Eva Kor

My friend Eva Kor has been awarded Indiana's highest honor. She will be the Grand Marshall of the IPL Festival Parade on May 27.

I became friends with Eva in 1995 when she came to the television station that was connected with the radio station where I worked. She was working mostly from her kitchen table to create the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. organization, and was working on her book, Echoes from Auschwitz, and trying to open a Holocaust museum in Terre Haute. Very few people knew Eva outside of her circle of friends and acquaintances, and now she is a symbol of strength for so many people. I am so proud of Eva, and so gratified that she has gotten the recognition and respect that she deserves.

Eva asked me and my string quartet to play for the opening of her museum, and I couldn't find appropriate music to play (short pieces that would give the flavor of the time and place), so I made some settings of Chassidic melodies that were connected to texts that I felt reflected Eva's character and mission. They were the first serious pieces I ever wrote. You can see them and listen to a performance here.