Forgiveness: The Story of Eva Kor, Survivor of The Auschwitz Twin Experiments

by Joseph E. Lee

Overview

In March of 1944, at age 10, little Eva was arrested with her entire family, including her twin sister, Miriam, for the "crime" of being Jewish.

Nazis loaded Eva and her family into a cattle car with other men, women, and children headed to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Within moments of their arrival, the twins lost their entire family to the gas chambers without a chance to say goodbye. Because twins were considered valuable for research, the girls were spared immediate death by Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor and war criminal, in favor of experimentation and torture.

This stunning, heartbreaking illustrated biography tells the story of a tenacious girl's fight to survive a horrific childhood ravaged by tragedy; her growing anger as an adult who settled in Terre Haute, Indiana; and her eventual discovery that forgiveness might just save her life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781684351787
Publisher:	Red Lightning Books
Publication date:	10/05/2021
Pages:	136
Product dimensions:	6.62(w) x 10.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Joe Lee is a cartoonist, illustrator, writer, and former circus clown. He is the author/illustrator of books on clowns, Dante, and Greek mythology; editorial cartoonist for the Bloomington Herald-Times; and staff illustrator for Our Brown County Magazine. His latest large work is the LeGrande Circus & Sideshow Tarot for US Games. Lee is a graduate of Indiana University and is currently based in Bloomington, Indiana.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
1. How Could This Happen?
2. Portz
3. Auschwitz/Birkenau
4. The Way Home
5. Forgiveness

What People are Saying About This

Jim Poyser

Prolific author, illustrator and cartoonist Joe Lee has produced the work he was born to create. It's a triumph of both art and the spirit, exploring the remarkable life of Eva Kor. Harrowing and inspiring, Forgiveness will reach a wide audience hungry to navigate a path out of our current cultural paralysis.

Leah Simpson

Joe Lee weaves Eva's story of overcoming atrocity and finding peace and forgiveness into a well-crafted and beautiful work of art. CANDLES has enjoyed helping with this project and is excited to have this new format and audience.

Editorial Reviews

09/20/2021

This passionately told graphic biography delves into the horrors of the Holocaust twin experiments conducted by Joseph Mengele. After speeding through the Nazis’ rise to power, the narrative focuses on headstrong Eva Mozes Kor (1934–2019), arrested by Nazis with her Transylvanian family at age 10. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, Eva and her twin sister Miriam are separated from their parents and subjected to torturous medical trials by Auschwitz’s “Angel of Death.” Framed for readers who may not be deeply familiar with the Holocaust, the treatment covers basic WWII history, along with Eva and Miriam’s profound inner strength. “Dying in Auschwitz was easy,” the adult Eva recalls later; “surviving was a full-time job.” The narrative continues beyond the war to follow Eva as she emigrates to Israel and then the U.S., copes with PTSD, and ultimately founds the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Her healing process includes writing letters and pronouncing forgiveness to her Nazi tormentors, with her motto that “each of us has a part to play in repairing our world.” Lee’s densely lined drawings show the influence of modernist art and caricature, recalling classic picture-book art, though they are sometimes cramped and blocky. But his dedication to translating Eva’s message to comics results in a memorable work that joins a growing chorus of graphic biographies of the Holocaust, one of a survivor speaking out against cruelty and complacency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Joe Lee weaves Eva's story of overcoming atrocity and finding peace and forgiveness into a well-crafted and beautiful work of art. CANDLES has enjoyed helping with this project and is excited to have this new format and audience."—Leah Simpson, Interim Executive Director, CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center, Interim Executive Director, CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center

"Prolific author, illustrator and cartoonist Joe Lee has produced the work he was born to create. It's a triumph of both art and the spirit, exploring the remarkable life of Eva Kor. Harrowing and inspiring, Forgiveness will reach a wide audience hungry to navigate a path out of our current cultural paralysis."—Jim Poyser, author of The Last Actor and Other Stories

"The art is detailed and conveys the terror, grief and fear of the Nazis' victims as well as the depravity of the Nazis themselves. The simple black and white drawings suggest an old movie or a nightmare. Most of the illustrations in the first part of the book are very dark, some with large areas of solid black, especially the illustration of Hitler. This is contrasted by the illustrations in the last part of the book, which have more white space, and many more curves as opposed to the sharp lines and angles of the first section. Readers who enjoyed Art Spiegelman's "Maus," and more recently George Takei's "They Called Us Enemy" or Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis," will also appreciate this book."—Rebecca Bennett, Austin American-Statesman

