Matthew O’Neil

Original Air Date: June 15, 2025

Co-directed by iconic NYC tv journalist Perri Peltz and Matthew O’Neil, the doc “The Last Twins”  centers on the hero Jewish Auschwitz prisoner who became a parent figure & savior to twins boys, who endured torture experiments at the hands of Dr. Josef Mengele.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Grasie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
This morning, we're gonna take a look at a father
I never heard of, No doubt you have never heard of.
But this man was an absolute hero. I always reference
this as a hidden figure of history. There are so
many unsung heroes, particularly when we talk about the Holocaust

(00:34):
in theaters. Now, it's a documentary called The Last Twins,
and one of the directors is with me now, Matthew O'Neill.
It's also co directed and co produced by Perry Peltz,
who we all know from New York City TV through
so many years. But joining me this morning is Matthew O'Neill. So,

(00:56):
The Last Twins actually is the story of a Jewish
man in Auschwitz who saved dozens of young twins who
were the victims of experimentation by the evil doctor Joseph Mengela.

(01:19):
They could have easily died. There were so many other
twins that died. Just an incredible story. First of all, Matthew,
how did you come across this story?

Speaker 3 (01:32):
Shelley? Thank you first for the father's day wishes and
there's no more appropriate day to be talking about Ernod zv. Spiegel.
And when we first heard this story, we learned about
it from his daughter Judith Richter, and we weren't sure
it could possibly be true. And the story was one

(01:55):
it was so dramatic and so engrossing, and it felt like,
how could this story have never been told before? And
we took the elements of the story that Judith had
shared with us and we brought it to historians at
the Auschwitz Birkenau Memorial Center in Poland and started asking
them about this story. And at first they said, we

(02:17):
never heard this story. We've heard reference to this, but
this is not a story that we're aware of. It likely,
you know, there's lots of stories from the Holocausts that
come out that aren't necessarily rooted in truth. Then they
called back and they said, this is all checking out.
Can we have some more information? And the deeper we went,
and the deeper we went, the more we learned about
what actually happened at Auschwitz with Ernod's Vishpigel Erno, a

(02:41):
twin himself was put in charge of the twin boys,
that the evil, monstrous Joseph Mangla, we're running experiments on.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Even his own children. This hero's own children did not
know his story until again an unbelievable story. Tell it,
Matt sure So.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
In short, as you see told in the film The
Last Twins by the few surviving twins from that time
first person testimonies from that period of time, Ernold Spiegel
was a father figure to about forty young boys between
the ages of five and twelve who were chosen to

(03:28):
be experimented on by Joseph Mangel And this Shelley was
an awful contradiction inside Auschwitz because they were being chosen
to be experimented on, but by being chosen for experiments,
they were also saved from immediate murder in the gas chambers.
And Ernold changed some names and birth dates of boys

(03:53):
who looked like who were just brothers and named them twins,
thereby saving their lives. And there's countless excess and risking his,
risking his For him to do what he did over
the course of his nearly year when he was interred
at Auschwitz was incredibly risky. And I think at this

(04:13):
time when we're all in different ways trying to figure
out how to be forces for positivity and good in
our lives. Here is a man, a simple man who
never wanted to be a hero, who was put in
an imp possible situation, and then, through a series as
you see in the film, a series of choices, consistently

(04:35):
chose to do the right thing and thereby saved dozens
and dozens of lives.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
And there was at one point, now the twins. First
of all, there were boy twins who he was in
charge of. Then there were girl twins, and another person
was in charge of them. But the boys knew that
people were being killed, that they knew what was going on. Now,

(05:02):
remember they're just a little babies themselves, and there's this
one point where an order comes down where they are
going to be killed, and they know this and this,
and this hero risks his own life, tell this story,

(05:23):
Matt that and saves their lives.

Speaker 3 (05:26):
So Mangelo was actually visiting his sick wife and was
not at the camp, and the replacement came in and
lined up these children for execution, and Ernold saw what
was happening and knew that if he could somehow reach
Mangola again, these contradictions, because what Mangola was doing was

(05:48):
inhuman and horrific and awful, but it meant preserving these
kids' lives. Erno runs through the camp. Imagine a Jewish
man running through Auschwitz in nineteen forty four, runs to
the guard tower, risking his life to get word to
Mangola and stops the execution of these boys moments before

(06:11):
they were being sent to the.

Speaker 2 (06:11):
Gas chamber, and completely risked his life. I mean, who
demands to speak to doctor Mengela, let alone a Jewish
man demanding to speak to doctor Mengelo, who was furious
because he wanted to continue his experiments. Now, mind you,
if one of the twins died in experiments and this

(06:32):
happened all the time, the other twin would them be
killed and then autopsyed to be studied. I mean, these
it's just mind boggling what went on in Auschwitz. I
am speaking with the director, co director, co producer of
The Last Twins, which you can now see in theaters.

(06:54):
It is the true story of a hero, a Jewish
man who was put in charge of the young twins
who were the victims of experimentation by doctor Joseph Mangela
at Auschwitz. I referenced earlier Matt that this hero's own family.

