« Nothing belongs to us anymore: they have taken away our clothes, our shoes, even our hair… They will even take away our name…”
Primo Levi, If This is a Man
Photo Istock, Old man showing the number tattooed on his forearm he got at Auschwitz concentration camp
The murderers replaced names by numbers
in an attempt to obliviate the victims
even before they proceeded to kill them
I suppose that made it easier
to eradicate people
if they were anonymous,
not the brothers, sisters, daughters, sons or parents of someone
not a human being anymore
Having a name
seems so important
a given name and a family name
being both an individual and a member of a community
and continuity
Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names
is a very special place
where so many are remembered
and restored in their names
Hall of Names, Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial, Jerusalem, Photo Yad Vashem website
« Yad Vashem, together with its partners, has collected and recorded the names and biographical details of millions of victims of systematic anti-Jewish persecution during the Holocaust (Shoah) period. More than four million eight hundred thousand of the near six million Jews murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices are commemorated here. This database includes information regarding victims of the Shoah: those who were murdered, many whose fate has yet to be determined as well as some who survived. »
Yad Vashem website
