The Tattooist of Auschwitz

Heather Morris’s 2018 novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov (born Ludwig Eisenberg), a Slovakian Jew and Holocaust survivor. A tale of love and survival in the face of one of the greatest atrocities in human history, the novel is centered on the love between Lale and Gita, a young woman he meets while tattooing prisoners. Lale becomes the titular tattooist, forever marking his fellow Jews and other prisoners with the numbers that replace their identities in the mechanized system of human extermination that was the Holocaust. The Tattooist of Auschwitz recounts many episodes from Lale and Gita’s time in the concentration camp, focusing on moments of loving tenderness and humanity as well as instances of cruelty and evil.

Lale is the critical lens through which the experience of a concentration camp survivor is examined in the novel. Lale never loses his humanity while being subject to a system designed to dehumanize and destroy. Lale’s upright moral bearing comes into conflict with the roles he plays in the camp. Because he is the tattooist who marks his fellow Jews, he is, in a way, contributing to their destruction. However, his continued survival also allows for the survival of others.

Lale uses his position of privilege to trade for contraband goods, obtaining food, medicine, and other creature comforts that save an unknown number of lives, not the least of which is Gita’s. Lale’s choices highlight the fact that normal morality must be suspended in times of virtually unimaginable peril. The will to survive becomes a moral directive in and of itself.

The novel opens as Lale and other Jewish prisoners are being transported in a converted livestock train to an unknown destination. The prisoners are tired, thirsty, and hungry; as the journey wears on, this only gets worse. The other prisoners turn to Lale for advice and guidance; he is evidently someone who can be trusted in times of crisis. Aron, a young Jewish man, particularly latches onto him.

They are transported to Auschwitz, and specifically to the Auschwitz Two Birkenau work camp. During his first night there, Lale witnesses the murder of two men by the SS. He never forgets this initial scene of violence.

Lale slowly adjusts (as much as one can adjust in such a situation) to the daily toil and horror of life in Birkenau. However, after witnessing the gassing of a bus of naked prisoners, Lale swoons and succumbs to typhus. When he comes to a week later, he is in the care of Pepan, the tattooist of the concentration camp. Aron saved Lale by bringing him to Pepan, though by doing so, sacrificed his own life.

Pepan takes a liking to Lale and manages to make him his apprentice tattooist. Lale is initially horrified at the job, but eventually accepts it as a means of survival. During the course of their daily labor, Lale tattoos a beautiful young woman. It is love at first sight, though he does not even get her name before she’s swept into the prison.

After Pepan disappears, which most likely signifies his execution, Lale becomes the main tattooist. He is presided over by a sadistic SS officer named Baretski. Lale asks Baretski for an assistant; the Nazi arbitrarily selects a young prisoner named Leon.

Using Baretski as a go-between, Lale is able to establish first a written and then a personal connection with the beautiful young woman. Her name is Gita, and the two quickly fall for each other, though their relationship takes a while to establish because they can only meet on Sundays.

Lale also establishes a relationship with two sympathetic Polish civilian construction workers: Victor and his son, Yuri. Lale then starts a new enterprise: he gets Gita’s friends who work in the warehouse where prisoners’ confiscated belongings are kept to smuggle him valuable items and paper money. He then uses these items to pay Victor and Yuri to bring him food, in order to justify the risk it poses to them financially and mortally. Lale then redistributes this food among his fellow prisoners in order to help them survive. This system of exchange allows Lale to save Gita’s life; when Gita becomes deathly ill with typhus, Lale is able to obtain penicillin from Victor.

Despite the relative prestige illicit trade brings him, it also gets Lale into trouble. The SS discover Lale’s treasure trove, and he is taken to the torture and execution block, where he is tortured by Jakub, an American whom Lale previously helped out. Jakub spares Lale as much pain as possible, but still inflicts great damage. Lale recovers, and thanks to Cilka, a beautiful Jewish woman who is repeatedly raped by SS officer Shwarzhuber, he is able to regain his position as tattooist.

Lale again suffers loss again when his friends in the Romany camp are all sent to the execution chambers. Leon, who has already suffered castration at the hands of Dr. Mengele, is taken away and never seen again.

More and more prisoners arrive at Auschwitz. A fly-over by an American plane and a small-scale prisoner revolt mark the beginning of the end of the concentration camp. One day, after Lale has been in Birkenau for nearly three years, there is a great commotion as the female prisoners are herded through the open gates by the SS. Despite Lale’s efforts, Gita is swept away in the crowd. Before she leaves, she is able to tell Lale her last name, which she heretofore refused to tell him: Furman.

Gita and the female prisoners are forced to march endlessly through the snow. Dana, a fellow prisoner, drops from exhaustion and forces Gita to leave her behind. Gita makes her escape with four Polish girls. They take refuge in the homes of sympathetic Polish women, hiding out from the Nazis in the forest, during the day.

Lale, meanwhile, escapes Birkenau a little while after the women are marched out of the concentration camp. He is swept onto a crowded train, and eventually finds himself in Mauthausen, Austria, from where he makes his final escape. Lale is taken in by Russian soldiers and briefly serves them as a pimp, acquiring village girls for the Russians to party with. He then escapes the Russians and makes his way back to Slovakia.

In Slovakia, Lale reunites with his sister, Goldie, his only living family member. He seeks out Gita, whom he finds in Bratislava. The two get married and happily live out the rest of their lives together.