A Holocaust survivor hugged a former Nazi concentration camp guard who worked at Auschwitz at his trial, before she then accepted a kiss from him, too.
Eva Mozes Kor, who was encamped at Auschwitz over 70 years ago, met SS Sgt. Oskar Groening at his trial, and then explained that she had not only forgiven him and other Nazis for their past horrors, but she feels that more people should do the same.
Eva Mozes Kor took to her Twitter account to share a picture of her alongside Oskar Groening, who has been nicknamed as the “accountant of Auschwitz.”
I am sharing with you my face to face meeting with Oskar Groening the former Nazi guard. Two old people reaching out pic.twitter.com/XlooNvPpQ1
— Eva Mozes Kor (@EvaMozesKor) April 23, 2015
Kor wrote on her Quora page that while Groening was on trial, she approached him and declared that she wants him to encourage the youth of today to avoid right-wing political parties.
“I appreciated the fact that you are willing to come here and face us. But I would like you to appeal to the old Nazis who are still alive to come forward and address the problem of neo-Nazis in Germany today.
Because these young misguided German who want Hitler and fascism to come back — they will not listen to Eva Kor or any other survivor. You can tell them you were in Auschwitz, you were involved with the Nazi party, and it was a terrible thing.”
Kor then explained that Groening responded by leaning in and giving her a kiss, while Kor later wrote, “I probably wouldn’t have gone that far, but I guess it is better than what he would have done to me 70 years ago.”
Kor was separated from her two older sisters when she arrived at Auschwitz. Alongside her twin sister, Miriam, both of whom who were aged 10 at the time, they were experimented on profusely by Josef Mengele.
Kor explained that when she originally met Groening, their exchange didn’t go exactly to plan, as it concluded with the elderly man, who is currently on trial for his past actions, fainting while she held onto him.
“The strangest thing happened,” Kor explained while writing on Quora, via the Blaze . “He was trying to say something as he was sitting sideways in his chair. He turned white and fell backwards, not saying a word. He was holding onto my arm so he did not hit the floor. At that moment, he was not a Nazi but an old man who fainted and I was trying to save him from falling. I screamed, ‘He is falling and I can’t hold onto him — he is big old guy!’ This was not the interaction I was hoping for. I knocked out an old Nazi.”
Groening is currently being tried on 300,000 counts of accessory to murder between May and July 1944.
[Image via Super Consciousness ]
