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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWow~! Proudly Bearing Elders’ Scars, Their Skin Says ‘Never Forget’
JERUSALEM When Eli Sagir showed her grandfather, Yosef Diamant, the new tattoo on her left forearm, he bent his head to kiss it.
Mr. Diamant had the same tattoo, the number 157622, permanently inked on his own arm by the Nazis at Auschwitz. Nearly 70 years later, Ms. Sagir got hers at a hip tattoo parlor downtown after a high school trip to Poland. The next week, her mother and brother also had the six digits inscribed onto their forearms. This month, her uncle followed suit.
All my generation knows nothing about the Holocaust, said Ms. Sagir, 21, who has had the tattoo for four years. You talk with people and they think its like the Exodus from Egypt, ancient history. I decided to do it to remind my generation: I want to tell them my grandfathers story and the Holocaust story.
Mr. Diamants descendants are among a handful of children and grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors here who have taken the step of memorializing the darkest days of history on their own bodies. With the number of survivors here dropping to about 200,000 from 400,000 a decade ago, institutions and individuals are grappling with how best to remember the Holocaust so integral to Israels founding and identity after those who lived it are gone.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/01/world/middleeast/with-tattoos-young-israelis-bear-holocaust-scars-of-relatives.html?hp&pagewanted=all
uppityperson
(115,677 posts)rsweets
(307 posts)COLGATE4
(14,732 posts)generations are reminded of the horror that was the Holocaust. To young adults born after 1994 events during World War II are as remote as the far side of the moon. It's essential that there are reminders which can be seen.
Scurrilous
(38,687 posts)nadinbrzezinski
(154,021 posts)Distance...and as a daughter of a survivor it is hard at times to talk about this ancient history to grand kds and great grand kids.