Holocaust survivor, author, public speaker, human rights activist and educator Eva Mozes Kor died July 4 at the age of 85.
At the age of 10, Kor was sent to the Nazi’s Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland where her parents and two older sisters were killed. Eva and her twin sister Miriam became part of a group of about 3,000 children who were abused in horrific genetic experiments under the direction of Dr. Josef Mengele. They were among the roughly 200 children found alive when the Soviet Army liberated the camp in 1945, most of whom had also been Mengele twins.
Nearly four decades later, Eva Kor founded CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) and with Miriam’s help, reconnected 122 other Mengele twin survivors around the world. In 1995, Kor founded the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana. That year she also wrote and published her account of survival in the book, “Echoes from Auschwitz: Dr. Mengele's Twins: The Story of Eva & Miriam Mozes.”
During her life, Kor become known as a forgiveness advocate. Fifty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, she offered her forgiveness to the Nazis as an act of self-healing and to free herself of victim status. In light of Kor’s passing and recent news of a Florida High School Principal defending Holocaust deniers, we listen back to our 2015 interview with Kor about her story of survival.
