Separated soon after birth, Jack Yufe was raised as a Jew in Trinidad while his sibling Oskar grew up in Nazi Germany... (Associated Press) 
 
 Separated sixth months after birth in 1933, Jack Yufe was raised as a Jew in his native Trinidad while his identical twin, Oskar Stohr, grew up in Nazi Germany, where he joined the Hitler Youth movement. When the two met again at a German train station at age 21 they discovered they didn't particularly like each other. When Stohr died of cancer in 1997, she said, Yufe was devastated but couldn't bring himself to attend the funeral because he looked so much like his brother that he feared it would disturb the family. "They both used to wash their hands before and after going to the toilet," recalled Nancy L. Segal, a professor of psychology at California State University, Fullerton, who studied the brothers as part of a landmark study of twins conducted at the University of Minnesota. On the other hand, Yufe had a nightmare about killing his brother with a bayonet. "As psychologists, it made us really rethink our explanations for behavior," said Segal. Yufe and Stohr, meanwhile, came to care deeply for one another, said the psychologist, who got to know both over the 20-year study and wrote about them in her books "Born Together — Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study" and "Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins." Yufe, who died Monday of cancer in a San Diego hospital, had arrived for that first meeting wearing a white sports jacket, shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. “I said, ‘Oskar, you are wearing the same shirt and same glasses. Yufe, who was 82, recalled in a 1999 BBC documentary. "He said to me, 'Why are you wearing the same thing that I am?'" “They had an amazing, what I would call a love-hate relationship,” Yufe’s wife, Ruth, told the AP. “They were fascinated by one another, fascinated by their similarities, intrigued that the worst traits that they saw in themselves were mirrored in the other one. They were hot-tempered and short-tempered and impatient, demanding. But their families loved them.” 
 
 Yufe’s son, Kenneth, described his father to the AP as “very old school,” but a “wonderful guy.” 
 
 Yufe is also survived by daughters Anita Yufe, Hovi Reader and Debvra Gregory, as well as stepsons Renee and Enrique Vega.
– A California man named Jack Yufe died this week at age 82, and his life story is so fascinating that the AP likens it to a Hollywood script nobody would believe; the Los Angeles Times draws a comparison to a "tabloid headline." The reason? Yufe was born in Trinidad along with an identical twin brother, but their parents split after 6 months. Yufe grew up as a Jew, even serving a stint in the Israeli navy. Brother Oskar Stohr, meanwhile, went to Germany with his Catholic mom and grew up as a Nazi, becoming a member of the Hitler Youth. They managed to stay in touch and met again at age 21. The weird part? Despite their incredibly different backgrounds, they were alike in nearly every way. They dressed the same (both showed up to their first meeting in a white sports jacket and wire-rimmed glasses), walked the same, wore the same mustache, and had the same temperament and quirks. They both liked to sneeze loudly to scare people as a joke, and "both used to wash their hands before and after going to the toilet," says Nancy Segal, a professor of psychology who studied the pair as part of a well-known study of separated twins at the University of Minnesota. The brothers' story eventually rose to "the center of discussions about nature and nurture," notes the Washington Post. Though the brothers didn't much like each other at first, that changed over the years. When Stohr died of cancer in 1997, a devastated Yufe didn't attend the funeral, however, notes AP. They looked so much alike he was afraid it would upset loved ones. (A survivor of the Nazi death camps' only mass escape also recently died.)