The Holocaust survivor who shocked the world when hugged a former SS officer known as the 'bookkeeper of Auschwitz' has explained why she forgave him. Eva Kor, 82, embraced Oskar Groening, 94, in a court in April before he was found guilty of facilitating the mass murder of 3,000 people. Speaking in a new Channel 4 documentary, to be aired on Saturday night, Mrs Kor said: 'I believe forgiveness is such a powerful thing. It is free. It works. It has no side effects. And this is what our world desperately needs besides punishment.'

Mrs Kor and her twin sister Miriam, both Hungarian Jews, were forced to endure horrifying medical experiments at Auschwitz concentration camp by Josef Mengele, known as the 'Angel of Death'. The sisters evaded being gassed on arrival at the death camp thanks to Mengele's twisted obsession with twins. He experimented on siblings in a sickening attempt to develop genetic techniques for Hitler's dream of creating a 'pure' Aryan race. Mengele used 1,500 sets of twins in his experiments, and only an estimated 180 to 250 individuals survived. Mrs Kor's mother, father and two older sisters were gassed to death in the camp. Miriam died in 1993. Speaking in the documentary, The Girl Who Forgave the Nazis, Mrs Kor revealed her shocking ordeal at the death camp.

'As we were holding on to my mother, a Nazi came running, yelling at us in German shouting "Twins! Twins!",' she said. 'He noticed us as Miriam and I were always dressed alike and we looked alike and he demanded to know if we were twins. 'My mother didn't know what to say and she asked if it was a good thing and the Nazi said "yes". 'At that moment another Nazi came over and pulled my mother to the right while the other one pulled me and my sister to the left. 'He looked at my mother, who started screaming, and I remember her hand was still in the air and she was crying and I never even got to say goodbye to her. 'I didn't realise at that moment, that would be the last time I would ever see her for the rest of my life. 'I had never seen a dead body before and I saw dead children there, and for me it became clear that this was a place where people would die.

Despite her ordeal, Mrs Kor found the compassion to forgive her Nazi tormentors - and even unofficially adopted the grandson of SS commander Rudolf Hoess, who oversaw the murder of more than 1 million people at Auschwitz. And in a court in Germany, she approached Groening after giving evidence and hugged him in an extraordinary act of forgiveness and called for the prosecutions of former SS officers to end. She explained in the documentary: 'Up to that time, I always reacted to what other people did to me and in many ways I reacted as a victim. 'Now I was originating action and that is the feeling of power and that comes from forgiveness and that made me realise that we can control how we feel. 'And that was such a release of pressure of anger, and to me that was a very interesting result of giving a gift to a Nazi. I ended up getting the biggest gift.' Mrs Kor, who now lives in the U.S., previously said she wanted to thank Groening - who, at Auschwitz, sorted and stored the Jews' money that the Nazis kept - for having some human decency in accepting responsibility for what he has done. In the documentary, she revealed she told him to 'appeal to your fellow Nazis to make statements' and 'this is your good job to make up for your bad job'.

Originally posted by JonnyϟLightning I hate ******** stories like this. He ****ing tortured you and killed your family... you dont need to forgive him. Let him suffer.

Just wow. Even after she lost her parents and two sisters at the camp. I would have probably died of sorrow and misery.

Forgiveness really is a powerful thing. This lady is extraordinary, she should write a spiritual book.

Originally posted by JonnyϟLightning I hate ******** stories like this. He ****ing tortured you and killed your family... you dont need to forgive him. Let him suffer.

What a lovely woman.