Title: The Tattooist of Auschwitz
Author: Heather Morris
Genre: Memoir / Biography
Material source: iBooks
My rating: 5 / 5 🌟
About the book:
Lale Sokolov was born in Slovakia, and when the Germans invaded and requested volunteers over the age of eighteen to work, Lale found himself at Birkenau concentration camp in Poland, believing that by doing so he would be saving his family. Thus begins his three years in Auschwitz and Birkenau. Soon after he arrives he becomes sick with typhus, and is saved by his fellow block members and the camp Tattooist, who later offers him a job. When the Tattooist is taken away, Lale becomes the full time “Tetovierer”, tattooing the 5 numbers along the arms of the new arrivals to the camps. It is here that he meets Gita, the woman with whom he falls in love, and together they are determined to survive the horrors that surround them.
With Lale’s new elevated position comes some benefits, such as a room to himself and more rations. Lale uses his position to set up an exchange system with local paid workers at the camps. In exchange for gems and currency found at the camps, Lale managed to get extra food rations, medicines and even chocolate, which he shares among the people who need it the most.
Here is the incredible love story between Lale and Gita, but also a story of survival.
My opinion:
Lale told his story over the course of three years to the author of this book. Lale and Gita kept their story quiet for fear that they might be called Nazi collaborators on account of the jobs they held at Birkenau, but when Gita died, Lale decided to tell his story, so that it never happens again.
I’m not sure I will ever forget this book. It is one of those that remain with you long after you close the cover and place it back on the bookshelf. It reads like a novel rather than a biography, and I liked that as it made reading it easy. However it also made it difficult at times to remember that Lale and Gita aren’t fictional characters. They were real people with a heart wrenching history to tell. The true horrors that occurred inside the concentration camps are disturbing, saddening, and anger inducing. I’ve learnt much about the Second World War – I studied it over years at school, I’ve read books about it, true accounts included, and I’ve watched documentaries about it. Yet little has come close to the effect this book had on me. Lale witnessed so many awful things, and it is difficult to read about.
Yet through all of that, Lale and Gita survived the odds that were stacked against them. They carved out a new life for themselves, and I was so glad that even when the book ended, there was an afterword to let you know that they made it. They moved to Australia, had a son, and lived and loved a happy life. I’m not sure I’ve ever been so happy for a couple in a book before.
This love story is no summer beach read (unless you like crying while sunbathing?). But it’s an important one.
Bookish Wanders 