Auschwitz Survivor: 'We Had No Rights But a Fierce Determination to Survive'

Auschwitz death camp survivor, Eva Mozes Kor, in the
courtroom in Lüneburg, Germany.

THE GUARDIAN: Eva Mozes Kor takes the stand at the trial of former SS guard Oskar Gröning to describe her ordeal at the death camp where he worked

A survivor of Auschwitz who lost 119 members of her family in the Holocaust, has confronted the former SS guard who is on trial for complicity in the murder of 300,000 Jews, appealing to him to take responsibility for his actions.

Ninety-three year old Oskar Gröning sat impassively in the courtroom as Eva Mozes Kor, from Terre Haute, Indiana, greeted him by name before launching into a dramatic account of her internment at Auschwitz extermination camp where the former SS officer worked for two years.

Kor described how within 30 minutes of her family’s arrival from Romania in May 1944 at the selection platform in Auschwitz-Birkenau – where Gröning’s task was to take prisoners’ suitcases – her family was “ripped apart forever” after her parents were sent to their deaths, and she and her 10-year-old twin sister Miriam were picked out by the notorious doctor Josef Mengele to take part in his infamous experimentation programme on twins.

“Of our family, only Miriam and I survived because we were used in Dr Mengele’s experiments,” the 81-year-old told the court. » | Kate Connolly in Lüneburg | Wednesday, April22, 2015