Twins Renate and René Guttmann (later Irene Hizme and René Slotkin) were born in Teplice-Šanov, Czechoslovakia, in December 1937 to German Jewish refugees. The family was living in Prague when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied the Czech lands in March 1939. Shortly afterwards, their father, Herbert, was arrested. In September 1942, the Guttmann twins and their mother, Ita, were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto. They remained there until December 1943, when they were deported to Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, the twins and their mother were imprisoned in the Theresienstadt family camp (“Section BIIb”). Eventually, they were separated from their mother and each other. The six-year-old children were subjected to the notorious experiments run by SS doctor Josef Mengele. Renate suffered painful experimentation, and René was kept as a control.
The twins survived, but neither of their parents did. After the war, the children were taken in by different families. Eventually, they found each other by happenstance. The group Rescue Children brought Renate to the United States in 1947, where she was reunited with René in 1950.
RENE: It was March 29, 1950. It was, I landed at Idlewild Airport, with Mr. Enright [ph]. It was a misty night. Um, did we...well, let me just--it was my mother who came to pick us up, because my father wasn't out there. I call them mother and father, because that's the only ones that I knew. He was out, out of town somewhere, but we came in, we came to the house. I think it was so late at night that you, we didn't see. I didn't, I don't remember seeing you that night. I think we just went to sleep. They gave us their bedroom, the master bedroom of the house, Mr. Enright and myself had that, and I don't know where the rest of them were. But I remember seeing you first in the morning on, on, on that path in the front of the house. That's my first recollection of seeing you, meeting you.
IRENE: Yeah, I remember it was in the front of the house.
RENE: In front of the house. Right. In the front of the house. And, uh, to me, to me it was like when I saw her in Auschwitz. The look, didn't say a word.
IRENE: Not a word. We didn't say anything, we just...
RENE: But okay, now it's all right.
IRENE: Yeah, it was, you know, I, people are always surprised. They expect that fireworks went off, but it was not like that at all. It was just...yeah.
RENE: It's a long, long trip.
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