Review of “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” by Heather Morris

Lale Sokolov, born in Krompachy, Slovia in 1916, was transported by the Nazis to Auschwitz on April 23, 1942. Late in his life, he told his story to the author. She decided to call this book a “novel” because she created dialogue based on what Lale told her, and because of the uncertainty of the veracity of memory. Nevertheless, she states:

“Lale’s memories were, on the whole, remarkably clear and precise. They matched my research into people, dates, and places.”

At the time he was sent to Auschwitz, Lale was 24, healthy, and could speak a number of languages, all of which proved very fortunate for him. In fact, as inappropriate as it seems to speak of an inmate of Nazi concentration camps having a lot of “luck,” the truth is that Lale, in spite of his circumstances, had an inordinate amount of it. Even one of the S.S. marveled he was like a cat with nine lives. Almost without exception, those who tried to do what he did in the camps were executed – or tortured first and then executed.

Lale became a Tätowierer, or tattooist, for the camp, one of the men assigned to brand the prisoners when they arrived, just as was done to Lale when he came to Auschwitz. The Nazis used the tattoos to identify bodies after they killed them, in order to facilitate their meticulous record-keeping that chronicled who arrived and who was killed.

Children at Auschwitz showing their tattooed arms

Lale hated the job, but it was a way to keep alive, and he vowed when he came there that he would survive and see those who were responsible pay a price. He held on to that thought using it like a mantra to make himself get up each morning, and the next and the next.

Lale Sokolov showing his own tattoo from Auschwitz

He soon got another reason to go on living, after meeting a girl whose tattoo had faded and needed to be redone: Gita Furman (born Gisela Fuhrmannova) was also from Slovakia. Lale was entranced by her dark eyes, and began a secret courtship with her. He was helped by a number of factors. Because he was one of only two Tätowierers, he had more freedom than other prisoners, and even got extra rations. He was able to walk around and befriend two local (non-Jewish) workers who came from the nearby town, and from whom he received meat, chocolate, and even medicine, for which he paid in jewels confiscated by the Nazis from incoming prisoners. He got those from the girls who worked in “Canada,” where the possessions of new arrivals were collected and processed. The girls transferred jewels and money to Lale, and he used it as payment for goods from the outside. These he shared not only with the girls from Canada but with others.

Women’s Barracks

He was in this way able to help get Gita penicillin when she was sick. After she recovered, he also managed, through bribes, to obtain a job for her in the camp office where life would be easier. He paid the guard in charge of Gita’s barrack to get time to see her. He helped anyone he could (everyone in the camp always wanted more than what the camp provided), and he was repaid in kind when he himself needed help. Thus both he and Gita survived until 1945, when the Russians were closing in and the Germans abandoned the camp. But first, the Nazis tried to kill remaining prisoners. In the ensuing chaos, Lale and Gita independently escaped and made their separate ways back to Slovakia.

Lale went to the main train station in Bratislava every day, hoping to find Gita among the many survivors arriving daily. And after two weeks, there she was. They were married in October, 1945. When he got into trouble with the new government in Czechoslovakia, again Lale got lucky, and he and Gita escaped, making their way to Australia in 1949.

The author met Lale in 2003, after Gita died and when Lale wanted to tell his story to a writer who was not Jewish, so would more likely be without personal baggage or preconceptions. She visited Lale two or three times a week for three years until his own death in 2006 and gradually learned his story.

PHOTO: Lale and Gita with their son Gary in the 1960s.

The author concluded:

“The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a story of two ordinary people living in an extraordinary time, deprived not only of their freedom but also their dignity, their names, and their identities. It is Lale’s account of what they needed to do to survive. Lale lived his life by the motto: ‘If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day.’ On the morning of his funeral I woke knowing it was not a good day for me, but that it would have been for him. He was now with Gita.”

I would only counter that I didn’t think of Lale and Gita as “ordinary” at all. As Lale said to Gita about her friend Cilka, who was forced to perform sexual acts with one of the SS:

“Tell her I think she is a hero. . . You’re a hero, too, my darling. That the two of you have chosen to survive is a type of resistance to these Nazi bastards. Choosing to live is an act of defiance, a form of heroism.”

Like them, Lale as well, in my view, was heroic, and extraordinary.

The book includes photos and some additional information about the fate of others mentioned in the story.

Evaluation: This powerful book of courage and hope when there is no justification to feel either is an incredible story, and highly recommended.

Rating: 4.5/5

Published in the U.S. by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2018