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    child survivors of Auschwitz in January 1945

    Forgiving Dr. Mengele

    By Eva Mozes Kor

    July 15, 2022

    Available languages: Deutsch, español

    7 Comments
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    • Cain Delon

      Nazism is not forgivable. None of the prominent Nazi figures are worthy of forgiveness.

    • Lynn Magnuson

      Wow. Just wow. I have often wondered about the Nazis that took part in the holocaust and what kind of lives they lived after the experience. Now I have at least part of my answer. Hatred and unforgiveness are like cancer. They will slowly destroy you from the inside Eating away is everything with his human. I can’t say that I would forgive the Nazis for what they have done but I think that no one is beyond redemption and some including one person I know personally were actually forced into becoming Nazis. I am a converting to Judaism and one question I had was on this subject. The other was about Palestine. And a third question I had of the rabbi was how to relate to some of the figures of the religion that I was raised in, Christianity. The rabbi told me that Jesus was a good Jewish boy but they did not believe that he was God incarnate. The Judaism contains no requirement to hate anyone. Quite to the contrary. What hates in us is human, not divine.

    • Edward

      What a profoundly powerful piece this is. Our Christian faith demands that we forgive those who do wrong to us. The Sermon on the Mount is lovely and people quote it, but when you are thrown into the myths of having someone persecute you, of having an enemy who hates you and it's doing terrible things to you, that's when you find out if your Christianity is real or it's just something of your mind only. I have never come close to the kind of horror that Eva Kor experienced at the hands of the psychotic Dr Mengele, but I have had people do some terrible things to me and it took me a long time to forgive them and to begin to pray for them. Such forgiveness is the hard work of the Christian life. We have not been promised that it will be easy, but we have been promised that if we seek to do it, our God will give us the power to do it.

    • Mario Scorziello

      Thank you for this article. Appreciated it very much. There is freedom in forgiving!!!

    • Eddie Falzone

      God Bless this World, Amen

    • Lisa Turner

      What an amazing and loving thing you did for yourself when you decided to forgive. God's words tell us to forgive. I personally don't know if I would have had the capability in forgiving the people that had caused the misery and loss that you had happen to you. I have never experienced anyone hating me because of my race, religion, or sex. My heart goes out to anyone that does. I hope you're still alive to share this blessing you gave yourself. Much love to you and other survivors.

    • Frank m Kalan

      when you forgive you play into the psychopaths hands......they won and will continue just on the perimeters of getting caught. Who is next?

    This article was originally published November 11, 2015.


    At the age of ten, Eva Mozes Kor and her twin sister Miriam were transported to Auschwitz. There Dr. Josef Mengele used the two girls along with other twins for medical experiments. Mozes Kor went on to found the CANDLES Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana.

    On January 27, 1945, four days before my eleventh birthday, Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army. I returned to my village in Romania to find that no one from my family other than Miriam had survived.

    Forty years passed before I spoke to Miriam about our experiences in Auschwitz. She died in 1993 from the long-term effects of Mengele’s experiments. That year I was invited to lecture to some doctors in Boston and was asked if I could bring a Nazi doctor with me. I thought it was a mad request until I remembered that I’d once been in a documentary which had also featured a Dr. Hans Münch from Auschwitz, who had known Mengele. I contacted him in Germany and he agreed to meet with me for a videotaped interview. On my way to meet this Nazi doctor, I was so scared, but when I arrived at his home he treated me with the utmost respect. I asked him if he’d seen the gas chambers. He said this was a nightmare he dealt with every day of his life. I was surprised that Nazis had nightmares too and asked him if he would come with me to Auschwitz to sign a document at the ruins of the gas chambers. He agreed.

    Eva Kor and child survivors of Auschwitz

    Eva Mozes Kor (far right) and other young survivors of Auschwitz in January 1945. Courtesy of Belarussian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography.

    In my desperate effort to find a meaningful thank-you gift for Dr. Münch, I searched the stores, and my heart, for many months. Then the idea of a forgiveness letter came to my mind. I knew it would be a meaningful gift for Dr. Münch, but even more important, it became a gift to myself. I realized I was not a hopeless, powerless victim. When I asked a friend to check my spelling, she challenged me to forgive Mengele too. At first I was adamant that I could never do that. But with time, I realized that now it was I who had the power: the power to forgive. It was my right to use it. No one could take it away.

    On January 27, 1995, at the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I stood by the ruins of the gas chambers with my children, next to Dr. Münch and his children and grandchild. Dr. Münch signed his document about the operation of the gas chambers while I read my document of forgiveness and signed it. As I did that, I felt a burden of pain lifted from me. I was no longer in the grip of hate; I was finally free.

    The day I forgave the Nazis, I also privately forgave my parents, whom I had 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.

     
     
     
     

    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. We need to honor and remember 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 speaking in their name. I have never done that. Forgiveness is as personal as chemotherapy – I do it for myself.

    Contributed By Eva Mozes Kor Eva Mozes Kor

    Eva Mozes Kor (1934–2019) was born in Romania and transported with her Jewish family to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in 1944.

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