Holocaust survivor: How can Israel make people into numbers?

Auschwitz survivor slams state for referring to African migrants by numbers not names in court documents.

A Holocaust survivor has expressed her horror at Israel's use of numbers instead of names for 153 African migrants in court proceedings against them. "It's shocking that our state is using numbers," 87-year-old Lucy Mandelstam told Ynet. "It's not right, and it's humiliating." The state used the numbers in an appeal against a court ruling that it did not have the authority to continue with the detention of the migrants, currently held in a facility in southern Israel.

Numbers instead of names for African migrants

The state has indicated that it would add the names of the 153 at a later date and had decided to use numbers due to time constraints.

Mandelstam, who now lives in Tiberias, survived three concentration camps and has the infamous number tattoo used by the Nazis on her forearm. She recalled how at the age of 16 she was sent to Thereisenstadt concentration camp, in what is today the Czech Republic. She was there for a year and a half before she transferred to Auschwitz. "I was there for three months and then I went to Stutthoff (in what is now Poland)," she says.