Transcripts For CSPAN3 Nancy 20240705

Introduce todays speaker, dr. Nancy segal, from the department of and counsel at university bulletin. Some of us in the room, nancy, for her. Ill just leave it its many better and i wont get into this specifics. After nancy completed her ph. D. At the university of chicago, her first position was here in the department of psychology, university of minnesota, where she accepted a position, the position as the assistant director for, the Minnesota Center for twin for adoption, for twin adoption and adoption. Yeah, we have different salaries. I get in anyway. She was very well suited for this position. She here from chicago with a lot of expertise in enthusiasm for twin research. She also came with a commitment try to repair our borings academic writings. I dont know if you remember, but you were really keen on getting us to write better. She succeeded in helping make the grade apart. Twins study, really one of the worlds most famous studies in psychology. I dont think you succeeded much with her writing, though. After about a decade here, nancy left minnesota to join the Department Psychology in fullerton, where she remains today. There she is, established an Impactful Research program on twins thats really worldwide for the Innovative Research designs, nancy is used things like i wont try to define them. Maybe shell talk about, i dont know, virtual twins or look alikes that are unrelated. In 2005, her contribue actions to turn research were a receipt of the shields lifetime contribution to twin Research Award granted jointly by the behavioral genetics associate and the International Society for twin louise finch for twin. Among nancys many talents has been her ability to convey the significance of twin research to a general audience. She has done this primarily through a series of highly acclaimed books. I think you must have almost ten books now, and its nine now. I was close. I didnt count it, but i just looked at the list list in these books shes she describes not only why twins have fascinated scholars literally literally millennia but also humanizes the twins by telling their fascinating and i think today shes going to share some of these stories with us. And i think also if youre interested, well be able to maybe get a book by book from this. Im sure excited it for us to do so. In any case, please join me in welcoming nancy back to the university. Well, good morning, everyone. It is such a pleasure to be here and to introduce my two new books to this audience, both written in 2023. As matt said, i was a postdoc here at the University Minnesota and a Research Associate that lasted for nine years. And i worked very closely with tom bouchard on, the study which twins raised apart and for a new ph. D. , was a dream job. It was fascinating. It was famous. It was controversial and always exciting. And i got to be with the twins that other people just saw in the newspapers. So i also want to thank matt for the wonderful introduction and think well well start going now. Im going to talk about two books today and take a break after the first one for questions and answers and then go on to the second one. So i wanted to start out with gay fathers, twin sons, the citizenship case that captured the world this was a high profile lawsuit filed by the divorce banks couple a same sex couple andrew and a lot against the Us State Department secretaries of state Rex Tillerson and then mike pompeo, the lawsuit was filed 2018 and settled in 2020. Now the case details will become as i go through the talk. But what you need to know just for now is that they were suing on behalf the fact that one of their twin sons was us citizenship. Okay, now this was an extraordinary tale of ordinary people being caught up in extraordinary circumstances and. The person who captured this concept so beautifully was fiona hill, a Foreign Affairs specialist. Her book, there is nothing for you here, which ive read, by the way, just excellent. And she says that the Life Experiences of individuals who find themselves the spotlight by choice or by chance shaped countrys written history. And that is so true in this, because the decision of the couple to go public with their story and, with their lawsuit has really improved the lives of so many other same couples in that same situation. So how did i learn about this case, i was reading the Angeles Times january 27th, 2018, and i saw this headline, these were born 4 minutes apart, but only one is a us citizen and i could hardly believe it. How could that be . I just couldnt figure it out. But i was going to learn now before i go on to tell you all about this, we have to just talk about the two types of twins, because this is actually important for the story. I didnt know if these were identical or fraternal, i knew there were two boys. So we have two types of twins. The identical or minor psychotic who share all their genes in common. Having split in single fertilized egg within the first two weeks after conception. And then we have twins who can be either same sex or opposite sex, who result when a woman releases two eggs at the same time and they are separately fertilized. Different from the father. Now, most people know about these two types, but there are some fascinating variations within each type. And the one you need to know about today, a type of atypical twinning that results in hetero paternal twins because of a process super precondition. These twins have the same mothers, but they have different fathers and they share 25 of their genes on average by which is like making them have siblings. Now, if a woman has relations with the different men in time, thats how these can i mean, they could also result could have twins can see the different times the same partner but they be hetero paternal. It happens because theres a 12 to 48 hour window once over released for fertilization and the 7 to 10 day window in which survive in the uterine tract. Now the frequency of kind of twinning is really unknown. Its presumed to be rare. In fact, the only really large scale study ever done on the frequency was in 1992, published in the twin Research Journal and he concluded that point a 1 of disputed paternity cases involved hetero paternal twinning. Thats a tiny little amount. But when he narrowed it down to just the fraternal twins. It jumped to 2. 