A woman who survived the Holocaust says she suffered a ‘very demeaning’ body search by the Transportation Security Administration.
Eva Mozes Kor, 84, gives talks all over the country about her experiences at the German death camps, aged 10, where she was subjected to horrific experiments at the hands of the Nazis.
On Sunday, she was returning home to Indiana from Albuquerque, New Mexico, after speaking at the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History on Saturday.
She tweeted that her experience was ‘ruined’ by the demeaning body search at the hands of TSA agents.
Eva Mozes Kor, a Holocaust survivor (pictured in 2015), says she suffered a ‘very demeaning’ body search by the Transportation Security Administration
‘Another very demeaning body search by the TSA – there has to be some way that at age 84 I can get some clearance by the POWERS of Government from this procedure,’ she wrote.
‘As I lecture about surviving Auschwitz I barely survive the TSA body search I detest it. That ruined my experience.’
It is not clear if the invasive search occurred at Albuquerque International Sunport.
TSA Regional Public Affairs Manager Carrie Harmon did not immediately return an email from The Associated Press.
Kor, of Terre Haute, tweeted today to say she had spoken to the TSA and they were working to address the issue.
‘Thank you everybody for caring about me and my stress left from Mengele’s experiments,’ she wrote.
‘I have been contacted by the TSA to help me and they are working with me to solve this problem.
‘I fly tomorrow to Los Angeles to lecture this problem will be solved-thank you very much!’
She tweeted that her experience was ‘ruined’ by the demeaning body search at the hands of TSA agents
Kor tweeted today to say she had spoken to the TSA and they were working to address the issue
Kor, who has been lecturing about the torture she suffered during the Holocaust for decades, will be the focus of a new documentary, released next month.
Eva, which premieres in April 5 in Indianapolis, tells the story of her imprisonment in the camp, and her life, sharing her story.
Kor and her twin sister Miriam, both Hungarian Jews, were forced to endure horrifying medical experiments at Auschwitz concentration camp by Josef Mengele, known as the ‘Angel of Death’.
The sisters evaded being gassed on arrival at the death camp thanks to Mengele’s twisted obsession with twins.
He experimented on siblings in a sickening attempt to develop genetic techniques for Hitler’s dream of creating a ‘pure’ Aryan race.
His experimentations included deliberately injecting one of the twins with diseases and transferring the blood of one twin into the other.
Mengele used 1,500 sets of twins in his experiments, and only an estimated 180 to 250 individuals survived.
Kor’s mother, father and two older sisters were gassed to death in the camp. Miriam died in 1993.
But Eva, who for years afterwards suffered nightmares about the sick tests, said only in forgiveness was she also able to free herself.
She said: ‘I forgave all the Nazis who were involved in the assassination of my family. For my forgiveness has set me free.’
Speaking in another documentary, The Girl Who Forgave the Nazis, Kor revealed her shocking ordeal at the death camp.
Eva Kor (circled) pictured in Auschwitz, where most of her family were gassed to death
Kor is seen standing behind a barbed wire fence at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau in southern Poland, on the day of the camp’s liberation
Eva Kor (right) pictured with her twin sister Miriam, who were subjected to horrors in Auschwitz
Kor still has the concentration camp tattoo as a permanent reminder of the horrors she suffered
‘As we were holding on to my mother, a Nazi came running, yelling at us in German shouting “Twins! Twins!”,’ she said.
‘He noticed us as Miriam and I were always dressed alike and we looked alike and he demanded to know if we were twins.
‘My mother didn’t know what to say and she asked if it was a good thing and the Nazi said “yes”.
‘At that moment another Nazi came over and pulled my mother to the right while the other one pulled me and my sister to the left.
‘He looked at my mother, who started screaming, and I remember her hand was still in the air and she was crying and I never even got to say goodbye to her.
‘I didn’t realize at that moment, that would be the last time I would ever see her for the rest of my life.
‘I had never seen a dead body before and I saw dead children there, and for me it became clear that this was a place where people would die.
Eva Kor said: ‘I believe forgiveness is such a powerful thing. It is free. It works. It has no side effects’
‘At that moment I made a pledge to myself that I would do anything and everything within my power to make sure Miriam and I shall not end up on the filthy latrine floor.’
Despite her ordeal, Kor found the compassion to forgive her Nazi tormentors – and even unofficially adopted the grandson of SS commander Rudolf Hoess, who oversaw the murder of more than 1 million people at Auschwitz.
She also shocked the world in 2015 when she hugged a former SS officer known as the ‘bookkeeper of Auschwitz’ as she told him she had forgiven him.
Kor embraced Oskar Groening, 96, in a court in April that year before he was found guilty of facilitating the mass murder of 3,000 people.
‘I believe forgiveness is such a powerful thing,’ she said at the time.
‘It is free. It works. It has no side effects. And this is what our world desperately needs besides punishment.’
Seventy years after Auschwitz was liberated, Eva Kor embraced former Nazi guard Oskar Groening in 2015
Oskar Groening (pictured left and right) was found guilty of facilitating the mass murder of 3,000 people
Auschwitz survivors during the first hours of the concentration camp’s liberation in January 1945
In a court in Germany, she approached Groening after giving evidence and hugged him in an extraordinary act of forgiveness and called for the prosecutions of former SS officers to end.
She explained in the documentary: ‘Up to that time, I always reacted to what other people did to me and in many ways I reacted as a victim.
‘Now I was originating action and that is the feeling of power and that comes from forgiveness and that made me realize that we can control how we feel.
‘And that was such a release of pressure of anger, and to me that was a very interesting result of giving a gift to a Nazi. I ended up getting the biggest gift.’
Kor previously said she wanted to thank Groening – who, at Auschwitz, sorted and stored the Jews’ money that the Nazis kept – for having some human decency in accepting responsibility for what he has done.
In the documentary, she revealed she told him to ‘appeal to your fellow Nazis to make statements’ and ‘this is your good job to make up for your bad job’.
The TSA does make some concessions for elderly passengers, and travelers aged 75 and over are allowed to leave on their shoes and a jacket during the screening process.
However, if they are chosen for additional screening, they can be required to remove those items and undergo a pat down.
But last year, the TSA announced agents would be giving more invasive pat downs during security screenings.
While agents previously had more leeway in the type of physical search they carried out on individual passengers, the new policy means they must do a ‘comprehensive’ full-body pat down on everyone they pull side – which can include touching travelers’ genitals through clothing.