“Mister, that's an awfully boring tattoo on your arm."

[Bluebear]

There's an old man and a little child sitting on a bench. The child says to the old man “Mister, that's an awfully boring tattoo on your arm. It's just a bunch of numbers.” The old man replies: “Well, I was about your age when I got it, and I kept it as a reminder.”

“A reminder of happier days?”

“No, a reminder of when the world went mad. Imagine yourself in a land where your countrymen followed the voice of political extremists who didn't like your religion. Imagine having everything taken from you, your entire family sent to a concentration camp as slave laborers, then systematically murdered in this place. They even take your name and replace it with the number tattooed on your arm. It was called the Holocaust, when millions of people perished just because of who they were.”

The little boy, with tears in his eyes, said: “So you kept it to remind yourself about the dangers of political extremism?”

“No, my dear, to remind you.”

[BlackHawk706867]

1. Now that brought tears to my eyes... Thanks for the post! eom. ww

[Hoof Hearted]

20. Then you never would have survived a conversation with my dad.

At the tender age of nine when none of my classmates were allowed to watch the '79 miniseries "HOLOCAUST", my father required that I do so.

It's hard for me convey the power or even really put together the scant, and yet volumous experiences conveyed from that series, but much, MUCH, more powerfully, by my fathers personal accounts.

One memory that has always held: My father was in a unit assigned to "clean up" after Hitler was dead. His shop broom caught the perfect finger of a little girl with a christening band, that of course, gleamed without blemish. It didn't make sense of course, but none of it did.

He couldn't even talk about most of what he saw, what happened to him.

He woke up screaming and outside of himself at least a few times a year for the rest of his life.










I love you Dad. I miss you.

[undergroundpanther]

50. I saw that series when I was a kid too

My sisters and mom watched it, We had 1 TV,So I watched it too.The part about the artist who was forced to draw Nazi propaganda and got busted for having a hidden collection of drawings he did expressing his feelings about what he was going through during the Holocaust..This artist getting his hands crushed by the Nazi officer thugs was so awful the memory of that scene still makes me wanna cry.

Maybe it was so painful for me because during that time the bullies in my school were tearing down my art destroying it every time the teachers put it on display in the main entrance .The bullies were putting my destroyed art where I would see the torn crumpled remains, just to hurt me. Eventually the school put up a locking display case because of this.. I think that scene in Holocaust hit too close to home for me..I dunno, but that whole series is painful to watch,cinematic wise it is very powerful but important too because we must NEVER forget. Never.

I had a few bad nightmares myself after watching that series considering my home and my school was not a safe place for me at all.I felt persecuted just for existing in a personal way that I think is another reason the Holocaust series still seems vivid and clear..Unlike the Holocaust,only my school and my home were a danger to me,not the entire country. I dunno if I could live through a holocaust if everywhere I went was like my home and school.At least I had the woods to go to. The survivors and victims of the Holocaust had no place to go to get away from Nazis for they were hunted down by these psychopathic genocidal assholes who once were "normal people" but under the pressures of fascism became by their own cowardly and selfish choices,Nazis..

Regardless I wish your dad peace and that wherever he is in whatever place he went to that he is safe, finally from the sadism of bad people,and they cannot touch him again,Forever.

[HuskiesHowls]

62. There was another movie, "Shoah" about this

It was on public television in 1985, in 4 parts, over 9 hours.

<snip>
"...the film does not feature reenactments or historical photos; instead it consists of interviews with people who were involved in various ways in the Holocaust, and visits to different places they discuss."
<snip>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)

I have it on videotape, and have never been able to watch it all, its just too disturbing.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090015/

[BlooInBloo]

2. :)

[CGowen]

3. brought to you by IBM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2gNXfrMR_Lw

The infamous Auschwitz tattoo began as an IBM number.

In August 1943, a timber merchant from Bendzin, Poland, arrived at Auschwitz. He was among a group of 400 inmates, mostly Jews. First, a doctor examined him briefly to determine his fitness for work. His physical information was noted on a medical record. Second, his full prisoner registration was completed with all personal details. Third, his name was checked against the indices of the Political Section to see if he would be subjected to special punishment. Finally, he was registered in the Labor Assignment Office and assigned a characteristic five-digit IBM Hollerith number, 44673.

The five-digit Hollerith number was part of a custom punch card system devised by IBM to track prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, including the slave labor at Auschwitz.

