Eva Mozes Kor is almost never at a loss for words, but she seems to struggle to describe what 2017 was like for her.

In April, the 83-year-old Holocaust survivor from Terre Haute was awarded Indiana’s highest honor. In May, she served as grand marshal at the IPL 500 Festival Parade. By August, she was appearing on a radio program with her new friend, a bass player from the legendary metal band Motley Crue.

Kor traveled more than 80,000 miles, calmed the winds at Auschwitz, floated in the Dead Sea, posed for pictures with Jake Gyllenhaal and took a jug of milk from racing icon Mario Andretti. In September, Buzzfeed, a website known for its lists and quizzes, interviewed her for a video on the serious subjects of her life and watched as it was viewed 180 million times.

In a bit of an understatement, Kor simply says: “I haven’t quite had a year like this."

Kor has spent the past two decades telling anyone who would listen the story of how she survived Nazi lab experiments on twins and how, after decades of bitterness, she found ultimate healing by forgiving her tormentors.

But in 2017 her audience grew exponentially. Being honored with Indiana’s Sachem Award and getting the nod as the 500 parade marshal role got things started. But the Buzzfeed video sent her into a new stratosphere.

Shot in a stuffy little studio in Los Angeles in August and posted a month later, the video was shared 1.7 million times — a record for Buzzfeed, whose audience tilts considerably younger than the octogenarian/Holocaust-remembering demographic.

Since then, Kor has been recognized by gate personnel at the San Francisco airport, by beachgoers at the Dead Sea and by members of the Israeli Defense Forces at a roadblock.

Her book about surviving Auschwitz shot to No. 1 on Amazon’s list of books about the Holocaust for young people. And her little museum in Terre Haute has welcomed more than 13,000 visitors, a record since its opening in the 1980s.

“I have been blessed,” Kor said. “My mind is very, very good and very, very positive.”

How positive?

A year ago she nearly died from heart problems. In April, she received a pacemaker. On the day of her surgery, she was angry about not being able to keep a speaking engagement with an audience in Indianapolis that included Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. So angry she video recorded the speech from her hospital bed and, when it aired, she was given a standing ovation.

Despite the physical ailments, Kor has traveled this year to England, Scotland, Germany, Poland and Israel, spending more than three weeks out of the country.

Ted Green, an Indianapolis filmmaker who followed Kor to shoot footage for a documentary he is making about her, describes her almost as a whirlwind whose message is reaching further than ever.

“It’s just sort of astonishing to see,” he said. “This is a woman who has been a difference maker and a life changer for decades. Yet here she is at 83, just about to turn 84, and she’s just on a wave of momentum unlike any she’s been on before.”

Some of her encounters have been by happenstance. At the Indy 500, transportation issues kept her stuck in traffic. Green flagged down a golf cart to get her to the red carpet.

A bit flustered when she got there, Kor — who stands 4 feet 9 inches — looked up and saw a burly, bearded, long-haired man covered in tattoos. It was Nikki Sixx, best known for being a member of Motley Crue.

Immediately, Sixx took a liking to Eva. They posed for pictures and later exchanged loving Tweets. Soon, Sixx asked Eva to come to Los Angeles for an interview on his radio show. She is especially fond of his warm hugs.

"Nikki Sixx," she said, "is a very gentle soul and a very loving person."

Kor also would work on projects this summer with a German heavy metal band and a Scottish pop star.

“I was discovered by rock stars this year,” she said.

Green says Kor seems to draw on the playful spirit of the 10-year-old she was before Auschwitz. But, in some ways, she also is a force of nature.

Green corroborates Kor’s account of her complaining to God about the wind at Auschwitz during her visit in July and the wind subsequently dying off. Her group was attempting to light some candles for a Jewish prayer remembrance for the dead. The gusts weren’t cooperating.

But after Kor’s plea the winds subsided and the candles stayed lit. Kor claims to have successfully persuaded God to halt a torrential downpour at Auschwitz a year before.

“I think I can ask God for a few things,” Kor said.

If anyone has earned such an audience with the Almighty, it might be Eva Mozes Kor.

In 1944, her family – Jews in Romania – were rounded up by the Nazis and sent by cattle car to the Auschwitz concentration camp. At the selection platform, her mother, father and two older sisters were pulled to one side and eventually sent to die in the gas chamber. Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, age 10, were set aside for the experiments of Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi “Angel of Death.”

A series of injections nearly killed Eva before she rallied. Her sister would die in 1993 following cancer and a lifetime of ailments that Eva is convinced were the aftereffects of the experiments.

For decades after Auschwitz, Kor harbored bitterness for what Mengele and the Nazis had done. But by 1995, after the 50th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Kor worked through a period of soul searching, concluding that there was power and healing to be found in forgiving her tormentors. Sharing that “cure,” as she likens it, has since been the great mission of her life.

Even now, Kor is still closing some circles.

At Auschwitz this year, she read letters to her parents. To her father, it was a letter of goodbye. To her mother, it was also a letter of forgiveness. Her mother resisted her father’s pleas to take the family to Palestine in 1935, when the Nazi threat – and anti-Semitism – was still growing. In Israel, at her sister’s grave, she said goodbye to her, uncertain whether she would ever make the trip back.

While it's hard to imagine, Kor's reach is likely to grow in 2018.

Green and WFYI are putting the finishing touches on their documentary “Eva: A-7063,” which will premiere at Butler's Clowes Hall on April 5 and air on WFYI at a later date. (Here's a link to the trailer.)

For all her newfound fame, viral videos and rock star friends, Kor seems most delighted by audiences with students — from elementary school to college age — that she engages with almost on a daily basis. She seems to draw energy from them. And, having been a 10-year-old in a concentration camp, she knows some things about struggling as a child.

She tells her audiences, in any venue, to not let bitterness define them.

"As long as you are angry with somebody you are a victim," she said. "Your good ideas, good thoughts are blocked by your anger. If you want to accomplish anything in life you should get rid of that anger because it will give you a wonderful outlook in life.”

Call Robert King at (317) 444-6089. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

See the documentary

Ted Green's documentary "Eva" will premiere April 5 at Butler University's Clowes Memorial Hall. Tickets go on sale Jan. 19. For more information: www.thestoryofeva.com.

Address: 4602 Sunset Ave., Indianapolis, IN 46208

Website: www.cloweshall.org

Phone: (317) 940-9697

WFYI announced this morning that the world premiere of our "Eva" documentary about Holocaust survivor Eva Mozes Kor will be April 5 at Clowes Hall on the Butler University campus, with tickets going on sale Jan. 19 (details in the attached post). Your support of me, co-producer Mika Brown and WFYI on this nearly two-year, around-the-globe endeavor has meant the world to us, and we'd all be grateful if you would share this news with your friends. And come if you can! WFYI is planning a spectacular evening, in partnership with Butler and Heartland Film. We are equally excited to announce a Terre Haute premiere on April 14, hosted by our wonderful friends at Eva's CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center. Come one, come all -- come to both! And with everything I have, thanks again.