STEPHANIE SALTER: A precious legacy threatened by an ill-chosen political alignment

By Stephanie Salter
The Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE December 04, 2007 11:40 pm

— I was deep into writing a satirical column about The People Formerly Known As Democrats for Duke Now Known As The Voice of True Elections Committee when I noticed all the misspellings and mangled syntax in the group’s introductory news release.
In five paragraphs I counted 18 obvious mistakes — among them, “Vigp Public Library,” “shaddow of a doubt,” “disqulify Mayor-elect Duke Bennett” and “Terry Modesit.” I could only conclude that whoever typed the release was in such an angry hurry, he or she didn’t hit spell check or take a moment for the most basic proofreading.
When one of the group’s members, Dr. Joseph Selliken, identified the author of the news release as Eva Kor, I suddenly lost my stomach for satire.
Having spent nearly 35 years away from Terre Haute, I didn’t even know who Eva Kor was until I moved back here in late-2004. For a long time after that, everything I learned about Mrs. Kor was wonderful. I read of her CANDLES Holocaust Museum, of her educational trips to Auschwitz and her tireless efforts to teach schoolchildren about the horrors of Nazism and the indomitable human spirit that even that malignant force could not extinguish.
My sister, a public middle school teacher, spent nearly an hour one night recounting for my mother and me a visit Mrs. Kor paid to her school. My sister cried as she described the speech, saying, “She is such an amazing woman. She kept telling the kids about forgiveness.”
I’ve sent news clippings about Eva Kor to a friend in California who is writing a book about forgiveness. They include a New York Times review of “Forgiving Dr. Mengele,” a 2005 documentary about Mrs. Kor overcoming the enormity of Auschwitz, the concentration camp in which most of her family died and where she and her twin sister were physically abused by the diabolical Nazi doctor, Josef Mengele.
The last year or so, I stopped sending clippings.
Forgiveness seems to have slipped on Mrs. Kor’s list of priorities. Her public pronouncements have been furious and condemnatory. She has accused local people in elected or appointed office — Mayor Kevin Burke, members of the parks commission and City Council, this newspaper — of all kinds of transgressions, including (of all things) Nazi tactics.
These days, as Mrs. Kor has aligned herself with citizens who see conspiracies under every desk and demons in every desk chair, her public time and passion are consumed by accusations. Most of this group’s conspiracy theories would be laughable if Terre Haute were not such an intimate city — or if a handful of smart, cynical folks behind-the-scenes were not pouring fuel on the flames of discontent as each new issue or political campaign arises.
Even when Mrs. Kor doesn’t intend to slime someone, she does.
In her Nov. 28 news release about the Voice of True Elections Committee, she says she sympathizes with County Clerk Pat Mansard’s “difficult position” in the mayoral election recount. But, the release continues, “this is not acceptable, and should not be accepted to any party because the ballots have not been secured, and no one can prove beyond the shaddow of a doubt that they are the same as the night of November 6, 2007, and therefore they are not acceptable, and should not be acceptable to anybody.”
This absurd standard of proof echoes what Mrs. Kor said last week when she, Selliken and others launched their new committee. Referring to Mansard’s possession of a sole key to the disputed ballots, Mrs. Kor said she was “concerned, not because she did anything wrong, but because she cannot prove it to anybody’s satisfaction that they were secure.”
So, a good, honorable public servant is suspect because she cannot prove a negative. No one can — not beyond a shadow of a doubt, and certainly not to the “satisfaction” of a band of conspiracy-bent citizens who view everything through a peculiarly narrow and warped lens.
Earlier this week, a reader left a note here in which she said that if the Tribune-Star published many more letters from Mrs. Kor, the reader would cancel her subscription. A few days ago, I overheard some people at a downtown lunch spot making fun of what they called Mrs. Kor’s “conspiracy du jour.” One person said he was starting to wonder if she really ever spent time in a concentration camp.
“After all,” he said, “she can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”
All I could do was shake my head in sadness and think of the precious legacy that is being eroded.
Yesterday, I Googled Eva Kor and re-read some of her many inspirational observations. Her essay for the international Forgiveness Project is quietly stunning. Remembering the pivotal moment when she and a former Nazi physician, Hans Munch, stood in solidarity in Poland, Mrs. Kor wrote:
“On January 27, 1995, at the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I stood by the ruins of the gas chambers with my children — Dr. Alex Kor and Rina Kor — and with Dr. Munch and his children and grandchild. Dr. Munch signed his document about the operation of the gas chambers while I read my document of forgiveness and signed it. As I did that I felt a burden of pain was lifted from me. I was no longer in the grip of pain and hate; I was finally free.”
The catalyst for my now-abandoned satire was an explanation Joe Selliken gave when he was told by a reporter that Vigo County Prosecutor Terry Modesitt did not — as Mrs. Kor’s news release stated — try and fail to secure ballots at the county courthouse on election night.
Selliken said he hadn’t proofread Mrs. Kor’s release and “basically it was her interpretation of my interpretation of what I believe Terry Modesitt’s role had been, which was largely informed by [what] our expectation was before he went over there.”
The tortured obfuscation of that excuse — her interpretation of his interpretation of an assumption based on an expectation — and Selliken’s refusal to simply acknowledge, “We got it wrong,” invites nothing but scorn.
Every time Mrs. Kor participates in such unhinged irresponsibility, she moves further from the extraordinary summit she once reached. Her hard-fought climb from Nazi victim to international symbol of transcendence and reconciliation deserves so much better.
Won’t someone, please, help her turn around?
Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com.