Reconciliation: Tattoos as Blemishes to Remove

These stories explore the feelings of some holocaust survivors that removing their tattoo is one method for reconciling with their past. 

Badges of honor: Survivors’ tattoos displayed:

For a year and a half, Zelik Sander was known by the tattooed numbers on his arm. His wife, Sally, also a Holocaust survivor, was ashamed of the numbers on her arm.

“Someone told my wife that only a prostitute is tattooed,” said Sander, who lives in Port Washington. “She broke down, went to a psychiatrist, and had surgery to remove it. I covered mine for 30 years.”

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Disappearing Ink

July 23, 1999|By Jeremy Manier, Tribune Staff Writer.

But it took just 30 seconds of laser treatment in a Vernon Hills clinic earlier this month to start wiping away that bleak memory for Meilert, 79, a native of France who lives in Libertyville.
Meilert's decision to break with the past is rooted in his personal experience of the war. Meilert, who is not Jewish, received his tattoo when he was imprisoned along with many other French mechanics who intentionally produced faulty equipment at a German machine gun factory in Austria. He said the beatings and executions that happened there represent a chapter in his life that he would like to leave behind.

"Every time I wash and see it, my mind goes back there," Meilert said. "I hope when it's removed I won't have to think about those things."

Even for Jewish Holocaust survivors, however, the choice of what to do with such tattoos is a complicated one, with connotations that have changed over time.

Most Jews who had their tattoos removed probably did so soon after the war, in the years when many survivors were reluctant or even ashamed to be open about their experiences, said Peter Novick, a professor of history at the University of Chicago. Novick's new book, "The Holocaust in American Life," describes one episode involving a survivor of the Birkenau death camp who was a contestant on the 1950s television program "Queen for a Day."

Given the chance to be granted one wish, Novick writes, the woman replied, "Each time I look down at my left arm and see my tattoo I am reminded of my terrible past. . . . If only my tattoo could be removed!"

Read more at: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1999-07-23/news/9907230151_1_tattoos-jewish-holocaust-survivors-nazi-atrocities