SuperHeroBooks - Forgiving Dr. Mengele
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List Price: $24.95
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Manufacturer: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Starring: Eva Mozes Kor
Directed By: Cheri Pugh;Bob Hercules
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
EAN: 0720229912648
Format: Color
Label: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Manufacturer: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Region Code: 1
Release Date: 2007-04-17
Running Time: 80
Studio: FIRST RUN FEATURES
Theatrical Release Date: 2005
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: What does it mean to forgive?
Comment: For many of us, the virtuosity of forgiving is a given. It's good to forgive, we say, and wicked to hold a grudge. Curiously, however, it's not at all clear what it means to forgive, nor whether forgiveness is always virtuous. Is forgiveness primarily directed at self-healing, letting-go of resentment and pain? Is it primarily directed at offering the transgressor a fresh start? Is it a mode of justice, or is it antithetical to justice? Can one forgive if the transgressor doesn't express remorse? Are some actions unforgiveable, such that forgiving them is morally wrong? Can one forgive a dead transgressor? Can one forgive on behalf of others?
"Forgiving Dr. Mengele" invites us to reflect on these sorts of questions by focusing on the extraordinary life of Eva Kor. Along with her twin sister, Eva was a human guinea pig in Dr. Mengele's notorious "genetic experiments" at Auschwitz. (Eva's sister would eventually die from the after-effects of the experiments.) Like all survivors of the death and concentration camps, Eva was incredibly scarred by her experiences.
Seeking documentation about the experiments she and her sister endured, Eva (who was then in late middle age) sought out and met with a Dr. Erich Munch, the only Auschwitz physician exonerated at war's end. This personal encounter, in which a German expressed deep remorse over what Germans had done to Jews during the Third Reich, persuaded Eva that the "enemy" had a human face. Moreover, she came to the conclusion that dealing with her own pain was her responsibility. As she says, "victims need to take responsibility for their own healing, just as perpetrators need to take responsibility for their crimes." So she publicly forgave the Nazis for the crimes they committed against her as a "life-changing experience, to be free of the pain." "Getting even," she asserted, "has never healed a single person."
This is an extraordinary enough story had the film ended here. But what makes the film an excellent reflection on forgiveness is its honesty about the critical responses to Eva's forgiveness. Other survivors who are interviewed insist that forgiving when it comes to Nazi atrocities is a denial of what happened; that it's a violation of justice; that it's a disguised form of forgetting, and thereby encouraging, atrocities; that only Nazis who atone, in deed as well as word, qualify for forgiveness; and that Eva has no right to forgive on behalf of other victims (this last is a misdirected criticism, since Eva is clear that she's forgiving only on her own behalf).
Moreover, the film makers point out that Eva has a great deal of resistance to forgiving Palestinian terrorists, thereby gesturing at the psychological complexities and blindspots that must be taken into consideration when examining forgiveness.
Highly recommended.
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Summary: the unforgivable
Comment: On Yom Kippur, the process begins with repentence.
First, repentence by the oppressor. Then, forgiveness by the victim.
Dr. Mengele was not repentent.
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Summary: Must see.
Comment: Everyone should watch this movie at least once. I don't even have the words to express how much this film touched me.
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Summary: short, simple--but powerful
Comment: Forgiving Dr. Mengele tells the exceptional story of a Holocaust survivor named Eva Kor who shocks many other Holocaust survivors--and others--when she declares that she forgives the Nazis for their actions during World War II. In particular, Eva forgives a Dr. Mengele who was performing horrible "experiments" on identical twins; Eva and her sister Miriam were subjected to these tests.
The film allows us to understand why Eva has chosen to forgive Nazis and Dr. Mengele in particular: she wants freedom from her emotional pain and scars by forgiving them. She does not forget; but she does forgive. That's pretty amazing.
Of course, we also see Eva try to explain her position to other Holocaust survivors. Predictably, most are not interested in forgiving the Nazis--and that certainly includes Dr. Mengele. There is one heated exchange between Eva and another Holocaust survivor at Israel's Holocaust museum that will make quite an impression upon you.