The Polish timber merchant's punch card number would follow him from labor assignment to labor assignment as Hollerith systems tracked him and his availability for work, and reported the data to the central inmate file eventually kept at Department DII. Department DII of the SS Economics Administration in Oranienburg oversaw all camp slave labor assignments, utilizing elaborate IBM systems.

Later in the summer of 1943, the Polish timber merchant's same five-digit Hollerith number, 44673, was tattooed on his forearm. Eventually, during the summer of 1943, all non-Germans at Auschwitz were similarly tattooed.

Tattoos, however, quickly evolved at Auschwitz. Soon, they bore no further relation to Hollerith compatibility for one reason: the Hollerith number was designed to track a working inmate-not a dead one. Once the daily death rate at Auschwitz climbed, Hollerith-based numbering simply became outmoded. Soon, ad hoc numbering systems were inaugurated at Auschwitz. Various number ranges, often with letters attached, were assigned to prisoners in ascending sequence. Dr. Josef Mengele, who performed cruel experiments, tattooed his own distinct number series on "patients." Tattoo numbering schemes ultimately took on a chaotic incongruity all its own as an internal Auschwitz-specific identification system.
....
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/articles/auschwitz.html

[Shine]

5. Wow, I didn't know any of that stuff.

whew.

[baldguy]

8. For multinational corporations, profits are always more important than people.

Nothing has changed in 70 years.

[Shine]

10. Sigh.

:(
it makes me sad.

[CGowen]

11. I hope people will learn from the past and realize when similar things happen n/t

[Shine]

12. Indeed.

I share your hope, CGowen. :toast:

[myrna minx]

37. IBM and the Holocaust .

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/myrna%20minx/4


http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.

[LiberalFighter]

6. Just think those that have themselves tatooed provide a means

for others such as law enforcement to more easily identify them.

[LanternWaste]

33. So IBM devised the punch card system and a government misused it

So IBM devised the punch card system and a government misused it though no fault of IBM... is that a correct summation?

[myrna minx]

38. No, IBM was in deep with the Nazis.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/myrna%20minx/4

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.

But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.

IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.

IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.

Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.

Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?

[CGowen]

40. when you watch the short video (6 min) above, you will see that the machines were leased

and that they had to do maintenance every month in Germany, also letters in 1941 were send directly to Watson in New York

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2gNXfrMR_Lw

[awoke_in_2003]

59. Thanks for the video

guess I won't be buying anymore Fanta anytime soon

[bluescribbler]

41. I'll have to buy the book

I have a Jewish friend who fought at the Battle of the Bulge, and later went to work for IBM until he retired. I dare say he isn't aware of this.

:wow: :wow: :wow: :wow: :wow:

[BonnieJW]

44. And there were the medical experiments.

Inmates at various concentration camps were subjected to many medical experiments. I won't go into them because they are too horrible. Many people were injected with experimental drugs. The drugs were obtained from a German company that still is in operation today: Bayer.

[Shine]

4. Never forget.

:thumbsup:

[H2O Man]

7. Very good.

Nominated.

[rateyes]

9. Yep. We need to get rid of the political extremists...

in all governments around the world.

[wicket]

13. K & R

Love you Bluebear :hug:

[AspenRose]

14. I used to work with a woman who had one of those "boring tattoos"

Never, never forget.....:cry:

[AnneD]

45. I was working at a Diagnostic Imaging at...

MD Anderson. I went to start an IV on an elderly women. When she turned her arm over, I saw the crudely tattooed numbers.

"I'm so sorry to have to stick you with a needle after all you've been through." I said.

"I don't mind, you're trying to help me." she said with a philosophical shrug."Once, I had this young plastic surgeon tell me he would remove it for free, but I told him no, it was my badge of honour."

"It seems ironic" I said,"you survive the Holocaust only to have to battle cancer."

"When I see what is happening today and how little we learned, I wonder why I even survived?" I knew she was talking about the ethnic cleansing in then Yugoslavia and the trial of the Holocaust denier that was in the news. There was a long pause.

"Perhaps,"I said-thinking of canaries "you are here to remind us that what happened was not a nightmare, but very real. And if we aren't careful it can happen again and again. As long as you're here, and people that knew you or know of you are here, we will know this evil for what it really is."

"I don't think we are doing such a good job of remembering." she said with a sad smile.

"Well", I told her. "I'll never forget you." I said as I finally got the IV started.

And I never have forgotten her. Just when you think, as a Nurse you've seen it all. Something happens that takes your breath away.

[Jack Bone]

15. Kicked...

:kick:

Rec'd it earlier...I also fwd'd it via email to everyone in my address book..Dems & Repugs along w/ those I know who don't really care about politics..

Thanks Bluebear...Great Post!!

[ismnotwasm]

16. K&R

Very powerful

[NYCGirl]

17. My cousin Sam has one of those. He was the only one of his family who survived.

[barbtries]

18. my ex MIL

never had hers removed. she got it at auschwitz

[NanceGreggs]

19. Wonderfully said ...

... and thanks for sharing.


(K & R)

[SheWhoMustBeObeyed]

21. One of my father's friends...

A tireless worker for the union, a warm and kind man who was close to Dad and was a pallbearer at his funeral...he and his wife each had them from different camps.

We were instructed by our parents not to ask about it, but Ulrich showed me his tattoo once. I was speechless...

[Tiggeroshii]

22. This is ripped right out of a comic strip...

Non Sequitur, by Wiley Miller to be more precise.

[Bluebear]

23. "Ripped", what's your problem?

Are you saying because it is from a comic book it is any less important?

[Tiggeroshii]

24. Comic strip..

No, I'm not. In fact it's very meaningful, but it is an originally thought out dialogue by an original man, and this forum post failed to give him or his comic strip credit for it. It would give both the writer of this dialogue and it's message a lot more respect if you were able to find the actual strip and post it in place of what you have there.

[Bluebear]

25. Being that I found it absent of crediting the owner, I did not know who wrote it.

So instead of being respectful yourself and barging into a meditative rather rudely, would it perhaps have been possible to let us all know who created it less aggressively?

[Tiggeroshii]

28. Didn't mean to be rude, sorry.

I saw it as plagiarism, and reacted with that understanding. Obviously you didn't know that, and I do apologize for coming off a harshly...

[Bluebear]

29. Cheers

[NutmegYankee]

26. Very moving. Here is the comic it came from.

[Bluebear]

27. Thank you and welcome to DU!

[SalmonChantedEvening]

30. Never Forget.

:cry: :hug:

[No DUplicitous DUpe]

32. Thank you for finding the original. I've seen it before...Still brings tears to my eyes..

(K & R)

[bunkerbuster1]

34. Thank you for finding this.

[ooglymoogly]

39. Yes it is a great "cartoon" and hits harder

when captioned in a cartoon....welcome

[BlooInBloo]

51. :)

[stlsaxman]

55. yes! that's where i remember that from...

Bluebear- thanks for reminding us all of this important and moving story!

never forget.

i may be goyum- but i'm a real mench.

[YOY]

31. Not just because their faith...that's just one group

Some because they were politically opposed to the madmen.

Some because they were "sexual deviants".

Some because they were "genetically inferior".

Some because they were part of an ethnic underclass that has existed for hundreds of years.

Some because they lived on the fringes of society that didn't contribute to the mainstream in any way the mainstream wished to recognize.

Some were simply criminals that the madmen thought could never be reformed and should be disposed of.

[Sequoia]

35. I once worked with a woman who had the tattoo.

She and her sister were spared because they had blonde hair, blue eyes, and were in a children's choir. The rest of the family were not spared.

[H2O Man]

43. This thread

has been on my mind since reading it last night. I am reminded of when I was a liitle boy, one of our neighbors was a Jewish man who survived the death camps. He had lost all of his family, and he lived with an elderly couple, the Judsons.

I may mis-spell his last name, but I remember Eric Sonafield as a kind and gentle man, who always took the time to talk and listen to the children in the low-income neighborhood where I lived in my early years. He used to give my oldest brother coins and bills for his growing collection, and he bought toys for myself and my other siblings.

I can remember one day -- and I could only have been four -- when the Judsons told my parents that "Eric was really climbing the walls last night." I had no idea what that meant, of course, which was probably why it wasn't intended for me to overhear. But children are curious. It was something that I've never forgotten.

People like Eric Sonafield and Viktor Frankl have enriched my lfe.

[tandot]

36. My French great-grandfather had one of those.

Half of my family is French, the other German. His daughter decided to marry a German soldier who was a POW in France after WWII. They all moved to Germany in the 50s and my great-grandfather never waited in line anywhere. He always showed his tattoo and moved to the front of the line. Nobody ever dared to complain.

