Keeping It In The Family

The Holocaust was a horrible time for the Polish and Jewish everywhere. The Nazi Party (which was run by Adolf Hitler) went around terrorizing everyone. They wanted a “pure” society. This meant that they needed to eliminate everyone they had a problem with. The Nazis attacked Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, the physically and mentally disabled, and people didn’t support them. But the Jews were the main targets. Hitler convinced his soldiers that Jews were the cause of all of their problems and that they should be killed. The Nazis gained power quickly. They began rounding Jewish people up by the dozens. After a large number of Jews were in captivity, they were transported in small, cramped trains to concentration camps. Concentration camps were massive facilities that people were forced to live and work in. If they didn’t the task a Nazi officer wanted them to, they would be killed. People inside the camps were given little food and lived in horrible conditions. By 1945, majority of the camps were liberated by the Allied Powers. Only about one-third of the people that walked into the camps’ gates were able to walk out.

Recently, the decedents of Holocaust survivors have decided to remember what can be called the worst years in history. The grandchildren of concentration camp survivors have decided to get the same tattoo on their arm as the actual survivors in their family. The Nazis tattooed numbers on their prisoners to keep track of them. People have said that they chose to get the tattoo because their generation “knows nothing about the Holocaust,” and they are determined to remind them of the struggle. Getting the tattoo has become a trend. Having the numbers on the decedents allows them to be connected with their ancestors.