Poland Poland - Searching for long lost twin Jeno Gottesman "A7734"

New Posts

L

Littlegreenlady

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2014
Messages
348
Reaction score
691
I've got to be honest and say this is a difficult one to know where to fit in the forum, so if there's somewhere better for this thread, please feel free to move it mods. I put Poland as a prefix because the twins were originally Polish but Elias now lives in Tel Aviv.

Anyway, I thought this would be suitable for websleuths as in a way it's still an active search, and the people concerned are actively using the internet and social media in part of their search.

The story is about twin boys, Elias and Jeno Gottesman who were in Auschwitz, under Doctor Mengele when they were four years old. They were separated around the time of the liberation of the camp and Elisa was adopted. He is now looking for his twin Jeno, or "Jolli" Gottesman with the help of an Israeli genealogist Ayana Kimron

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/14/holocaust-survivor-twin-brother-facebook_n_2870129.html

The facebook page that has been set up is called "A7734" which is the number that Jeno was assigned in the camp and will have tattooed on him.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/A7734/499971010060858
 
They came from a small village in Ukraine. Their mother was killed searching for them in 1946, having survived the war. Perhaps she went back to the Ukraine to look for them. It was a terrible place for Jews to be, both during and after the war.

It is a miracle one twin survived but miracles do sometimes happen in pairs. It's thought Jeno was taken east, not west, so that will make him harder to find I'm afraid, as I think his identity would probably have been completely changed.

I believe there are other, older survivors of Mengele's experiments still living. The lady with the terrible, terrible scars on her leg springs to mind, if anyone can recall her name? I wonder if they have been asked if they remember the twins? Vital information has been received that way before.

Link to the Ukranian info.
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/re-unite-auschwitz-twins-a7733-and-a7734/
 
Duh. Eva Mozes Kor of course, the founder of Candles. She was one of the surviving twins. She is in Indiana.

There were only 200 children in the children's camp when it was liberated. The Gottesman twins would have spoken Russian so I suppose it was a Soviet liberator nurse who took Jeno east?

http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/about/eva-kor.htm
 
Did anyone see the Facebook link that someone posted of a man who resembles Elias and whose name is Jeno? Any thoughts? Ages don't seem to match up judging by pictures on the man's Facebook, but anything is possible!
 
So I can't find the links from the articles and FB to the Candles Holocaust site. As this is THE resource for zwillinge (twins) victims of Mengele, it's puzzling. Can anybody find them? This is what I get:

http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/Twinlist_04.htm

It would be odd if these survivors hadn't been approached for information, as some of them have very good memories of their time there.
 
I did find this though - could this also be our little missing Jolli on the right, as well as the left?
 

Attachments

  • image.jpg
    image.jpg
    29.2 KB · Views: 64
I'm a bit disappointed that the FB doesn't have anything in Russian either. Are they convinced Jolli was taken to the US, or just hoping if he went to Russia, he or his descendants will find and understand an English-language website?
 
zwiebel said:
So I can't find the links from the articles and FB to the Candles Holocaust site. As this is THE resource for zwillinge (twins) victims of Mengele, it's puzzling. Can anybody find them? This is what I get:

http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/Twinlist_04.htm

It would be odd if these survivors hadn't been approached for information, as some of them have very good memories of their time there.
Click to expand...

http://candlesmuseum.drupalgardens.com/content/about-survivors

Go to twins list A7733 & 7734 are listed as not being found by Candles
 
Grrr. I completely forgot about the changing borders in Europe. Mr Z has just pointed out to me that the Gottesman twins could NOT have been from Ukraine, during this period.

They were from Munkacs, a region which was given to Czechoslavakia ( now the Czech Republic) in 1919, after WW1, and then handed to Hungary in 1938.

So the twins would have been amongst the swathe of Hungarian Jews transported from Munkacs in 1944. They would have been recorded as Hungarian at the camp, even though that village is part of Ukraine today (which looks like it's about to become part if Russia again at the moment, but I'd better not get into that.)

The reason I am going on about this is because it could make a big difference in the language the twins spoke - they may not have spoken Russian at all. It's important in the sense that if Jeno is deceased, there may only be family members left who knew grandpa was originally Russian/Hungarian, so it could make a big difference.

