A Holocaust survivor called me fat

I was 14 at the time and traveling through Europe with a group of kids my age. I had body issues then, just as I've always had body issues, but tried to hide that by cracking jokes about how I accidentally knocked multiple vases off the same table because of my large caboose.

"Those vases didn't even see it coming!" I'd joke, feeling slightly less fat with every laugh I got.

We went to hear a Holocaust survivor speak and were not told ahead of time there would be audience participation. Had I known, I would've worn my sparkly tube top. While discussing the intake procedure at the concentration camps, the survivor asked that I stand on stage. He then asked the same of a boy my age who was much scrawnier and shorter than I was.

"If these two came into the camp, he would be shot immediately because he is so tiny," the man said. "But this girl..."

He paused, and I realized that this was definitely not going to go my way.

"This girl is...well-built. They would keep her to do all the physical labor."

Not knowing how to respond to being called fat in front of 250 people, I raised my arm to my chest and soundlessly said, "Yes!" As we were walking off stage, I nudged the boy I had been standing next to and whispered, "Did you hear that? If this were the Holocaust, you'd be so dead right now."

While I didn't think the man was going pull a coin from behind my ear when I went on stage, I certainly didn't expect to step into the magic show of hell. But somehow, I wasn't that upset about it. There was something tragically comical in being called fat by a Holocaust survivor. (I should note that I don't find the Holocaust funny at all. It's the situation - being called on stage during a Holocaust survivor's speech and told that the Nazis would spare me initially because I eat too much pizza - that is so mind-boggling it becomes really funny.)

What's more, I got to have really exciting conversations in my high school history class during our Holocaust section because of this interaction.

The teacher asked all the kids in the class to raise their hands and then had every other kid put his or her hand down. I had my hand up at the end of this. She said the kids with their hands up would be killed immediately upon entering a concentration camp, so I set her straight.

"Actually, a Holocaust survivor told me that I'd be kept to do all the heavy labor because I'm so fat," I said. No one knew how to respond, so one of my classmates chimed in that I'd likely be killed at some point because, you know, concentration camp.

There's no real point to this story. I wish I could weave in a theme of body acceptance or something like that, but really it's just a fun anecdote I haven't shared publicly yet. Besides, I'm pretty comfortable with my body now. Comfortable enough, it appears, to tell everyone about the time a Holocaust survivor called me fat.