Published: December 12, 2006 12:10 am         

Holocaust? Iran hosts conference to see if it existed; Terre Haute resident says there’s no doubt

Eva Kor survived nine months at Auschwitz

When Eva Kor learned about Iran hosting a conference to debate the existence of the Holocaust, she didn’t have to look too far to learn the truth.

She endured experimental tests as a young girl trapped in a concentration camp at Auschwitz, which is in Poland.

Fifty years later, she witnessed a former physician at the camp sign an explanation of how people died in the camp’s gas chambers while expressing his remorse for joining the Nazis.

Kor, who founded a Holocaust memorial museum in Terre Haute, witnessed evidence that refutes Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s belief that the Holocaust never happened.

Iran opened a conference on Monday to examine whether the Holocaust really occurred. The Associated Press reported that the United States, Germany and Israel condemned the conference before it even opened.

The AP also reported that Ahmadinejad has questioned the Holocaust’s justification to create Israel.

Kor noted that some people who deny the Holocaust happened say that it’s a lie propagated by the Jewish people.

“This is why it was so unbelievably important to me that it was signed by a Nazi, where it happened,” Kor said of the explanation, which was signed at Auschwitz, “and I feel that this document is a very important document, the only one of its kind.”

About 11 million people died in the Holocaust, according to a University of South Florida Web site dedicated to the subject.

The Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs Web site condemned the Iranian conference, noting that the “statements and acts by the Iranian president are clearly counter-factual and stand in stark contradiction to history, as endorsed unanimously by the international community.”

The AP reported that the Iranian conference has attracted 67 researchers from 30 nations, and that Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed foreign criticism as “predictable.”

But Ahmadinejad hopes to shed light on Israel’s actions toward Palestinians by staging this conference, said Sunil Sahu, a political science professor at DePauw University in Greencastle.

“That is the main focus,” Sahu said, “and actually, there are very few people who subscribe to the notion that the Holocaust did not happen.”

Sahu added that North America and Europe has paid more attention to the conference than Iranians. He believes that Ahmadinejad is an extremist who is using a diversionary tactic with the conference.

“In fact, there are some moderate Iranians who don’t like Ahmadinejad’s viewpoint,” Sahu said, “but by doing this kind of thing, he’s kind of a rabble-rouser.”

The AP reported that the Iranian president has called for Israel to be annihilated.

“Well, it’s all rhetoric,” Sahu said of calls to eliminate Israel. “We all know that it’s not going to happen.”

But the conference continues, and Kor continues to spread awareness of the Holocaust. She travels around the world to speak to different groups about her time in a concentration camp during World War II, which includes how she and her twin sister were subjected to numerous tests.

She added that Dr. Josef Mengele, a Nazi, at one point told her that she would die in two weeks after she was injected with a “deadly germ.”

“I willed to live and I denied death,” Kor said of her nine months in the concentration camp. “I refused to die. It’s as simple as that.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Austin Arceo can be reached at (812) 231-4214 or austin.arceo@tribstar.com.



Explanation Document

n Dr. Hans Munch, a Nazi physician who worked in Auschwitz in 1944, explained in a document how victims were killed in gas chambers and expressed his remorse at being a Nazi. The document was signed on Jan. 27, 1995, in Auschwitz, Poland. Terre Haute resident Eva Kor, who survived nine months in the concentration camp at Auschwitz, witnessed the event.