Auschwitz acquires stamps used to tattoo prisoners

Seventy years after the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp in southern Poland, the equipment used by the Nazis to tattoo camp inmates with identifying numbers has been found.

Piotr Cywinski, the director of the Auschwitz museum, called the find "one of the most important finds in years," according to a report in The Telegraph.

SS guards used the tattoo stamps, consisting of sharp nails emerging from a metal base to form a 2, two 3s and a 6 or a 9, by sliding them into a wooden block to form a series of digits. The block was then pushed into the prisoner's flesh and ink was rubbed into the fresh wound, creating a tattoo.

The stamps were discovered in Poland, but the museum has not released the specific location of their discovery or the donor's identity.

Auschwitz is the only camp in which prisoners were tattooed. According to the Telegraph report, prisoners at the camp originally had their uniforms numbered, but following instances in which clothing disintegrated, or dead prisoners were stripped of their uniforms, the Nazis abandoned that identification system in favor of tattoos.

Tattoos were initially used in 1941 to identify Soviet prisoners.

After the Holocaust, the tattoos became a symbol of Nazi cruelty and dehumanization.

The discovery of the tattoo equipment is both rare and historically significant. According to the Auschwitz museum, the only other piece of equipment used by the Nazis to tattoo prisoners is on display at the Military Medical Museum in Saint Petersburg. The newly found stamps will be displayed at the Auschwitz museum.

Moshe Haelion, who lives in the Israeli city of Bat Yam, was 18 years old when he was taken to Auschwitz. "To the best of my memory, they did not use a [usual tattooing] instrument, rather [thick] needles," he said of the method the Nazis used to tattoo him. "Also, when I look at the tattoo, I do not see a straight line, but a series of dots. That is how my [tattoo] is, and also [the tattoos of] other survivors.

"We waited in a long line, about 500 people," he said, recalling the day he was tattooed on his forearm. "When people got out, we asked what they did to them, and they said it was not something terrible. I remember feeling a stabbing sensation in my arm."

Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel head Colette Avital said Thursday: "The finding of the tattoo equipment from Auschwitz carries a lot of significance because of the great number of Holocaust deniers around the world. Every piece of evidence like this forces them to face reality, which is difficult to ignore, and helps perpetuate the recognition of the atrocities that occurred."

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