Seventy-five years ago on Jan. 27, 1945, the Soviet army liberated Auschwitz.
Approximately 1.3 million Jews were sent to Auschwitz, the largest extermination camp run by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. About 1.1 million of those people perished at the concentration camp, including 960,000 Jews.
Under Hitler’s rule, 6 million Jews, about two-thirds of the community, died during the Holocaust. It is estimated that another 5 million, political dissenters, gypsies, pacifists, disabled persons, and homosexuals were killed at the order of the Nazi government.
To some, these numbers are just numbers. And the date seems so long ago.
As does 1997. In that year students who attended Mahomet-Seymour Junior High collected 11 million pop tabs in an attempt to help students understand the magnitude of the Nazi’s extermination campaign. When they had collected 890,000 tabs, a visitor came.
As to whether or not the pop tabs left an impact on the students is not understood. But what those students remembered 18 years later was the visit from Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor.
Eva Mozes, born in 1934 in Portz, Romania, was a twin, who attended a one-room schoolhouse with her sister, Miriam. Her parents, Alexander and Jaffa, were landowners and farmers who enjoyed a rustic lifestyle with their four daughters.
By the time the twins were six, the Hungarian Nazi armed guard had occupied their Village. Four years later (1944), after having experienced prejudice against the Jews, the Mozes family was transported to the regional ghetto in Simleu Silvaniei before they were transported by cattle car to Auschwitz death camp.
The family spent 70 hours in that car with other families, all without food and water. When the group emerged, families were ripped apart. Her older sisters, Edit and Aliz, were whisked away, along with their father. Shortly after, the twins were taken from their mother. Alexander, Jaffa, Edit, and Aliz did not survive.
Because Miriam and Eva were twins, they became part of Dr. Josef Mengele’s genetic experiments. Approximately 3,000 children (1,500 sets of twins) were subjected to everything from blood transfusions, forced insemination, injections of diseases, and amputations. Once a twin had died, the other was often murdered and their bodies were dissected and studied.
When the Soviet Army arrived at Auschwitz, about 200 children were found alive, the majority of which were the twins that were subjected to Mengele’s torture; Eva and Miriam were among those who survived.
During her time at Mahomet-Seymour Mozes Kor walked to the pile of tabs and dropped, one-by-one, 119 into the pile: each representing a member of her family who had perished. With that, and listening to Mozes Kor’s story, the students used the media and internet to their advantage. Pop tabs began to pour into the school, 11 million from 50 states and eight countries.
Once they had collected all 11 million, they poured 6 million onto the gymnasium floor at Mahomet-Seymour High School and placed the additional five million in bags around the pile in an event that caught regional and national attention at a Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day) commemoration.
Mozes Kor revisited Mahomet-Seymour on May 8, 2015, retelling her story and calling on humans everywhere to “to never, ever give up” on forgiveness.
Eva nearly died during her time with Mengele. She stayed alive to help her sister survive. After being in three different refugee camps, the girls went to Romania to live with their aunt. Even then they did not feel safe as communist rule took over their country.
The twins finally felt free to be who they were born to be in Israel in 1950. Eva went on to meet Michael Kor, her future husband. Eva moved back to the United States with Michael, a Holocaust survivor.
Three decades later, after watching a miniseries on NBC, Mozes Kor set forth to find other survivors of Auschwitz, particularly those who had been subjected to the same cruelty she and her sister endured. The twins founded CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors) as a way to shine light in a time that was so dark.
Mozes Kor told Mahomet-Seymour residents of her time at Auschwitz, but she focused more on how she came to forgive the Nazis. Fifty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, Mozes Kor stood at the site where her family was murdered, and she was tortured with Dr. Hans Munch, a Nazi doctor who knew Mengele, but did not work with him.
Munch, with his grandchildren by his side, signed a document about the operation of gas chambers while Mozes Kor, with her children by her side, read a document of forgiveness.
“As I did that, I felt a burden of pain was lifted from me. I was no longer in the grip of hate; I was finally free,” Mozes Kor wrote.
“The day I forgave the Nazis, privately I forgave my parents whom I hated all my life for not having saved me from Auschwitz. Children expect their parents to protect them; mine couldn’t. And then I forgave myself for hating my parents.
“Forgiveness is really nothing more than an act of self-healing and self-empowerment. I call it a miracle medicine. It is free, it works, and has no side effects.
“I believe with every fiber of my being that every human being has the right to live without the pain of the past.
“For most people, there is a big obstacle to forgiveness because society expects revenge. It seems we need to honor our victims but I always wonder if my dead loved ones would want me to live with pain and anger until the end of my life. Some survivors do not want to let go of the pain. They call me a traitor and accuse me of talking in their name. I have never done this. Forgiveness is as personal as chemotherapy – I do it for myself.”
Eva Kor passed away on 4 July 2019.