4, but nevertheless the the writer, the scientist wenk said that he probably this is underestimated because most of the women in his sample young and we know that fraternal twinning is more common among older women. I also wrote in a 2020 paper based on a case report that i think the frequency has been underestimated and why . Because a lot of cases are not detected. And even those that are detected are often not reported. And i know of two cases that have never been in the literature. So must be others now what me to this particular case, because i get a lot of cases over my desk all the time. This one just had so many contemporary themes of timely interest, same sex marriage, egg donation, surrogacy by family, citizens, and immigration. Of course township and was again ordinary people. Quite an extraordinary circumstances. And with the overturning of roe v wade in june of 2022, which actually happened at the end of my book, not in the beginning, writing part of individual threats to freedom. Threats to individual freedom were a problem. Now, as i go through the slides, youll see some that are numbered and those that are numbered conform to the different chapters of the book. So what i wanted to do here was to really humanize the people. You know, there was a lot written about them in the press. They were on television. You didnt get to know them as people. I did. And it was absolutely fascinating. But i have say that when i first learned about the case, i jumped it. That was 2018 and i was busy writing deliberately about the new york city study of twins to intentionally separated and then secretly studied until they turned 12. I get near that case. I couldnt get through the lawyers, i couldnt get through the family. I couldnt get get them through the media because as the lawsuit is pending, they dont want you speaking publicly. And it wasnt they didnt like the of the book. Everybody thought the book idea was great. But they worried that their clients Say Something that will jeopardize the case. So i had to be put on hold. I will admit that i secretly spoke to one of the sisters of one of the men, but that was about it anyway. Who is Andrew Devine . Andrew banks at this point. He was born in santa monica in january of 1981, and he was the first openly gay student, Beverly Hills high school. He faced a lot of discrimination because it nevertheless, he was a decorated athlete and an outstanding student and volunteered in his free time as a way of coping with the discrimination he he joined teen line which was a service thats conducted by teens. 14 is a 24 hour telephone line that helps teens cope with various types of problems. He loved International Travel, and he was very high in leadership skills and always fought hard for his beliefs beliefs. His partner elijah weisz was an israeli born in march of 1985, and he was a very talented young pupil. He was accepted to the prestigious Tel Aviv School for the arts, but he discrimination on two counts. He was a sephardic with a history in spain where his family came from. So he lived among the ashkenazi in tel aviv, faced a lot of discrimination because of that. And then he was rejected by his parents and face when he came out as gay, he was in the army in a very elite intelligence called unit 8200. He was a College Counselor in the overseas department. He liked to help people and helped students adjust to coming to a new country. He also International Travel and was very high in leadership and fought for his beliefs. So the couple called a fabulous couple by their friends met at Tel Aviv University when andrew was getting a masters degree in International Relations and a lot was getting a bachelor of arts degree in literature and World Affairs and they married in cannes in 2010. Why canada . Because canada allowed same sex marriage at a year when the us did not, nor did israel. The us does now as of 15 with obergefell and hodges case, but in israel still cannot marry if youre gay. But gay marriages are recognized if performed also it turned out that andrew was a citizen of he was a dual citizen of the us and canada because his parents came from. So in about 2015 2016 they decided to have a family and in canada what they do is they practice altruistic or compassion surrogacy and what that is that donors and surrogates are reimbursed for expenses only. They are not paid any of a fee or honorarium and thats very different in the United States. And this appeal to andrew and a lot a great deal. I asked the couples attorney, michelle flower they, why women would do this if theyre not getting paid for it. And she said that they feel like a gift because they see joy that brings a childless couples. And many of these women do not intend to have children themselves, although some do and she said that she has some egg donors that come six and seven times to donate eggs. Now, i also spoke to amanda adams and i can use these names freely because i have all the permission and theyre in the book. Amanda adams was a surrogate who carried the two twin boys and i asked her why she did this. And she had a very interesting personal story. She had a little girl of her own and. It was a very, very difficult pregnancy to the point where was told to terminate the child. And she said she was not going to do. But if everything ended up all right and she had a healthy child, she was to be a surrogate for another couple. And so she was for another couple. And then she met andrew and a lot. And it was very close in time to her second delivery, but she didnt care. She said, i fell in love with him and i wanted to do this for them now. Andrew and a actually conceived hetero paternal, they picked a very young donor and they dont know anything about what they. Know a lot about the donor, but not her name, right . Thats anonymous. So they picked a young donor because. Young women tend to produce a lot of eggs. And this woman produced 40, which is really a lot. And then they were mixed with. The of both men and the both men did not care whose child, whose if it was one and one or this one or that one, they didnt care. But it turned out that five days when this is the optimal time for embryo implantation, the top two embryos were almost conceived by elad and one by andrew. So it was really an ideal situation situation. Okay, well before i get to this one, let me just say that that it was a kind of difficult pregnancy for amanda, too. This twin ship, because what happened was that one of the little boys that was going through brain sparing which is when oxygen is denied to the brain and so this kind of an adaptive response that goes on where a energy is an oxygen is redistributed from from the heart but its the very situation the other boy was not in the least bit in danger, but the other one was going through intrauterine retardation. So they had to be very careful about the delivery because that one little boy was actually safer outside, woman inside. But the other boy had to stay in longer. So its like a delicate dance to figure out when deliver the babies they were delivered at just under 33 weeks and they were actually than they thought so it worked out just perfectly all right so now we come to the trouble so the trouble was crossing the border when they had very cruel questioning so they went to the us consulate in toronto in january of 2017 with the idea of moving to the us. Thats what they wanted. Thats where andrew was from a lot, always wanted to live in the us, loved california. And that was the plan. So the boys are four months old at this time. The boys, aiden and ethan. So they filed papers. They, they were told that their portfolio was complete. They the fee and all of a sudden the officer back and stress asking a series of really rude and invasive questions such as who was the father and where do these children come from and are they genetically related . And the couple was shocked, not prepared for this line of questioning. And it turns out that officers rely on the Foreign Affairs manual, which gives you guidelines but not hard and fast rules for who can gain us citizenship. And once they make a decision. Those decisions are rarely contested. She also required another dna test from these men. They had a dna test or they hadnt brought with them because had documents