Eva Mozes Kor, who survived the Nazi death camp Auschwitz and its sadistic doctor Josef Mengele has died at age 85 while on an annual trip to the the death camp where several of her family members perished.
Kor devoted her life to Holocaust awareness and founded the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, Ind.
According to the museum's Twitter account, Kor died on Thursday in Krakow, Poland.
"We are deeply saddened to announce the passing of Eva Kor, Holocaust survivor, forgiveness advocate, and founder of CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center," the tweet said.
"Only five days ago we recorded a testimony of Eva Kor, an Auschwitz survivor, for @AuschwitzMuseum Archive. Today came news about her passing away," the museum said in another tweet.
"Broken-hearted to inform you that Ewa Kor has passed away and will be buried in the US," Michael Schudrich, Poland's chief rabbi, told AFP, on Friday, using the Polish spelling of the Romanian-born Kor's first name.
The Guardian noted that Kor was a longtime advocate of forgiveness, and said that, "The moment I forgave the Nazis, I felt free from Auschwitz and from all the tragedy that had occurred to me."
"Forgive your worst enemies," she said in a video during her final visit to the Auschwitz Museum.
Combatting racial prejudice doesn't take "big laws" or "any government," she said, but is as simple as "treating each other with respect and fairness."
She testified in the 2015 trial of the former SS officer Oskar Groening, known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz," who was charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder of Hungarian Jews.
During that trial, she described Mengele's fascination with twins, as she had a twin sister.
Her 10-year-old twin Miriam suffered a high fever, and both were giving mystery injections. Kor said she saw Mengele at Miriam's bedside as he began to "laugh sarcastically."
"Too bad, she’s so young. She has only two weeks to live," she testified he said.
Kor said she crawled on the floor to her sister because she was not able to walk. Her sister had been injected with a substance to stop her kidneys from growing.
"If I had died, Miriam would have been killed with an injection in the heart. Mengele would have performed comparative autopsy," Kor said.
The sisters were liberated by Russian soldiers in January 1945, but their parents and two other sisters died at Auschwitz.