Published: June 17, 2008 08:03 pm            

Kor taking Darfur message on the road

CANDLES founder to give speech in front of U.N. visitors entrance

TERRE HAUTE — While listening to the radio, Eva Kor heard a Sudanese man speaking through a translator. The man had fled to Israel and was being sent back to Darfur, Sudan. He asked a simple question: “Don’t I have the right to have a place I call home?”

It’s a feeling Kor, CANDLES Holocaust Museum founder, can relate to.

As a 10-year-old, she was in Auschwitz concentration camp and still wonders to this day, “Why didn’t people do something to help us?”

Kor said her experience in Auschwitz compelled her to help the man.

“I remember 64 years ago, I felt just like that,” Kor said Tuesday. “I said to myself, I am free now, 63 years. What am I doing to help these poor people that are needing help today?”

Kevin Bolinger, associate professor at Indiana State University and CANDLES board vice-chairman, told her that Marshall (Ill.) High School students started a fund for Darfur through Interact, a social service club. Kor decided to have them and other students write letters.

The letters will be delivered on Thursday and Friday as Kor travels to New York and Washington, D.C. for the cause.

On Thursday, Kor and a group from CANDLES will go to New York and deliver letters to the Chinese Permanent Mission at the United Nations. Kor also will give a lecture in front of the United Nations visitors entrance at noon.

The following day, Kor, a group of students from Marshall High School and volunteers from Philadelphia will go to the Chinese Embassy. From 8 to 10 a.m., the group will read letters aloud before handing the letters to Chinese officials.

CANDLES sent out 5,000 letters last fall, requesting the help of students. They received 3,793 letters from two nations, 17 states and 60 schools. Responses came from as close as Terre Haute South Vigo High School and as far as Canada. The students’ ages ranged from 6 to 18. Kor said she used a wide variety for a reason.

“Children are so often the biggest victims,” Kor said. “I felt writing a letter would not in any way endanger them, but it would empower the children to see that they can do something.”

The letters are addressed to the Chinese government. Kor chose China because it is a close ally of Sudan. It buys oil from the country, and supplies it with arms, thus contributing to the genocide, she said. She also stated that China has vetoed motions in the United Nations that would aid Sudan. Hundreds of thousands of Sudanese have died and been displaced since ethnic African tribesmen forcefully took over the formerly Arab-dominated government.

Bolinger will drive four students from Marshall to represent the students who wrote letters. Though the letters are addressing the Chinese government, he said he was shocked that the United States doesn’t take more of a stand.

“Are the Africans less worthy of being saved?” Bolinger said, referencing a statement by President Bush about saving Iraq civilians from genocide. “Seems so, because we’re only waiting for the U.N. resolution.”

Beth Nairn, a sixth-grade teacher at Patricksburg Elementary School, told her class about Darfur to impress the idea that an incident like the Holocaust is just as likely now as it was then if no one speaks out.

“I tell my kids that they have a voice,” Nairn said. “It depends on whether you’re going to speak up for something that you think is right.”

A Terre Haute South student wrote a letter that Kor said stood out. The student asked Chinese ambassador Zhou Wenzhong to inform Chinese citizens.

“I don’t mean to beg,” she said. “But I pray that you would open the people of China’s eyes to the horrendous atrocities that their government is contributing to.”

DeAntae Prince can be reached at (812) 231-4214 or deantae.prince@tribstar.com.

        

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