The Number on Your Forearm is Blue Like Your Eyes: A memoir

by Eva Umlauf, Stefanie Oswalt (With), Shelley Frisch PhD (Translator), Michael Brenner PhD (Foreword by), Naomi Umlauf (Afterword)

Overview

On November 3, 1944, a toddler named Eva, one month shy of her second birthday, was branded prisoner A-26959 in Auschwitz. She fainted in her mother’s arms but survived the tattooing and countless other shocks. Eva Hecht was born on December 19, 1942, in Novaky, Slovakia, a labor camp for Jews. Eva and her parents, Imrich and Agnes, were imprisoned in this camp until their deportation to Auschwitz. A month prior to their arrival there, several thousand mothers and their children had been gassed. Now that the Red Army was rapidly advancing in Poland, the murders stopped. Agnes, then pregnant with her second daughter, and Eva were still alive when the camp was liberated on January 27, 1945. Her father was transferred to Melk, a subcamp of the Mauthausen concentration camp, and died there in March 1945. 

In late April, Nora, Eva’s sister, was born. Agnes Hecht remained in the camp infirmary until her two little girls were well enough to travel, then brought them back to her home in Trenčín in western Slovakia. Eva grew up with a mother who had to “survive her survival”—the little family lived with the loss in the Holocaust of the husband/father, the mother’s three siblings, and the grandparents and great-grandparents. Having also lost her family’s fortune, Agnes worked hard to create a normal home life for her daughters. Like many survivors in the post-Holocaust era, Eva’s mother never talked about her experiences. 

Eva suffered frequent flare-ups of the illnesses she had suffered in Auschwitz. She did well at school and went on to study medicine in Bratislava. In 1966 she married Jakob Sultanik, a fellow Holocaust survivor who had resettled in Munich, Germany. Eva left the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1967 to join him in West Germany. There she began her practice as a pediatrician and later as a psychotherapist—and for the first time she had the opportunity to live out her Jewish identity. Unfortunately, her husband, Jakob, died unexpectedly in a tragic accident when their son, Erik, was a small boy. Eva later married a fellow physician, Bernd Umlauf, and they had two sons, Oliver and Julian. 

Every so often, the horrors of Eva's early years would resurface in nightmares involving dead babies and Auschwitz gas chambers. Having achieved prominence as a pediatrician, child therapist, and international speaker, Eva finally decided to tell her story. In 2016, at the age of seventy-four, with the assistance of journalist Stefanie Oswalt, Eva Umlauf published Die Nummer auf deinem Unterarm ist blau wie deine Augen: Erinnerungen (Hoffmann und Campe Verlag). In 2023 the German edition was beautifully translated into English by Shelley Frisch, under the English title, The Number on Your Forearm Is Blue Like Your Eyes.This poignant and riveting memoir sets her family story in historical context and brings psychological insight to bear on accounts of emotional trauma. As someone who has endured the effects of the Holocaust from infancy, she writes, I wish for all that has happened to be understood and processed from diverse perspectives so that personal suffering, societal ruptures, and brutal transgenerational traumas can be prevented from being passed on to future generations.” This book draws on years of interviews, copious correspondence, archival research in Europe and Israel, trips to labor and concentration camps, and the author’s personal recollections.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942134978
Publisher:	Mandel Vilar Press
Publication date:	05/02/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Eva Umlauf was one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz. After World War II she returned with her mother and sister to Trenčín in Czechoslovakia. She studied medicine, married a fellow Holocaust survivor in 1966, and managed, with difficulty, to leave Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia and settle with her husband in Munich. After his untimely death and with a child to support, she worked as a clinic doctor, later opening a pediatrics practice and becoming a child psychotherapist. She married a second time and had two more sons. In 2011, Eva first spoke at the commemoration ceremony in Auschwitz, and since then has been involved in many research projects and as a contemporary witness in international conferences. She continues to practice psychotherapy.

 

Stefanie Oswalt earned her doctorate in Jewish Studies in Potsdam. She worked as a freelance journalist for Deutschland Radio and as an author in Berlin. Most recently, she published Ari Means Lion (with Ari Rath, Zsolnay Verlag, 2012).

 

Shelley Frisch taught at Columbia University and Haverford College, where she chaired the German Department, before turning to translation full-time in the 1990s. Her translations from German, including biographies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl (dual biography), and Franz Kafka, along with many other works of fiction and nonfiction, have been awarded numerous translation prizes, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. 

Michael Brenner is the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies and director of American University’s Center for Israel Studies. He received his PhD at Columbia University. He is the author of nine books, including After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany, and Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism. He is the co-author of the four-volume German-Jewish History in Modern Times, for which he was awarded a National Jewish Book Award. In addition, he is the editor of nineteen books.