(07:16):
He did not tell his story to his family. It's
hard for me to wrap my head around why there
was such shame among those who survived the Holocaust that
they did not talk about this to their family, so
many of them until many of them were near death

(07:40):
themselves and just wanted the story to be told. But
explain this feeling of shame rather than heroism of surviving Alschwitz,
there was shame.

Speaker 3 (07:52):
I think there's an unbelievable level of trauma for people
who went through that experience, and the exact reason why
he never spoke is hard to discern. I don't even
think after decades of trying to understand why her father
never spoke and shared these stories, Judith really knows why,

(08:17):
you know. She says that there was a there was
a silence when it came to Auschwitz from him. They
knew that he was in the camp, but he never
told any of the stories, none of the stories that
we're telling here, and not the story Shelley of the
post Auschwitz liberation where instead of heading off on his
own as a relatively healthy twenty nine year old man,

(08:37):
he escorted thirty six boys between the age of five
and twelve through a war zone right as the Soviet
Army came in the coldest winter of the twentieth century
back to Hungary. Then never spoke about it again in
until one of the twins reached out in the nineteen

(08:58):
eighties and the story began to reveal itself.

Speaker 2 (09:03):
But wasn't it a family member who actually saw the
story in a supermarket and grabs what was it? Life
magazine and happens to see this story about his relative,
like what it was?

Speaker 3 (09:18):
His father in law? And there was a photo of
Erno in this Life magazine piece about Mangla And there
was a side reference that talked about two twins that
credited this man, Ernod Schpiegel, with saving their lives. And
it was the smallest of pictures, the smallest of sidebars.
And Kobe Richter, Judith's husband, saw that in the supermarket

(09:40):
while they were both studying in Boston and came running
in and said, Judith, it's your father. It's your father
in this story. And that's where they began to pull
out these different details. And Peter Smoji, the boy who
was pictured in that photo, reached out trying to find
every Na Spiegel in Tel Aviv at that time to

(10:02):
make that connection and reconnect, and back to that Father's
day theme with the man who served as a father
figure in the most horrific of circumstances at Auschwitz.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Because they knew, these boys knew that their own families
were gone, they were dead. This was this was he
became their father.

Speaker 3 (10:24):
He did. And it's something that we've talked about a lot,
you know, Perry and I in the edit room and
with Judith to Peter Simoji, the boy that we're talking about,
says that one of the kind things that Erno did
was be very clear from the beginning when he first
asked where my parents and Ernau explained that they had
been murdered, And how a child understands that and how

(10:50):
it shapes them, I don't know, you.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
Know, I've also I've often found it very strange, Matthew
that so many who survived the Holocaust, and specifically survived
the death camps, went on to live incredibly long lives.

(11:15):
What are your thoughts on that?

Speaker 3 (11:18):
Something about resilience, right, something about in their in their
core that will to live. You know that that interconnection.
There are certain things that we can't help in our health,
but that will to live somehow becomes part of our
overall longevity or overall health. And you see in the

(11:39):
in the film these boys, and I think of them
as boys, even though when they were interviewed they were
all in their eighties and nineties. They still feel when
they go back to this place like a like a
cadre of boys who went through this experience together. So
we all prefer to them as the boys. These these
boys lived long lives, and I think when we talk

(12:02):
about the value of a child's life, no matter the
race or ethnicity or location of that child, these men
and their children and their children's children are a testimony
to why it is so important that we work to
save children's lives day in and day out. Because the

(12:24):
generations that have come because of Erno's good work. Their doctors,
their lawyers, their nurses, their psychologists, there's even a software
designer for Amazon. They're people who have contributed to the
world in such incredible ways. And those thirty six lives
have given so much to our world.

Speaker 2 (12:47):
And I always say this to my listeners. You know
one person can make a difference. Don't throw your hands
up in despair. A lot of us are frustrated with
things that are going on that feel out of our control.

(13:08):
But one person can make a difference. Now, Matt, after
discovering this story of this hero, are you like on
a mission to tell other stories that, no doubt we
that have gone un covered in history with the Holocaust,
a story that now you know there there are so

(13:32):
many deniers, and with the deaths, you know there are
very few that are still living that survived, and with
them could go the truth.

Speaker 3 (13:42):
It is so essential that we raise up the figures,
the ordinary figures who did extraordinary things in horrible circumstances. Shelley,
I couldn't agree with you more. I think there's many
of us who feel helpless or out of control our
lives in our world at this point. But Ernold Spiegel

(14:04):
was at Auschwitz, lost most of his family, and was
put in charge of young boys by perhaps one of
the most evil men in history, Joseph Mangela, And he
took that set of circumstances impossible by any stretch of
the imagination, and chose to do the right thing again

(14:25):
and again and again. And it gives me hope, and
it gives me inspiration, and I hope that people who
see the Last Twins take that inspiration and take Ernold
Schpied's Spiegel's example and bring it into their own lives,
because we that sometimes that's all we can do is
make the decisions to do the right thing and trust
that it is going to pay itself forward.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Yes, absolutely, thank you so much, and please say hi
to Perry Pelts for me. I'm sorry she couldn't join us.
I will last twins. This is absolutely a musty story.

Speaker 1 (14:56):
You've been listening to Sunsteen sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three