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As a bodily schooling instructor at an Orthodox boys college in New York Metropolis, René Slotkin continuously wore short-sleeved shirts — leaving the numbers tattooed into his arm seen to anybody who noticed him.
His story of Holocaust survival was outstanding: Slotkin and his sister have been amongst simply 200 units of twins to outlive grotesque experimentation by the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, then have been reunited six years after being separated.
Slotkin’s story, which he informed and retold, together with in a movie about his household, was by no means removed from the minds of his fellow congregants at Congregation Ohab Zedek, the Higher West Facet synagogue down the block from his dwelling the place he studied Talmud each morning effectively into his 80s.
“I nonetheless discover it staggering {that a} man who noticed a lot horror and devastation not solely clung to his religion and perception, however did so with happiness and hakarat hatov,” or gratitude, Jonathan Discipline wrote within the Jewish Hyperlink on Friday about his fellow congregant, who died on Sunday at 84.
Born René Guttmann in 1937 in Teplice-Sanov, Czechoslovakia, René was solely 3 years outdated when he and his twin sister Irene have been deported to Theresienstadt with their mom, Ita, in 1941. (Their father Herbert was taken to Auschwitz in 1940 and died there.) Two years later, they have been moved to Auschwitz, the place their mom was killed and the twins have been separated and subjected to medical abuse by the notorious Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.
Ita Guttmann and her twins, Rene and Irene (then Renate) have been photographed for Nazi propaganda whereas they have been imprisoned at Theresienstadt. (Courtesy of United States Holocaust Memorial Museum through Irene Guttmann Slotkin Hizme.)
After the camps have been liberated, René was repatriated to Czechoslovakia and lived with two households. Irene, who had initially been positioned with a Christian household in Oświęcim, Poland (the city the place Auschwitz is positioned) was finally discovered by the Joint Distribution Committee, who wished to return her to a Jewish household. Irene and one other survivor turned the “poster kids” for the Rescue Youngsters Inc. initiative and have been taken to New York Metropolis, the place they have been photographed for LIFE Journal. Shortly thereafter, Irene was adopted by the Slotkin household in Lengthy Island.
After Irene informed her adoptive dad and mom that she had a twin brother, the Slotkins employed a personal investigator to search for him in Europe. In a uncommon story of reunification, René was adopted by the Slotkins in 1950.
He was 12 and had not seen his sister in six years — half of their life.
In “René and I,” the 2005 documentary about Irene’s life, Slotkin recalled that second of reunification.
“As a matter of reality, the night time that I arrived in America and we first noticed one another, we mentioned nothing. We simply checked out one another,” he mentioned. “There was no operating to one another, hugging or kissing. Nothing like that. That was it. That’s all I keep in mind from that night time.”
After school, Slotkin joined the Nationwide Guard, the place he reached the rank of sergeant and served within the reserves for seven years. He was one of many few survivors of Auschwitz who served within the US army, and he was additionally uncommon for carrying a kippah and observing Shabbat throughout his service.
He remembered being shocked that his fellow army members didn’t know a lot, if something, about Judaism, and that they didn’t acknowledge the numbers on his arm as that of a focus camp tattoo — that they had assumed it was a Social Safety quantity or a telephone quantity.
René’s first son was born whereas he was within the army, and he and his first spouse had two extra kids earlier than they divorced. Some years later, he married a instructor, June Slotkin, with whom he had a daughter.
It took Slotkin and his sister almost 4 many years earlier than they began talking brazenly about their experiences throughout the Holocaust. In 1985, they went to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, in Jerusalem to participate in a mock trial of Josef Mengele centered on his abuse of twins, the place Nazi conflict crimes investigator Simon Wiesenthal served on the panel. Mengele’s physique was found in Brazil a yr later. He had drowned in 1979.
In his later years, Slotkin volunteered at Camp Sharon in Tannersville, New York, the place he taught woodworking and sports activities, and taught kids in regards to the Holocaust and what it means to be a survivor.
“I would like children to understand how I recognize life at the moment,” he mentioned in “René and I.” “I inform them the issues that I’ve realized and the issues that I contemplate of worth are issues that needs to be handed on.”
Within the Nineteen Nineties, Irene developed a number of sclerosis, which she and her brother attributed to the abuse she suffered as a Mengele twin — they suspected that she was the one subjected to “experiments” whereas René was the “management variable.”
Irene died in 2019.
“I really feel very, very fortunate that I escaped,” Slotkin mentioned within the 1997 interview. “I’ve what I feel are the true riches. I’ve a spouse that loves me, that I really like. I’ve a household. I belong to a synagogue, I’m a member of a neighborhood. I’ve good associates, I appear to be wholesome.”
He added: “However then there’s a bit of little bit of vacancy.”
René is survived by his spouse June, whom he referred to as “the very best girl on this planet”; his 4 kids, Zebbe, David, Corrie and Mia; 11 grandchildren, and a great-grandchild. The funeral service was held at Congregation Ohab Zedek on Sunday.
In recounting his story to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Slotkin mentioned, “Maybe these feedback, maybe the tapes that I’ve completed, maybe the reveals that we’ve recorded, maybe sooner or later, perhaps that’s the factor that’s going to depend and serve.”
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