"This passionately told graphic biography delves into the horrors of the Holocaust twin experiments conducted by Joseph Mengele. . . . [Lee's] dedication to translating Eva's message to comics results in a memorable work that joins a growing chorus of graphic biographies of the Holocaust, one of a survivor speaking out against cruelty and complacency."—Publishers Weekly

"Lee's insightful narrative moves us boldly, compellingly, across a century of political and economic turmoil, compelling us to flip back to page one with its stark enumeration of devastation and death of sixteen million. . . . Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows about Eva Kor and her journey to be at one with herself through the strength of forgiveness. Lee gets it manifestly right."—Rita Kohn, NUVO

"Every personal, community, college, and university library Holocaust Studies and 20th Century Jewish Biography collection should include a copy of Forgiveness: The Story of Eva Kor, Survivor of The Auschwitz Twin Experiments."—Midwest Book Review

"[Lee's] drawings provide visual recreations of scenes that Kor described. Lee turned her words into depictions of the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching moments the Jewish people suffered during the Holocaust. . . . As a graphic novel, Lee's paperback tells the story through the eyes of a child "who suffered only because she was Jewish." Lee condenses the saga into a digestible 120 pages with vivid illustrations and captivating storytelling."—Mark Bennett, Herald-Times

"Joe Lee's book does superb justice to this remarkable woman, keeping Eva's inspiring story, and spirit, alive."—Beverley Chalmer, Jewish Book Council

From the Publisher

[Lee's] drawings provide visual recreations of scenes that Kor described. Lee turned her words into depictions of the heartbreaking, gut-wrenching moments the Jewish people suffered during the Holocaust. . . . As a graphic novel, Lee's paperback tells the story through the eyes of a child "who suffered only because she was Jewish." Lee condenses the saga into a digestible 120 pages with vivid illustrations and captivating storytelling.

Herald-Times - Mark Bennett

Every personal, community, college, and university library Holocaust Studies and 20th Century Jewish Biography collection should include a copy of Forgiveness: The Story of Eva Kor, Survivor of The Auschwitz Twin Experiments.

Midwest Book Review

The art is detailed and conveys the terror, grief and fear of the Nazis' victims as well as the depravity of the Nazis themselves. The simple black and white drawings suggest an old movie or a nightmare. Most of the illustrations in the first part of the book are very dark, some with large areas of solid black, especially the illustration of Hitler. This is contrasted by the illustrations in the last part of the book, which have more white space, and many more curves as opposed to the sharp lines and angles of the first section. Readers who enjoyed Art Spiegelman's "Maus," and more recently George Takei's "They Called Us Enemy" or Marjane Satrapi's "Persepolis," will also appreciate this book.

Austin American-Statesman - Rebecca Bennett

Lee's insightful narrative moves us boldly, compellingly, across a century of political and economic turmoil, compelling us to flip back to page one with its stark enumeration of devastation and death of sixteen million. . . . Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock knows about Eva Kor and her journey to be at one with herself through the strength of forgiveness. Lee gets it manifestly right.

NUVO - Rita Kohn

Joe Lee's book does superb justice to this remarkable woman, keeping Eva's inspiring story, and spirit, alive.

Jewish Book Council - Beverley Chalmer

2021-09-01
A biography, in comic form, of a survivor of Josef Mengele’s horrific experiments on twins.

Eva and Miriam Mozes are twins, born in 1934 to the only Jewish family in their Romanian village. Though Papa, fearing the antisemitism of interwar Romania, wants the family to flee to safety in Palestine, Mama argues against it. And so it is that they are still in Romania when their home is invaded by Hitler’s ally, Hungary. Following an all-too-familiar story, the Mozes family is sent first to the ghetto and then on to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Torn away from their family, the girls are brought to Mengele for his nightmarish twin experiments. The graphic form mercifully makes it difficult to provide much detail of the stomach-churning tortures Mengele inflicted on those he found lesser, though the blocky illustrations certainly feature starvation, death, and disease. After the girls are liberated by the Soviets, they begin the second part of their ordeal: living with their trauma. Two extremely dense chapters detail the next 74 years, eventually building to the journey Eva would take late in her life toward liberating herself by forgiving the Nazis. This overstuffed survivor tale owes less to Maus than it does to the For Beginners series of graphic nonfiction. Dense blocks of historical play-by-play, ungainly prose, and hard-to-read lettering make this a slog.

An important story drowned in illegibility and exposition. (Graphic biography. 13-15)

Kirkus Reviews