(Re)Marked: Holocaust Commemorative Tattoos in a Time of Renewed Antisemitism

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Klein, Reisa

• SSHRC IDG awarded 2020: The compulsory tattooed number on Holocaust survivors’ from Auschwitz acts as an embodied public record of the attempted extermination of Eastern European Jews during the Second World War. As Holocaust survivors are aging and dying these material archives are disappearing, leading to a period described as the “fourth wave” of public Holocaust memory, when no living eyewitnesses remain. In the face of this loss, some descendants of Jewish Holocaust survivors are choosing to tattoo copies of these numbers on their bodies as well as other commemorative Holocaust symbols, such as the yellow “Jude star.” This practice is particularly significant in light of the Jewish scriptural proscription against tattoos, and this research will deepen our understanding of commemorative holocaust tattoos in contemporary culture.

• Date created

  2020-02-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Insight Development Grant
  • IDG
  • SSHRC
  • Tattoos
  • Digital Media
  • Holocaust
  • Public Memory
  • Jewish Identity
  • Antisemetism
  • Intergenerational Trauma
  • Communications and Media Studies
  • Sociology
  • Social Work
  • Arts and Culture
  • Communication
  • 1939AD-1945AD
  • 2010AD-2020AD
  • North America
  • Europe
  • International
  • Canada
  • United States
  • Germany

• Type of Item

  Research Material

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-2df0-rd89

• License

  ©️Klein, Reisa. All rights reserved other than by permission. This document embargoed to those without UAlberta CCID until 2024