Passing Holocaust Tattoos from One Generation to the Next

Last updated on: October 5, 2018 at 9:14 am by Rebecca Hamilton

Passing Holocaust Tattoos from One Generation to the Next 2018-10-05T09:14:16-06:00 Rebecca Hamilton

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Israeli grandchildren of Holocaust survivors are beginning to have their own arms tattooed with the same number that their grandparents had put on them in the concentration camps. This is an interesting way to memorialize what happened to their grandparents. I would guess that it also eases whatever remaining shame these Holocaust survivors may feel.

It seems especially poignant to me since we live in a time when whole sections of our population are being marginalized and reduced to non-human status. I am thinking specifically of the unborn, especially unborn children who have disabilities, and people who are feeble with age and injury whose lives we have begun to think of as so burdensome to the rest of us that they should be given the “right” to self-euthanize.

The article, which was published on the German website DW, says in part:

Soon, there will no longer be any living Holocaust survivors. But in Israel, some of their grandchildren are choosing to have themselves tattooed with the concentration camp ID numbers on their grandparents’ arms.
Holocaust survivors are disappearing and, with them, the memory of what they went through.
But some of their children and grandchildren have found a way to preserve the past – by tattooing on their arms the very numbers the Nazis inscribed on their victims. The crude mark that had been a concrete and painful reminder of the Holocaust has turned into a strong symbol of solidarity for some of the survivors’ family members.

Arik Diamant, a 33-year-old from the Israeli city of Herzliya, came up with the idea four years ago to duplicate his late grandfather Yosef Diamant’s Auschwitz identification number on his own arm.

“I went to my father and told him I wanted to tattoo my grandfather’s number,” Diamant told DW. “But I said I would do it after he passed away. My father told me right away that there was no reason to wait and that we could go and ask grandpa right now what he thought about it.”

Diamant didn’t wait. One Friday night, after the weekly dinner he and his family ate with his grandfather, he delicately brought up the idea.

“I told him that if it bothered him at all, I wouldn’t do it. At first, he was really shocked and asked me why I would want to do something like that,” remembered Diamant. “But then he stopped me and said, ‘When you have a grandchild and he asks you what it is, will you tell him about me?'”

Diamant’s story has been worked into a documentary film to be released soon: “Numbers,” produced by Uriel Sinai and Dana Doron.

Ayal Gelles’ arm on the right and his grandfather Avraham Nachshon’s on the left
Ideology of numbers

Diamant is one of a growing number of young Israeli Jews who are deciding to preserve their grandparents’ stories in this way. About three years ago, Ayal Gelles, a 28-year-old from Tel Aviv, tattooed the number of his grandfather, Avraham Nachshon, during a trip to South America. Gelles said he had thought it over for a while – but it was a cow that sealed his decision.

Gelles says that that the same day he got the tattoo he also became a vegan after reading a book by Charles Peterson, who writes that, for animals, every day is like a day in the Treblinka concentration camp. Gelles sees the story of the meat industry as a reflection of the Holocaust: a story of superiority and subordination, of one being above all else. And that triggered him to get the tattoo.(Read more here.)

children of holocaust survivors

Jewish Holocaust survivors

unborn children

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