A retired Catholic educator’s commitment to teaching about the Holocaust

By Barb Arland-Fye
The Catholic Messenger

Chris Green’s journey to Auschwitz began 20 years ago when one of her junior high students proposed a History Day project on SS physician Josef Mengele, who “conducted inhumane, and often deadly, medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz” (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum). The student, Taylor Beitzel, chose to focus on the physician’s violation of his Hippocratic Oath.

“As Taylor researched Dr. Mengele, she discovered Eva Kor, a ‘Mengele Twin,’ public speaker and forgiveness advocate. Eva had ‘forgiven, in her name only,’ those who had persecuted her and murdered her family,” said Chris, a member of St. Ann Parish in Long Grove and retired teacher from North Scott Community School District in Eldridge.

Eva’s journey to forgiveness took years. During the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 1995, she publicly forgave her persecutors. In a reflection for The Forgiveness Project, Eva wrote, “I felt a burden of pain was lifted from me. I was no longer in the grip of hate; I was finally free” (theforgivenessproject.com/stories-library/eva-kor). Eva died in 2019.

She founded CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Indiana in 1995, a decade after founding the organization of the same name. The acronym stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Lab Experiments Survivors. Eva and her twin sister, Miriam Mozes Zeiger, were among the survivors, liberated from Auschwitz just four days short of their 11th birthdays.

“Taylor wrote to Eva and Eva wrote back,” Green recalled. Eva “wanted to educate people about what had happened … Taylor went to the museum in Terre Haute and corresponded with Eva.” After that, Chris vowed to make the journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau someday.

Before that journey transpired, “In 2016, I was able to travel to Hungary and Romania with Eva on her trip to her childhood home in Portz, Romania,” Chris said. “A movie crew was filming for the documentary about her life, Eva: A-7063. Seeing and hearing Eva share her story with us impressed on me how crucial it is for the truth to be spoken. Again and again and again.”

Chris, who now chairs the Holocaust Education Committee of the Quad Cities, attended the 80th Anniversary of the Liberation of the German Nazi Concentration and Extermination Camp Auschwitz in January “to give witness that the Holocaust did happen.”   

A member of the CANDLES delegation, she had a pass to view the commemoration from a giant screen about a quarter-mile from the ceremony, held at the Birkenau Entrance Gate. She described that experience as extraordinary and humbling. “I could see and feel the emotion of the Holocaust survivors, even though most were speaking different languages.”

“Eighty years separated these survivors from the daily horror they personally experienced right here at Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Chris said. Yet, these survivors spoke of hope for the future, the importance of remembering the past but also the extreme need for truthful acknowledgement” of what happened so that this “horror never happens again.”

“Each of us has an obligation to recognize and speak out against hate, prejudice, antisemitism and falsehoods whenever we see or hear them,” Chris said. She quoted a child survivor, who spoke of the need to transform the violence, anger and hatred that grips society today into a humane and just world, an enormous task.

In her Facebook post Jan. 27, the day of the commemoration, Chris reflected:

“… Seeing the world leaders here on the screen, especially (Ukraine President) Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose entire country hangs in the balance, has really affected me. The music, the survivors’ testimonies, the size of this place of death, thinking of what took place here … Overwhelming! As I process, I know that as a citizen of this world it is incumbent on me to seek truth, speak truth and work toward understanding and peace.”

Her Facebook post for Feb. 4 described her visits to Auschwitz I (Oświęcim) and Birkenau, a complex of multiple concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. The camps became a major site of the Nazis’ Final Solution to the “Jewish question,” Chris said.

Auschwitz I housed mostly Polish prisoners, who were “beaten, tortured and executed for the smallest reasons. The gassings started in 1941 and in 1942, the deportation trains of Jewish people began arriving at a newly built Birkenau camp. More than 1.1 million people died at Auschwitz… Auschwitz I was functioning for four years before Auschwitz II-Birkenau was built and became functional.”

Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the largest extermination camp in the Third Reich, Chris said, was about two miles from Auschwitz I. “According to historical investigations, more than 1.1 million people were killed in the Birkenau camp, 1 million were Jews. Additionally, thousands of Poles, Roma, Sinti, the handicapped, people who were gay, political prisoners, musicians and artists were systematically starved, tortured and murdered in this camp. Most of the victims of the Auschwitz Complex, probably about 90%, were killed in the Birkenau camp.”

“Between late April and early July 1944, approximately 440,000 Jews, including the Alexander and Jaffa Mozes family (Eva and Miriam’s family) were deported to Auschwitz. Of the nearly 426,000 Hungarian Jews deported, approximately 320,000 of them were sent directly to the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” Chris said, including Eva and Miriam’s family.