By
Eva Kor
4 min read
My name is Eva Kor. I am a survivor of Auschwitz and medical experiments performed by Dr Josef Mengele. If you had told me I would end up getting a kiss from a former Nazi last week, I would never have believed you.
I came to Germany to give evidence at the trial of Oskar Gröning, who worked at Auschwitz. I wanted to know how he would feel if I approached him. I wanted to thank him for having some human decency in accepting responsibility for what he has done.
We were two old people reaching out, although I never expected him to hug me and kiss me - absolutely not.
In my testimony, I told him I forgave him. I have forgiven all the Nazis. I could not have imagined doing this 22 years ago. Back then, I was a very good victim. I was angry with the world and I hated everybody. I yelled a lot. I was very unhappy.
It was 22 years ago, that my twin sister Miriam died in Israel. Her body never recovered from Mengele's experiments.
I had never buried any member of my family but I could not get there in time for the funeral. It was something I had to accept and I was trying to deal with this the best way I could but I developed nightmares.
I would wake up many nights suffocating because Miriam died when the cancer filled her lungs. I knew I would do something in her memory and I opened my Holocaust museum in Indiana.
Shortly after her death, I received an invitation to a conference on Nazi medicine. I was asked if I could bring a Nazi doctor.
That was a strange request - those guys don't advertise in the Yellow Pages.
I remembered a documentary which featured a Nazi doctor called Hans Münch. He was not my doctor in Auschwitz but he was there, so I contacted him and he said he was willing to meet me at his house in Germany.
I was extremely nervous. I did not want him to look down on me. Every nerve in my body was rebelling against meeting him but I wondered why this Nazi doctor had agreed to meet me. I also hoped he might know the whereabouts of Dr Mengele's files, to see what Miriam and I were injected with. When I arrived at his house, he treated me with the utmost kindness and respect.
Unfortunately, he said he did not know anything about the experiments because Dr Mengele kept it top secret. I am still looking for these files.
I asked Dr Münch if he knew anything about the operation of the gas chambers in Auschwitz. Without hesitation, he said this was a nightmare he lived with every day.
The Zyklon B was dropped to the floor and operated like dry ice, rising up, so people were trying to get away from it and gasping for air. With their last breaths they were climbing on other people, so ended up in a little mountain of intermingled bodies.
Dr Münch would look through a peephole and when the people on the top of the pile stopped moving, he knew that everybody was dead and he would sign a death certificate. No names, just the number.
I had been working in Holocaust education for five years but I had never heard these details, so I asked him to come with me to Auschwitz and sign a document in front of witnesses.
He said he would. I was very excited that I would have a document that, if I ever met a revisionist saying there were no gas chambers, I could shove that letter in their face.
I was grateful and I wanted to thank him. But how on earth do you thank a Nazi doctor? I did not want to tell my friends or children because I knew they would think I had lost my marbles.
I went back to my number one life lesson, which is to never give up on yourself or your dreams. For 10months, I kept thinking how I could thank Dr Münch. I thought about a letter of forgiveness. I thought he would probably like that.
It was then that I discovered something even more important to me. I had the power to do this. Nobody could give me the power and nobody could take it away.
Up to that time in my life, I always reacted to what other people did. Now I was initiating action. People might react to it or they might not, but it made me feel good to have that power.
The idea that I could heal myself was, and still is, the most amazing thing I have discovered. I then realised that my problem was not with Dr Münch but with Dr Mengele. But I had power even over Mengele, and there was nothing he could do. If I forgave Mengele, I thought I might as well forgive everybody who has ever hurt me.
Dr Münch signed his document at Auschwitz in 1995. I signed my document. I immediately felt I was no longer a victim of Auschwitz or a prisoner of my tragic past. I was also free of Mengele.
Forgiveness is different from reconciliation. Forgiveness is an act of self-healing, self-liberation and self-empowerment.
I do not need anybody's approval or acceptance. Reconciliation takes two people, this is why it is so difficult.
I also call forgiveness the best revenge against the perpetrator. And everyone can afford it. It is free. If you do not like it, you can take back your pain. No one will stop you.
Some Holocaust survivors do not like this and some call me a traitor. I have been told that in Jewish tradition, the perpetrator must repent and ask forgiveness.
Do you think that Hitler, Himmler and Mengele would have repented and asked for forgiveness? What would that do for my freedom? Should I remain a victim for the rest of my life?
I refuse to be a victim. Society is bent on nurturing victimhood. Oh you poor little soul!
That poor little soul remains one. Those who are nurturing it care for the victims but the victims remain victims.
It is not only Jews who tend to nurture victimhood. It is an international problem. The world is filled with victims because nobody is making the right effort to help people heal.
This is why I am so passionate about forgiveness.
I realised that Hitler was an angry man who considered himself a victim. Anger is a seed for war. Forgiveness is a seed for peace.
I forgave the Nazis, not because they deserve it but because I deserve it.
