By all accounts, Irene Hizme shouldn’t have lived through her three years at Auschwitz, w🦩here she suffered daily medical experiments at the hands of the Nazis’ Angelജ of Death — Dr. Josef Mengele.
Most of the other little girls just like her never made itꦍ out alive.
But Hizme — only 6 when she and her twin br🥀other, Rene, were ripped from their mother’s arms and selected as test subjects — managed to persevere.
Amid the suffocating pall of death, there was just one lessoဣn.
“The only thing I learned was h💦ow to survive,” Hizme, 75, toꦬld The Post.
Today, she lives in Oceanside, LI, and is surviving a differenꦏt 🌞tormentor — multiple sclerosis.
But the retired computer programmer, mother of two and grandmother of four refuses to succumb, giving talks about the Holocaust to ensure that her survival — and her family’s demise — wasn’t for naught.
She also has a creative outlet — art. Because her hands shake too much to be usef♉ul for fine bꦕrushwork, Hizme uses her mouth to paint holiday cards for the Jewish New Year, which are dispatched to other Holocaust survivors. Rosh Hashanah begins Wednesday.
“Her artwork brightens the High Holy Days for numerous survivors, many of whom are homebound and alone,” said Masha Pearl, ex♈ecutive 𒐪director of The Blue Card, a nonprofit that helps needy Holocaust survivors, including Hizme.
Like she ༺did as a girl,🧸 Hizme has learned to adapt.
“I use whatever works,” she said of her craft.
It’s the same attitude that madಌe her one of the lucky ones who got out of hell. Of the 1,500 sets of twins who were the subjects of Mengele’s savagery, there are fewer than 100 individuals still alive today, according to Eva Kor, a survivor of the experiments who founded the CANDLES Holocaust Museum ♏and Education Center in Indiana.
“As sick as it may sound, I💮 wanted to be the favorite child, because I wanted to be treated nicely,” Hizme said. “I relied on👍 my cuteness. In a 6-year-old’s mind, I figured if you like me, you won’t hurt me.”
She was wrong.
Under Mengele, Nazi scientists hoped to unlock the secrets to producing an Aryan master rac𝐆e, subjecting their subjects to horrific experiments, murdering one or both twins when the study was over.
Mengele experimented on Irene and kept her brother🦹 🎃as a control.
Hizme recall🏅s sitting naked in Mengele’s office, being measured, having blood taken from her narrow veins over and over. She still doesn’t know what was injected into her body.
“I remember always trying to hide, always trying to stand behind someone bigger than me,” she said. “I was ♎6, and I thought this is how the world is.”
Once she saw her broth🙈er through a barbed-wir🐓e fence.
“It was just a look. We knew we belonged to each other, and this reaffirmed it — that we would be t🔜ogether again.”
Hizme was near death when the camp was liberated in 1945. She was taken in by a Polish woman, and later adopted by a family in 🅰Lawrence, LI.
The family spent years trying to locate Rene, and in 1952 they ꦍsucceeded, finding him Czechoslovakia, where t💜he twins had been born.
“At first we juꦫst stared at each other. We𒉰 said nothing.”
Today Rene lives on the Upper West Side. T꧑he two speak every day.
But the twins never dared speak about what happened in Auschw🌌itz until 1985 — when they learned there were other survi𒅌vors.
“It was a taboo subject,” Hizme said. “My parents didn’t want to tal💟k about it. They wanted us to be American, to go with the flow. I learned how to do that — it’s a survival of sorts.”