Hidden from sight, disguised to forget, an indelible sign of a past as survivors: they are the tattoos with the numbers of deportation to the extermination camps.
While fewer and fewer survivors remain alive and we celebrate Remembrance Day on January 27, 1945, the symbolic date of the opening of the gates of Auschwitz in a historical phase of resurgence of anti-Semitism due to the war in the Middle East between Hamas and Israel (after the terrorist attack on the kibbutzim on 7 October 2023 and Tel Aviv's ferocious response which left thousands of civilians dead in Palestine), we are always looking for new ways to not forget what happened.
In Jewish tradition, tattooing is largely taboo.
For many, a sign engraved and inked on the body is as incompatible with Levitical law as it is irreconcilable with the memory of the Holocaust in which a million Jews died in Auschwitz alone.
But also an indelible legacy: for this reason a small but growing number of descendants, children and grandchildren, are choosing to
replicate on their bodies the serial numbers that the Nazis forcibly tattooed
on the forearms of their relatives.
It's a way to define their own identity.
The sociologist
Alice Bloch
, from the University of Manchester, carried out five years of research, trying to understand the power of this gesture, the power, as the son of an Auschwitz survivor says, of "walking with the number",
becoming with their living memorial tattoos
.
The impact that the Holocaust had on the families affected is devastating and goes deep into generations: among the survivors there are those who have not spoken about it for decades (like Senator Liliana Segre herself) and those who felt they were witness immediately.
In Bloch's research, relaunched by The Conversation, some children and especially grandchildren of survivors tell why they replicated the extermination camp tattoo on their bodies.
"Some waited until the surviving parent or grandparent died. Some got the tattoo without asking for approval. Others discussed it with their relatives in advance," the sociologist says.
Some have chosen to exactly replicate the look of the original and where it was placed.
Others chose to alter the designs in detail and color, or place them on a different part of the body.
“Every decision creates the meaning of the new tattoo,” she points out.
The Auschwitz number tattoo, we read in the Manchester sociologist's research, has not always been venerated.
After World War II, survivors were often stigmatized.
Public commemorations celebrated resistance and uprisings.
Victims and survivors, in contrast, were described as weak.
That initial stigma would follow some survivors throughout their lives, even as public perceptions began to change.
Some have had their numbers removed.
Others covered it with long sleeves.
For some descendants, it was the visit to Poland that sparked the idea
of replicating the Auschwitz number on their body.
The choice has become
a symbol of love and legacy, of commemoration and pride.
The testimonies of the grandchildren who chose to replicate the number to keep the memory alive
"The number is my grandmother. It's my past, my roots, my history. It's who I am" says Rony Cohen who felt as if he had experienced the Holocaust first hand but in a different cycle of his life .
He permeated family life, as did the self-imposed ban on talking about the past and the absence of relatives.
But food was an indicator of suffering, it was used to calm down, there was no waste at home, his grandmother finished every crumb of every dish.
"
Every time someone sees my tattoo, they know this is Auschwitz
. I want it to be noticed and understandable. No one should doubt what it is."
Alice Bloch says: "in the summer of 2022 I met Orly Weintraub Gilad. She had chosen to have her maternal grandfather Samuel Kestenbaum's number tattooed on her arm, but it was also for her maternal grandmother, Agi Kestenbaum. She had also been to Auschwitz, but she was not tattooed because she was not expected to live. Stories about the Holocaust had been part of her life since childhood. She is very close to her grandmother Agi who is 95 years old. The tattoo gives her the opportunity to talk about the Holocaust, "
My grandmother is happy about this.
She knows that after she's gone, I'll talk
."
Then there's the story of Yair Ron (Reisz). He grew up in Israel, on a kibbutz founded by Holocaust survivors. "It was a very small community of people with same idea of communism," he recalled upon meeting the sociologist. "They are all Holocaust survivors, so they all have numbers." Like many children of Holocaust survivors, Ron and his sister knew not to ask. "It was impossible have a conversation about the Holocaust with my father.
We were afraid to ask and afraid to hear.
Maybe we didn't want to hear.
And he told us that he didn't want to tell, so we couldn't exchange any information about the Holocaust.
It seemed very natural to us that adults had numbers so we didn't pay much attention to this.
We didn't know any other adults or people without numbers.
The kibbutz was far away, on the mountain, very isolated", but once he left the kibbutz he noticed that the other people didn't have any numbers so he came up with the idea of the tattoo but his father was against it and only after his death was he able to do it.
The survivors die, soon there will be no more people counted. This, for Yair Ron, makes the number an important thing to preserve,
a tool to keep the memory alive.
Primo Levi, the number is a brand, you no longer have a name
It should be known that Auschwitz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, was the only camp where
numbers were tattooed on inmates not selected for immediate death
.
Replacing the person's name, this number became the visual symbol of the crimes of the Nazis.
And more than 400 thousand prisoners were forcefully and painfully tattooed starting in October 1941, before the identification numbers were sewn onto prison uniforms.
Roma and Sinti prisoners had the letter Z added to their number, the first letter of the German (pejorative) word Zigeuner, used at the time for these communities.
With the arrival of Hungarian Jews in increasing numbers, new digit sequences were introduced in May 1944.
These began with the number 1 and were preceded first by the letter A;
then, when more was needed, B.
In her 2001 autobiographical book,
Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered
, German studies scholar and Holocaust survivor Ruth Klüger describes the experience of being forcibly tattooed to Auschwitz.
Primo Levi
also talks about it
in his immense 1986 book,
The Drowned and the Saved:
"Its symbolic meaning was clear to everyone: this is an indelible sign, you will never leave here; this is the mark with which the slaves and cattle sent to the slaughter, and this is what you have become. You no longer have a name; this is your new name."
Museums and memorials due to little awareness of the Holocaust
Museums and memorials around the world are dedicated to telling the story of the Holocaust.
Since 2006, International Holocaust Remembrance Day has been celebrated every year on January 27.
But despite the proliferation of Holocaust-related art and culture, despite the books that lay out the facts, research shows that
many people are unaware of what happened
.
In 2021, the Global Holocaust Awareness Survey found large gaps in people's knowledge.
In the United Kingdom, 52% of respondents could not specify that six million Jews were murdered, a figure that rises to 56% in Austria and 57% in France.
Among adults surveyed in the United States and Canada, 45 percent and 49 percent, respectively, could not name a concentration camp or ghetto.
Among millennials in the United States, only 49% could name a concentration camp or ghetto.
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