'The number is with me everywhere I go'
Auschwitz survivor responds to news of discovery of death camp tattoo equipment with mixed emotions: 'The number was a constant reminder that the Germans wanted to destroy me, but the family that I created is my revenge.'
"I don't need to hear that they found something at Auschwitz in order to remember. The number on my hand and the terrible memories from there haunt me every day since," said the 76-year-old Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor Abraham Binet, responding to the article in the British Daily Telegraph regarding the discovery of Auschwitz tattoo equipment in Poland.
SS soldiers used the small metal stamps with embedded needles to tattoo inmates as they were processed on their arrival at the camp in German-occupied Poland, the paper said.
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According to the report, Auschwitz museum director Piotr Cywinski said the discovery was "one of the most important finds in years."
Abraham Binet, who was six years of age when he was sent to the death camp with his mother and two brothers, remembers well the day that the number 140005 was tattooed on his forearm.
"As soon as we got to the camp, we moved through a selection process," he said. "My mother was sent to the right, to the labor section, and my twin brother, little sister and myself were sent to the left to the 'showers', essentially to the gas chambers and crematoria."
The three children survived miraculously when a German officer pulled them out of the line and handed them over to German SS officer and physician Dr. Josef Mengele, where they were used for human "experimentation".
"We were saved, just minutes before our certain death," Binet, who was born in Czechoslovakia and deported to Auschwitz in 1944, recalled. "After I was taken away from the queue, it was time to receive the tattoo. There weren't only stamps, it was done with pins and the ink was injected into my skin. It was a very painful procedure, our hands were tied to the table and SS soldiers stood nearby with a machine gun. Since then, the number is with me everywhere I go."
The three children, who were separated from their mother, managed to survive the impossible conditions of the death camp. "It was hell and we conquered it", Binet said. The survivor immigrated to Israel in 1950, where he established a large family: Five children, nineteen grandchildren and nine great grandchildren. "The number was a constant reminder that the Germans wanted to destroy me and my family. I can't do anything to them, but the family that I created is my revenge."
Colette Avital, chairwoman of the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, addressed the new findings: "The discovery of the tattoo equipment from Auschwitz evokes painful memories for the survivors about a stamp that was sunk into their flesh and the number that they carry on their arms till this day."
"However," Avital added, "the discovery is of great importance due to the vast number of holocaust deniers around the world. Any proof of this kind puts them in front of a reality that is difficult to ignore, and helps commemorate and gain recognition for the horrors that occurred.