from canada saying that both men are the legal parents of both children and the children were born. While these parents were legally married. So they had all that evidence, but it was not accepted. So they had to go out and get another test which cost 1,000 cad in order to at least get a passport for one child. Ultimately, the decision was that aidan, whose biological father was andrew, got the us passport and the child got a tourist visa which allowed him into the us six months. All right. So the couple comes to los angeles and of course the is ticking on this and i call this chapter immigration equality policy practices and the twins ship. So here at options they they wanted hire an attorney the problem was in 2017 they may remember it was when trump a ban against entry immigrants from seven muslim nations so a lot of attorneys in that line of work were busy and the one who was available all told he should adopt his child. Andrew said, im the legal parent so the guy said, well, i really no advice for you. So another option was to apply a green card, but thats very long and arduous process. They could live in or in israel. Well, they didnt want to live in either country going to israel, possible option. But that also can be a long, drawn out process. And andrew did not want his sons, his only children, to eventually be in the army and living apart. Not an option either because this is a new and would have destroyed the fabric of the parents and the children. Fortunately one of them heard about immigration. You quality directed by a wonderful named aaron moss. Its a group that works probono and does litigation with, a law firm in this case, sullivan and cromwell, that also works probono. Let me show you the mission of immigration, equality. Theyre based in new york city for over 25 years. We have worked to secure a safe haven, freedom and equality for the lgbtq and hiv positive communities through direct legal services, policy, advocacy impact, litigation. We support immigrants who face discriminate nation based on who they are and whom they love. Now, theyre very selective about the cases that they take and they get thousands of calls and letters and communications day. But the timing was perfect. After two online interviews. Andrew lloyds case was accepted. And heres why. Because immigration equality had three other similar cases involving same sex couples that had children born, transnational, and they were having problems bringing the children to the us and gaining citizenship for them. So the idea of immigration equality was to bundle these as a package. Now, i met aron aron morris it tricky but its an interesting story. I was in new york city in 2022, in june for the book Party Celebration of deliberately divided and aron morris. I figured id see him on zoom and be no problem, but i got an email from him and he says, i just heard from the guys meaning andrew in a lot and im happy to meet with you monday this was a sunday im happy to meet with you monday from 530 to 7 at the wine bar. Then seven in new york city. Well, monday night was my night in new york. I planned a celebration with my boyfriend, but of course that all went by the wayside. I was not giving up this opportunity, so i met him on this crowded street. I have my tape recorder, but thank god for iphones and i was able to transcribe that. He said i drank he drank wine. I encouraged that and anyway, we talked a lot about the case but i brought up the township angle to him because said to him, you know, in all honesty, if twins had not been involved in this case. I not have jumped on board or been that interested. And he said, well, you and the rest of the world. And then i said to him, didnt you . And the attorneys push the township angle more . And i at one point i emailed sullivan and cromwell said, look, im right here. Nero. I can be an expert witness. Ive done it many times. And they said, well, you know, well let you if we need you. He said that they did not want to make this case distinctive from others, and he also said that they were concerned with family than with twins. Separation. And he said that for him most important, are when it was that the twins were born together. So i said to him, but thats the twins are theyre born together. He said, no, he didnt want winship they were born together. Well, we went and forth over this a long time and he said, he said this did make the case more. Stark i mean, he finally admitted to that. And in fact, what was interesting was that another an immigration attorney i spoke to much later used, the same phrasing that made the case more stark. And i looked the media, i did a Google Scholar search on all this. They had many more papers written about them than the other ones did. Okay. So now the case is proceeding and these guys are in the public media nonstop and that was something that immigration to quality absolutely demanded because aaron claims and i think rightfully so that if the American Public cares theres this push this Public Policy so according to one of the other lawyers alexa lawson rimmer, whos also a mother of twins, also gay and had them through surrogacy, they addressed a law were definitely a joint client relations ship in terms of advising and making they were great parents and they were coparenting throughout the whole. So youve got to remember that with this ad, this whole thing, these parents as well as plaintiffs, they had to take care of the childrens education and health and all kinds things while they were litigating this case. And they were a very private in some ways did not want anyone to know that one fathered one and one fathered the other. That was private between them and surrogate. And that was about it. Werent going to tell any family member, although when you look at the physically, its pretty to figure out whos whos. But that being said so these are some selective headlines that were coming out the time now as far as parenting went, i actually got this one comment from andrew, which i just he said, there are so many crazy difficult moments being a parent of twins that hard to really find these happy moments when your heart just melts and morning i had that and he said that his boys are in twin beds and he watched one get out of bed and crawl into with the other and say i love you and always want to be your friend, but so what do you say to that . All right. So the next chapter, which is titled menacing landscape and hopeful terrain lawsuits, negotiations, appeals and resolutions. So as i said, the case was filed january of 2018 and the the ninth Circuit Court of appeals issued a in favor of the family. That was their decision. The government then has 60 days to appeal and they appealed on 59, which set the litigation and back at the same time, there were supporters, many gay associations wrote statements on their behalf and there was a wonderful statement, actually a brief written a Yale University professor, douglas zinn name, who i got to know very well over the internet just, a wonderful guy, a family attorney. And he authored a brief and 65 Family Lawyers to sign on. Yeah, just about everyone he contacted who signed to that, very supportive. But while physical going on on the there were supportive comments there were horrifically insulting comments and this was very painful for couple