the wordsmith
sarah james
tattoos under the third reich
Many have argued that the Second World War (1939-1945) was the greatest human rights violation of the 21st Century.
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The tattoos issued to Jewish prisoners at Nazi concentration camps have become almost synonymous with the war, however, they were not issued from the beginning of the war. These identification tattoos were also issued primarily at Auschwitz and Auschwitz-Birkenau.
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Initially, concentration camp identification numbers were sewn onto prisoners’ clothes. This soon became a problem as the deceased had their clothes removed and were then unable to be identified. Soldiers began to write the identification numbers on the dead prisoners’ chests with permanent markers, but when the first wave of Soviet Prisoners of War arrived in 1941, this too became impractical.
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​The initial surge of tattooing began in 1941. A metal stamp comprised of interchangeable numbers made from needles was made. Through this, the number could be punched into the skin of the left hand side of the chest in one go. Ink was then rubbed into the open wound.
Tattoo stamps
Identification tattoo on chest
This method was later deemed impractical and so a single needle method was introduced. A needle dipped in ink was used to pierce the skin and create the tattoo. The area for the tattoo was changed from the upper left chest to the left forearm. Most were done on the outer forearm but a few were done on the inner forearm. These tattoos were done upon arrival at the camp, along with body shaving.
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Prisoners who were sent straight to the gas chamber upon arrival did not receive these tattoos.
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These tattoos usually comprised camp numbers, and then sometimes had additional identification symbols. Jews had a triangle and Roma had a Z. By 1944, Jewish men’s tattoos included an A or B, to keep from tattooing excessively high numbers. Once 20 000 numbers had been issued in the A series, they moved on to the B series.
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The last number given to a concentration camp prisoner in January 1945 was 202 499, meaning that there had been 202 498 prisoners before that person.
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However, these concentration camp tattoos were not the only tattoos issued by the Nazis. Soldiers in the SS-Waffen had their blood groups tattooed on the upper left arm, near the armpit.
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The tattoo consisted of the soldier’s blood group (A, B, AB or O). Although the Rh Factor had been discovered in 1937, it was not fully understood during the war and so was not implemented into these tattoos.
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The purpose of these blood group tattoos was in case the soldier needed a blood transfusion and he was unconscious. It also served in case the soldier’s dog tag or pay book had gone missing. Although this practice was widely carried out during the early stages of the war, it was mostly abandoned by the end of the war.
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The Allies used these SS tattoos as a means to identify and try those who had committed a series of war crimes during the war. Those who did receive the tattoo tried to remove it through surgery or self-inflicted burns. However, many who did not receive the tattoo were able to escape capture, such as the infamous Josef Mengele – the Nazi doctor known for his cruel experiments performed on Jewish twins.
Josef Mengele
Despite tattoos being seen as a form of self-expression in today’s world, we can see that they have also served a much darker purpose.