I Have Lived a Thousand Years

Nazis believed the Aryan race was superior and valued physical characteristics typically associated with Aryans: blond hair, blue eyes, and a pale complexion. The Nazi regime also valued women who were tall and thin. In appearance, Bitton-Jackson exemplifies this Nazi Aryan ideal. Ironically, her mother wished for “dark-haired, dark-eyed children,” though during their time in the ghetto, Laura grows to appreciate Bitton-Jackson’s blond hair, saying, “Nobody has hair […] as brilliantly blond” (43). Her aunt Celia compares it to “the rays of the sun” (43). A Hungarian soldier who befriends Bitton-Jackson notes her blue eyes, prompting her to recall a Hungarian folk dance that “made blue eyes the standard of beauty” (61). The woman who shaves Bitton-Jackson’s head in Auschwitz refers to her hair as a “heap of gold” (70).

Dr. Mengele conducts Bitton-Jackson’s first selection at Auschwitz, sending women either to the right (life) or left (death). As she stands before him, he exclaims, “Goldene Haar!” (66). He asks her if she is Jewish and what her age is then comments, upon learning she is thirteen, that she is “tall for [her] age” (66). He sends children under sixteen to the left but tells Bitton-Jackson to go to the right with her mother and to remember that from this point forward she is sixteen.