As the lights went out and the first speaker of the night took the stage, the hushed sound of a hundred conversations ending swept across John R. Emens Auditorium.
A tiny screen soon descended with a quote projected onto it.
“We may not live in the past, but the past lives in us.”
The scene transformed into the beginning of the documentary “Forgiving Dr. Mengele."
The film detailed the story of Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor and subject of the notorious Josef Mengele experimentations on twins at Auschwitz during World War II.
Following the screening, Muncie Mayor Dennis Tyler announced the creation of Eva Mozes Kor Day, to be honored April 3. He urged the attendees to support Kor and her efforts to bring peace to the world through education.
After his short address, Tyler stepped aside to welcome the evening's guest of honor.
Just 10 years old when she and her sister Miriam were separated from their father, mother and two older sisters, an older Kor stepped onto Emens' stage as the audience was brought to their feet by her presence.
She lowered herself into the lone chair that sat upon the stage and gazed into the seats before her.
What followed was a message of forgiveness despite years of suffering both before and after Kor’s horrifying experiences at Auschwitz.
William Womack, a former Ball State student, said he had studied the Holocaust before, but had never seen an actual survivor.
“She was actually there, you could hear it: the emotion," he said. "Which was different. I’d never heard that before. That’s the reason why I came today because I feel like I would be upset if I missed out on actually seeing a Holocaust survivor speak.”
Kor’s lecture was broken into three parts: a retelling of how she survived Auschwitz, the lessons she learned after months of starvation and dehumanization and an opportunity for the audience to ask her questions.
“It was the dawn of an early spring day 70 years ago,” she began.
Between her story of fighting back from a deathly fever just to keep her sister alive and her eventual liberation by American soldiers, Kor injected moments of humor.
“I wasn’t expecting to come here and laugh half a dozen times,” Womack said. “I thought it was cool how she was able to work the crowd. She could tell when it was getting too serious and she needed to throw in a joke.”
In 1993, Kor’s twin sister died. In an attempt to understand the link between the injections her sister received at Auschwitz and her death, she contacted the only SS officer to be acquitted in the Nuremberg Trials, Hans Münch.
At the time, Kor said it was impossible for her to think about German people without feeling hate toward them.
“To my great surprise, he treated me with kindness and respect,” she said.
Münch knew nothing about the injections, but after meeting with him, Kor found she had a power inside herself — the power to forgive.
“I immediately knew that this was a meaningful gift,” she said.” But what I discovered for myself was life changing. I discovered that I, the little guinea pig from Auschwitz, had the power to forgive.”
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