A-19723
Everyone expects it to be black.
In fact, it had an almost bluish hue, like a stamp running out of ink.
I can remember the first time I took significant note of it. Uncle Leo was washing his hands in the sink, his sleeves rolled up halfway to the elbow. It barely peeked out, an unexpected mark, and curiosity buzzed in my young head.
I don’t know how old I was – young, earlier than ten. I can’t remember who it was, most likely my mother, who explained the mark’s significance.
But what made the most lasting impact was the awe and terror my Jewish education would drive into the number on my uncle’s arm.
Through sixth grade I was a student at the San Diego Jewish Academy. I can’t imagine a better time in my life. My Jewish heritage meant so much to me; learning Hebrew and prayer gave me a sense of gratification. But Judaism wasn’t all about religion. Every morning we acknowledged the Israeli flag with all the pride and patriotism we owed, and gave, to the American one. We sang the Israeli national anthem, a song I knew by heart long before “Oh say can you see?”
Jewish pride. Jewish togetherness. Jewish homeland.
I want to say it was fourth grade when it all began, but it was just hints then. They gently glossed over the topic so that we knew it, but were not troubled by it. The Holocaust was now a buzz word we were in on.
We knew it meant pain. We knew it meant death. We knew it was a bad, bad thing.
Sixth grade marked a year when considerable time was spent on the topic. We read books about it (fourth grade gave us Number the Stars, but that was tame in relation to other accounts). Most importantly, we learned the history. We had a textbook about Nazi Germany – how it began, who Hitler was, what he believed in, how it all came to pass.
We learned to tremble at the names Dachau, Theresienstadt, Buchenwald.
Auschwitz.
And by then I knew Uncle Leo had a number. I knew he had seen these things come to pass.
We took a field trip to see “I Never Saw Another Butterfly”, the play based on the poem we all knew well. The play haunted my dreams and the bone-crushing sound of a train pulling out of a station never failed to hasten my heart, even to this day.
We participated in Yom Hashoah, a day for remembering the Holocaust.
We learned sorrowful songs about the pain our people had to endure.
It was only after entering public school that I realized this inundation with suffering was not typical. In fact, there were kids out there that hadn’t even heard of the Holocaust!
Shock jolted my body when my Jewish education prompted the statement:
“How horrible! I can’t believe they talked to kids about that.”
I thought:
‘How horrible that they kept this a secret.’
I was raised as a Jewish girl in a Jewish community surrounded by Jewish friends and a Jewish family. I was brought up learning the Torah and the trials of our people recounted there. So many times do we celebrate our people’s conquest over an enemy that looked unconquerable.
The Syrians. The Egyptians. The Romans.
And then, too recent to be understood, too terrible to be called a victory, the [Nazi] Germans.
But we have survived. We have suffered and we have survived.
To me, the fact that Uncle Leo was a Holocaust survivor was a matter of intense pride. He was a living example of our strength. He represented the entire Jewish people when he survived.
When ninth grade history touched on the Holocaust, I was mortified by my peers’ ignorance. Didn’t they see this wasn’t ancient Greece? Didn’t they understand this was a mere fifty years ago?
They didn’t.
And so, with thankful encouragement from my teacher, I asked Uncle Leo if he would speak to my class.
He was hesitant. How many horrors could he comfortably recount to a group of fifteen-year-olds? He never wanted any of us, family or friend, to feel the pain he’d suffered. To be traumatized by his life story was to abuse his purpose for telling it. He didn’t want hurt. He wanted understanding, pride for our people, and a commitment to stop such horrors from happening again.
His speech was great. We videotaped him and he moved my teacher to tears.
It wasn’t until this year I understood how much he had toned-down his experience for my young self and my friends.
But I always knew one thing. He had a number. And when he said he’d been to Auschwitz, the most scorched, grey, and suffocating place of all, I understood that we could never know. We would never understand.
And as far as he fled from that feeling, the number followed.
That number reminded me that I was a product of survival. It reminded me that suffering was not for naught. If my Uncle Leo, a man I will always remember as smiling and loving, if he had a number, then the number was not evil. The number had no debilitating power.
As I began my meditation on Uncle Leo’s number, it never occurred to me that I would be writing this the day of his funeral. It’s almost as if my desire to preserve him, to give his number immortality, gave him permission to let go of the pain and pass.
Nothing is what we expect it to be.
Uncle Leo’s number wasn’t boldly black. He was neither angry nor fragile, nor withdrawn. His Holocaust experience never frightened me at any age; it only drew me towards him.
I wanted to write about the significance of the number, the essence of being raised as a Jew. I worried when it became all about Uncle Leo, and less about the abstract feelings in a Jewish woman’s heart. But then, nothing represents the Jewish experience better than my Uncle Leo.
Fear. Pain. Courage. Nostalgia. Survival.
He stood for everything I could never have written as beautifully as the poetry of his life.
We buried a man today, but the Jewish pride he stood for lives on.