Why did Donna love this book?
I had heard of Dr. Mengele’s experiments in genetics in WWII, but nothing specific. I didn’t know, for example, that he looked at twins and that he tortured children.
In this book, we follow twin girls, where chapters go back and forth between their points of view. The author does a stunning job of helping us see how a given situation can be interpreted differently by different characters and how the bravura of a character might be camouflage for tremendous fear.
Here, the children are resilient and extraordinarily decent in the face of hideous choices. It is far too easy to underestimate children’s understanding of morality. I was grateful for every page of this book.
2 authors picked Mischling as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
It's 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood. As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others, and they find themselves changed, stripped of the personalities they once shared, their identities altered by the burdens of guilt and pain.
That winter, at a concert orchestrated by Mengele, Pearl disappears. Stasha grieves for her twin, but…
