When Ron shared what he had learned with his family, they took pride in Reisz’s “creativity and thinking out of the box.” Neither man had any, so they tattooed what looked like Auschwitz numbers on their left arms. Weintraub Gilad's maternal grandparents, Samuel and Agi KestenbaumĪfter their release, the men started their journey back home, but to pass through the British-occupied military area without being detained, identification was required. Yair Ron (left) and his father, Jakub "Yakshi" Reisz, around 1955 Letters emerge from different vines-the initials of Weintraub Gilad’s husband and her children.Įven though her grandfather’s number was on his left arm, Weintraub Gilad placed her own tattoo on her right arm, because she wanted “to do it the same but different.” One reason for choosing the right arm was because she did not want to see the number “on the side of the heart.” The tattoo itself features her grandfather’s number in a nest of leafy green vines, a nod to her love of nature. As Weintraub Gilad explains, “It starts the conversation, and that’s the purpose.” She says the tattoo gives her the chance to tell her grandmother’s stories and talk about the Holocaust with others. Weintraub Gilad remains very close to her grandmother, who is now 95 years old. But the tattoo was also for her maternal grandmother, who had been imprisoned at Auschwitz but was never tattooed because she was not expected to survive. Orly Weintraub Gilad, a 45-year-old Israeli, chose to have her maternal grandfather’s number tattooed on her arm. Orly Weintraub Gilad holds a photograph of her maternal grandparents. Each decision crafts its own independent meaning. Others have chosen to alter the designs in detail and color, or to place it on a different part of their body. Some individuals have chosen to replicate exactly what the original looked like and where it was placed. The replica tattoos vary in terms of font, color and placement. Still others discussed the procedure with their relative beforehand. Others got the tattoo without seeking approval. Some waited until their survivor parent or grandparent had died. The tattoos’ designs aside, tattooing in general is considered taboo among many Jews for religious and cultural reasons. The people I have spoken with have relayed complex and varied decision-making processes behind this action. Of the 16 people I have spoken with, 13 are from Israel and 3 from the United States.Īs the number of remaining survivors of the Nazi concentration camps grows ever smaller and the Holocaust passes out of living memory, replicating an Auschwitz tattoo becomes to these descendants an ever more potent gesture about embodied memorialization and, crucially, familial ties and love. My research delves into the stories of those descendants who, like Cohen, have chosen to replicate a parent’s or grandparent’s serial number tattoo on their own body. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons A potent gesture Holocaust survivor Bronia Brandman's Auschwitz tattoo As a gesture and an indelible mark she carries with her, Cohen says, “The number is my grandma. To her mind, replicating this number was a means of taking both her grandmother as a person and her grandmother’s legacy forward. Cohen draws meaning from her tattoo in that it signifies her grandmother’s history and her own identity as a descendant of Holocaust survivors. Over the course of Auschwitz’s existence, more than 400,000 prisoners were assigned serial numbers. Cohen is one of a number of the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, more specifically survivors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, who have chosen to replicate their family member’s tattoo on their own body.Īuschwitz, in Nazi-occupied Poland, was the only camp where numbers were tattooed on those prisoners not selected for immediate death. The influence the Holocaust has had through the generations runs deep, and how each descendant of survivors remembers the past and its legacy varies hugely. Her grandfather finished every crumb from every plate. The legacy of starvation was never far from the surface. It permeated family life, as did the self-imposed interdiction on talking about the past and the absence of relatives. It was just always there.Ĭohen, a 41-year-old living in Israel, felt as if she had experienced the Holocaust herself, in a different cycle of her own life. Rony Cohen doesn’t remember any particular moment when she first became aware of the number tattooed on her grandmother’s arm.
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