Holocaust survivor shares tales of hope amid tragedy

It was a spring day in 1944 when 10-year-old Eva Kor, along with her family crowded in a train car, could see nothing but a patch of gray sky over a barbed wire fence. Her thoughts turned to times before when she had been tormented for being born Jewish. She remembers with disdain her mother telling her "you have to learn we are Jews, and you have to learn we have to take it." \nAs she found herself arriving at a concentration camp, Kor made a vow to herself and her twin sister that she would do everything in her power to survive. Tuesday night in the Indiana Memorial Union, Kor spoke to a large audience as part of a Holocaust Remembrance event with a powerful message: never give up.\nThe commemoration event began with a proclamation by Bloomington Mayor Mark Kruzan. He declared April 19 Holocaust Remembrance Day and urged others to do more than remember the Holocaust. Kruzan emphasized the importance of education for combating violence and prejudice. \n"History literally repeats itself when we fail to learn from our mistakes ... never forgetting means passing on lessons to those who follow us," he said.\nMark Roseman of the IU Borns Jewish Studies Program spoke following Kruzan. His words echoed Kruzan: We must learn from tragedy.\n"Commemorating the Holocaust can be remembering loss, but it should also mean learning from it," he said.\nAs the honored speaker of the evening, Kor captivated her audience and told of the tragedy and ultimate survival she and her sister experienced while in Auschwitz. She recalled stepping off the train not understanding the commotion around them and seeing her father and older sisters disappear into the crowd, never to be seen again. Minutes later, a guard noticed Eva and her sister Miriam were twins, and the girls saw their mother for the last time.\nThey were taken to a group of about 20 sets of twins. \n"We were ordered to undress and sit naked in the company of complete strangers," Kor recalled. \nFilled with unrivaled determination, it took four adults to hold her down to be tattooed. The girls went their first four days without food or water, and when offered a piece of bread and a brown drink, Kor refused, because it wasn't kosher. She quickly learned that "if you want to survive this place, you'd better learn to eat anything." \nA girl told her as they watched the glowing flames of the crematorium, "the Nazis are burning people in the oven. They want to kill all the Jews." Kor said she felt her blood freeze in her veins as she realized her own family could be burning at that moment. She began to understand her own mortality when she found the corpses of three children in a latrine.\n"I will do everything in my power to make sure we survive," she vowed to her twin. \nKor soon discovered the significance of being a twin at Auschwitz. Nazi doctors used twins in merciless medical experiments. Kor is still trying to learn all that was done to her, but she knows that one experiment involved blood being drawn from her arm to see how much blood a person needed to be alive. \nLike her speech Tuesday, Kor uses the Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors museum she founded in Terre Haute, Ind., and speaks to people not only to tell her story but to teach lessons she has learned in life. First, she said "never give up." She has observed that "when we have a problem, we try one, two, three things and then we give up. But I guarantee you will come up with something that will work." \nKor spent years writing letters to find other twins who experienced similar fates at concentration camps. Eventually, she formed an organization of which she became president to make her cause more prominent. In due time, she came in touch with 120 other twins.\nHer second lesson is for people to realize that "hatred and prejudice have not vanished." In order to overcome it, we must "take the time to get to know a person and judge them by their actions." \nThough horrible actions were committed in the concentration camps, Kor said she has learned how to forgive the perpetrators.\n"(Forgiveness) has nothing to do with the perpetrator; it's strictly an act of self-healing," she said. "(I) immediately felt a burden lifted. (I was) no longer a victim of Auschwitz, but a survivor."\nKor moved some of the audience to tears with her horrifying tales of Auschwitz and her incredible strength and courage.\nShe closed with one final request: "When you see your parents, give them an extra hug and kiss for all of us children with no parents to hug and kiss." \n-- Contact Staff Writer Kacie Foster at kdfoster@indiana.edu.