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EVA MOZES KOR, a survivor of Auschwitz and the death camp’s infamous doctor Josef Mengele, has passed away in Poland during a trip to the Holocaust site, sources said.
The Romanian-born Kor, who founded the Candles Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana and devoted her life to Holocaust awareness, was 85.
“We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Eva Kor, Holocaust survivor, forgiveness advocate, and founder of CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center,” the museum said on its Twitter account.
It added that Kor passed away yesterday in Krakow, southern Poland, during an annual trip organised by the museum that included a visit to Auschwitz, a former Nazi camp in the nearby town of Oswiecim.
“Only five days ago we recorded a testimony of Eva Kor, an Auschwitz survivor, for @AuschwitzMuseum Archive. Today came news about her passing away,” the Auschwitz Museum said in a tweet late Thursday.
“Broken-hearted to inform you that Ewa Kor has passed away and will be buried in the US,” Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich told AFP via a text message on Friday that used the Polish spelling of her first name.
Kor testified in the 2015 trial of former SS officer Oskar Groening, the so-called Bookkeeper of Auschwitz, who was accused on 300,000 counts of being an “accessory to murder” of Hungarian Jews.
During the trial, Kor described her experiences at the hands of Mengele, who had a fascination for twins.
Sole survivors
She and her twin sister, Miriam, were 10 years old and managed to survive the regular mystery injections from Mengele, who was dubbed the Angel of Death.
Kor recalled how, suffering a high fever, she saw Mengele at her bedside, “laugh sarcastically”.
“Too bad, she’s so young. She has only two weeks to live,” she recalled him saying.
Crawling on the floor because she was unable to walk, Kor said she went on to find her sister who had been injected with a substance to freeze the growth of her kidneys.
“If I had died, Miriam would have been killed with an injection in the heart. Mengele would have performed a comparative autopsy,” she said.
On 27 January 1945, the two watched as Russian soldiers liberated Auschwitz.
“They had smiles on their faces. They gave us chocolate, cookies and hugs. That was our first taste of freedom,” Kor said.
Kor’s parents and two other sisters perished at the death camp.
Auschwitz-Birkenau was built by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. With one million Jews killed there between 1940 to 1945, the camp has become a symbol of Adolf Hitler’s genocide of the European Jews.
More than 100,000 other people also perished there, including non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war and anti-Nazi resistance fighters.
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I’ve seen Eva speak so eloquently in so many holocaust documentaries. After visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau last August I fully understood her terror. She was a twin under Dr. Mengele’s cruel experiments and it was a miracle that she survived that. She is an inspiration. Rest easy Eva, you deserve it x
Reunited with the souls of the 6 million who were murdered! RIP brave lady!
@Oliver Jumelle: 12 million of which 6 million were Jews. The killing began with German citizens deemed unproductive because of their special needs and moved on to include other classes deemed unfit.
@SteoG: The figures are only very rough post-war estimates. Many who died weren’t registered anywhere – and the Nazi’s didn’t waste much time on documentation, for those about to be murdered.
The figures are conservative and understated calculated using different primary sources and pre war population figures. Included in the figure are 3 million Red Army POWs. The Germans were and still are sticklers for administration and documentation. The Nazis are probably unique in the fact that they produced so many records that they left plenty of evidence for the criminal investigations
Her final tweet was about how excited she was that she could buy McNuggets so close to Auschwitz. She loved her McDonalds. She posted a pic of her tucking into them just a hours before she passed. She was a great lady, so brave and eloquent. But somehow I think that this final tweet would be what she wanted her final tweet to be. She had a great sense of humour too. RIP.
@Ger: that’s so unprecedented and adorable. Thanks for posting that
The experimentation done by the Axis, specifically Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, will go down as some of the darkest in human history. Even within this period Mengele stood head and shoulders above the rest, a depraved man – a true evil scientist.
Helping to unravel these horrific events, in the chasm of darkness that was/is WW2, is an achievement that will cement her place in history. The world might have lost a great person, though she will survive via her sacrifices, hard work, relentless determination and most importantly her story.
R.I.P.
@Artugal: Yes – and, sadly, Megele escaped justice, and remained free in Argentina and Paraguay for around 35 years. Openly working, he had his own businesses – and usually used his own name; he died in 1979.
Eichmann, another senior Nazi, also escaped to Argentina where he was tracked down in 1960 – by a joint Mossad/Shin Bet team. Found guilty of serious war crimes, after a trial in Israel, he was hanged in 1962.
@Alonzo Margate: Hitler, architect of ‘the deadliest conflict in history’ committed suicide – on the last day of April, 1945.
@Alonzo Margate: The Mengele family have a large agricultural firm in Bavaria until Lely bought them in 2010.
@Seán Dillon: Thanks – didn’t know. What saddens me, is how many senior Nazi’s escaped justice – seemingly with the help of only a very few countries. Including Ireland – about which there’s some evidence. About a school book publishing family, for instance!?
@Seán Dillon: Didn’t Dev sign the Book of Condolences for Hitler – in the knowledge he was the world’s biggest ever mass murderer? Yes, we have a lot to learn – and forget…
@Alonzo Margate: both the Americans and the Russians were happy to use Nazi scientists post war. The Americans and British used former Gestapo and S.D men as agents after the war and in some cases eased their way into the ost war German administration.
@Alonzo Margate:
Sean is 100% correct, I come from a farming background, Mengele silage harvesters were a common sight on Irish farms in the 80s and 90s
@Patrick Nolan: Does the Fallon* family ring a bell, in terms of ex-Nazi’s here – and why would Dev have given condolences to a monster, who committed suicide?
@Alonzo Margate: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Folens
I read Eva’s book about the holocaust and has seen her in many documentaries. RIP
Crazy time in the not too distant past
@John kane:
And still denied by many idiots despite first-hand accounts from Eva Kor and many others like her, including former nazis.
she eventually died in the country where she &so many millions went through such unspeakable horrors in the holocaust &incredibly she survived it..RIP
RIP
Incredible story of horror and courage. RIP
The strength of this lady was incredible. R.I.P Eva.
A brave lady who survived despite the Nazi cruelty. May her God protect and keep her
Rest In Peace great lady !
The Tattooist of Aushwitz is an ok read but it’s virtually fiction . If you want a good book about life in aushwitz try If This Is a Man by Primo Levy.
Poor woman and so many countless others. To think Mengele lived out his life until 1979 in south America with out facing justice and those countries allowed it. There are still idiots who claim the holocaust never happened.
R.I.P Eva
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