Many believe it’s important to remember the past. For Dr. Alex Kor, it’s personal.
In 1944, Kor’s mother, Eva, and her twin sister were taken onto a cattle car to Auschwitz, a journey that spanned 70 hours without food or water. There, the two children were subjected to human experimentation under Dr. Josef Mengele. One year later, the sisters were liberated.
The Nazi doctor’s “Mengele twin experiments” are well-known today, Kor noted. But after Eva died in 2019 and Kor spent more time with his father, Kor realized that his father’s Holocaust story was relatively unknown to most. He vowed to write a book detailing what his parents endured.
That’s what Kor did in “A Blessing, Not a Burden.” Published in May 2024, the 272-page memoir is the amalgamation of three narratives: his mom’s, his dad’s and his own as a second-generation Holocaust survivor. Each chapter begins with a quote by one of the three.
Kor will discuss his family’s experiences and his battle to keep his parents’ legacy alive at a book talk he’s giving at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 12.
Kor lived in D.C. for about a decade in the early 2000s, and now resides in his home state of Indiana. As a full-time podiatrist, he said he didn’t have time to write a book. Kor’s friend, Graham Honaker, knew how much writing this book meant to him and offered to use his writing experience and knowledge about the Kors to help.
Honaker asked Kor a few questions one night after a regular Saturday night dinner, Kor responded, and that conversation became the first chapter of “A Blessing, Not a Burden.” The two began the writing process in August 2023, which was two months before the event that changed everything.
“Oct. 7 happened,” Kor recalled. “For me and for Graham, that really changed the urgency of the writing because as a child of Holocaust survivors, the incredible increase in antisemitism since October 2023 made it even more important for me to finish the book in a timely fashion.”
Kor said many parts of the book serve as a call to action for second- or third-generation Holocaust survivors to get involved and tell their parents’ or grandparents’ stories.
“Even though we know that Holocaust education does not entirely mitigate antisemitism, it’s definitely a start and a help, and so that’s why we started the book,” Kor said.
This educational piece is crucial now because “each day we lose more and more survivors,” he added.
A unique aspect of Eva Kor’s story is her forgiveness of the Nazis five decades after the Holocaust.
Dr. Hans Münch, “The Good Man of Auschwitz,” had been tasked with standing outside the gas chambers and signing a mass death certificate once all the victims’ bodies had stopped moving. He described this operation to Eva Kor in a 1993 meeting.
“My mom was a quick thinker, and she said, ‘Dr. Münch, what you just told me, the world needs to know,’” Alex Kor said. “My mom said, ‘Look, for all the people who believe the Holocaust didn’t occur, you were a Nazi doctor. Would you come with us in January 1995, the 50th anniversary [of the liberation of Auschwitz], to tell the world what you just told me?’ And without hesitation, he said yes.”
Two years after that conversation, Eva Kor and her two children visited the ruins of the gas chambers with Münch and his children and grandchild, Alex Kor said.
Münch signed a document about the operation of the gas chambers — a part of his past that was a “nightmare he dealt with every day of his life,” according to The Forgiveness Project and Alex Kor.
Eva Kor, surprised to learn that Nazis also experienced nightmares, wanted to thank him somehow for publicly acknowledging his role in the Holocaust. Alex Kor said he told her he thought that was a terrible idea.
“She went to the local Hallmark store — true story — looking for a thank you card for a Nazi doctor; nothing appropriate,” Alex Kor said of his mother. “She went to a liquor store; nothing appropriate. Months and months and months went into this. And finally one day, she thought, in my own name, the highest honor I can give somebody is to forgive him in my name only.”
Eva Kor presented Münch with a letter of forgiveness, much to his surprise, an action viewed as controversial by many. But it was healing for Eva.
“She realized several months later, by the summer of 1995, that she had given herself a gift because she no longer had a chip on her shoulder,” Alex Kor said.
She then forgave her parents, whom she resented for not having saved her and her twin sister from being taken to Auschwitz, and even Mengele.
Eva Kor began talking about forgiveness in the tear-jerking lectures and presentations she made across the country; in the introduction to “A Blessing, Not a Burden,” Honaker, the co-author, wrote that Eva inspired him to forgive a family member he hadn’t spoken to in years. He had been one of many.
“I truly believe that my mom’s healing via forgiveness gave her probably another 20 years of life [and] has helped so many people around the world,” Alex Kor said.
People came to The CANDLES Holocaust Museum, founded by Eva Kor in Indiana, to learn how she forgave in order to apply that experience to their own lives, thus repairing relationships and mending hearts.
“Looking back, I think [my mom] discovered an incredible skill, a life skill that many people either don’t want to learn or don’t have the ability to learn,” Alex Kor said.
And he’s made it his goal to ensure that no one forgets that legacy.
