RE: [Cz-L]czernowitz-l digest: September 01, 2011

As I read the beautiful letter to a son about the yellow star, I began to imagine myself in Cz at the time (we emigrated in the spring of 1939) and I fantasized about how I might have reacted to it and what I might have done.

Shame is something that I can only feel when I've done something wrong and that star wouldn't have brought me shame. My grandmother, Sali Gleitzmann, nee Todres and Hermann, had been a designer, supposedly one of the top in Eastern Austria and my aunt Hilda carried on in her tradition. It would have been easy to find material and I would have made myself two yellow stars big enough to could cover my entire chest and back, to wear as a fashion statement.

I might have printed pamphlets expressing pity on the Nazis for having to wear those ugly swastika armbands. And after I joined a resistance group, I would leave yellow stars on the bodies of all the Nazis we killed. When I fantasize I can get carried away.

And then I read Anny's post and found a kindred spirit. I've known former inmates of concentration camps who wear numbers branded on their forearms, which, apparently can't be removed. If I had one of these, I would wear it proudly and perhaps add some words in a tattoo that say, "I'm Alive and Adolph isn't."

Andy Halmay,

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Received on 2011-09-02 10:09:09