I guess the the twins's history was actually discovered through the children's survivors' list from the Camp? Luckily, a list of all surviving children was kept, along with their KZL number tattooed on their arm. But I haven't managed to find a copy of the page with the twins' numbers on yet. They are handwritten, but the oages are easily readable, and they document the countries the children came from too.
 
I don't really have anything to add except that I hope the twins are ale to be reunited. How sad for them to have gone through that. How sad for their mother.
Kind of OT but here's an interesting read- Mengele spent some time in Brazil after WWII. "The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town, an Argentine historian has claimed." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...osef-Mengele-created-twin-town-in-Brazil.html
 
ktgirl said:
I don't really have anything to add except that I hope the twins are ale to be reunited. How sad for them to have gone through that. How sad for their mother.

Kind of OT but here's an interesting read- Mengele spent some time in Brazil after WWII. "The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town, an Argentine historian has claimed." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...osef-Mengele-created-twin-town-in-Brazil.html
Click to expand...

Aaargghh! Don't get me started on Latin American Nazis and the damage they still managed to wreak there- just ask the moms of the Argentinian Disappeared. You'd have thought managing to reduce their own homeland to absolute rubble would have been enough.
 
zwiebel said:
Aaargghh! Don't get me started on Latin American Nazis and the damage they still managed to wreak there- just ask the moms of the Argentinian Disappeared. You'd have thought managing to reduce their own homeland to absolute rubble would have been enough.
Click to expand...

Years ago I went to Argentina & saw a couple of elderly mothers holding pictures of their disappeared children in the Plaza de Mayo.

So many disappearances and unanswered questions caused by evil people in this world.

I hope these twins' story can have a happy ending.
 
My grandfather was from the Carpathian mountains of Ukraine - his mother identified as Polish and his father as Ukrainian, and some of the family's immigration records say "Austro-Hungary." Doing genealogy on that side of the family has been a nightmare due to the constant change of what empire was in town that week, so to speak. All of the different powers that have controlled Ukraine can make genealogy very difficult; it almost requires a master's degree in Eastern European history and ability to read Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian, etc. I am sure that is making this search even more difficult.

I am hoping the lost twin was adopted by a loving family and can be reunited with his twin.
 
zwiebel said:
I'm still lost. Do you mean those numbers are listed as not being found, or are not listed at all? Because I can't see them. Or any trace of the name Gottesman.

http://candlesmuseum.drupalgardens.com/content/about-survivors
Click to expand...

Go to the twins list. Close to the bottom is

The following twins are identified as having been liberated from Auschwitz or a subcamp, but have not been located by CANDLES.



A-7733

Gottesmann, Elias



A-7734

Gottesmann, Jeno
 
ktgirl said:
I don't really have anything to add except that I hope the twins are ale to be reunited. How sad for them to have gone through that. How sad for their mother.

My grandfather was from the Carpathian mountains of Ukraine - his mother identified as Polish and his father as Ukrainian, and some of the family's immigration records say "Austro-Hungary." Doing genealogy on that side of the family has been a nightmare due to the constant change of what empire was in town that week, so to speak. All of the different powers that have controlled Ukraine can make genealogy very difficult; it almost requires a master's degree in Eastern European history and ability to read Polish, Ukrainian, Russian, Hungarian, etc. I am sure that is making this search even more difficult.

I am hoping the lost twin was adopted by a loving family and can be reunited with his twin.

Kind of OT but here's an interesting read- Mengele spent some time in Brazil after WWII. "The Nazi doctor Josef Mengele is responsible for the astonishing number of twins in a small Brazilian town, an Argentine historian has claimed." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...osef-Mengele-created-twin-town-in-Brazil.html
Click to expand...

I didn't mean to dismiss the difficulties and vagaries of family research in central Europe, by the way. It's just that this was nicht in ordnung for the Germans at this time. They decided exactly how to classify each country they conquered, and victims were from there, whether they liked/agreed with the classification or not.

Did you find your family history? I hope so. :)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

DNASolves

Who is Escambia County John Doe (1989)?

Members online

... and 69 more.
Total: 3,651 (members: 70, guests: 3,581)

Online statistics

Members online
70
Guests online
3,581
Total visitors
3,651
Totals may include hidden visitors.

Forum statistics

Threads
592,110
Messages
17,963,372
Members
228,686
Latest member
Pabo1998
Back
Top