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February 24, 2024The Tattooist of Auschwitz
By Heather Morris,
Echo Publishing, 2018
Perhaps it is the current crisis in the Gaza strip, precipitated by the horrific violence of the attacks on Israelis and the cruel kidnapping of Jews of all ages, by Hamas, that has caused me to examine several harrowing texts set during World War II, focusing on Hitler’s Holocaust against the Jews in Germany and beyond. Firstly, I listened to the audio book, The Librarian of Auschwitz, on a recent trip home from Port Lincoln. Shortly after that, my friend invited me to see the movie, One Life, and now the first book chosen in my new book club was The Tattooist of Auschwitz. After spending many hours reviewing videos related to Israel and Palestine to try to understand this current conflict, it feels as though there is no escaping the responsibility of trying to understand this tragic history and its continued impact on our world today. However, this review is related to the book, so I will limit my remarks mostly to that.
WE NEED TO REMEMBER THE PAST. WE NEED TO REMEMBER WE ARE CAPABLE OF GREAT GOOD AND GREAT EVIL.
As with all good novels based on war, Heather Morris has chosen to focus on the point of view of one young man, a Slovenian, who finds himself in Auschwitz and who survives this horror by being appointed to tattoo every prisoner with their identity number, a foreshadowing of the dehumanising treatment of groups like Jews, gypsies and homosexuals. In fact, this focus on Lale was not so much an authorial stroke of genius as a stroke of luck for Heather Morris, as she was introduced to Lale by someone who believed his story needed to be told. Subsequently, she set out to do just that through a drama script which metamorphosed into this book. Whilst I appreciated the book, I couldn’t help wondering whether a dramatic presentation would have a more powerful impact on the audience.
I am usually deeply angered by injustice and moved to tears by people’s plight but, though sickened by what I read, I found myself strangely unemotional, until I read the Afterword by Lale’s son, Gary. It was only then, I found myself crying, not as a result of the horrific, inhumane conditions and the physical and psychological violence they suffered, but for the glory of the human spirit and the capacity for self-sacrificing love and endurance in the face of monstrous evil and depravity. To think that this couple, who met in Auschwitz, could show their son love, and how to love, after everything they had been through, filled me with such hope for humanity ─ in spite of the ugliness that seems to prevail in our personal, national and global relationships. Gita and Lale were married for 58 years and their son testified to their devotion and their determination to ensure their son experienced life to the full and would not be ‘robbed’ of his youth as they were. What a gift!
Despite living in fear in that ‘stinkhole’ for three years and knowing that ‘he will be marked for life’ by this experience, Lale is determined to survive. That, in itself, has its price because the moral norms are overturned, in order to make it through each day. When compassion and anger overcome the good sense of the survivalist mentality, there is always a risk involved, even for someone as ‘privileged’ as the Tattooist. Especially a tattooist who was just as committed to the service of others as his own survival!
From the outset, Lale is warned, ‘Work hard. Do as you are told and you will go free. Disobey and there will be consequences.’ Morris describes those consequences matter-of-factly. ‘Some men struggle or fall to their hands and knees and are beaten, until they get up. If they do not, they are shot.’ What Lale sees only reinforces his determination: ‘I will live to leave this place. I will walk out a free man.’ It was terrible to watch a cheerful young man full of life and plans bitterly declare, ‘If there is a hell, I will see these murderers burn in it.’ This is understandable. Yet that is not what motivated Lale, when he was finally able to escape and create a new life with Gita. There were struggles, but as Gita smilingly told their son, when their business folded, ‘when you spend years not knowing if in five minutes’ time you will be dead, there is not much that you can’t deal with . . . As long as we are alive and healthy, everything will work out for the best.’
I will let Heather Morris have the last word. ‘As the teller of Lale’s story it became important for me to identify how memory and history sometimes waltz in step and sometimes strain to part, to present not a lesson in history, of which there are many, but a unique lesson in humanity.’ I think this book does both. We need to revisit our history. But we also need to revisit our humanity.