Today is the Day of Remembrance of the holocaust and the heroism in Israel, and there are all kind of related stories in the papers. One Auschwitz survivor has "given" his tattoed number in the forearm to his son, as some kind of family jewel, like a family name or a ducal title that passes from father to son till the family exists. My mother, as well most of my family, carry their numbers tattoed on their skins at Asuchwitz train station's "reception desk". Is this a good idea?
At first look, it is not. Tattoes are traditionally the sign of slavery and posession, or a criminal past. In Lancaster Prison we saw an iron artifact where the accused had to introduce his right hand, to show if in its inside there was the sign (done with a red-white iron) of a convicted criminal. That is the reason that in Anglosaxon countries people swear with the left hand on the Bible and the right hand in the air, to show that they are not convicted criminals. If they were, that meant immediate death sentence.
Now, I always was of the opinion that the holocaust was a terrible defeat for the Jewish people in general, and for my family in particular. They could have easily left Hungary when it was still possible, which in Hungary was even in the years when the assessination of three million Polish Jews was already a crime of the past and the details more or less known in Hungary.
While one should not feel shame for such an error and defeat, as most survivors do, I also see no reason to proud of it. When a child, I thought that one must have some mystic quality to be among the 30,000 survivors of the 3,000,000 inmates, but nowadays I think that it was mostly a question of being of the right age and good health, arriving in a lucky day (most shipments were sent directly to the gas chambers), staying near friends and family, and large quantities of luck, luck after luck in an improbable stream of lucky events and decisions. So I will not take up the number but let it go into eternal dissolution under the earth following my Mother's death (may she live to 120 years old). The pic does not show my Mother or anyone I know.
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PS: My wife's Jew-hating Hebrew fishwrap, HaAretz, following the thesis "write nine times some small truth so the tenth, people will believe the big lie", brings the story in a credible way:
One day Dr. Ron Folman walked into a tattoo studio accompanied by his parents, Professor Yeshayahu and Dr. Ahuva Folman. He asked his father to bare his left forearm, and told the tattooist: "I want an exact copy of that tattoo." The original inscription, B1367, was seared into the arm of the 10-year-old child Yeshayahu Folman in June 1944, on the day he was brought to Auschwitz.
Yeshayahu Folman was appalled by the idea and tried to prevent his son from doing it, but eventually cooperated. "It was an act of solidarity with me," he says. "Of course I was moved, but I was not in favor of it. I still believe that he is burdening himself with a weight he will carry for life. That is unnecessary as far as he and his children are concerned. It pains me to feel that I'm transferring it to him." He refuses to bare his arm for a joint photograph with his son. "I was a victim against my will. I don't have to display my coercion, especially since I was so young. You," he addresses his son, "since you chose it, don't convey wretchedness. Good or bad, it's your choice."
Ron Folman, a quantum physics expert and lecturer at Ben-Gurion University, says "I've always had a strong need for hard facts. Beyond all the feelings around the Holocaust and the talks with my father, I had a need for something factual. The number on the arm was the only factual thing we had left from the Holocaust. I asked for an exact copy, but he blew it. He used different fonts. The Germans made the digit 3 with a round font, but this tattooist made a 3 with a flat top. The 3 irritated me."
Yeshayahu Folman says he has never thought of having the number removed. "I've heard of people who do that; I don't believe in escaping, especially not from history. It happened, the people who lived through it have no choice, they must bear it as best they can, but why pass the personal emotional burden on to the next generation?"
11 comments:
My Aunt Manya still has her Auschwitz number but it certainly never occurred to her children (my cousins) to copy it. A sick and stupid idea - to mutilate another generation because the Germans mutilated the previous one. I am no halachic expert but I recall that Judaism forbids tattoos of any kind. I frankly don't understand the sudden fashion for tattoos - young girls get them now. When I was a kid, tattoos were for drunks and sailors.
My father was in the KZ system but he had no tattoo (this was apparently an Auschwitz only thing). He passed thru Auschwitz only long enough to meet the good Dr. Mengele on the selection ramp and then was sent on directly to Germany.
I disagree with the idea that survival was purely a matter of luck. Perhaps it was different in the case of the Hungarians, who were in the camps for only a relatively brief time. My father was either in a ghetto or in a KZ lager for maybe 5 years. Certainly luck played a large element, but will to live was very important. Every day was a struggle and you had to have at least the delusion that if you kept going you would and could outlast the war. In a way you could say that this was a form of false optimism, that any realistic person would see that there was no realistic chance of survival, so why bother go on working like a dog day after day, which was only helping the German war effort? The "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign was just a cynical lie - any wise person could see right through it and understand that the Germans fully intended to work you to death, that the only exit was up the chimneys. So maybe survivors were the ones with the capacity to fool themselves, the cockeyed optimists? I remember seeing the movie Shoah and they interview a barber and he has a little smile on his face, eerily enough the same smile I remember my father having. They ask him why he is smiling after all he has seen (it was this barbers job to shave the heads of the women on the way to the gas chamber) and he has no good answer, but yet he smiles. I know in my father's case there were other factors - relative youth as you say, that he was together with three of his brothers and they supported each other , that he had lived a rugged outdoors life before the war as a fisherman and so was used to manual labor and exposure to the elements, that his particular camp had a commandant who was perhaps less cruel than most. But still, I had the feeling that without the right attitude this all would have meant nothing.
It is only too human to try to transmute an unbearably painful humiliation into a badge of honor and glory. That is what we are doing with the Holocaust. We are so proud of it that many are almost envying us for it.
