Holocaust Survivor's Search for Lost Twin Goes Viral

Menachem Bodner doesn't remember the horrors he suffered as an experiment subject of Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz. But he knows he had a twin brother, and deep down always believed he was alive somewhere. Now, thanks to help from a genealogist, the 72-year-old has proof his brother, Jolli, survived the camp, and he's enlisting the Internet to help find him, the Daily Beast reports. The search began when Ayana KimRon spotted a post from Bodner's partner's cousin on a genealogical message board, and found a Nazi record showing a pair of twins who were "identified as having been liberated at Auschwitz."

After a host of leads turned out to be dead ends, KimRon created a Facebook page titled "A7734," Bodner's brother's tattoo number. Within a day a photo of the young Bodner had been shared 23,000 times (it's now up to almost 48,000), and racked up 1.13 million views. "I'm going to maximize the Internet," KimRon promises, with a Twitter account already up and a YouTube channel in the works. So far, there have been no leads to Jolli—but KimRon has found nearly 70 of Bodner's extended family members. "I was shocked," says Bodner, who lives in a suburb of Tel Aviv. "I thought that nobody would look for me. I had a dream to find someone. It made my dreams come true." (More Holocaust survivor stories.)