In a vaccination centre in suburban England, 96-year-old Evelyn Lipmann is rolling up her sleeve. “You’re my oldest person yet,” the nurse says.
Then the faded tattoo, on the lady’s forearm, catches her eye. “I bet you haven’t seen one of these before,” Evelyn says. The stark number A25466 was branded onto Evelyn’s arm aged 19 in November 1943, when she arrived at Auschwitz, the most notorious of the Nazi concentration camps.
Now, the vaccine’s needle, which Evelyn sees as a great symbol of hope, punctures the same arm where the Auschwitz tattooist once condemned her. “I’m so happy to have had it,” she says, of the Pfizer vaccine, invented in Germany by Turkish immigrants. “For me, the vaccination is life.” Part of the dehumanisation