depositions were taken in 2019 and excerpts are actually available on the internet im going to read you just two and one of them was from terry day the consular officer. And you can just notice how hesitant she was in her because. They twins were they were treated as i mean, all the information is true for one in the initial interview as far as i know it would have been true for the other. So here she is not making a difference between the twins but she certainly did ultimately an adverse head its not every day that you walk into your countrys consulate to be told youre essentially not the parent of your child even though youve produced a birth certificate showing. That is the case. So thats what these guys had to face. And ill tell you another they had was that and im sorry not to ethan. The child with the israeli father would be stolen they about this every day that they went to work that if they came home he wouldnt be there. They had a nanny who was not native english speaker. They didnt know how she would handle this. And i asked the Immigration Attorneys if this was a realistic concern. And they said it was a very slight chance that could happen. Probably not likely slight and this caused the family a amazing levels of concern, as you can imagine. Right. The mom and your childs not going to be there. All right. So in october of 2020, the case was resolved for good. The government tried to appeal again. They asked for whats called an en banc review, where every member of the ninth Circuit Court can weigh on this. And that was turned down. It was turned down by a group of three attorneys, one appointed by bush one by obama and one by trump. And the only one who voted in favor of en banc review was then one appointed by bush. Ill tell you also that another concern this couple was the trump was going to be reelected because trump knew about this case. I know that because of a friend of someones mother and this and that, but he knew about case and they were very worried about that. At any rate, in june of 2021, it was finally put to completely and they never have to worry anymore about. Ethans citizenship. Now, at this point, i had some time to talk to family about some of their dynamics. And i want to talk about three concept one that im sure is familiar to everybody and to that may not be and certainly the last one was not at all familiar to me. So we all know what sort of meeting is. Its the non random mating or pairing of couples based usually on similar characteristics. We know that verbal cognition is about point values at that point for physical characteristics, height sent to be much lower at about ten. So on that i was aware of a concept which is out there and defined but had no name. So i it the name of sort of parenting and maybe thatll get into the literature and ill famous and immortal. We dont know. But at any rate, i sort of took parenting refers to the affinity or attraction or even favoritism between. A parent and a particular child in they perceive similarities to themself. Okay and that can happen for a gay couple or an opposite couple. But there was and both men said that they saw that that they were attracted to they saw certain traits in their child that reminded them of themselves. But there was another concept that eli brought up to me and he said he read it and hebrew newspaper, but he can never find the source i call it a sort of cross parenting. And what it refers to is that partner a may look at a and be attracted to that child because that child has features that remind him his own partner so that child has features that that explain the attraction and both men said that they felt it both not that they loved one child more than the other, but there was a certain attraction or affinity and i was able to interview two other couples like this to same sex couples where partner had contributed to one of the twins and one couple enthusiastically endorsed it. One did not, but you know, thats a small sample. I think it would be a fascinating new way of looking at relationships within same sex families. Five years and four lawsuits now next time. So based the immigration and nationality act of 1952 that informed the state departments policy in 1990s and beyond and. That was the children delivered abroad. A surrogate were considered born out of wedlock even if they had a u. S. Citizen parent. The ninth Circuit Court in 2020. This is just the time the case settled, said the ayana was misapplied and a pilot relationship between the parent and the child is not required when couples married. So what all the attorneys reminding me was that andrew and i live were treated as if they werent a married couple. And then in the summer of 2021, many immigration manuals were modified to take note at policy and there were changes. These changes, of course, were due to work of immigration, equality and sullivan and cromwell. Ive just a few slides left for this i just to talk a little bit about the lawyers and a state Department Official. So i mentioned douglas nejame, the lawyer at yale. He was the one who authored the brief signed by the 65 law professors because he felt that the lawyers involved in the case were not as experience with family as he would have liked. Katherine ross was one of the signers of that particular brief, a woman at George Washington university. And actually, i knew her because. Id met her a few years earlier at the university, virginia, where they were having a conference on the new york city twins that was deliberately divided. So i knew her very well, and she argued that legal parentage should be is recognized across the United States and across nations. Now, svo state Department Official i actually got somebody pretty high in the state department who agreed to talk to me as long as i would not. His name and i have not mention his name to anybody, but he said i could him sdl in the book so i have and he exclusively on this case for a while and he called it an action forcing an event he worked to modify the term biological to include genetic and gestational and he noticed there was among some of the older litigants but they eventually came around and he said the gestational is still remains a problem because gestational has a different connotation if its a man if its a woman, its a woman and Somebody Just stated yourself. But for men just contributing again again, he and some other lawyers have said that what happens couples are not married. Same couples intend to have children. Perhaps you might order prebirth orders to take care of parentage and that would, you know, everybody would be treated legally as opposed to biologically. And thats a concept thats been taken up by a woman in denver, a fertility specialist. And attorney, ellen. And the lawyers, of course, are worried about the overturning of roe v wade. So in summing this up, andrew gave me this quote and i knew it was going to be the of the book or the end. I just didnt know where it fit beautifully in the end. And it says its a gordian knot of investors who would never do this. A heterosexual couple. And i think thats true. I in the book, i cite many examples of heterosexual couples who are not related to their kids. Kids were born abroad and nobody raises an eyebrow. And the other thing i want to say is that and im going to tell me that theyre so