Eva Mozes Kor

1. Eva MozesKor She was a victim and survivor of Josef Mengele's medical experiments on identical twins.

2. Her story When Eva and Miriam (eva”s twin) were six, their small village was occupied by a Hungarian Nazi armed guard. The Mozes family was the only Jewish family in the village. After being under occupation for four years, the Mozes family was transported to the regional ghetto in SimleuSilvaniei in 1944. Just a few weeks later, the family was loaded with other Jewish prisoners onto a cattle car and transported to the Auschwitz Nazi death camp.

3. The cattle cars & platforms After a 70-hour ordeal without food or water, Eva and her family emerged from the packed cattle car onto the selection platform at Auschwitz. Eva believes that at 85 feet by 35 feet, no other strip of land in the world has seen as many families ripped apart as that selection platform. In the mass of people that poured out of the cattle car, Eva and Miriam gripped their mother's hands. Eva looked around and realized her father and two older sisters were gone. She never saw them again.

4. The experiments Soon after, the girls were ripped apart from their mother, whom they also never saw again. Eva and Miriam became part of a group of children who were used as human guinea pigs in genetic experiments under the direction of Dr. Josef Mengele. Approximately 1500 sets of twins - 3000 children - were abused and most died as a result of these experiments. Eva herself became deathly ill, but through sheer determination, she stayed alive and helped Miriam survive. Approximately 200 children were found alive by the Soviet Army at the liberation of the camp on January 27, 1945. The majority of the children were Mengele twins. Eva and Miriam Mozes were among them.

5. The aftermath After the camp was liberated, Eva and Miriam were all alone. They no longer had anyone else in the world except each other. They were in three different refugee camps over nine months before returning to live with their aunt in Romania. Even though free from Auschwitz, Eva struggled to feel free as Communists took over Romania. It wasn't until immigrating to Israel in 1950 that Eva and Miriam first felt free and were no longer afraid of persecution because they were Jews.

6. What she did to help Eva enlisted the help of her Miriam, who was still living in Israel. Together the sisters began trying to locate other survivors of Dr. Mengele's deadly experiments. In 1984, Eva founded CANDLES, Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experi­ments Survivors, and named her sister Vice President for Israeli Survivors. Eva liked the acronym CANDLES because she wanted to shed some light on this hidden and dark chapter of the Holocaust.

7. Brining the victims together For nearly forty years, little was known about the now infamous twin experiments. The selection of twins for genetic experiments had not been a topic of Holocaust conversations. On January 27, 1985, six Mengele twins met at Auschwitz II-Birkenau to observe the 40th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. They continued on to Jerusalem for a mock trial for Mengele, where 80 twins participated. The Auschwitz observance and mock trial generated worldwide publicity and helped locate even more Mengele Twins. The U.S. Congress even passed a resolution to begin a search for Mengele. As a result of the Mozes twins' efforts in the early years of CANDLES, 122 individual Mengele twins living across ten countries and four continents were reconnected

8. Credits • Information http://www.candlesholocaustmuseum.org/index.php?sid=26 Pictures- http://www.mff.org/connections/connections.taf?cid=50 http://news.missouristate.edu/2013/02/20/kor/ http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/a-nazi-victims-plea-opens-old-wounds/2005/09/30/1127804661544.html http://ucneuroscience.com/blog/eva-mozes-kor-survivor-of-holocaust-and-menegele-is-guest-lecturer-november-3/