René Slotkin, one of the last of the “Mengele twins,” died July 10, in New York. He was 84. Born René Guttman in 1937 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia, he was 3 years old when he and his twin sister, Irene, were deported to Theresienstadt with their mother, Ita. Two years later, they were moved to Auschwitz, where their mother and father were killed, and the twins separated and subjected to medical abuse by Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi physician.

After the camps were liberated, René was repatriated to Czechoslovakia and lived with families there. Irene, who had been placed with a Christian family, was found by the Joint Distribution Committee, who wanted to return her to a Jewish family. She was taken to New York by Rescue Children Inc., and adopted by the Slotkin family on Long Island. Irene told her adoptive family that she had a twin brother. The Slotkins hired a private investigator who found René in Europe, and the Slotkins adopted him, too. He was 12, and had not seen his sister in six years.

According to The Times of Israel, René went to college, served in the U.S. military, married and had four children. It took four decades before René and Irene could speak openly about their experiences during the Holocaust. In his later years, René volunteered at Camp Sharon in Tannersville, NY, where he taught woodworking and sports, and where he taught children about the Holocaust and what it meant to have survived. Irene’s story is told in a 2005 documentary, “René and I.” Irene died in 2019.