FIELD TRIP: Candles Holocaust Museum

A uniform for a male prisoner at Auschwitz.

Yesterday, we traveled to Terre Haute, Indiana, to visit the CANDLES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM. It was really interesting. It was founded by EVA KOR, a Holocaust survivor. She, and her 8 year old twin sister, Miriam, were one of the Mengele Twins. 

Josef Menegle was a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz who planned and supervised experiments that were done on over 200 sets of twins. One twin acted as a "control" while the other one was injected with different substances to see how they reacted.

Josef Mengele

Eva and Miriam are pictured on the left as young girls. The other two photos are of their two older sisters.

The entire family was forced to ride in a crowded cattle car for 3 days with no provisions. They were lied to and not told where they were going. They ended up here. This is the entrance to the concentration camp. One track took all the twins and other "selected" Jews to one area. Another track took the remaining Jews to be put to death in the gas chambers.

A photo of several Mengele Twins. They were forced to sit naked while waiting to be experimented on. Eva and her sister were only 8 years old when they were brought there.

After the war, the 14 year old girls went to live with an aunt who also survived. The girls' parents and sisters had not survived.

The girls later immigrated to Israel and joined the Israeli army.

Both sisters found love, married, and started families of their own. Miriam stayed in Israel, while Eva ended up making her home in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Eva's sister had poor health for many years, due to the experiments that were done on her. She eventually needed a kidney transplant (which Eva provided for her), then ultimately died of progressive bladder cancer. Eva was devastated by Miriam's death, but wanted to do something positive in her memory. So, in 1995, she opened the CANDLES Museum and Education Center.

For the first part of our visit, we walked around the museum looking at the photos and displays.

Then, for the last part of our visit, we were privileged to sit and listen to Eva as she told her story. She is now 85 years old.

We were able to get our photo taken with Eva.

This last photo is a bit blurry, but we asked to see the tattoo on Eva's arm. Every prisoner who came into the camps was forced to have a number tattooed on their arm. The numbers on Eva's tattoo were hard to make out now, due to age and skin condition, but it was still evident that a tattoo was there. Eva knew those numbers by memory and told us what they were.

If you get a chance to stop in at this museum, I encourage you to do that. Eva is not only a Holocaust survivor, she is an advocate for FORGIVENESS, and is known to help people in finding their own path to self-healing. Her story is riveting and inspiring.

"Anger is a seed for war, forgiveness is a seed for peace."  ~ Eva Kor