Erno “Zvi” Spiegel is an unsung hero of the Holocaust – a nearly forgotten Hungarian Jew who saved young Jewish twins in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland from looming death.

An inmate in the camp since May 1944, he worked for Josef Mengele, the German physician who conducted gruesome medical experiments on twins he had personally selected upon their arrival in the camp. Spiegel, then 29, lived with the boys in a special barrack and related to them as a father figure.

Spiegel’s daughter, Dr. Judith Richter, researched his story to bring his legacy as a righteous person to the public. The Last Twins, a PBS documentary to be broadcast on June 15 at 10 p.m. (check local listings), fills in the blanks.

Narrated by the American movie actor Liev Schreiber, it focuses on several of the twins – Tom Simon, Mordechai Alon, Laszlo Kiss, Ephraim Reichenberg and Peter Somogyi – whom Spiegel rescued.

Spiegel recounts his rescue mission in an old recording........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)