Terre Haute, Indiana – A video of a Holocaust survivor explaining why she forgave the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele for experimenting on her has gone viral over the past few weeks.
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Eva Mozes Kor, 83, and her twin sister Miriam were sent to Auschwitz from Romania in 1944. Mengele, known as the “Angel of Death” for his cruel experiments on concentration camp prisoners, added the Kors to the groups of twins he closely monitored and injected with toxic substances.
The sisters survived the war , but Mengele’s experiments had lasting effects on both of them — especially Miriam, who eventually contracted kidney problems and later a fatal form of cancer.
All of that makes the tale Eva Mozes Kor tells in a Buzzfeed video posted last month — which has garnered over 130 million views on Facebook — all the more astonishing.
In 1993, Kor was asked to visit Boston to tell her story. She contacted the former Nazi doctor Hans Munch — the only man to be acquitted of war crimes at the 1947 Auschwitz trials, for his refusal to assist in mass murders — and asked him to go with her. He refused to go to Boston, but the pair would eventually visit Auschwitz together in 1995. She ended up writing him a letter of forgiveness.
“I didn’t know how to thank a Nazi,” she says in the video. “I didn’t tell anybody about it because even to me it sounded strange.”
In JTA profile in 2010, Kor says her decision to forgive Mengele as well helped her overcome her trauma. “Here I am, this little guinea pig from Auschwitz, and I have the power to forgive Josef Mengele! And he can’t do anything about it,” she told JTA. “I stopped being a victim, and that makes me a very powerful person.”
While fellow Holocaust survivors denounce her actions (in 2015, she angered other Auschwitz survivors when she said that the government should stop prosecuting former SS officers and instead urge them to come forward and publicly share their stories), she found forgiving an act of “liberation” and “self-empowerment.”
“What I discovered for myself was life changing,” she says in the video. “I discovered that I had the power to forgive… As a victim of almost 50 years, I never thought that I had any power over my life.”
Watch Kor tell her full story in the video below.
Millions of Holocaust victims and their descents won’t forgive nor forget.
Degenerative brain disease. Mengele performed some of the most gruesome experiments on Jews. He fled to Paraguya and a number of Mossad agents lost their lives capturing him. This woman is sickening
was she born psychopath? or or is it a result of mengeles experiments?
she accomplished her purpose she made headlines which she would not without her abnormal sickening statement
I will never forgive him for killing my paternal great grandparents who were given his signal to go to the left where they were murdered in the gas chambers. My grandmother watched in horror as they were marched away never to be seen again. As a lot of grandchildren from survivors know the psychological scars were far reaching and affected generations after.
May hashem avenge Mengele’s soul.
All of these commentators never even sat through listening to her entire 15 minute You Tube. No one here can judge this woman until you went through what she did, and you can thank Hashem in your shetebels that you didn’t.
Soon there will be someone that one-up’s her and forgives Hitler Y’MS. After all he nebach lost his Mutter to cancer at a very delicate young age. New style today – forgive the Nazis.
Trying to figure it out. Did the terror they went through get to the brain? Do they feel it will lessen their pain if they forgive? Or, at the end of their days they feel they need the publicity? What ever the case – is it is horrible, and at the same time it hurts hundreds of thousands of others. Still we have to feel bad for these few people
She is entitled to forgive him, so that the pain leaves. And I think Hashem is teaching something very important through this mechanism.
However, it’s upon the others to bring justice and take revenge for her.
Hope she spoke for herself and not for my entire murdered family. 5 survivors of families of 4 families 7-10 siblings. ALL extended ones perished. We shall never forget nor forgive.
Zochor eis asher oso lecha amalek…
the Torah doesn’t say forgive them
I think Mengele’s (yimach shimo vizichro)experiments finally caught up with her. I lost my mother’s entire side of the family except her and my grandmother. I, for one, cannot forgive that I never had any uncles or cousins or grandfather from her side. this woman is a poor example of holocaust survivors–shame on her!!! She does not speak for anyone else!!!
She has the right to forgive him and the fact that she is able to makes her a stronger person. Bais Din shel maala will take care of the rest.
It is amazing how quickly people on here can call her names and question her sanity. Noone here has the right to judge her or question her motives.
Never Again!