The gradual disappearance of Holocaust survivors has long been viewed with worry by those tasked with ensuring that the world never forgets the crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators. The passage of time means that the most able advocates of remembrance will soon be but a memory themselves. Fear that their experiences would be forgotten have fueled the proliferation of Holocaust museums and memorials, as well as praiseworthy efforts to create libraries of survivor testimony that will all remain once they are gone. But for some that is not enough.
For some grandchildren of survivors and others who care about the subject, that has led to a bizarre fad in which they have taken to having the numbers that the Nazis branded on the survivors tattooed on their own arms. As a New York Times feature published on Monday shows, this phenomenon has grown from isolated instances to what must considered a trend with large numbers of youths in Israel. While the motives behind this seem pure, one cannot help but wonder at anyone embracing a practice whose purpose was to dehumanize captive Jews. While survivors who lived long enough eventually saw that most considered those numbers to be a badge of honor rather than a mark of shame, the act of fetishizing this evidence of the Nazis’ crimes seems like something that says more about the current generation than it does about the experience of the survivors.
It is true that in the past insults directed at Jews have become symbols that transcended their original intent. Secret practitioners of Judaism in Catholic Spain were taunted as “Marranos” — a word that meant “pigs” but history has accepted the label as a mark of heroism. Yet while tattoos are — for reasons that completely escape me — all the rage in 2012, this is a very different sort of thing than a mere word.
For those grounded in traditional Judaism, the idea of using tattoos to memorialize the Shoah is intrinsically abhorrent since Jewish religious law forbids the practice under any circumstances. While not all the victims were religious any more than all the survivors and their descendants are, there is something profoundly distasteful about adopting a practice that was, in part, a Nazi effort to outrage Jewish sensibilities as well as to dehumanize the victims by replacing their name with a number.
But even if we were to somehow ignore this rather important point which is mentioned only in passing in the Times article, let’s understand that the tattoo craze seems like an effort to personalize an experience that can never truly belong to the person copying a survivor’s numbers.
Advocates for the practice will say that those who are appalled by this don’t understand today’s youth who see nothing wrong with tattoos and relate better to such individual gestures than more amorphous concepts. That may be so. A number on an arm may have a deep personal meaning for individuals, but turning oneself into a living Holocaust memorial via a tattoo is to merely become, as some of those interviewed for the Times story seemed to want, a conversation piece.
It might be admitted, as historian Michael Berenbaum told the Times, that a Holocaust number is preferable to some of the other things people pay to have drawn on their skin these days. But no one should be under the illusion that a tattoo can properly memorialize the six million slain in the Shoah or those who emerged from it.
The most important challenge for Jews today is to reconnect with Judaism, Jewish peoplehood and to act to protect the living Jewish state that is the best guarantee that the Holocaust will never happen again. That requires joint action that seems the antithesis of elevating a tattooed number inspired by Nazi dehumanization into a conversation starter.
It needs to be restated that the only proper memorial to the victims is a living breathing Jewish people determined to survive and thrive in a world still filled with anti-Semites who might like to emulate Hitler. Drawing a number on your skin may have meaning to individuals (or, as in one case, serve as a reminder to a young man to call his grandfather) but Jewish identity can’t be rooted in a vain attempt to relive a tragic past. Judaism is an affirmation of life not death. Seen in that light, the attempt by some secular Jews to grab onto a symbol of the slaughter as a way to connect with the past seems more like a futile provocation than a method of perpetuating the memory of this great tragedy.
That this abhorrent practice – not to speak of the widespread use of traditional tatoos – is occurring in Israel is further proof if any is still needed that the secular Zionist enterprise has produced a large populace totally ignorant of Judaism if not disdainful of it. No wonder the schools were until recently teaching about the so-called Fakistinian "Nakbah" while jettisoning traditional Jewish history and poetry. And it is this development more than either the Iranian or Arab threat that threatens Israel's long-term survival. If Israel wants to be recognized as a Jewish state it had better start working 24/7 to become one.
How unbelievably sad. Every young Jew who embraces Torah is helping to deny the yemach shemam a victory. Every Jew who adopts or advocates what the Torah prohibits, or who ignores what the Torah requires, is rh'l doing the opposite. This tattoo fad makes as much sense as walking around naked because the Nazis sought to humiliate their victims by forcing them to stand naked as they were being murdered.
I might not be the best person to comment on this, since I have three tattoos myself, but I TOTALLY understand the attraction. I have long had a dream of getting everyone to wear yellow stars one day, as a badge of honor: Yes, I am a Jew: what are you gonna do about it? n nI know tattoos are not kosher (pun intended)–my Orthodox brother is always on me about mine–but I like the in-your-face attitude that is causing these kids to get them. n nremembering the Holocaust is critically important. if tattooing numbers on one's arm helps the world remember, then I'm all for it.
I have two questions: nHave we now entered a period of "Holocaust nostalgia"? nWhen did "Never Again" become "Never Forget"? n
Whatever it is, the point of the New York Times piece at all, was to humiliate, scorn, denigrate and trivialize Jews in general. It's their stock in trade.
Yes, you are right that the NYT has its search engines running overtime trying to discredit both Israel and Judaism; secular Jews who both feed the anti-Semitic engines of the Gray Lady and glorify it are treated differently. Which means that also we Jews must accept that many of us do much to both denigrate ourselves and aid our enemies – after all it wasn't the Egyptians who made the Golden Calf. So our community should start addressing the many who enjoy publicly rejecting Jewish values be they the suicidal Amy Winehouse, Israeli chilunim (secular) preferring the art of tattoo shops to the form Hashem gave them, or American Jews embracing the latest universalistic ideologies falsely labeled Tikkun Olam by a clutch of Jewishly ignorant intellectuals bowing to the latest Democrat Party platform.
Being tattooed is a sign of a deeply rooted inferiority complex wherein the person is crying out "look at me".
I never wanted a tattoo until I read the nyt story. I do not have relatives (that I know of) who were in the holocaust however the idea of "turning oneself into a living Holocaust memorial via a tattoo is to merely become, as some of those interviewed for the Times story seemed to want, a conversation piece." is EXACTLY the point to me. There NEEDS to be conversation and memorials and museums do not have that personal touch that this does. I am debating never forget in place of numbers on my left forearm to make sure the conversation happens. And likely in hebrew so that it is not confused with 9/11. I wholly disagree with your premise that it is distasteful – I do consider tattoos distasteful that is until I read the NYT story.
It simply is not true that "Jewish religious law forbids the practice under any circumstances. " Tattoos are used to guide radiation treatment for people with cancer, and the halakhah is quite clear about the overriding importance of the preservation of life. Only the most rigid and extreme interpretation of halakhah would claim that under those circumstances a tattoo is prohibited. But clearly there ARE those who would take that view – perhaps the same people who approved of frail and ailing Jews taking intravenous feeding on Yom Kippur rather than eating (another NYT story). I for one do not believe in, and could not worship, a God who really wanted this of us.