boring. They said all we do is we take our kids to disneyland. We netflix, we go to walgreens. They love to go there and he said, were just like other couple, except that were two dads. And its true when. You watch them with their kids. And i have many occasions. All you see are two parents who love their kids, who want take care of them and nurture them and have fun with them. Thats it. Nothing. So i have one more thing i want to mention here, is that dr. Charlotte is a psychologist at the university of virginia who has done a lot of work on the outcomes of children and raised by gay couples. And she finds virtually difference between them. Sometimes the kids are stigmatized by their classmates, but in terms of their personalities, theyre more tolerant, theyre welladjusted, and they have no more School Problems than anybody else. So thats something that i think needs to get out there. I want to acknowledge my editor at ramona littlefield and agent at the carroll man literary agency, my funding sources, ashley shapiro, who is the that i spoke to off record early on but also a magnet was a photographer who just gave me all these professional photos that are in the book and the attorneys at immigration equality and sullivan and cromwell, the family law scholars, anonymous, sdo, and of course, the couple, andrew and the last of us banks. So were going to take maybe two or three questions right now . And then im going to go on to the other book. So so i mean, feel to applaud if you want. Are there any questions, a comment at this time . Yes i think this idea of a sort of chip parenting and sort of coparenting, very interesting. What what kinds of characteristics do they see in their either their own biological child or their partners child that they find . Do they talk about that . They mentioned a couple. And of its going to vary from couple to couple, but they mentioned an energy and enthusiasm. One one man who was rather lethargic. He loved the energy and exuberance of his partners child. Those are the two that really come across. So but yeah, i think absolutely fascinating. Something i hadnt thought and i think its really worth pursuing, particularly now that more and more same sex couples are having children, particularly men it used be that men were adopting, but now theyre actually going towards surrogacy much more. And other questions or comments. Yes. How is the family doing now . I imagine this was a really difficult situation for them to go through. And yeah it was very, very difficult for a long time. But doing just fine right now. Absolutely fine right now. They live in california, southern california, not too far from me and the kids are going to school and the men have great jobs and they have a social network and they really are so pleased that they went public with this story because they said that this will make their children proud of them. In fact they constructed a digital diary because they wanted children to know what the world was like when these kids grow up. Because right now they dont really understand, of course. But i think thats great legacy theyre leaving. And i think that that because it helped so many couples, you know, this guys really sacrificed a lot to be able to do this. So theyre doing this by. Okay, one more question. Yes. Oh, thats true. The thats what the crew sorry. So im going to go on and about the second book now and this is the windshield of the holocaust stolen childhood and the will to survive, which came out in 2023. Its actually an annotated photo from a trip that i took in 1985 to auschwitzbirkenau. So on the occasion of the 40th anniversary reunion of the twin children who survived the mengele experiments, it was followed by a three day public hearing at yad vashem, which stands for a more a memorial and a name in jerusalem. And i also cover an inquest that occurred in november of that year in terre haute, indiana, when news of bangalores death was reported and forensic evidence needed to be reviewed to go over. And i stayed in touch with a number of the and some of them are actually pictured more recently in the book. How did i get involved in this . So actually tom bouchard had sent me to california to be on woman to woman. They were doing a special twin segment and that show was off the air hosted by pat mitchell. But i was listening to the radio last late that night and i heard about this reunion that was taking place, and i knew vaguely about the mengele twins, but they said that some twins were separated all their lives and hoping to meet. And of course, thats but i was sitting at the time and being a jewish twin myself, i was so drawn to this because. I knew that in another time, another place that could have been my sister and me on that railroad ramp and the selection. So i learned very interesting lesson through all this to this time so that i know if you remember this time, but the next morning i called you and i said, i to go to this and you said, well discuss it when you get back. So, so i got back and tom said, heres 300. This is your bargaining. Go get the rest. And i learned that if you have a little bit of money, it shows people are interested, but youre not too greedy asking for the world. So then i went to see jack shepherd. Some of you may remember him, who was head of the dwight institute, and he gave me another 300. And at this point i was only planning to go to auschwitz birkenau had no intention of yad vashem, but then i called the Minneapolis Federation and i kid you not with phone call. I had 500, but more. I thought about it. I knew i had to go to yad to. So thats when tom and norman gamez and i got together to brainstorm. And norman gamez was just a wonderful person. He was not only brilliant in his field, a resilient children, but he knew he the culture of the field. And as me sitting there, he said, doesnt greg kimball us a favor . Now Greg Campbell was a psychologist that time and he knew who was the editor of psychology today, and one of them went out called greg kimball. And before i knew i was hired to write an for psychology today, which was going to pay handsomely. So with that money, i could go both places. I could buy a really good nikon camera, and im not a photographer. But that allowed me to take these incredible pictures so that was all great. So i how did i get from minneapolis to new york to paris to poland to israel in two months . So after the Radio Program and raising the funds . I was in new york city prior to the leaving, and i met some of the twins i met the two that you see up here, rene irene, who by the way, were separated at the age of five and met through amazing circumstance is at the age of 13 and ill talk a little bit about that later and i met paterson maggie who was a somewhat older twin at the time and he was there with his wife and his wife me that he never never talked about his experience to her or to his children. And then i saw peter take out a piece of paper and draw a map of auschwitz. And i kept that for many, many years his wife amazed now getting back to a twin research design, theres one design you need to know about, and that is code twin control. That is when, well, theres two two varieties. Theres natural poetry control, which uses only minus psychotic twins, where one might have schizophrenia, one doesnt or one might have