Kor’s words have deep impact on Penn student

Penn High School student reporter Arielle Kirsch attended the talk to Penn High School students by Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor on Friday, May 13. Below is Kirsch’s reflection of what that moment meant to her.

 

On Friday, May 13, Penn students had the immense privilege to meet Holocaust survivor Eva Kor (formerly Eva Mozes).  A twin and victim of Dr. Mengele’s experiments at Auschwitz, Kor’s earliest memories depict horrific brutalities and inhuman cruelty.  Despite the horrors Kor has lived through, she maintains her strength with a positive and lively attitude guaranteed to inspire anyone who listens to her first-person account of being a Jewish child from Romania during the Holocaust.

 

At age 10, after four years of living in a village occupied by Nazis, Kor and her family were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. While standing on a strip of land outside of the cattle car from which the Mozes family had just stumbled out, Kor and her twin sister, Miriam, were separated from the rest of their family.  What the two young, innocent sisters didn’t know at the time was that they would never see any other member of their immediate family again.

 

Personally, I feet a very strong connection to Kor’s story.  My two maternal grandfathers both are child Holocaust survivors as well.  My mother’s father, David Tamir, was born in Belgium and lived in hiding in the attic of a Christian family for about two and a half years during the war.  My mother’s stepfather, Peter Daniels, was born in Germany and was trapped in the Czechoslovakian concentration camp Theresienstadt for approximately two years.  Growing up with the knowledge of the outrageous atrocities that my grandfathers experienced at such young ages has given me the motivation that I have to try not to take things for granted, since, when I was seven years old, I was enrolled in a fantastic school and had the privilege to go on family vacations, while, when my grandfathers were seven years old, they lived in constant fear of not surviving the day.

 

Kor’s speech on Friday was motivational and moving.  As I sat in the front row and listened to this beautiful woman tell of the horrors she encountered as an innocent child in Auschwitz, I realized once again how extremely fortunate I am to be growing up as a Jew in the United States in this time period, instead of being a Jew in Europe 80 years ago.

 

Kor recounted to her audience at Penn that, upon arriving at Auschwitz, she made a silent vow to herself that she would not let herself die in the camp.  Her incredible story served and continues to serve to empower and educate everyone listening, no matter what their beliefs or background.