Another remarkable segment of this film is the time we accompany Eva as she goes to meet a former Nazi doctor--the only one acquitted after the war ended. We se the doctor express great remorse and he treats Eva like a lady. Eventually the doctor goes with Eva and other Holocaust survivors of Dr. Mengele's "experiments" on twins to participate in a healing memorial ceremony on the grounds of Auschwitz in Poland.
Look also for the rather human way that we find out Eva isn't exactly perfect: when she meets with Palestinians Eva becomes much more reticent to feel anything like remorse for the conflicts in the Israeli occupied territories. When her own Holocaust museum burns to the ground by arson, Eva once again admits that she will have "to work on forgiveness."
The DVD comes with a few extras; there's a printed brief interview with the director and there are printed web links to websites connected with this film.
Overall, Forgiving Dr. Mengele gives us a noteworthy and intimate look at a woman who chooses to follow an idealistic path to self-healing after the horrors of the Holocaust. She makes a controversial decision to forgive the Nazis; and we see Eva teach young people why she forgave them even as we see people challenge Eva for forgiving the Germans.
I highly recommend this film for students of World War II; and people who want to see a person successfully reach a rather lofty goal of forgiving brutal enemies and murderers will be riveted to their seats as they watch this film.
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Summary: forgiveness as self-healing
Comment: Could you forgive Dr. Mengele, the Nazi "angel of death?" That was not a theoretical question for Eva Kor. She and her twin sister Miriam spent 10 months in Auschwitz and, along with many other twins, were separated from their families and subjected to Mengele's horrific experiments. After liberation by the Soviets as a ten-year old, then ten years in Israel, she relocated to Terre Haute, Indiana in 1960, where she raised a family. She returned to Auschwitz for the first time in 1984, and then again for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps in 1995. On that occasion she did the unthinkable: she read aloud her personal "official declaration of amnesty" to Mengele and the Nazis. To be liberated from the Nazis was not enough, she said; she needed to be released from the pain of the past. To extend forgiveness, she says, without any prerequisites required of the perpetrators, was an "act of self-healing." Others in the Jewish community were outraged that she dared to do this. Most interesting of all, Kor was clearly uncomfortable with extending forgiveness to or empathizing with the Palestinians when she traveled there. Still, this is a remarkable exploration what she calls "the feeling of complete freedom from pain" though the act of "forgiving your worst enemy."
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Editorial Reviews:
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Winner of the SPECIAL JURY PRIZE IN SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2006, Forgiving Dr. Mengele is a bold and thought provoking documentary about a shocking act of forgiveness by Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor and the firestorm of criticism it has provoked. Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, were victims of Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's cruel genetic experiments--an experience that would haunt them their entire lives. The film follows Eva's metamorphosis from embittered survivor to tireless advocate for reconciliation. This unexpected transformation was sparked when Eva, in an attempt to get information about the experiments, met with another former Auschwitz doctor and was stunned to learn that he also suffered from nightmares about Auschwitz. Eva's ideas about justice, revenge and the possibility of healing through forgiveness--as well as the passionate opposition from other survivors--become a window to a larger discussion of the many ways people define forgiveness.
This personal agenda morphs into a political crusade, as Eva finds herself challenged--in the US, Germany and Israel--by other survivors who view her as nothing short of a traitor. Seemingly undeterred, Eva remains steadfast in her conviction that personal healing through forgiveness is not inconsistent with the need to never forget. Yet Eva's life and her vision--and by extension the film itself--take dramatic, unexpected turns: a meeting in the West Bank with Palestinian teachers yields decidedly mixed results, and then, amazingly, we watch as this woman, who in 1995 built a tiny museum in a Terre Haute strip mall as a tribute to her twin sister Miriam and other child survivors, is forced to witness the destruction of this memorial by hateful neo-Nazis. Can Eva's convictions withstand these terrible tests?
Thrusting itself into the roiling debate about how Jews in general and Holocaust survivors in particular must view the perpetrators of Nazi atrocities, Forgiving Dr. Mengele pointedly asks: is it easier to forgive than to forget?
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