Eugene Pogany's widely acclaimed memoir about his Jewish father and Catholic priest uncle – identical Hungarian twins torn apart by the Holocaust – has been called “superlative,” “haunting” “poignant,” “powerful” and “elegant.”
Pogany, the author of “In My Brother's Image: Twin Brothers Separated by Faith after the Holocaust,” (New York: Viking Penguin, 2000) will speak at Union on Thursday, April 27 at 7 p.m. in Reamer Campus Center Auditorium as the highlight of this year's Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom Hashoah, observance.
The talk is free and open to the public.
Pogany is a practicing clinical psychologist in Boston and a frequent lecturer on anti-Semitism and Jewish-Catholic relations.
“In My Brother's Image” chronicles the extraordinary story of identical twin brothers Miklós and György Pogany, who were born in Budapest in 1913 of Jewish parents but raised as devout Catholic converts, largely so their father could succeed at work as a Christian. World War II plunged their family into grief and conflict that lasted for generations.
Miklós Pogony, Eugene's father, was persecuted by the Nazis as a Jew and sent to Bergen-Belsen. He later renounced Christianity and returned to Judaism.
Uncle György became a Catholic priest and spent the war years in rural Italy as a devoted follower of the revered Padre Pio, sheltered from the Holocaust and his family's fate.
The author, raised in the Jewish faith, was five when he met his uncle in America after the brothers' 19-year separation. In the 37 years between his reunion with his brother Miklós and his own death, Father Pogany never asked about his brother's experiences during the Holocaust.
The twins' mother, a devout Catholic who never denied her Jewish roots, died clutching a crucifix while walking into the gas chamber at Auschwitz.
Eugene Pogany collected much of the early family background from his uncle, who served as pastor to a New Jersey parish of Hungarian refugees. And while his father divulged little about his past, the author's mother, Margit, spoke of the atrocities of her struggle for survival as a Jew.
After his uncle's death in 1993, Pogany traveled with his father to Hungary and made several trips to Italy to research his family's history.