Survivor of Mengele and Auschwitz, Eva Kor

Forgiving the unforgivable

Below is Eva Mozes Kor, one of the greatest people ever to live. She is without a doubt, the best person to ever write on Quora and it’s partially due to her that I continue my work.

Eva was born in 1934 in Portz, Romania (later Hungary) with her twin sister Miriam. Her parents were Alexander and Jaffa Mozes who were landowners and farmers in the village. Eva also had two older sisters named Edit and Aliz. In the spring of 1944, the Germans invaded and occupied the region. The Mozes family was taken from their home and deported to the nearby Somlyócsehi ghetto.

At Somlyócsehi the family lived on the street under a sheet. After a few weeks of this, the family was deported to Auschwitz in May of 1944.

• This was part of a larger operation to deport Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz after the German takeover in 1944. Some 434,000 Jews were deported to Auschwitz in 147 trains. Around 80% were gassed and killed upon arrival.

Upon arrival at Auschwitz Eva’s mother was tricked by a guard into revealing that 2 of her daughters were twins. Immediately Eva and her twin sister Miriam were snatched up by the guards and taken off despite the screams of her mother and father.

Eva would never see her sisters or parents ever again.

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This is where we meet Josef Mengele.

Mengele went to school mostly in Munich where he became fascinated with genetics and anthropology. He would become a physician and graduate from Munich with a PhD in anthropology. He then began to work at the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene in Frankfurt under geneticist Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer who had focused much of his career on the study of twins.

Mengele was a loyal Nazi from the start. In 1931 he joined “Der Stahlhelm” a right-wing paramilitary organization. When the SA absorbed it he was thrilled as he was a devout Nazi by that point. He bought everything Hitler was selling including the genetic superiority of Aryans, the conspiratorial nature of the “evil Jews”, and the idea of German expansionism. He would then become an officer in the SS and get an MD from Frankfurt University (not in that order). After that, he fought in the war on the Eastern Front, was injured, and ended up requesting a transfer to Auschwitz.

At Auschwitz Mengele did 2 things

1: Selection Process

Often at Auschwitz prisoners were “sorted” into 2 groups. The young and healthy were made slave laborers while those that were elderly or too young were sent to the gas chambers. This “selection” would happen when victims arrived and during imprisonment in the camp. For Jewish people- around 90% were gassed and killed upon arrival while 10% were taken into the camp.

The task of “selection” often fell to the camp's medical personnel. Despite being dedicated Nazis they were often uneasy when it came to this task. After all, selecting women and children to be mass murdered isn’t exactly something most people enjoy. There was a notable exception though- Mengele. Not only did he not mind the selections, but he genuinely enjoyed overseeing them. He would be seen smiling, whistling, and acting flamboyant as he selected those who would be murdered and who would live on.

Making this worse, Mengele knew full well the fate awaiting those whom he “selected” to be murdered. This is because one of his jobs at the camp was to oversee the use of Zyklon-B specifically in Crema IV and Crema V.

One of the reasons he enjoyed the selection process may be his continued faux-academic “research” into genetics and anthropology. He would select individuals who were deformed, pregnant women, and most of all children who were twins for experimentation. This gets us into his second role at the camp.

2: Human Experiments

A wide range of human experiments were conducted in WW2. Mengele is considered one of the greatest monsters to do this. Not only did he test on children, he also tested on disabled people and pregnant women. His main focus though was twins.

Mengele would experiment on children with no thought to their well-being, safety, or lives. He did things like

• Surglicaly implant the genitals or organs of one twin onto/into the other twin

• Carry out random surgeries seemingly to see how a person's body would react to having no organ

• Amputate healthy limbs just to see the response of the victim

• Infect them with diseases to judge how they reacted

• Completing blood transfusions between one twin and the other, even if they had opposing sexes

His goal seemed to be to understand the genetics of twins more and perhaps unlock how to ensure a twin birth and further expand the Aryan population.

In the end, almost all of his victims died. The few who survived were often killed brutally so that Mengele could dissect their bodies. Some did survive but very few of his victims overall.

