A Blessing Not a Burden: The Kor Family Legacy

Dr. Alex Kor and Graham Honaker authors of A Blessing, Not a Burden: My Parents’ Remarkable Holocaust Story and My Fight to Keep Their Legacy Alive discuss the book and the legacy of Eva and Mickey Kor. In 1941, Nazi troops sent his father Mickey to a Latvian ghetto and later deported him to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Mickey endured four years of grueling labor under the most unimaginable of conditions. More than 56,000 people were murdered at Buchenwald, but Mickey evaded execution with a daring escape. With the aid of U.S. troops, he emigrated to America to begin life anew. In 1944, his mother Eva and her family were sent by cattle car to Auschwitz, the most feared of the Nazi camps. Eva and her twin sister Miriam were whisked away on the train platform and separated from their parents and other siblings. It would be the last time Eva and Miriam would ever see their family again. Eva and Miriam were subjected to the inhumane experiments of Dr. Joseph Mengele, “The Angel of Death.” Through sheer will, they survived and were liberated by Allied troops in 1945.