When we learn someone’s name we take the first step to encountering the humanity of the other, and to avoiding the trap of demonising those whom we don’t know
Perhaps like me, you are an avid viewer of the BBC’s adaptation of Les Misérables or have read Victor Hugo’s classic novel. If so, you’ll know that one of the protagonists is introduced early in the story as “Prisoner 24601”. We quickly learn his name – Jean Valjean. He becomes the hero of the story.
Holocaust Memorial Day takes place on Monday, and “Prisoner 24601” prompted me to reflect on the power of names. It was not by chance that the Nazis tried to dehumanise Jews and other victims of the Holocaust by replacing their names with numbers. Initially in Auschwitz, numbers were sewn on clothes but with the increased rate of killing it was difficult to identify corpses (since clothes were removed before entering the gas chambers).
The practice was established to tattoo concentration camp inmates with identification numbers. In Les Misérables the number 24601 is also a synonym for dehumanisation; with a name, Jean Valjean comes alive in the reader’s imagination. He becomes a person.
Since its establishment in 1953, Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, has been attempting to find the name and to produce a brief biography of every Jewish victim of the Holocaust. Called “Pages of Testimony”, the goal is to do everything possible to restore the personal story and identity of each of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis. Pages of Testimony documents not only the name and biographical details of each person but also, whenever possible, includes a photograph. As well as a name, each person has a face.