Eva Mozes Kor


Eva Mozes Kor was a Romanian-born survivor of the Holocaust. Along with her twin sister Miriam, Kor was subjected to human experimentation under the direction of SS Doctor Josef Mengele at the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Her parents and two older sisters were killed in the gas chambers at Birkenau; only she and Miriam survived.
Kor founded the organization CANDLES in 1984 and through this program located 122 other survivors of Mengele. In 1984, Kor founded the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center to educate the public about eugenics, the Holocaust, and the power of forgiveness. After meeting Hans Münch, Kor received international attention when she publicly forgave the Nazis for what had been done to her. This story was later explored in the 2006 documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele. She authored or co-authored six books, and took part in numerous memorial services and projects.

Early life

Eva Mozes was born in 1934 in Porţ, Kingdom of Romania, to Alexander and Jaffa Mozes, farmers who were the only Jewish residents in the area. She had three siblings named Edit, Aliz, and her twin sister Miriam.
In 1940, when Eva and Miriam were five, a Hungarian armed guard occupied their village. In the spring of 1944, the family was transported to the regional ghetto at Cehei in Şimleu Silvaniei. During their time at the ghetto, the family had no housing but had to make tents out of sheets. A few weeks later they were transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp.

The Holocaust

Eva Mozes Kor, her twin sister Miriam, two older sisters and parents were deported from the Cehei ghetto to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in May 1944. After a two-day journey in cattle cars, they arrived at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. An SS guard approached Eva’s mother during the selection of new arrivals demanding to know if Eva and Miriam were twins. When she said yes, the twins were immediately taken away despite her mother's protests. Kor said that was the last time she ever saw her mother, her arms were stretched out in despair as she was pulled away. "I never even got to say goodbye to her. But I didn't really understand that this would be the last time we would see her", she said.
The twins spent the next 10 months in this camp until their liberation being subject to experimentation led by SS Doctor Josef Mengele. In her documentary Forgiving Dr. Mengele, Kor mentions that her weekly ordeal would be twofold. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays the Nazi doctors would put her and her twin, and many other twins, naked in a room for six to eight hours and then measure every part of their bodies. Data would compare the two twins and then against previous measurements. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, SS doctors would take Eva to a blood lab and tie both of her arms to restrict blood flow, then a large amount of blood would be taken from the left arm while a minimum of five injections with unknown substances would be given in the right arm. After some injections, Eva became very ill with a very high fever while her legs and arms became swollen and painful; she was trembling as the August sun burned her skin and she had huge red spots covering her body. She was taken to Dr. Mengele, who checked her fever instead of taking her measurements. She remembers him saying that she was going to die within two weeks. Kor was taken to the hospital barracks. During that time, she only has one clear memory of the two weeks she spent there: crawling across the floor to reach a faucet with water. As she crawled, she faded in and out of consciousness, telling herself, "I must survive, I must survive". After two weeks, her fever broke and she was reunited with her sister three weeks later.
On January 27, 1945, the Red Army liberated Auschwitz. Kor and her sister were among approximately 180 children, most of whom were twins, to survive the camp. First they were sent to a convent in Katowice, Poland, which was being used as an orphanage. By searching a nearby displaced person's camp, Eva and Miriam located Rosalita Csengeri, a friend of their mother who also had twin daughters used by Mengele. Csengeri took responsibility for Eva and Miriam, helping them return to Romania.

Later life

After the war, Eva and Miriam lived in Cluj, Romania, with their Aunt Irena where they went to school and attempted to recover from their experiences at Auschwitz and adjust to life under Communist rule. In 1950, at age 16, they both received permission to leave Romania and immigrated to Israel, arriving in the port city of Haifa. They both served in the Israeli army. Both Eva and Miriam attended an agricultural school as they adjusted to life after the Holocaust. Eva became a draftsman and attained the rank of Sergeant Major in the Israeli Army Engineering Corps.
In 1960, Eva married Michael Kor, an American citizen and a fellow Holocaust survivor, and she joined him in the United States. In 1965, Eva Kor became a US citizen. In 1978, after NBC's miniseries The Holocaust aired, she and Miriam, who was still living in Israel, began locating other survivors of the experiments. In 1984, Eva founded CANDLES.
Into adulthood, Eva suffered numerous health problems that she believed were a result of her treatment and experiments at Auschwitz. Because Miriam had kidney problems after her last pregnancy, Eva donated one of her kidneys to Miriam, saying: "I have one sister and two kidneys, so it was an easy choice". Miriam died in 1993 of kidney cancer.

Activism

Eva was highly active through the time of her death, traveling around the world lecturing and presenting, and also gave guided tours of Auschwitz. She returned to Auschwitz on numerous occasions, often accompanied by friends and members of the community. This pilgrimage took place each summer.
In 2007, Kor worked with Indiana state legislators Clyde Kersey and Tim Skinner to gain passage of a law requiring Holocaust education in secondary schools. She was featured in the January 2015 CNN documentary "Voices of Auschwitz" and CNN's "Incredible survivors". in 2016.
In April 2015, she traveled to Germany to testify in the trial of former Nazi Oskar Gröning. During this trial, Kor and Gröning shared an embrace and a kiss, with Kor thanking Gröning for his willingness, at age 93, to testify as to what happened more than 70 years ago. On January 23, 2016, Kor became the focus of a new documentary out of Britain by Channel 4 titled The Girl Who Forgave the Nazis. This explores the meeting between Kor and Groening.
In 2016, Kor traveled to Los Angeles, California, to be one of 13 Holocaust survivors immortalized using the latest technology in the University of Southern California's New Dimensions in Testimony Project. The project is a collaborative effort between the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, USC Shoah Foundation and Conscience Display.
Kor was the subject of a documentary by Ted Green Films and WFYI Indianapolis, entitled Eva that premiered on April 5, 2018, at Butler University.
Kor came to the realization as an adult that in order for her to heal, she must forgive those people who did horrible things to her in the camps. She spent months writing letters to those who hurt her. She even wrote one to "The Angel of Death". These were very hard for her to write but through this she felt she became a happier and healthier person. Not everyone has agreed with her decision to forgive but she felt it was best for her and the right thing to do.

Death

On July 4, 2019, Kor died while in Kraków, Poland, accompanying a CANDLES group on an educational trip to Auschwitz. She was 85 years old. She made the trip annually to share her childhood experiences and give tours from her perspective as a survivor.
On 12 July, Kor was featured in the BBC Radio 4 obituary programme Last Word.

Awards and honours

Kor has been recognised by four Indiana governors: twice with the Sagamore of the Wabash Award, once with Indiana's Distinguished Hoosier Award, and once in 2017 with the Sachem Award, the highest honour of the state of Indiana. In April 2017, Kor was also named the Grand Marshal of the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade.
In May 2015, she received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. She also received the 2015 Wabash Valley Women of Influence Award, sponsored by the United Way of the Wabash Valley, the 2015 Anne Frank Change the World Award from the Wassmuth Center for Human Rights in Boise, Idaho, and the 2015 Mike Vogel Humanitarian Award, in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Kor was honored at the 24th Annual ADL in Concert Against Hate on November 8, 2018
for "resilience, compassion, and love in the face of hatred and violence."
She received over 30 awards including: