mincuo wrote:I repeat:
He has the tattoo on the arm (near the shoulder).
(Un di velt hot geshvign, p. 87 --
imgur permalink for image)
Arum fir a zeyger hot men undz oysgeshtelt in eyn rey. Drey alte heftlingen hobn gebrakht a tish un meditsinishe intstrumentn. Yeder hot gemuzt aroyfsharn der linkn arbl, eyder er iz tsugekumen tsum tish: numern! Di drey heftlingen hobn gehaltn nodlen in
hant, zey eyngetunken in shvartsn tint un tatuirt numern oyf undzer linker
hant.
Meyn numer: A-7713.
Around four o'clock, they put us in a line. Three old [i.e., veteran] prisoners brought a table and medical instruments. Each man had to push up his left sleeve before he came to the table: numbers! The three prisoners took needles in hand, dipped them in black ink and tattooed numbers on our left hand.
My number: A-7713.Of course, the Yiddish word "hant" really isn't meant as "hand" the second time it's used--or at least that's not very likely. In English, we tend to discriminate very carefully between our hands (below the wrist) and our arms (above), but not every language is so picky. So when I look up "hant" in my Yiddish dictionary, sure enough it has "arm" alongside "hand" as a possible meaning. That said, even if "hant" can sometimes be used, loosely, to mean the lower arm close to the hand, it most certainly does not mean "shoulder" (Yiddish has a word for that) or even "upper arm" (Yiddish has a word for that too). No, the clear, natural meaning of the sentence is that the prisoners were tattooed on the forearm, or wrist--in Yiddish,
hant-gelenk (literally "hand joint" or "link"). If Wiesel had wanted to say he was tattooed on his shoulder, he could, and would, have said so.
And it's definitely the left side.