Eva

“Eva” explores Eva Mozes Kor a survivor of the Mengle Twin Experiment.  Eva was sent to Birkenau as a child and in 1984 she and her twin sister visited the camp.  She went with a tape recorder to recall her experience.  When entering the camp, her mother and father were taken from her and her twin.  She would never see her mother again.  Eva promised her mother that she would tell the story of what happened to them.  The run time for Eva is 56:09.
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On September 1, 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland.  Hitler rose to power and eventually blame the people who brought Germany down and eventually would blame the Jews.  He vowed to get rid of every Jew in Germany.  Eva was born in Portz, Romania and they were the only Jewish family in town.  She was in a family of six, with a mother and father, an older sister, her twin, and a brother.  The nice thing about being a twin was that she was never lonely.  Eva grew up on a farm that had a large orchard and she was always in the trees.

Hungary invaded Romania and things started to change.  The first movie she saw was a movie that showed how to catch and kill a Jew.  School days became difficult.  The children and the teachers called her and her siblings Dirty Jews.  The children would spit and hit them and the teacher did nothing to protect them.  The teacher threw coals at a corner and made Eva and her twin sister sit in them. 

The first concretion camp opened was Dachau and those camps would multiple.  Six camps would become death camps.  However, the six death camps were still too small for Birkenau was construction.  The Mozes family was taken from their village in Portz.  Nobody said anything nor stopped them from being taken.  They were hauled into a wagon and sent to Auschwitz.  The Mozes family were the first to step onto the freshly hardened concrete.

Nazi officers noticed Eva and her twin Miriam and cried out “Twins, Twins, Twins!”  Their mother confirmed that they were twins and the girls were taken away.  Eva remembers her mother’s arms outstretched.  It was the last time she saw her mother.  Eva and Miriam were sent to separate barracks for experimentation.  These experiments were performed on Jews to help perfect the perfect Nazi races.

Eva and Miriam were measured every day and then compared to each other and then compared to charts.  Every other day they were taken to the blood lab.  Here they would take blood from the twins and inject them with something.  Eva never knew what she was given.  After one injection, Eva got a fever.  Mengele thought she would not survive, but she defied the odds.  Throughout the war, she was experimented on.  The end came, in January 1945 the Russians had come.

Eva remembers liberation day.  The Russian soldiers were wrapped in white.  The most important thing to Eva was that they did not look like Nazis.  The Russian were shocked by what they found.  Eva wanted to see her home again.  It took her nine months to return home.  She hoped that there would be someone in the home, but there was nobody.  Eva and her sister Miriam were taken in by their aunt where they lived under Communist rule.

In 1950, Eva and Miriam went to Israel to start a new life again.  Ten years later, Eva would take another voyage with her husband and they would arrive in America.  However, Auschwitz loomed large over her life.  It was here, that she had a new mission: she wanted to bring Joseph Mengele to justice.  Living in the United States proved to be a challenge for Eva.  Auschwitz loomed large over her world and nobody could understand her.  It was only until the Docudrama Holocaust was broadcast in the United States.  Eva talked about her experiences at school as a result of the docudrama.

As a result, Eva went on a crusade.  She wanted to find out what happened to her.  She wanted to find out what happened to her sister.  She wanted to find out what happened to the other Mengele twins. 

To continue to learn more about Eva watch the rest of this documentary.  I would highly recommend showing  this documentary to a history class.