an injury, the other one does, or one might have had some experience that one doesnt. So you study these to understand what the interval and what the difference might mean and how that can be used apply to the normal non population. But also an experimental kind where. You can introduce an intervention such a Reading Program or an Athletic Program and then follow twins for a while to see if that intervention a difference or if the twins mature at the same rate. This the kind of design that was pursued. Dr. Mengele only in a very perverted form. For example, he inject one twin with typhus and not the other wait a while, have twins killed and compare healthy and deceased organs. There was a forensic pathologist, nazli, who used to do this. Okay so how did these twins together after so many years remember . The liberation was 45. This is 85. This is 40 years. One of the twins walked with the sign at a washington dc gathering of Holocaust Survivors with this sign that read broken twins dr. Mengele and found another twin. And together they formed an organization that they called which stands for children auschwitz nazis deadly laboratory experiments, survivors. And the Biggest Group was in israel, but there was a very sizable group here in the and some members are scattered throughout europe and australia. So when i went there you fly from new york to paris at the time and 85 there were no direct flights from new york to. And when you went to paris, you never knew if you were going to go on air. Lod, air france. I went on air a lot going there. Air france coming. It was quite an experience. Just to give you a hint of some of the weirdness is on air a lot. One half of the plane is smoking and the other is non smoking. So it doesnt matter where you sit, youre going to get smoke. All right. So and they also have the biggest bathrooms ive seen. All right. So now then from paris, we took a into warsaw and then im sorry, im sorry. We flew from paris to warsaw, took a bus from warsaw to krakow, which is not far from the camps. And then we in every day for about three or four days here, is a picture i took of the railroad from the bus window on, the way to auschwitz. Here is what it looks like as you are approaching the camps and. Here is the entrance between outfits and birkenau outfits was the earlier camp and now came later out, which was brick and birkenau was wooden. And this is a very crowded scene on this first day. But i waited. People sort of distributed themselves in other places and i got this photograph. So the first day was mostly taken up with speeches and with laying wreaths and things of that sort. So here you see epic corps on the left and her sister, miriam. Eva is from terre haute, indiana. Miriam lived in israel at the time and theyre putting down a memorial memorial plaque and a wreath in honor of the twins were no longer with us surrounded by various family members and government. The stars theyre wearing were a reminder of the stars that had to wear in the polish ghettos and elsewhere to identify themselves as. This man efraim reichenbach lost voice. Now, he was not a twin, but he was treated as if he was when he got up the Railroad Lamp with his twin, with his sibling, they looked a lot alike as ordinary siblings often do. And so they were brought right the twins barracks, even though they said they werent and they wanted to know why one twin had a beautiful singing and why one didnt. So they inject it all kinds of noxious substances into throat which cause difficulty breathing his brother never it he survived but when he went to palestine and then became israel. He had an operation and they had to remove his vocal cords. So he speaks with the assistance of an Electronic Device device which ironically is german made his voice very tinny and scratchy, but hes able to talk. And then eva and miriam just walked us around that first day and twins trying to remember what happened. That was the point. And i know the childhood memory well, any memory. But childhood memory can very, very fallible. But i spoke to a woman who handles trauma among Young Children and. She said that if children or adults for children is surrounded by warm friendly relationships, then sometimes things can return. Right. So that was something that was done. The this twin menasha lorenzi, the paternal opposite sex twin and hes leading the group in and i learned from him that surviving was not a matter of luck. It was a matter of strategy. And these were children grew up quickly. And thats why i have the subtitle stolen and the will to survive. He was there with his sister, laura. Its amazing. Photographs survived. Absolutely amazing. And he to get he was the twin boys and they used to go to the kitchen to get soup for the kids and a big receptacle. And while he was there, he would steal little bits of food and supplies. So he thought if he could only get his there too, she could benefit. So they put her into the big can and they got there, but then they had to take her out to put the soup in. So they gave her the job, holding her hand on the lid. If anybody that was her job, you know very clever, very clever kids. Here is a woman, joan. The locks and identical twin and. We were in the twins barracks and shes lifting up arm to show us the number that was. Turns out 93 years old. And shes in tel aviv. And i just made with her if, i get to israel, im going to meet her. Shes the ceo of some sort of holocaust remembrance organization now here is a picture of me of and her sister mary sometime after the liberation. Okay. So keep picture in mind now, look at this one. This was a sketch of a pair of twins that i found in the outfits archives. I dont know. Its joan and miriam. It could be. And i want to also mention that white splotch at the lower left hand corner, because thats significant. When i left poland in those days, you had to bring film in led bags right through the airport. So i was careful to do that. I forgot that i had one half roll of used film in my camera and the officer there would not allow me to hand carry it. So have half roll with them with white splotches. But in some ways im sort happy. Its something to talk about. This a reenactment of the wellknown death march out of the camps on january 27th, 1945. We did it on. 1985, and it turned out that the nazis were aware the soviet were coming to liberate the camps, and they tried to destroy as much evidence as possible and to get people out those camps. And of course, they couldnt destroy everything because we know theres lots of remnants there. But this was a reenactment of event. So i think you probably all elie wiesel, holocaust survivor and scholar, and i caught him his first visit back to auschwitz in, an amazing story. He was accompanied Peter Jennings of abc news. So i left my group to go visit the art museum, which is whole story in itself. And i stumbled upon them and i got this what i think is an incredible picture. Elie wiesel. And i wanted to get it to him. And i knew he a professor at boston university, but i wanted to give it to him personally. So i just waited till somehow i could do that, which might have been silly. I did it. And then he came to the twin cities to give a talk at orchestra hall. So off i went and. I gave it to an usher and she promised shed give it to him. And she promised. And