One day, a girl was sitting on a bench next to
an old man, and she said,
"I've gotta tell ya', mister,
that's an awfully boring tattoo on your arm there. It's
just a bunch of numbers."
And the man looks at her, and
says,
"Well, I got it when I was your age, and I
kept it as a reminder."
The girl smiles,
saying,
"Oh, a reminder of happier
times?"
And the man shakes his head sadly, and
says,
"No...of a time when the world went
mad. Imagine yourself in a land where your
countrymen followed the voice of political extremists who
didn't like your religion. Imagine having everything taken from
you, and being sent to a camp as slave laborers, then
systematically murdered. In this place, they even take your name
and replace it with a number tattooed on your arm. It was called
the Holocaust, when millions of people perished just because of
their faith..."
The girl, stunned, start to cry. She
asks,
"So you kept it to remind yourself of the
dangers of political
extremism?"
The man shakes his head
again.
"No, my dear. To remind
you."