The attitude of the survivors, as faithfully reflected in Folman Sr.´s words, is to avoid the subject. My parents (and myself) did not talk much about it. I still think that the Holocaust was a tremendous defeat and we should not emphasize it too much.
On the other hand, transforming it into some kind of ¨victory¨ may be a healthier attitude to overcome the trauma. As usual, I could equally argue for both sides of the argument. Anyway, I dont have to have a definite opinion, as no one asks for it and Israel keeps celebrating the Holocaust (and Heroism) Day.
The amount that survivors are willing to dwell on the subject seems to vary from not mentioning it at all (the Madeleine Albright approach where her parents supposedly never told her at all that grandma and grandpa went up in smoke in Auschwitz (not that I believe her))to speaking of nothing but. My father spoke of his experiences quite often but in retrospect, now that I have read some of the historical sources that reference the particular places where he was, he must have repressed many of the worst memories. He made it sound quite bad enough but not the unbearable hell that it truly was.
I do believe Madeleine Albright. Among Hungarian Jews, many survivors changed their names and invented family histories, never telling their children about their past. They wanted to break the chain of the curse they felt Judaism was. They wanted their children to be ¨normal¨, free of the burden of the past. Inevitably, they did not succeed. Their children gravitated toward Budapest´s intellectual circles which are, ethnically, no less Jewish than the Dohany utca synagogue.
Where do you see that the holocaust is being made into a victory?
Certainly not from this article.
Here, glory is not being passed on; only remembrance.
Thanks for commenting. I never felt the compulsion to convince anyone that I was right and the other wrong, so the writing down of my reflexions is not an attack on someone else's opinion. My own arguments seem to me doubtful, so lets concede from the beginning that you may be right. The article certainly does not glorify the Holocaust. The article is factual and the attitude conveyed by Dr Yeshayahu Folman through the article is utterly convincing and sounds exactly like my own father's attitude, although in our case, it was never so clearly articulated. That is why I commented that HaAretz writes the truth nine times (like this time) so it will be believed the tenth time (like its self-hating, lying post-Zionist history articles).
Now, there is a thing called the vanity of martyrdom. It is quite common in Catholicism, and rare in Judaism. Having grown up in a Catholic country, I was exposed to the almost pornographic pictures of saints being tortured, of detailed descriptions of their suffering, of the hidden smile imagining their souls ascending to Heaven. It is glorifying suffering and martyrdom, to the point of enjoying it. In my opinion death should be considered the ultimate defeat and no one should ever seek consolation in the thought that in some convoluted way, it is a victory. The Jewish religion has very well developed ways of mourning for the death, of fast days and sitting on the ground, of sack cloth and ashes, of ceremonial feasts, whatever. It is absolutely forbidden to prolong those ceremonies, or to practice in excess those ceremonies to the point of exhibitionism, and of course, it is forbidden to hurt oneself (as it is usual in other cultures) as expression of deep feelings of loss. In my times, tattooing oneself was also considered some kind of hurting onseself. In summary, I too feel like Mr Folman Sr. They were marked like animals, they had no choice, it was terrible, the traditional rituals of mourning and remembrance were completed, end of the story. Dr Folman Jr's actions are excessive, and may be contrued as contrary to Jewish customs. But that is between him and G-d, no business of anybody else. My criticizing him goes directly against the Chatam Sopher's teachings, but what can I do? I enjoy it. Be well.
Self mutilation. That´s the word I was looking for.
I appreciate the lengthy response.
I do not agree that death is the ultimate defeat.
Why do you say that? Who are we losing against?
Death is the ultimate defeat when your enemy wants to kill you, exterminate you. A senseless death, like 600,000 Hungarian Jews in Auschwitz, is the most abject defeat I can imagine. They lost again Eichmann and his 20 or so SS assistants. At least there was some negotiation, but we lost. European Jews wanted to live, and most of them, was defeated and killed. They didnt even realize they were in war, who the enemy was, what were the enemy´s objectives and plans, or to organize a minimum of self defense force. A terrible defeat that must not be allowed to recur. Ever. Even the Yishuv in Eretz Israel did not realize the nature of what was going on, and basically did nothing to help European Jewry.
Regarding the question of who we were losing against? Oh! How can I even approach this question? Who killed our relatives in Europe? It was Hitler, Himmler, Heydrich, Eichman, and all the bureaucratic machinery they created. We lost against them. Very badly. The fact that ultimately they were punished gives me no satisfaction.
(I apologize for takin so long to respond..and then expectin a comment from you)
So, I was questioning your blanket "death=defeat" but you answered that it applies only when your enemy wants to kill you.
I'm assuming this means that you are under the impression that death through other causes (ex sickness, age, accidents) is not a defeat? We haven't lost against nature or G-d, right?
Just wanna clarify....
To clarify my thoughts, should they be worth something, I would say that a gaming situation, if you lose, you lose. If a business competitor succeeds in closing down your shop, he wins and you lose. If an enemy succeeds in killing you, he wins and you are defeated. That is clear.
Now, to make it more difficult, you say an external parasite wants to use your body to perpetuate itself and kill you by the way, like a tuberculosis bacteria or an Ebola virus, dying is then a defeat? Certainly it is.
Say you have a degenerative disease like cancer or alzheimer, and is killing you. To succumb, is it a defeat? It is.
Old age? Fate? God? Force majeure? Yes and yes.
But against old age we have little choice. Against Eichmann and his 25 SS assistants in Budapest we had a fair chance. Mass death could be avoided with little sacrifice. It is therefore so much more poignant than dying of old age. Much more painful to contemplate. For me, at least.
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