OCPL documentary screening remembers Holocaust survivor's message of forgiveness

Persecution.

Freedom.

Fight.

Forgiveness.

About 15 people in the audience listened to Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor's story and progression from anger to forgiving the Nazi doctor that conducted experiments on her in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Filmmaker Ted Green and Kor's son, Alex Kor, presented the 2018 documentary "Eva A-7063" and facilitated a discussion on June 6 at the Owen County Public Library.

When Green first heard Eva speak, he was "mesmerized right away," he said. "Something struck me, something kind of gnawed at me about her talk."

Eva stood apart from other Holocaust survivors because of her focus on forgiving the Nazis who killed six million Jews and millions of others.

But, while listening to Eva's story, Green noticed something was missing. She presented her story in two parts: her life leading up to and being liberated from Auschwitz and how she forgave the Nazis. The decades in between were absent.

"Her forgiveness didn't quite work for me, because it just seemed so quick," Green said. "What I set out to do is to uncover those 50 years, in hopes that it would better reveal Eva, who she was, and also better explain her path to forgiveness."

The documentary begins with Eva's shaky recorded voice, detailing what she sees and feels during a 1984 trip to the concentration camp with her twin sister, Miriam Mozes Zeiger. Later in the film, more than 70 years after she was deported to the camp, Eva could still remember the moment she arrived and was separated from her mother. She remembered their arms stretched out to each other.

"Mom, I will tell our story," Eva says in the recording. "I will tell our story, because the world must know."

The film explores the history of the Holocaust and Eva's experience with cruelty and antisemitism before and after she was liberated by the Soviet Army. After meeting her husband Mickey — also a survivor — in Israel, the couple moved to Terre Haute, Indiana.

The forward facing goal of Green's work, he said, was to "chronicle the triumph of the human spirit."

In 1984, Eva created the organization Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors (CANDLES) to find other twins that survived the abusive experiments — where many were mutilated, forcibly sterilized and injected with diseases — conducted by Dr. Josef Mengele.

She worked to bring attention to what she and 3,000 other twins endured and launched a campaign to publicize the experiments and hold Mengele accountable. Up until Eva died in 2019, she spread awareness of the Holocaust, but for many years, harbored anger, the documentary discussed.

She was a fiery activist and was arrested while she demonstrated in the U.S. Capitol rotunda in 1986.

Working toward forgiveness was her way of moving forward.

"She no longer despised her parents; she no longer hated anything German," Alex Kor, her son, said. "She realized that what she needed to do, in her name only, is forgive her mom, forgive her dad, who she really resented, because they didn't save the family. Forgive herself for hating them, forgive Mengele all in her name only. Because she knew it was healthier and happier, and that made her healthier and happier."

Some audiences were skeptical of the documentary at first, but many came to understand and respect her after watching it, Green said.

After hearing Eva's story, or listening to her speak at the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, they noted the profound impact her message of forgiveness had on their lives.

Spencer resident Michelle DeFord attended the screening. She met Eva at the museum 10 to 15 years ago.

"She changed, my roommate and I, both of our lives just by her words of forgiveness," DeFord said. "I'm thinking, how does a person do that? How is this person able to forgive when such terrible things have happened?"

Both the audience and Alex wiped tears from their eyes that day, watching the film and discussing what forgiveness is to them.

Alex, also a full-time podiatrist, worked with Green on "Eva A-7063" and convinced his mother to be part of the film. He said even now, as he travels with Green to show and discuss the piece, he cries when watching it and often becomes emotional when he gives the presentation about his life, and his mother and father's stories after the screening.

"I would write, it'd be two, three, four in the morning on a Saturday night, writing, crying, reliving my mom's death, reliving my dad's death," Alex said. "And I thought, at some point, what's my end game? Why am I doing this?"

When speaking to some Fort Wayne, Indiana, high school students after their trip to the Dachau Concentration Camp, a professor and expert in death and dying gave a presentation with a slide that said "storytelling is healing" and Alex started crying.

He found an answer to why he was doing it, what he was meant to be doing. He hopes that by sharing his mother and father's stories, he does his part to "remember the past to protect the future."

Green and Alex are now working on developing a feature film about Eva's life.

"The message is so needed," Green said. "It's so critical beyond the Holocaust. I hate to say it, but it's true. With human rights, what's going on in our country, is going on around the world. You have to get these stories out there."