Written by By Staff Writer
Written by Staff Writer, CNN
Heavily redacted documents in an Israeli court document reveal that the lawyer of a woman who was forced to tattoo Auschwitz detainees made a series of representations of what appeared to be the black tattoo ink used at the Nazi concentration camp.
The documents were published on Monday after the Law and Justice Ministry blocked them from being released, saying they contained sensitive information.
The so-called “gloving kit” — made from gloves used by American soldiers to mark their hands with a V for victory emblem when they returned from the war — was intended for sale at an auction in Tel Aviv last week.
Dozens of vials of ink and plastic syringes were said to be part of the kit.
The images appear to show the same ink used by inmates to tattoo “Arbeit macht frei” — “Work sets you free” — on their arms when they arrived at the camp.
(The last line of the German Hitler’s Order to Germans was missing from the documents.)
The description of the kit said the ink was “pitted black powder” — a term that could easily be mistaken for the ink used to mark Nazis by British, American and Canadian soldiers during the Second World War.
The kit’s seller said she had kept the ink and syringes and put them up for sale — reportedly at $5,000 each — after her father died.
More than 1.1 million Jews died at Auschwitz in German-occupied Poland from March 1944 to January 1945, according to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. The victims were executed and dumped into gas chambers, according to the museum’s website.
Israel’s national broadcaster, Channel 10, said the items were also used to mark the remains of prisoners.