she swore she did. But never know. Well, it turned out. But when i left to get the bus back to apartment there he was on the street by himself, going back to the hotel. So i asked him if he remembered the picture and got it. Yes, did so then fast forward to 2010 and i was invited by a friend to go to the white house to attend obamas ceremony that honors scholars in the humanities and the arts. It was a great opportunity for me anyway. I no idea that elie wiesel was going to be honored. So of course, its another chance for me to go up and remind him of that. And of course, he said he remembered. So those are those are great things that happen sometimes when you least expect that, okay, this is the picture that i find the most gratifying and the most rewarding. Its in the twins barracks, the background in black and white is a still from the film made by the soviets when they were liberating the camps and if you look very closely you can see doubles these are twins being out but in the very front are nine year old twins, eva and and i was able to position in front of themselves at the of 49 which to shows the strength and resilience of these particular twins. Here ive got a single twin whose brother died in the camps hes also 22 himself as. He was as a child. Now, i showed you already rene and irene, the twins i met in new york city before i took the trip. And i want to just tell you how they reunited because i think twin reunion stories are fabulous. So the little girl was taken in by polish woman and then eventually brought to paris orphanage after the liberation and. Then a group in new york city sponsored a trip for two children, a boy and, a girl. But this is not her brother. This is another little to come to new york city for a great trip. Toys, meet, celebrities, all that of thing. So she was picked and she wanted desperately to go back to the paris orphanage, but she was then adopted by a long island couple. So she stayed in long island and she told the couple that she had a twin brother. So the little boy had been taken in by a czech doctor and. Then the czech doctor had flee the country because of some political activities. So he went to palestine and was in haifa when he saw this picture that was published in the 1947 issue of life magazine. And so he was able to get word back to his sister in czechoslovakia, and then one thing led to another. And the twins were eventually reunited in long island. And i have in the book i have some wonderful correspondence between them just beautiful stuff about we cant wait to meet you and and all this sort of thing. Little pictures of ice. Were going to go ice skating together. I mean, really poignant stuff. And when you think about that the chances of these two meeting is just extraordinarily rare. So now we come to yad vashem and the World Convention of twins and others who underwent the experiments by mengele and many people, many historians of science debated. Whats the purpose . The experiments. Why did he do what he did . And some people feel it to increase the german twinning rate to increase the aryan population. I think thats the reason if you want to know what causes twins, you study the parents. You dont study the twins. I think as. My. Anyway, who wrote the book the doctors. That was to show genetic differences population groups and that much closer to the truth i think because mengele who had an m. D. And a ph. D. , had done a lot of research on population difference is in cleft jaw cleft lip and palate and jaw structure. So he was interested in genetic underpinnings of population differences and could use those to make comments superiority and inferior. So i think that was why he did that so there was testimony from 30 mostly twin but some non survivors over the three day period and it was heard a very distinguished group a panel assembled from left to right is aton, who was an advisor to the government on terrorism. Yehuda bower, a historian who im actually still in touch with at age of 95, and gideon house, who was the lead prosecutor at the eichmann trial. Then we come to telford taylor, who was a prosecutor at nuremberg, and arnold tulsi, who authored a wonderful book and was a medical geneticist at the university of washington. Then simon wiesenthal, the nazi hunter, and v torello, an attorney, and also an advisor to the Israeli Government on terrorism. So they heard all this testimony. Now, im not going to show you all of that just a sampling. But this is v spiegel, who was an old its one at the time. He was 29 when he was brought to the camp and from his twin sister, he was put in charge of the young twin boys, meant that he had to make them for experimentation. But at the same time, he made sure that they knew each others names and. He taught them a little geography of little history. And at the time of liberation he gathered these boys and he brought them. He walked them of the camps and guided toward their hometowns and at one point he had 80 to 100 boys following him. And this is original handwritten list. He kept of the boys name thats on display at yad vashem during the testimony, one of the panels said, are there of these boys here today . And there were eight of them and they stood up and the applause was deafening, just went on almost forever. It seemed. And here are two of the twin boys that were actually on that walk the right petersen maji who was of the twins i met early on and his twin brother tom, who lives in they were originally from paige in hungary and about five years ago when the twin congress was held in in in budapest, i took the trip up to page and i saw where they lived. I saw the synagogue that was it was it was really quite fascinating. And these twins, otto and frank klein, they in auschwitz and i to frank one on the right and he told me that when the nazis would ask questions about twinning this family, he said he made up a number and they would write it down if it were real data. So there you go. And heres a picture them. It was printed in a newspaper with their parents and older Sister Sister and here it to dwarfed individuals not twins but theyre part of a family of seven dwarfed children three children who are of normal stature. And i got this picture by leaning over somebodys shoulder and grabbing this is the original what they call the lily troop. Lily put named after the imaginary in gullivers travels by jonathan swift. And they used to entertain through czechoslovakia, romania, hungary but here they were put in a special barracks and on the camps and they forced to dance naked. The officers and their feces and teeth were extracted and anally okay. Annetta and staff of probably the ones i know the best they did then they moved to australia to and they were supposed to be part of an experiment where they would be imprisoned by a pair of identical twin men. Its unlikely they would have become pregnant because they were underweight, malnourished, but was the whimsical nature of those experiments. There was no peer review, nothing. Theres the one on the left is still alive today. They come back to her in one second. And these are twins who are known for being the most beautiful, the kangaroos, sisters and. One of them said that when she went to israel she went to see the doctor and he told her her lungs were like a coal mine. And she was a