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Outlook: Auschwitz Survivor: I Forgive the Nazis

Eva Kor, credit Getty Images

13/05/2015

Auschwitz Survivor: I Forgive the Nazis

BBC World Service - Outlook, Auschwitz Survivor: I Forgive the Nazis

Eva Kor, the Auschwitz survivor who's forgiven the Nazis

Holocaust survivor Eva Kor; Ugandan video jockey Emmie Batte; Iranian-American novelist Porochista Khakpour; and porcelain hunter Huan Hsu.

81 year old Holocaust survivor Eva Kor gave evidence in April 2015 at the trial of Oskar Gröning - a book keeper from the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, accused of being an accessory to 300,000 murders.  Eva, and her twin sister were subjected to sinister medical experiments in that camp, and her parents and two older sisters died in the gas chambers.  Eva tells her family's story, and why she's, controversially, decided to forgive the Nazis. 

As a child growing up in Salt Lake City in the USA,  Huan Hsu wasn't very interested in his Chinese ancestry. But his attitude to the past changed completely when he was told about a valuable porcelain collection apparently buried by his great great grandfather in China in 1938. He set off on a journey to discover the porcelain, and in the process more about his own family background. 

If you go to a cinema in Uganda to watch a Hollywood blockbuster, the chances are you'll experience the film with a different kind of soundtrack. Sitting in the corner with a microphone is the video jockey - the VJ - who translates the dialogue into the local language...and adds a little something of his own. Emmie Batte - known as VJ Emmie - is one of thousands of VJs who perform across Uganda. 

Film clips featured in the interview:

The Terminator (1984) directed by James Cameron and produced by John Daly, Derek Gibson and Gale Anne Hurd.

Taken (2008) directed by Pierre Morel and produced by Didier Hoarau

Forrest Gump (1994) directed by Robert Zemeckis and produced by Wendy Finerman, Charles Newirth, Steve Starkey and Steve Tisch.

Porochista Khakpour's family fled their native Iran at the start of the Iran/Iraq War in the 1980's, leaving all their possessions behind.  She grew up in the US and became a writer and academic, but was always drawn to Persian literature. Her latest novel 'The Last Illusion' is set against the backdrop of the 9/11 attacks on New York but is also based on a medieval Persian epic.

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