Mischling

Mischling
by Affinity Konar
Published September, 2016

It's probably not news at this point, to hear that Nazi Germany was a nasty place, run by some very nasty people. We know about the Nazis. We know about Kristallnacht and the Final Solution and Dachau and Auschwitz. This is not new information. And yet, every now and then a book (or movie, or play) comes along to shed a completely new light on events and make the horror of Nazi Germany feel awfully, viscerally real. Mischling is one of those books.

Infamous physician and war criminal Dr Josef Mengele used the population of Auschwitz as his own personal pool of experimental subjects, picking out prisoners to add to his "zoo", where they were subjected to some priveleges and countless horrors, the subjects of grotesque experiments. Mengele broke their bones; poisoned them; blinded or deafened them; he even injected chemicals into their eyes in an attempt to change eye colour. Of particular interest to Mengele were children and twins; it is estimated that around 1,500 pairs of twins became subjects of Mengele's experiments at Auschwitz. Of those 1,500, fewer than 200 were still alive at the end of the war.

Survivors of Mengele's "zoo" at the liberation of Auschwitz.

Twin sisters Stasha and Pearl Zagorski, twelve years old when they arrive at Auschwitz, are promptly sent to Mengele's "zoo". As the chapters alternate between Stasha's and Pearl's points of view, Mischling tells the story of personalities adapting under horrific conditions and two halves of a whole growing apart as the twins are each damaged in different ways by Mengele's monstrous experiments.

Mischling was inspired by twins Eva & Miriam Mozes, survivors of Mengele's "zoo"

Clearly, Mischling is based on real, historical events so upsetting that a reader can't help but be affected. The story of the fictional Zagorski twins is based on the true stories of countless children subjected to Mengele's "research" at Auschwitz. But part of the success of Mischling rests on the fantastic characterisation of these fictional girls. Somehow, Stasha and Pearl are incredibly close and very similar, yet each has her own voice - there are very subtle differences between the two and its a testament to author Affinity Konar's talent as a writer that both twins feel like utterly real, complex and unique individuals.
The fantastic writing doesn't end there. Affinity Konar uses language in a way that elevates her sentences to absolute poetry. Mischling includes some of the most horrifying passages I've ever read, but also some of the most beautiful: about her beloved grandfather, Stasha says "With him, we once saw a rainbow that ran only red, saw it straddle a mountain and a sea, and he toasted the memory of it often. To unbearable beauty! he'd cry, eyes abrim". In the midst of pain and illness, Pearl says "Night - it had forgotten that it shouldn't be beautiful in Auschwitz. There was no stopping its velvet sway at the messenger's back"
It is this depiction of beauty amongst horror that elevates Mischling to something truly special.
Following an injection with god-knows-what by Mengele, Stasha explains "The needle made me a mischling, but the word took on a meaning different then the term the Nazis imposed upon us, all those cold and gruesome equations of blood and worship and heritage... One part was loss and despair. Such darkness should make life impossible, I know. But my other part? It was wild hope. And no one could extract or cut or drain it from me. No one could burn it from my flesh or puncture it with a needle". This is exactly what makes Mischling unique. It is just as affecting and upsetting and grim as you would expect, but it is also full of beauty and love and (perhaps unexpectedly) hope. It is a beautiful, hopeful story based around an utterly grim and seemingly hopeless historical event.

Meticulously researched, undeniably moving and fantastically well-written, Mischling is an absolute work of art.