nonsmoker. And so she worries perhaps it was something that happened to her. This is the problem with these older twin survivors, because they go through the ordinary aging process. But you dont know if the condition linked to that or something that happened to them at auschwitz. This is a Group Picture was taken at the out of the Sculpture Park and in the background you artwork by the yugoslav sculptor nandor gleb and the original is in dachau in germany. But its supposed to depict tangled and fragmented, tumbled bodies and limbs. And then, of course, i mentioned the inkwell that was held to get the truth about mengeles death. Many of the did not believe it was ordinary drowning. They felt that it was another hoax, but based on the very sophisticated evidence, i think the world pretty concludes that that was mengele. Although my understanding is the case is not completely closed. So as i said, there were some twin gatherings that ive been able attend at the two on the left were at the home of one of the twins and. The one on the right was actually taken in 2014 when Michael Jeffrey craig invited me to come to melbourne speak at a childrens hospital. And there i am with anita and staffer. Im drinking champagne, theyre drinking wine now, let me tell you about stefan. So this now is fast forward to june of 2023 and i just come back from my trip to europe. I was at that twin congress in hungary it was also held in hungary this year. I went to wales to give talks. I went to london to sightsee. I was exhausted. This is june 30th, 2023. Im home for two days and i get this email and it says my mother, stephan just wrote a book. Shes 99 years old. Were having a book in melbourne. Can you come . And they never expected me to come. They never spoke me to come. I knew i was going and i knew, i was going. I couldnt not. I made a list of pros and cons to travel 18 hours each way for a two hour event. Made no sense, but my heart told me something in my head and i went and i am so glad i did because i was one of the three speakers and was the most marvelous event i could ever have imagined. It just. I cant even describe it. Im at a loss for words. But anyway it was written up in the newspaper and there at 99 with her daughter, shell be 100 in february. And ive gotten her into the guinness records as the oldest mengele survivor. All right. When i wrote my book, i asked anita for a comment. And this reflect, i think, any of the twins experiences as. We were rounded up and sent to tracings and then to auschwitz in december 1943. Were being identical. It brought us to dr. Mengeles attention. This saved our lives, not that of the rest of our family. My sister was my everything and i loved her deeply. I miss her every day. Her twin sister died about four years ago. So the legacy of all this i wanted to reveal humanity behind the horror, the book has very little tags just enough for context because. A lot of this has been written up in other places. I wanted the photographs to speak for themselves. And, you know, it was during covid that i rediscovered these hundreds of photographs. I felt that this is the time. Get that record out there. There have been debates about the medical experiments. Should we use the data . I think it sends the wrong message. Future generations and we much better methodologies today. We have to do at understanding Human Behavior how somebody mengele with sterling credentials could unleash that horror and those circumstances. And of course, the statement by yad vashem arguing about the the dangers of genocide, very, very powerful statement and acknowledging if i may, my editor in Academic Studies press, who did an absolutely superb job in the production of that book, white glossy paper, and keeping price down my funding sources. And of course, the twins and their families. Can. Im going to conclude with some time questions and comments on this book. Well, but feel free to bring up the other book as well you want. So thank you all very much. Maurice, what happened . Mengele after the war. Hes a mengele was on the run after the war, and he was very close to being captured. The americans and he went into hiding in south america. He was in paraguay, he was in many places and ended up in the very southern tip of brazil, where he changed his name. And he worked as a farmer, basically, and he was hidden. Now, whats very interesting is this. I just learned this in the last month or so. This is a woman in sao paolo, which is one of the southern brazilian cities who remembered that she had a named louise, lisette and lisette was the woman helped hide mengele and. This woman said that she always wondered where her teacher went and then discovered this, and shes writing a book now called tropical bavaria. And so theyre using one of the pictures in this book. Im really thrilled about that. So thats what happened to mengele . He was never brought to justice. No one can ever really find any of data he left. And you know whats amazing is that in newman, freeman, his classic work on rita part twins is a tribute to bond for sure. They him a quote unquote distinguished European Student of twins, and he was mengeles collaborator at the college. We built him institute. And of course, von was sure that a lot of work on placentas, on disease, in twins . I had no idea until i read that section that he was involved with mengele in any way. Mengele made frequent trips up to berlin to discuss things with him, bring him samples and yeah, andreas, are there any accounts of mean i think you just said that there was nothing about the data that has been found there are there are any records accounting for any of the, i dont know, biological details of experiments well, you know, at the auschwitz, there are these sheets very hard to read. But they recorded heights and weights and things like. So some of this stuff does exist and i have a chart that lists the different anthropometric measurements that mengele made on the twins. So i mean, it was interesting is that mengele did some of ordinary twin research heights facial with, but then he just went to cross that boundary into the horrific. But but to answer your question more directly, i did find some data there but whether it was twin data or not, i dont know it could have been data on other people because there were 23 doctors in auschwitz and not all of them worked on the twins. In fact, was very protective of. His data, nobody was allowed close to it. He was afraid it would be stolen, of course. Are there any other accounts in history of similar population scale experiments . Well, yeah, same of cruelty. And there were there were many i mean, the tuskegee experiment are one. There were other. Yes, certainly gruesome. And there were experiments done in other camps and dachau, how they these horrific hypothermia experiments. And i think that i dont know if its on the same scale, but certainly the ones i discussing deliberately divided. I mean, those twins were not physically harmed mentally, they were completely. The hbo documentary, speaking about its not it its bbc as. We get any any more questions or comments. Oh yes, tom, i dont know how you can remember all these things. It amazing. Im getting old, so i underst and okay well i think that could be our final comment thank you all again so much for youll be all right