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Friday November 28, 2003

‘Domestic terrorism’ leads to fire at Shoah museum

terre haute, ind. (ap) | Rallying behind a Holocaust survivor whose museum was destroyed by a fire the FBI calls domestic terrorism, about 100 people gathered outside a synagogue Nov. 20 for a candlelight vigil.

“I am touched by every single one of your gestures,’’ Eva Kor told the gathering on the steps of Temple Israel in Terre Haute.

After reciting Jewish and Christian prayers by the red glow of candlelight, Kor and the others walked about 10 blocks to the CANDLES Museum, which was gutted early Tuesday, Nov. 18, by a suspected arson fire.

Kor, a survivor of Auschwitz, founded the museum in 1995 with artifacts from Auschwitz to educate people about the Holocaust. It had become a popular stop for school field trips, with tours led by Kor and her husband, Michael, himself a Holocaust survivor.

Doug Garrison, a spokesman for the FBI’s Indianapolis office, said that investigators consider the fire that destroyed the museum an act of domestic terrorism because of the words “Remember Timmy McVeigh’’ that were spraypainted on the side of the building.

McVeigh, the Oklahoma City federal building bomber who shared sympathies with white supremacists, was executed at a federal prison outside Terre Haute in 2001.

On Thursday, a blue tarp covered the spraypainted message, but Kor lifted the covering to show reporters the words.

All signs point to arson as the cause, as evidence of an accelerant was found and a brick was thrown through a window of the one-story brick building along U.S. 41 south of Terre Haute’s downtown, said Vigo County Prosecutor Bob Wright.

Among the museum’s now damaged or destroyed collection of artifacts were documents about Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

Kor and an identical twin sister, Miriam Mozes Zeiger, were subjected to Mengele’s genetic experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. Her sister died of cancer in 1993.

CANDLES stands for Children of Auschwitz Nazi Deadly Experiments Survivors.

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