Eva Kor's Survival at Auschwitz

Eva Kor is a 78-year old survivor of Dr. Josef Mengele's genetic research project in Auschwitz consisting of children from the ages of 2-16, the majority being sets of twins.  She articulates her story in such a way that you would never get the impression of how bad it truly was for her and the rest of the "Mengele Children."  When Eva speaks you can sense a lot of spunk in her character, which is probably what can be attributed to her survival.     



Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, were 10 years old at the time they were separated from their family and used as guinea pigs for research purposes.  In this picture you will see Eva and Miriam revealing the tattoos (a research number) each of the children received. 

Approximately 1500 sets of twins were placed in horrific, rat-infested living conditions with little food to eat. They were subjected to long days of standing naked and having their bodies measured inch-by-inch.  At one point both Miriam and her sister became deathly ill from the series of injections each of them received.  With Eva's determination to make it out of the camp alive, she recovered and helped her sister survive as well.  Most of the children died. 

In January of 1945, a Soviet Army liberated the camp in which approximately 200 children were still alive.  At the age of 11, Eva and Mirium only had each other; they never saw their parents or two older sisters after they were separated and taken for research.  It took five additional years for the twins to feel free and no longer afraid of being persecuted for being Jewish. 

In 1993 Mirium died of bladder cancer; her kidneys had stopped functioning.  It was learned at this time that Mirium's kidneys remained the size of a teenage child.  Presumably, this was the result of the injections she received under Dr. Mengele's control.

In 1995, Eva found the courage to forgive Dr. Mengele and wrote a forgiveness letter.  How she could find it in herself to forgive the man responsible for torturing so many children, resulting in several child deaths, and for her own sister's death, is remarkable.  To be able to write a letter to this man, and visit the site in which the torturing took place, required a lot of courage on her part.  As Eva stated, she immediately had a huge weight lifted after giving her forgiveness.  It is Eva's hope that others will be able to forgive, as she did.