 

Naomi Umlauf is a student at Brown University and Eva’s granddaughter. In her afterword she discusses the impact of the Holocaust on her family and herself as a third-generation survivor. 

Eva Hecht was born on December 19, 1942, in Nov Slovakia, in a labor camp for Jews. Eva and her parents, Imrich and Agnes, were imprisoned in this labor camp until their deportation to Auschwitz. After arriving at Auschwitz on November 3, 1944, accompanied by her pregnant mother, Eva, one month shy of her second birthday, was branded with a blue tattoo on her forearm as prisoner A-26959. She survived the tattooing and countless other shocks that awaited her in this  Nazi concentration camp. The advancing Red Army liberated Auschwitz on January 27, 1945. Eva and Agnes remained in the camp infirmary because Eva was too sick to travel and Agnes was about to give birth to her second baby girl, Nora. Shortly afterward, Agnes Hecht brough her two little girls back to her home in Trenčín in western Slovakia. 

Eva grew up with a mother who had to survive her survival—Agnes was confronted by the devastating loss of her husband, her father, mother, three siblings, the generations of grandparents and great grandparents as well as the loss of the family’s fortune. But Agnes worked hard to create a sense of normal life for her daughters. Eva continued to have flare-ups of the illnesses she suffered n Auschwitz. But she did well at school and went on to study medicine at the university in Bratislava. 

In 1966 she married a fellow survivor, Jacob Sultanik who resettled in Munich, Germany. Eva left the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1967 and moved to West Germany to join her husband. Here she began her practice as a pediatrician and later as a psychotherapist—and for the first time had the opportunity to live out her Jewish identity. Jakob died in a tragic accident when their son, Erik, was a small boy. Eva later married a fellow physician, Bernd Umlauf, and they had two sons together, Oliver and Julian. Every so often, the horror of her early years would resurface in nightmares of the Auschwitz gas chambers and dead babies. Having achieved prominence as a pediatrician, child therapist, and international speaker, Eva Umlauf decided to finally tell her story. In 2016, at the age of seventy-four, with the assistance of journalist Stefanie Oswalt, Eva published Die Nummer auf deinem Unterarm ist blau wie deine Augen: Erinnerungen (Hoffmann und Campe Verlag).

Associate Author: Stefanie Oswalt studied history and literature in Cologne, London and Munich. She received her doctorate in Jewish Studies at the University of Potsdam. She worked, among other things, at the Moses Mendelssohn Center for European Jewish Studies. Since 2000 she has worked as a freelance radio journalist for Deutschland Radio, as a  publicist and as a co-author on various book publications on contemporary history.  She worked as a freelance journalist and as an author in Berlin. Herr publications include Siegfried Jacobsohn, A Life for the World Stage: A Berlin Biography (2001), Ari is called Lion (with Ari Rath, 2012)  Ari Rath: Raging Reporter,Chronicler, Bridge Builder (2022)  

 

Shelley Frisch taught at Columbia University and Haverford College, where she chaired the German Department, before turning to translation full-time in the 1990s. Her translations from German, which include biographies of Friedrich Nietzsche, Albert Einstein, Leonardo da Vinci, Marlene Dietrich/Leni Riefenstahl (dual biography), and Franz Kafka and many other works of fiction and nonfiction, have been awarded numerous translation prizes, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator’s Prize. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Michael Brenner is the Seymour and Lillian Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies and Director of American University’s Center for Israel Studies. He received his PhD at Columbia University. He is the author of nine books including After the Holocaust: Rebuilding Jewish Lives in Postwar Germany and Hitler’s Munich: Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism. He is co-author of the four-volume German-Jewish History in Modern Times, for which he was awarded a National Jewish Book Award, and editor of nineteen books.

Naomi Umlauf is Eva Umlauf's granddaughter and a student at Brown University. As a grandchild 

of a Holocaust Survivor, she discusses the impact of the Holocaust legacy on her family and 

her own future as a third-generation survivor.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

the witness                  Poem by Ján Karšai

 

Foreword                    Professor Michael Brenner

 

Chapter 1                    The Heart Attack                                            February 2014

 

Chapter 2                    Birth in Nováky                                              December 1942

 

Chapter 3                    Arrival in Auschwitz                                      November 1944

 

Chapter 4                    The Sledding Accident                                   February 1947

 

Chapter 5                    Under the Red Dictatorship                            November 1952

 

Chapter 6                    The Wedding: Starting Anew                         July 1966

 

Chapter 7                    Jakob’s Death                                                 April 1971

 

Chapter 8                    Julian’s Birth and the 

                                                Return of the Trauma                         December 1985

 

Chapter 9                    The Auschwitz Speech                                   January 2011

 

Afterword                   Naomi Umlauf: A Granddaughter's Reflections

 

 

Notes

 

Bibliography

 

Photo credits

 

Acknowledgments

 

Translator’s Note