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DESCRIPTION:Four women honored as 'heroes of forgiveness'\nBeth Ashley\nOJ Article 
 Launched: 07/29/2008 04:11:01 PM PDT\n\nClick photo to enlarge\nJaimee 
 Karroll is one of four women who will be honored Sunday on... (Provided by 
 Nancy Mullane)\n\nIt took Jaimee Karroll 21 years to forgive the three men 
 who kidnapped and repeatedly raped her when she was 9.\n\nFor two decades, 
 she suppressed the experience, expressing it in combativeness, high-risk 
 behavior, heavy drinking, attempted suicide.\n\n"There was a huge 
 disconnect with the person I showed on the outside and the person who 
 suffered inside," Karroll says.\n\nWhen she realized her self-destructive 
 behavior was hurting her husband and others she loved, Karroll asked for 
 their forgiveness.\n\n"And then I realized it was hypocritical of me to 
 expect their forgiveness if I could not forgive those who hurt me."\n\nA 
 newly peaceful Karroll, 54, of El Cerrito, now uses her experience to 
 counsel violent offenders at San Quentin State Prison, helping them 
 understand the impact of their crimes and to bring about reconciliation 
 between inmates and survivors.\n\nShe is one of four women who will be 
 honored as "Heroes of Forgiveness" at the 12th annual International 
 Forgiveness Day event set for 7 p.m. Sunday at the Osher Marin Jewish 
 Community Center in San Rafael.\n\nThe event is the brainchild of Mill 
 Valley attorney Robert Plath, who promotes the day worldwide and sees it as 
 part of a movement to promote peace, reconciliation and healing. Practicing 
 forgiveness, he says, has made him healthier, happier and more complete: 
 "It doesn't cost anything, and it's better than any medicine."\n\nHe quotes 
 Bishop Desmond Tutu: "Without forgiveness, there is no future." And 
 Gerald\nAdvertisement\nJampolsky of Tiburon of the Center for Attitudinal 
 Healing: "Forgiveness is the greatest healer of them all."\n\nOthers to be 
 honored:\n\n- Eva Kor, 74, of Terre Haute, Ind., who was taken at age 10 
 from her home in Eastern Romania to the Auschwitz concentration camp in 
 Poland, where she and her twin sister were subject to a year of medical 
 experiments at the hands of the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele. In 
 1995, at Auschwitz, she read aloud a document forgiving Mengele and his 
 assistants. "For the first time, I felt completely free."\n\n- Julie 
 Chimes, 53, of Granada, Spain, who was attacked by a mentally ill, 
 knife-wielding woman in Chimes' London home in 1986 and - despite grievous 
 injuries - forgave her assailant, saying, "no one was to blame." Today, 
 Chimes runs retreats and workshops in Europe designed to help others find 
 the courage to forgive.\n\n"This inner place of forgiveness and peace is 
 available to everyone," she says.\n\n- Attorney Nadia Bishop of Oakland, 
 39, whose father, Maurice Bishop, the former prime minister of Grenada, was 
 killed in a 1983 coup. After 24 years of anger, she visited 10 men 
 convicted of her father's slaying and publicly announced her forgiveness. 
 She told her countrymen that only through forgiveness can Grenada move 
 forward.\n\nThe four honorees will tell their stories at Sunday's event, 
 which also will feature a musical performance by the East Bay International 
 Mass Choir.\n\nKor will relive her months in Auschwitz, where both her 
 parents and two older sisters died in the gas chambers.\n\nShe and her twin 
 sister lived in a wooden barracks, inspected each morning by Mengele, whom 
 she described as "very elegant," cool, movie-star handsome. Three times a 
 week, she and her sister were given a minimum of five injections. "We 
 didn't know then, we don't know today, what was in them," Kor says. Once, 
 she became so ill she had to crawl across the barracks floor.\n\nAfter the 
 Soviet army liberated the camp in 1945, Kor spent time in refugee centers 
 in Europe before moving to Israel. She met and married an American tourist 
 in Tel Aviv and moved to the United States in 1960.\n\nAlmost half a 
 century later, she was befriended by a former Nazi who had seen the death 
 chambers in action. In time, she discovered the balm of forgiveness.\n\n"I 
 discovered for myself I had the power to forgive," Kor says. "No one could 
 take it from me. It became a gift to myself as well, because I realized I 
 was not a powerless victim.\n\n"I became free. I remain free. I will never 
 again be a victim."\n\nJaimee Karroll's ordeal of rape and torture took 
 place in the San Fernando Valley, where she was traumatized for 10 hours 
 before she could escape.\n\nAs a college student, Karroll began a career as 
 a performer - singing and playing guitar - but abandoned it years later to 
 focus on recovery from her childhood ordeal.\n\nShe began her prison work 
 with a lecture at Solano State Prison. She has since lectured at several 
 other prisons including Soledad and San Quentin, and a year ago began an 
 intensive class - two hours a week for 25 weeks - at San Quentin. Recently, 
 she played guitar again, singing to another group of inmates being 
 counseled by Jacques Verduin of the Insight Prison Project.\n\nKarroll's 
 work with violent offenders has facilitated her healing.\n\n"When I meet 
 with people trying so hard to transform themselves, it gives me great 
 hope."\n\nINTERNATIONAL FORGIVENESS DAY\n\nInternational Forgiveness Day 
 honorees will conduct a workshop in forgiveness from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday 
 at Mt. Tamalpais United Methodist Church at Camino Alto at Sycamore Avenue 
 in Mill Valley. Suggested donation is $55. Register online at 
 www.forgivenessalliance.org.All four will be honored at the International 
 Forgiveness Day event at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Osher Marin Jewish Community 
 Center at 200 N. San Pedro Road in San Rafael. Suggested donation is $20; 
 no one will be turned away.\n\nRead more San Rafael stories at the IJ's San 
 Rafael section.\n\nput up by pres of \n 
 https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/08/02/18522112.php
SUMMARY:San Rafael>Forgiveness Day
LOCATION:7 p.m. Sunday at the Osher Marin Jewish Community Center in San 
 Rafael.\n\n#\nOsher Marin Jewish Community Center\nPlace where people can 
 enhance their lives through various activities that reflect the unique 
 values of Jewish history and culture.\nwww.marinjcc.org - Cached\n\nend a 
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