About
Born : Jan 30th 1934
Nationality : Romanian
Religion : Jewish
Nationality : Romanian
Religion : Jewish
Before the Holocaust
Eva and Miriam Mozes Kor grew up in the small Romanian village of Portz. Their family was the only Jewish family in the region. The twins have been quoted to have said that their father told them, "The Nazis wont come this far for six jews". However, when the twins were only ten years old they were relocated to one of the many ghettos and soon afterwards were take to Auschwitz.
During the Holocaust
Ten year-old Eva recalled her arrival at Auschwitz as such:
'When the doors to our cattle car opened, I heard
SS soldiers yelling, "Schnell! Schnell!", and ordering everybody out. My mother
grabbed Miriam and me by the hand. She was always trying to protect us because
we were the youngest. Everything was moving very fast, and as I looked around, I
noticed my father and my two older sisters were gone. As I clutched my mother’s
hand, an SS man hurried by shouting, "Twins! Twins!" He stopped to look at us.
Miriam and I looked very much alike. "Are they twins?" he asked my mother. "Is
that good?" she replied. He nodded yes. "They are twins," she said.
The fact that the girls were twins meant that they were huge targets for Doctor Joseph Mengele, the notorious leading Nazi who carried out gruesome experiments on countless sets of twins throughout the Holocaust. Eva's first sight as she entered the concentration camp's communal latrine was the shrivelled bodies of three children. She knew then that she would have to fight to avoid the same fate. Throughout their nine months at the camp, the children suffered from various fevers and illnesses due to the poisons and chemicals that Mengele frequently injected them with. However, they both survived and were liberated by Russian troops in 1945.
'When the doors to our cattle car opened, I heard
SS soldiers yelling, "Schnell! Schnell!", and ordering everybody out. My mother
grabbed Miriam and me by the hand. She was always trying to protect us because
we were the youngest. Everything was moving very fast, and as I looked around, I
noticed my father and my two older sisters were gone. As I clutched my mother’s
hand, an SS man hurried by shouting, "Twins! Twins!" He stopped to look at us.
Miriam and I looked very much alike. "Are they twins?" he asked my mother. "Is
that good?" she replied. He nodded yes. "They are twins," she said.
The fact that the girls were twins meant that they were huge targets for Doctor Joseph Mengele, the notorious leading Nazi who carried out gruesome experiments on countless sets of twins throughout the Holocaust. Eva's first sight as she entered the concentration camp's communal latrine was the shrivelled bodies of three children. She knew then that she would have to fight to avoid the same fate. Throughout their nine months at the camp, the children suffered from various fevers and illnesses due to the poisons and chemicals that Mengele frequently injected them with. However, they both survived and were liberated by Russian troops in 1945.
Legacy
One of the great tales of forgiveness can be found in the story of Eva's return to the camp over 40 years after her liberation. She tells of how by forgiving the people that mistreated her she believes that that makes her more powerful than any of her abusers ever were. This forgiveness came despite the fact that she suffered with ill-health all of her adult life. The ending to her story is both tragic and powerful at the same time.