Summary
Highlights
Eva Mozes Kor recounts her arrival at Auschwitz in 1944 at the age of 10. Upon exiting the cattle car, people were immediately separated. Her father and two older sisters were taken away, never to be seen again. She and her twin sister, Miriam, were selected because a Nazi officer was searching for twins. This separation from her mother, who was pulled to the right while the twins were sent left, happened within 30 minutes of their arrival, leaving Eva and Miriam as the only family members left.
Eva describes the brutal experiments conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she and other twins were stripped naked, measured, and compared for up to eight hours. On alternate days, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, they were taken to a blood lab where large amounts of blood were drawn from her left arm and at least five unknown injections were given into her right arm. After one of these injections, Eva became severely ill with high fever, swollen and painful limbs, and red spots covering her body. Mengele declared she had only two weeks to live, a prognosis Eva miraculously survived after two weeks of crawling for water and fighting for her life.
Upon Eva's return, Miriam was withdrawn, refusing to discuss her own experiences during Eva's illness. Years later, in 1985, Miriam revealed she too had been under Nazi doctor supervision during Eva's critical two weeks. Miriam suffered severe kidney infections during her pregnancies, and doctors discovered her kidneys never grew larger than a 10-year-old's. Eva donated a kidney to Miriam in 1987, but Miriam developed cancerous polyps and died on June 6, 1993, likely due to the experiments.
Months after Miriam's death, Eva was invited to speak in Boston and was asked to bring a Nazi doctor. She located Dr. Hans Munch, who had participated in a documentary with Miriam. Munch agreed to meet her in Germany, where he described the operation of the gas chambers from his perspective, signing a document confessing his knowledge. Eva wanted to thank him, but struggled with how. After 10 months, she decided to write him a letter of forgiveness.
Eva realized that forgiveness was an act of personal empowerment. Initially hesitant to forgive Mengele, she was encouraged to imagine forgiving him. She found courage to confront this idea, ultimately writing a declaration of amnesty that she signed at Auschwitz in 1995 alongside Dr. Munch. Despite criticism from other survivors, Eva views forgiveness as an act of self-healing, self-liberation, and self-empowerment, emphasizing that while what happened cannot be changed, one can change their relationship to it.