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Perhaps now you understand why Eva and Miriam were taken away from their parents when they arrived at Auschwitz. The guard took them to be experimented on by Mengele.

Eva and Miriam were subject to a weekly regiment of experimentation and abuse. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays they would stand naked in a room for hours along with the other children while every part of their body and vitals were measured. Often this took 6 to 8 hours.

Then on Tuesdays and Thursdays, they would be “tested”. For instance, blood would be restricted to their arms via tourniquets, and blood was taken from the left arm while 5 to 10 random injections were given to the right arm.

Eva became very ill after one of these injections. She ran a high fever, her legs were swollen, and she had horrible rashes. After being taken to Mengele he told her she would not survive 2 weeks and she was taken to the hospital barracks.

At this “hospital,” she was not treated. Eva was determined to survive and stay by her sister and recalled how she dragged herself across the barracks to the faucet at the end of the room. She would lose consciousness while trying to crawl across the room but would wake up and continue, determined not to die. Luckily she survived and was reunited with her sister 3 weeks later.

Eva and Mariam survived their ordeal with Mengele and were among the prisoners still at Auschwitz when the Red Army liberated the camp in January 1945.

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After the war Eva and Miriam found that their parents and older sisters were gone. They managed to track down a friend of their mothers who had survived. She took charge of the girls and got them back to Romania where they reunited with their aunt, one of the only survivors of their extended family. From there the girls migrated to Israel.

Eva would attain the rank of Sergeant Major in the Israeli Army Engineering Corps before meeting Michael Kor, a fellow Holocaust survivor with American citizenship. She would marry Michael and the couple would have 2 children in Terra Haute Indiana.

In 1984 Eva returned to Auschwitz and pledged to tell her family’s story. She started an organization called C.A.N.D.L.E.S (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) and began to speak out about her experience.

Then in the 1990s, she became a controversial figure when she publically forgave Hitler, Mengele, and all of the Nazis involved in the Holocaust. She was clear- stating that she spoke for only herself- but would continue to advocate forgiveness and healing for the rest of her life.

Let me add two points about Eva that just show how amazing she was.

Point 1: Oskar Gröning was a member of the SS and an Auschwitz camp guard responsible for sorting the variables from new arrivals. After the war, he lived a normal life with a normal family. He was a well-respected member of the community and kept his wartime service a secret.

Later in life Oskar began to hear about Holocaust denial and decided to come forward on his own, telling the world he was a guard at Auschwitz. He knew that he would be hated by many and was even charged with various crimes as is standard for Auschwitz guards.

Regardless he viewed it as his duty to come forward. He said publically

I saw everything. The gas chambers, the cremations, the selection process. One and a half million Jews were murdered in Auschwitz. I was there

During the trial of Gröning Eva traveled to Germany to testify as to what she experienced at Auschwitz. During the proceedings, she approached Gröning and embraced him with a hug and a kiss. She thanked him for coming forward and in a beautiful moment 2 people- products of their time and world who were on opposite sides of the barbed wire at Auschwitz, came together in love and peace.

Point 2: Eva was dedicated to telling her story to the world and fighting Holocaust denial. She would take yearly trips to Auschwitz with young people to teach them about what happened and tell her story.

Eva came to Quora even where she wrote about her experiences. She took the time to address us on this very platform and her writings remain here to this day. She used her time on Quora to further promote her story along with forgiveness.

On July 4th, 2019 Eva died in Krakow, Poland. She was there to give her annual tour to students and young people. On that day we lost another brave voice from the Holocaust.

The loss of Eva is devastating but it is part of a larger tragedy. Most of the Holocaust survivors are gone, as are most WW2 veterans. Losing this direct link to past events has allowed Holocaust deniers to spread even further as they don’t have brave people like Eva or even Oskar to contend with.

This leaves the task to us to carry on the mission of Eva and so many survivors. We must not let racists distort history for malicious purposes. All of us must continue to advocate the historical truths in a spirit of forgiveness and acceptance.

Your memory is a blessing Eva, thank you for lending us your strength.