Clarkson University invites the community to hear a powerful message of
forgiveness from Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor on Monday, October 8, at 7:30
p.m. in Science Center Room 360. The event is free and open to the
public.
When she was about 10 years old, Kor and her family were taken by
the Nazis to the Auschwitz slave labor and extermination camp, where her parents
and two older sisters were quickly sent to the gas chambers.
Kor and her
sister, Miriam, were twins, so they were of chilling interest to Dr. Josef
Mengele, who subjected them to a series of heinous human experiments.
Her
talk, "The Journey from Auschwitz & Mengele to Forgiveness," tells the
amazing story of what she endured and how she eventually came to forgive Mengele
and the Nazis.
Sheila Faith Weiss, professor of history in the Department
of Humanities and Social Sciences at Clarkson, arranged for Kor to share her
story.
"I received a $277,000 National Science Foundation grant to
write a biography of Dr. Mengele's mentor, the German human geneticist Baron
Otmar von Verschuer, and I had been in contact with Eva Mozes Kor," Weiss says.
"Because I am teaching a seminar on the Holocaust this semester, I asked Eva
whether she might be willing to give a lecture at Clarkson. Normally, she would
have charged more for her talk, but generously agreed to accept significantly
less so we could bring her here. Her message is especially important for our
students to hear."
Trained in German history and the history of biology,
Weiss has written a book which explores the background that led to the kind of
bestial human experimentation Kor was subjected to in Auschwitz. The Nazi
Symbiosis, Human Genetics and Politics in the Third Reich (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2010) raises compelling questions about medicine and
ethics.
Eva and Miriam Kor were among the 200 children -- mostly
surviving twins -- liberated from Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers in January 1945.
After returning to her homeland, Romania, following a stay in a Displaced
Persons' Camp, Eva Kor moved to Israel. It was here where she met her future
husband.
The couple settled in Terre Haute, Ind., and in 1984, she and
her now deceased twin sister Miriam, established the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. (Children of
Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiment Survivors) Museum. Dedicated to education
about the Holocaust, its mission is to "eliminate hatred and prejudice from our
world."
Kor's lecture is sponsored by the Department of Humanities and
Social Sciences, the David A. Walsh '67 Arts & Sciences Seminar Series, the
Department of Biology, the Office of Student Life & Engagement, and the Dean
of Students Office.
For more information, please contact Weiss at
sheilafw@clarkson.edu.
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