, Hitler ordered the construction of death camps. Unlike concentration camps, which had existed in Germany since 1933 and were detention centers for Jews, political prisoners and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state, death camps existed for the sole purpose of killing Jews and other "undesirables," in what became known as the Holocaust.

Auschwitz: The Largest of the Death Camps

Auschwitz, the largest and arguably the most notorious of all the Nazi death camps, opened in the spring of 1940. Its first commandant was Rudolf Höss (1900-47), who previously had helped run the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany. Auschwitz was located on a former military base outside Oswiecim, a town in southern Poland situated near Krakow, one of the country's largest cities. During the camp's construction, nearby factories were appropriated and all those living in the area were forcibly ejected from their homes, which were bulldozed by the Nazis.

Auschwitz originally was conceived as a concentration camp, to be used as a detention center for the many Polish citizens arrested after Germany annexed the country in 1939. These detainees included anti-Nazi activists, politicians, resistance members and luminaries from the cultural and scientific communities. Once Hitler's Final Solution became official Nazi policy, however, Auschwitz was deemed an ideal death camp locale. For one thing, it was situated near the center of all German-occupied countries on the European continent. For another, it was in close proximity to the string of rail lines used to transport detainees to the network of Nazi camps.

However, not all those arriving at Auschwitz were immediately exterminated. Those deemed fit to work were employed as slave labor in the production of munitions, synthetic rubber and other products considered essential to Germany's efforts in World War II.

Auschwitz and Its Subdivisions

At its peak of operation, Auschwitz consisted of several divisions. The original camp, known as Auschwitz I, housed between 15,000 and 20,000 political prisoners. Those entering its main gate were greeted with an infamous and ironic inscription: "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Makes You Free."

Auschwitz II, located in the village of Birkenau, or Brzezinka, was constructed in 1941 on the order of Heinrich Himmler (1900-45), commander of the "Schutzstaffel" (or Select Guard/Protection Squad, more commonly known as the SS), which operated all Nazi concentration camps and death camps. Birkenau, the biggest of the Auschwitz facilities, could hold some 90,000 prisoners.

It also housed a group of bathhouses where countless people were gassed to death, and crematory ovens where bodies were burned. The majority of Auschwitz victims died at Birkenau. More than 40 smaller facilities, called subcamps, dotted the landscape and served as slave-labor camps. The largest of these subcamps, Monowitz, also known as Auschwitz III, began operating in 1942 and housed some 10,000 prisoners.

Life and Death in Auschwitz

By mid-1942, the majority of those being sent by the Nazis to Auschwitz were Jews. Upon arriving at the camp, detainees were examined by Nazi doctors. Those detainees considered unfit for work, including young children, the elderly, pregnant women and the infirm, were immediately ordered to take showers. However, the bathhouses to which they marched were disguised gas chambers. Once inside, the prisoners were exposed to Zyklon-B poison gas. Individuals marked as unfit for work were never officially registered as Auschwitz inmates. For this reason, it is impossible to calculate the number of lives lost in the camp.

For those prisoners who initially escaped the gas chambers, an undetermined number died from overwork, disease, insufficient nutrition or the daily struggle for survival in brutal living conditions. Arbitrary executions, torture and retribution happened daily in front of the other prisoners.

Some Auschwitz prisoners were subjected to inhumane medical experimentation. The chief perpetrator of this barbaric research was Josef Mengele (1911-79), a German physician who began working at Auschwitz in 1943. Mengele, who came to be known as the "Angel of Death," performed a range of experiments on detainees. For example, in an effort to study eye color, he injected serum into the eyeballs of dozens of children, causing them excruciating pain. He also injected chloroform into the hearts of twins to determine if both siblings would die at the same time and in the same manner.

Liberation of Auschwitz: 1945

As 1944 came to a close and the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces seemed certain, the Auschwitz commandants began destroying evidence of the horror that had taken place there. Buildings were torn down, blown up or set on fire, and records were destroyed.

In January 1945, as the Soviet army entered Krakow, the Germans ordered that Auschwitz be abandoned. Before the end of the month, in what came to be known as the Auschwitz death marches, an estimated 60,000 detainees, accompanied by Nazi guards, departed the camp and were forced to march to the Polish towns of Gliwice or Wodzislaw, some 30 miles away. Countless prisoners died during this process; those who made it to the sites were sent on trains to concentration camps in Germany.

