Stasha must care for: the funny, the future, the bad.

It's 1944 when the twin sisters arrive at Auschwitz with their mother and grandfather. In their benighted new world, Pearl and Stasha Zagorski take refuge in their identical natures, comforting themselves with the private language and shared games of their childhood.

As part of the experimental population of twins known as Mengele's Zoo, the girls experience privileges and horrors unknown to others, and they find themselves changed, stripped of the personalities they once shared, their identities altered by the burdens of guilt and pain.

That winter, at a concert orchestrated by Mengele, Pearl disappears. Stasha grieves for her twin, but clings to the possibility that Pearl remains alive. When the camp is liberated by the Red Army, she and her companion Feliks--a boy bent on vengeance for his own lost twin--travel through Poland's devastation. Undeterred by injury, starvation, or the chaos around them, motivated by equal parts danger and hope, they encounter hostile villagers, Jewish resistance fighters, and fellow refugees, their quest enabled by the notion that Mengele may be captured and brought to justice within the ruins of the Warsaw Zoo. As the young survivors discover what has become of the world, they must try to imagine a future within it.

seems like most reviews either loved it or didn't like it. I agree with the good reviews that its a dark book, a sad story, etc. But also agree with the others that although I wanted to like it, i did not. I didn't like the way the author wrote, felt it was hard to follow the story and decide between what wa real or not, especially the ending seemed rush when they all come together and not clear how they reacted together after the war, This was not an engaging book for me.

and while I did not like it, I think it would be interesting for a book club to read to get different perspectives on it

This is a book might cause various readers to be uncomfortable and reading this story is really can be difficult & horrific. I had to read it in stages. It is a Holocaust story that takes place in Auschwitz concentration camp. It involves the experiments Dr. Mengele used on twins as well as people he found genetically "different". He was never caught for his crimes and brought to justice.

Mischling, Affinity Konar, author; Vanessa Johansson, narrator.
The book was set in 1944, and the abomination of Hitler’s Germany was still thriving. At twelve years old, twins Stasha and Pearl Zagorski were riding in a cattle car with their mother and grandfather. Their father had already disappeared, never to return, after he went out to tend a sick child near the hour of curfew. Now the rest of the family was on their way to Auschwitz, one of the worst Concentration Camps, a death camp, which was also the home of the brutal and sadistic Dr. Josef Mengele. This horrid doctor also went by many other aliases after the war, as he successfully escaped and avoided the justice he so richly deserved for the crimes against humanity he had committed. This story is narrated alternately by each of the twins. Their stories are the stuff of nightmares, but sadly, their stories are based on history. Their stories actually occurred. It is hard to read, but it is necessary to learn and understand man’s capability to do harm, to understand the insanity that sometimes afflicts human beings, and in understanding, perhaps to prevent it from occurring once again.
Both girls were separated from their grandfather and mother almost immediately upon their arrival at Auschwitz. Their mother believing that multiples, like triplets and twins, were given special consideration, pointed them out to a guard who pointed them out to the truly evil Dr. Mengele. She had no idea to what they would now be subjected, although the alternative might have meant their immediate selection for the gas chamber. Pearl and Stasha were chosen to live in the “zoo”, which is what the “Uncle Doctor” Mengele called the area in which the twins and other multiples were housed, tortured and experimented upon. Their uniqueness was considered quite an opportunity for scientific study, using them as lab rats. The nurses, doctors and soldiers were without mercy, and their cruelty seemed to know no bounds. There were a few exceptions, such as Dr. Miri and “Twins’ Father”. They cared for and tried the best they could to protect and help those poor unsuspecting children from the horror that awaited them. They were forced to participate in a charade to make the children feel safer than they ever would be, because they were prisoners too.
There is an emotional tug to this book that takes hold and does not let go as the world of these twins was shattered, as their once joyous, happy life was transformed into a dreadful experience with the ultimate aim of breaking their spirits and their bodies, of destroying them for the sake of science. They were considered vermin like all the others that did not fit the picture of Hitler’s pure Aryan German specimen.
Dr. Mengele could only be considered vile and insane, sadistic and brutally cruel beyond the imagination of any normal human being. How the captive and tortured children learned to survive and find hope and a bit of happiness in the darkness of the world that Mengele created for them, was awe-inspiring, especially since the author researched the background of the “zoo” to make it as authentic as possible, and such things, therefore, did actually exist and occur, not only in her imagination, but, in fact, at the death camp, Auschwitz.
The Holocaust destroyed generations of Jewish families, lives were ended that could never be resurrected, brilliant minds were snuffed out, victims who survived were completely scarred physically and mentally by what they witnessed and lived through, altered beyond repair in some cases. Still, most tried to fight back when they could, tried to begin to live again and reproduce the beauty of their former lives. The ending seemed to be a bit unrealistic, in the breadth and scope of the salvation described, and therefore seemed a bit like a fairytale at the end, but that was the only drawback I found in the novel. All else seemed to follow the history, although the characters were fictitious, of the horror of the year or so that the young twins spent in captivity, until the end of the war and ultimate freedom.
The author’s presentation captured, with descriptive and eloquent prose, the devastation that these youngsters faced and even managed to overcome in some instances. The novel was difficult to read, but its impact was softened by the gifted presentation of the author, so the brutality, as awful as it was when depicted, could be borne by the reader. The author captured the intimacy and unique connection that multiples share in both their emotions and their intellect. She described their spiritual connection as well as their physical one, with a true portrayal of how they were often able to intuit each other’s thoughts and pain. In a coincidental connection to me, the Dr. Pearl introduced by the author at the end of the book, happened to have been my mother-in-law’s doctor so I had been privy to some of her stories prior to this reading.
As a twin, I can attest to the feeling of loss when one is no longer with the other. There is a unique emptiness that feels like the survivor is missing a piece of themselves. This, in itself, makes Mengele’s cruelty that much worse. He seemed to understand and exploit the beauty of those relationships. Still, he did no act alone, and as long as I live, I will never understand the mindset of those who went along with Hitler, his thugs and his madmen, the women who supported his barbaric, insane needs, ideas and behavior. Those who survived needed great courage to go on with the horrid memories that were imprinted upon their minds.