[alphafemale]

42. And tattoos are forbidden under Orthodox law.

I think it was another hateful thing, done with full knowledge of the anguish it would cause.

As well as the cremation and the using of body parts. ie hair skin

Under Orthodox law the body must be buried in whole.

The Nazis weren't just seeking to kill them, they wanted to deny them any dignity whatsoever.

[TZ]

49. You are right

The temples and any holy relics were the favorite targets of the Nazis. The Holocaust wasn't just about hurting people it was about destroying utterly a whole religion.

[undergroundpanther]

53. This is what psychopaths do

to the people they victimize. Any abuser or psychopath wants to erase you, take away your dignity ,break your body,shatter your mind,and defile your person hood. This is why I hate these toxic personalities and rail against the culture of tolerating the intolerable, the callous disregarding of the 'other' that authoritarian,narcissistic and psychopathic personalities will create around themselves with twisted"normal people"who dull thier empathy,people that will so easily excuse the atrocities the toxic personalities among us choose to do they enable this horror by not calling such abuses of power and human beings what it IS...WRONG, bad,Evil...

[ProudDad]

46. I wonder if they're using tatoos

in Guantanamo?

[LibertyLover]

47. The mother of a friend of mine from elementary and high school

had been in a concentration camp. I still remember the first time I saw her tattoo and realized what it meant. I had known her for years, from the time I was in first grade, and had seen her tattoo many times but it wasn't until I was 11 or 12 that it "clicked". It was like a punch in the stomach. Mrs. Schwartz died the summer we were rising juniors in high school from liver disease that had its origin in her concentration camp internment. I think that it's the reason that I have a very hard time with Holocaust deniers. I knew a concentration camp victim personally and for them to try and deny the Holocaust happened or was moderate in scope or that if Hitler had known he would have stopped it offends me greatly.

[alphafemale]

52. Yeah. If you've seen people with those "Tats" it clicks something over in your brain.

I've seen people with them.

But sadly. Not only are most people who lived through the camps gone...but in a few more decades those of us who "knew" and seen and spoke to the survivors will be gone too.

And imagine the strength of the deniers then.

[awoke_in_2003]

60. My grandmother's boss

had one. You're right, we will soon be gone, all we can do is make sure our children are informed.

[TZ]

48. Very nice

Never forget indeed. As someone who HAD family in Poland I very much remember. And to all those how love to make the Hitler comparisons to Bush....no sorry, not even close.:-(

[ElboRuum]

54. Interesting...

The little boy, with tears in his eyes, said: “So you kept it to remind yourself about the dangers of political extremism?”

Really? That's a precocious little youngster right there.

[SteppingRazor]

56. Wow. Eerily similar to something a colleague of mine wrote:

Grandma Sally was from Plonsk, Poland. Shortly after the German invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, she and all the other Jews in Plonsk were imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto. When the Nazis started liquidating the ghettos in 1941, Grandma, along with her parents, her two brothers, and extended family members, were hustled onto the train bound for Auschwitz. She was 19 years old. At the gate, under the sign that read Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Makes You Free), Joseph Mengele, the Angel of Death, sent Grandma Sally to the right line -- the work line. The rest of her family was sent to the left -- to be stripped, shaved, and finally corralled into a warehouse-shower to receive a lethal dose of Zyklon B. That was her entire family. Parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Everyone.

<snip>

Once, when I was old enough to ask questions and young enough not to care about being rude, I was sitting with my grandma waiting for the bus outside the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It was summer, and she was wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt. I stared at the tattoo, 27307, etched into her arm.

"What's that on your arm, Grandma?" I asked.

"It's my phone number," she replied, the hint of a smile on her face.

"But why do you have it written on your arm?"

Grandma closed her eyes and tilted her head back, as if retrieving long-lost and almost forgotten information. Then she straightened, opened her eyes, turned her head and regarded me sternly. The smile faded, and she pursed her lips and grabbed my arm with her bony fingers. Her eyes cut holes into mine as she said to me in her heavily accented English: "So I never forget, Adam."




The whole story is definitely worth reading:
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/2001-09-06/news/the-heart-of-whiteness/1

[Divine Discontent]

57. K&R 45 n/t

[ronnykmarshall]

58. I've seen some men and women with them.

We have a lot of Jews in West Hollywood. Many from Russia other parts of Europe. I first time I saw someone with one of those tattoos I wanted hug them.

[cboy4]

61. Triangles were just as horrific as numbers for some.

Excellent post bluebear