Holocaust Survivor Eva Mozes Kor, an Auschwitz survivor will speak at Mahomet-Seymour High School at 7 p.m. Friday evening.
Friday evening will also serve as the 18th year reunion for the 1997 “Pop tab Event” where MSJHS students displayed a massive collection of 11 million pop tabs, which represented the 11 million victims who were brutally murdered during the Holocaust.
This activity, conducted by MSJHS teachers Kevin Daugherty and Jane Fisk, was recognized by regional news stations and also featured nationally on ABC World News Tonight as well as the NBC Sunday Today Show.
In 1997, Daugherty, a seventh grade Social Studies teacher, wanted to find a way for his students to understand the magnitude of the Nazi’s extermination campaign against the Jews. Although the task seemed like a feat in itself, when Daugherty popped open a can of Diet Coke on his way to work, he realized he may have found a solution.
With Fisk’s help, the pop tab campaign took on a life of its own. With 2,000 spectators standing nearby, junior high students dumped bag after bag of pop tabs on the Mahomet-Seymour High School gymnasium floor.
The tabs represented 6 million Jews and 5 million political dissenters, Roma (Gypsies), pacifists, disabled persons, homosexuals and others murdered by the Nazis.
Current MSJHS students have also spent the last few weeks learning about the Holocaust in preparation for Mozes Kor’s talk during a school assembly Friday. Although the Holocaust is covered in the fifth grade curriculum at Lincoln Trail, MSJHS students have watched videos about remembering the Holocaust and talked about the German Nazi regime during the early 1940’s.
Although Mozes Kor and her sister Miriam barely survived genetic experimentation by Dr. Josef Mengele, her mother, father and two older sisters did not survive the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp.
Of the 1,500 set of twins Mengele experimented on, only approximately 200 survivors were found when the site was liberated in 1945.
Mozes Kor moved to the United States with her husband Michael Kor, also a Holocaust survivor in 1960. In 1984, she, along with her sister, founded CANDLES (Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors), an organization which sought out the other 180 survivors of Megele’s deadly experiments.
Over twenty-five years later, Mozes Kor is still heavily involved in the CANDLES organization, giving lectures and guided tours Auschwitz so that she can educate people, and help them understand forgiveness.
Mozes Kor returned to Auschwitz fifty years after its liberation to read Dr. Hans Munich’s, a Nazi doctor who knew Mengele, statement to those who denied the Holocaust. She then announced that although she would never forget the experience of the Holocaust, she forgave the Nazi’s for what they had done.
Her forgiveness has not been without controversy, but Mozes Kor still believes in the message that she learned in the camps: “to never, ever give up.”
The public is invited and encouraged to attend this event where Mozes Kor will talk about peace and forgiveness. A free offering will also be collected for the Holocaust Museum in Terre Haute, Indiana. Books and resources will also be available for purchase.
