“Forgive your worst enemies.”~ Eva Kor, Auschwitz survivor

Who Is Eva Kor?

I don’t pay much attention to the mainstream news media. There’s too much focus on “bad” news and negativity for my tastes. But there was one recent story that caught my attention.

It was about the death of Eva Kor. Eva was a survivor of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. It was probably no “coincidence” that she died during what turned out to be her final trip to the Holocaust site in Poland.

In this lifetime, most of us will never have to suffer through what Eva did at Auschwitz. At the age of 10, she and her twin sister, Miriam, were subjected to the tortures of the infamous Nazi medical doctor, Josef Mengele.

Eva and Miriam were among the relatively few people to survive Auschwitz and the torture inflicted by Todesengel (German for Angel of Death, as Mengele was known).

In her last visit to the Auschwitz Museum, Eva said, “Forgive your worst enemies….The moment I forgave the Nazis, I felt free from Auschwitz, and from all the tragedy that had occurred to me.”

Viktor Frankl

Another survivor of Auschwitz was Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. Dr Frankl was able to find forgiveness, compassion, and even joy in the most horrendous circumstances humanity has ever known.

Spirit

Forgiveness is not condoning or excusing the cruelty of others.

You have a saying:
Hatred is like drinking poison and expecting your enemy to die. That’s about how much sense hatred makes. You are harming no one but yourself.

Forgiveness is a choice you can easily make to free yourself from the past and its pain. Then you can move into the present moment, and find the joy and peace that live only there.

Forgiveness should not be something you do occasionally. It should be a way of life.

Forgiveness frees you to be who you really are, and to do what you came to do.

*************************************

In this powerfully moving short video, CBS News’s Ben Tracy interviews a Holocaust survivor and his unlikely roommate.