Tattoo Idea

I've been thinking about this tattoo for a while now and have been asking many peoples' opinions on the matter. So...you know how Hitler made Jews wear Magen Davids that said "Jude" (or "Jew" in the appropriate language depending on which country was ocuupied)? I want one of those tattooed on my chest.

Jillian and I were talking about how nothing within the Holocaust is being embraced by the Jewish community, and this is what I want to do with my tattoo. Hitler also created the pink triangle, by the way, which has become a symbol of gay pride/liberation. Also, the crucifix has become an important (the most important?) symbol of Christianity even though Christ was, well, crucified. [It could be an important symbol of Judaism as well, seeing as how many Jews were killed by the Romans. After all, there is Masada, which is seen by Jews as representing solidarity].

So I don't think this tattoo is religiously offensive, (other than the fact that I'm a Jew getting a tattoo) because the defacing has already been done by the Nazis. Indeed, one of my Orthodox friends said she wasn't offended by the subject of the tattoo, but that she is just against tattoos in general. It's also not like I'm dumping a menorah into a jar of urine in some kind of trite commentary on religion. (Fuck you, Andres Serrano, you unsubtle, petty moron. If you want to criticize religion, go ahead. But don't stick a holy symbol into human waste and try to pass it off as art).

One rebuttal to my idea was, "why don't you just get numbers tattooed on your arm?" And I was like, "well, shit, I would." It's more or less the same symbol as the Yellow Badge, even though only Auschwitz prisoners were branded, including non-Jews. I want my tattoo to be more about Jewish identity. So my tattoo is possibly more universal. (I also once saw a girl with a bar-code tattoo, and thought that was kitschy). Also, I wouldn't get this tattoo because I'm paranoid about very visible tattoos disallowing me from getting hired at some point.

Also, at Yad Vashem (the Holocaust museum in Israel) I saw art utilizing the Yellow Badge motif. So fuck you, haters!

Also, I'm thinking I should get it in German (my ancestors are Austrian) but at Yad Vashem I did see that the name Silberstein was connected to a Dutch Jew who died in either Sobibor or Auschwitz....I don't think he's related to me, and I don't think I had any ancestors who died in the Shoah or were interred, so if i get the tattoo in Dutch ("Jood") it could be an homage to this random guy.

This brings up another criticism of my tattoo idea. Someone was offended because she remembers sitting on her grandmother's lap and seeing numbers branded and her arm. She was told stories about the Holocaust every day of her life, and claimed that I couldn't connect to the Holocaust like she could. But I don't think she can make that assertion. I was inundated with the history of the Holocaust. I read "Night," I read Anne Frank's diary, I live right next to a Holocaust Museum which I saw the KKK picket! So it doesn't really matter if any of my immediate relatives were made to suffer; we all suffered.