A Difficult Subject

Don't miss this story from yesterday's NY Times about children and grandchildren of Auschwitz survivors who, as a sign of respect or remembrance, have had their elders' concentration camp numbers tattooed on their own arms. There are thousands of ways (more than six million, I'd guess) to respond to the Holocaust. I found this one to be particularly moving.

When I was growing up in New Jersey, I had several friends whose parents were concentration camp survivors. I thought this was "cool," as a bank employee said to one of the people in the video that accompanies the story. When I asked my boyhood friends about it, they invariably said their parents "never talk about it." In the past 10 or 15 years, though, there has been a lot of effort to record these people's stories before they pass from the scene.

Don't miss the slide show and the video that accompany the story. The first three photographs upset me for another reason. To me, they are too edgy, like something out of a Colors of Benetton ad, so the impact is something different than I think is appropriate. Emily disagrees with me.