Boston Premiere
Sunday, April 10. 2:00 pm
Filmmaker Present: Zeva Oelbaum
USA, 2004, 55 min
Director: Gina M. Angelone
Executive producer: Zeva Oelbaum
(Brandeis ‘77)

A remarkable story of triumph and the resilience of the human spirit, this courageous documentary tells the story of Irene and her twin brother Rene, Czech Jews sent to Auschwitz at age six. The siblings survived three years in the camp, where they were they were among the 3,000 twins experimented on by Josef Mengele and other Nazi doctors. Because Mengele generally murdered the twins he studied so that he could autopsy them together, only 160 twins survived Auschwitz. Separated after liberation, then reunited years later in the United States, Rene and Irene speak frankly about their experiences and their hopes for the future. More than a record of one of the Holocaust’s darkest chapters, Rene and I is about love and courage, demons and saviors, the complexity of the human psyche, and how rare individuals are able to rise above inhumane circumstances with their emotional selves intact.

Sponsors:
Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry, Brandeis University and the Brandeis University Alumni Association