In My Brother's Image: Twin Brothers Separated by Faith after the Holocaust

Eugene Pogany's father and uncle, identical twins, were born in Hungary of Jewish parents but raised by them as devout Catholic converts until World War II unraveled their family. Miklos, the author's father, was sent to Bergen-Belsen, a hell that led him to denounce Christian passivity in the face of the Holocaust and return to the Judaism of his birth. Gyorgy, a Catholic priest, was sheltered from the war in an Italian monastery by the renowned and saintly friar Padre Pio. Their mother, also interned as a Jew, walked into the Auschwitz gas chamber holding a crucifix to her breast.

In My Brother's Image eloquently portrays how the Holocaust destroyed these brothers' close childhood bond. Each believing the other a traitor to their family's faith, they remained estranged even after emigrating to America, where they lived and worked only miles from each other. Filled with extraordinary scenes such as Miklos's Passover celebration with fellow prisoners in the camp, this tragic memoir encapsulates the drama of a family torn apart by the historical rupture between Jews and Catholics--even as it trains a wider, impartial lens on its causes and on the history of Hungary's Jews. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.