KALMAN & LEOPOLD

Lowy recounts the unlikely reunion of two childhood survivors of the Holocaust in this nonfiction book.

After a long career as a producer and creative director working closely with Van Morrison, Harry Connick, Jr., and Malcolm Gladwell, among others, the author turned to a more personal project in 2001 when he made the documentary Leo’s Journey: The Story of the Mengele Twins. Narrated by Christopher Plummer, the documentary was aired worldwide and featured the story of Lowy’s father Leopold and aunt Miriam, who survived horrific experiments at the hands of Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz II-Birkenau death camp during World War II. While the story of Leopold and the making of Leo’s Journeycertainly receive ample coverage in the work (“Imagine growing up and not realizing over fifty members of your family were murdered,” the author reflects), the heart of this book’s narrative is the chance reunion between Leopold and another childhood victim of Mengele. Watching Leo’s Journey from his home in Tel Aviv, Kalman Bar-On instantly recognized the face of Leopold, who had “saved [him] from beatings and looked out for [him]” during a six-month period in 1944 before the liberation of Birkenau. Only knowing Leopold by his nickname “Lipa,” Kalman had faced a series of dead ends throughout his 56-year search for the fellow “Mengele Twin” with whom he had bonded as a child.

Detailing the reunion between Leopold and Kalman, this book also serves as a unique oral history as both men recount their childhoods, experiences in Birkenau, and their subsequent lives after the war. (The text also contains primary sources including reproductions of personal correspondence.) These reminiscences provide a harrowing first-hand account of the grotesque nature of Mengele’s brutality and the callous inhumanity of the Holocaust broadly. As the author quickly discovered following his first meeting with Kalman in Israel, conversing with his father’s childhood ally was “like stepping into history itself.” The recollections of Leopold and Kalman are richly annotated by Lowy with footnotes that provide historical context, descriptions of Yiddish terminology, and commentary on Jewish traditions and culture. A foreword by Michael Berenbaum, Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, adds to the book’s scholarly panache. As impressive as Lowy’s research is, this is ultimately a deeply personal family history crafted by a son seeking to preserve his father’s legacy. Unsurprisingly, given the author’s extensive experience in the entertainment industry, the book’s engaging story is presented in a visually impressive layout featuring a wealth of maps, charts, photographs, and other visual elements. Family trees and a detailed glossary are characteristic of Lowy’s accessible approach as he explores broad questions and themes related to the Holocaust through the lenses of two individuals who both died prior to the book’s publication. While the story is ultimately uplifting (“He is my hero,” Kalman says of Leopold; “I’ve been looking for Leo all my life”), Lowy does not shy away from the brutal history of the Holocaust, including the ways in which Mengele’s psychological torture impacted survivors for more than a half-century after the war’s end.

A well-designed, poignant story of the Holocaust told by two survivors.