Forgiving Dr. Mengele

"Forgiving Dr. Mengele" is a documentary film about Eva Mozes Kor, a victim of the Holocaust and her decision to forgive the Nazis who killed her family and in particular Dr. Josef Mengele and his staff, who experimented on her and her twin sister Miriam Mozes as well as approximately 1,400 other twin pairs.

The documentary was directed by Bob Hercules and Cheri Pugh, who also served as producers. They followed Eva for over four years, chronicling her story and her journey to Israel. Her decision to forgive the Nazis has been met with incredulity and hostility by some, particularly other Holocaust survivors, and these views are portrayed as well.

"Forgiving Dr. Mengele" premiered at the [http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/ Gene Siskel Film Center] in Chicago, Illinois, on February 24, 2006. It was scheduled to play for a week, and then travel to other cities in the US. The film is distributed by First Run Features which handles independent films and documentaries.

Biographical information on Eva

Eva Mozes Kor and her sister Miriam were born in northern Transylvania. In 1944, Nazis transported her immediate family to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Because Eva and Miriam were twins, Dr. Mengele selected them to remain alive for experiments. The rest of their family were never heard of again and are believed to have been exterminated.

Eva and Miriam remained in Auschwitz for nine months, enduring experimentation such as being injected with potentially lethal strains of bacteria (and not given treatment). After World War II, they went to Romania and then immigrated to Israel. Eva served in the Israeli Army for ten years. After meeting a tourist who was a Holocaust survivor living in the United States, the two were married, and she moved to the US. In Terre Haute, Indiana, they raised a family and she became a successful realtor and created the C.A.N.D.L.E.S Museum, which is dedicated to education about the Holocaust. Her husband, Michael, is a pharmacist.

In 1995, Eva Kor announced that she had forgiven the Nazis. This caused much anger from other survivors. Eva Kor makes speeches about forgiveness to schools and organizations. She is featured in The Forgiveness Project. [http://www.theforgivenessproject.com/stories/evakor] Her story of personal forgiveness is the subject of "Forgiving Dr. Mengele".

External links

*imdb title|id= 0489707|title=Forgiving Dr. Mengele
* [http://www.firstrunfeatures.com/ First Run Features] - distributor
* [http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,389491,00.html "A Holocaust Survivor's Path To Peace: Forgiving Josef Mengele"] - article in "Der Spiegel"