When the Soviet army entered Auschwitz on January 27, they found approximately 7,600 sick or emaciated detainees who had been left behind barbed wire. The liberators also discovered mounds of corpses, hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing and pairs of shoes and seven tons of human hair that had been shaved from detainees before their liquidation. According to some estimates, between 1.1 million to 1.5 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, died at Auschwitz during its years of operation. An estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Poles perished at the camp, along with 19,000 to 20,000 Romas and smaller numbers of Soviet prisoners of war and other individuals.

Auschwitz Today

Today, Auschwitz is open to the public as the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. It tells the story of the largest mass murder site in history and acts as a reminder of the horrors of genocide.

Fact Check

We strive for accuracy and fairness. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate.

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Auschwitz: Concentration Camp, Facts, Location

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After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, implemented a policy that came to be known as the "Final Solution." Hitler was determined not just to isolate Jews in Germany and countries annexed by the Nazis, subjecting them to dehumanizing regulations and random acts of violence.

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On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps-and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there.

Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller "satellite" camps. It was at Auschwitz II, at Birkenau, established in October 1941, that the SS created a complex, monstrously orchestrated killing ground: 300 prison barracks; four "bathhouses" in which prisoners were gassed; corpse cellars; and cremating ovens. Thousands of prisoners were also used for medical experiments overseen and performed by the camp doctor, Josef Mengele, the "Angel of Death."
Listen to HISTORY This Week Podcast: Episode 4: January 27, 1945 Surviving Auschwitz

READ MORE: The Shocking Liberation of Auschwitz: Soviets 'Knew Nothing' as They Approached Auschwitz Survivors Recall Harrowing and Heroic Moments From the Death Camps Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII's Deadliest Concentration Camp This Midwife at Auschwitz Delivered 3,000 Babies in Unfathomable Conditions The Jewish Men Forced to Help Run Auschwitz How the Nazis Tried to Cover Up Their Crimes at Auschwitz
The Red Army had been advancing deeper into Poland since mid-January. Having liberated Warsaw and Krakow, Soviet troops headed for Auschwitz. In anticipation of the Soviet arrival, SS officers began a murder spree in the camps, shooting sick prisoners and blowing up crematoria in a desperate attempt to destroy the evidence of their crimes. When the Red Army finally broke through, Soviet soldiers encountered 648 corpses and more than 7,000 starving camp survivors. There were also six storehouses filled with hundreds of thousands of women's dresses, men's suits and shoes that the Germans did not have time to burn.

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On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops enter Auschwitz, Poland, freeing the survivors of the network of concentration camps-and finally revealing to the world the depth of the horrors perpetrated there. Auschwitz was really a group of camps, designated I, II, and III. There were also 40 smaller "satellite" camps.

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The official podcast of the Auschwitz Memorial. The history of Auschwitz is exceptionally complex. It combined two functions: a concentration camp and an extermination center. Nazi Germany persecuted various groups of people there, and the camp complex continually expanded and transformed itself. In the podcast "On Auschwitz," we discuss the details of the history of the camp as well as our contemporary memory of this important and special place.

We kindly ask you to support our mission and share our podcast in social media.
Online lessons: http://lesson.auschwitz.org

The official podcast of the Auschwitz Memorial. The history of Auschwitz is exceptionally complex. It combined two functions: a concentration camp and an extermination center. Nazi Germany persecuted various groups of people there, and the camp complex continually expanded and transformed itself. In the podcast "On Auschwitz," we discuss the details of the history of the camp as well as our contemporary memory of this important and special place.

We kindly ask you to support our mission and share our podcast in social media.
Online lessons: http://lesson.auschwitz.org

Outstanding

Essential listening. Never Forget.

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The official podcast of the Auschwitz Memorial. The history of Auschwitz is exceptionally complex. It combined two functions: a concentration camp and an extermination center. Nazi Germany persecuted various groups of people there, and the camp complex continually expanded and transformed itself. In...

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Why I chose Auschwitz in the 1940's-1945's.

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Why I chose Auschwitz in the 1940's-1945's.

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I chose Auschwitz in the 1940's because it's important to understand what these innocent people went through. Each of my topics unravel different things that Jews would have to go through and once all revealed, it shows the real torture. From my overall time learning about Auschwitz, I've learned that we have to learn it even if its hard to hear so it never happens in the future.

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Sources for Auschwitz in 1940 to 1945 Works cited page