Forgiving Dr. Mengele

Last week I watched a documentary and have been wanting to write about it but never got around to it. Finally decided to just sit down and do it.It was a bit of a thinker/reflecting piece. When I finished it I wanted to badly to talk to someone about their thoughts but I watched it alone. The documentary is called Forgiving Dr. Mengele.

Dr. Josef Mengele was a Nazi doctor in Auchwitz-Birkenau most famous for his extremely disgusting human experiments on the people in the camp. He used twins in particular for many experiments because, as the film pointed out, there was a constant for comparison. Eva Mozes Kor, the main subject of the documentary, was one of the twins Dr. Mengele experimented on.

To me, the film wasn't really about the Holocaust - moreso it was about the process of forgiveness and what forgiveness really means. The fact that the situation needing forgiveness stemmed from the Holocaust gave it a deeper background. Something so good needing to come from something so horrid. Eva is quite a lady. She's fiesty, outspoken and determined. Throughout the film you can't help but admire her and the process she's gone through in learning how to forgive. I was so impressed by her. Many of the fellow surviving twins are so very angry with her and don't understand her position at all. I can respect that though. None of us today can truly comprehend what those directly effected (affected? I've never been able to get that right) by what went on in those camps. The fact that Eva is able to forgive those who hurt her so horribly is, to me, simply amazing.

One situation took a bit of a switch though. Eva went to Israel to meet with a group of Palestinians. She looked extremely uncomfortable through the entire meeting and rather disengaged. At one point members of the group are telling Eva stories about things the Jewish people have done that hurt them and their families and she interrupts and very abruptly says "I've heard it all before. You don't need to tell me these stories." I was quite taken aback by her response. Here's this woman who has spoken with former Nazi officials and forgiven them being so rude to this group of people. She even mentions at the end of the meeting she was scared of being kidnapped during her time with them. Her conclusion is that forgiveness is possible AFTER this situation is over but during the fighting, it's impossible.

Overall it was a very interesting documentary and I highly recommend checking it out. It's available for online viewing at Netflix if you have that or you can check your local video store. Eva has also opened a museum in Terre Haute, Indiana where she lives dedicated to the the survivors of Dr. Mengele's experiments: CANDLES Holocaust Museum .