The Tattooist of Auschwitz

by Heather Morris Barry Landy I have read many books about the Holocaust. By and large they divide into two categories: history and personal stories. This is a personal story but most unusually it is written as a novel based on reminiscences.

The basic story is of two particular people who were transported to Auschwitz as so many others were. He by chance was told to take over the job of tattooing the numbers on the arms of those who were not selected for the gas chambers; she was one of those lucky enough to survive the selection and so came to him to be tattooed. He was Lale Sokolov, she was Gita Furman.

As the publicity material for the book tells us:

"In 1942, Lale Sokolov arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. He was given the job of tattooing the prisoners marked for survival - scratching numbers into his fellow victims’ arms in indelible ink to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.

“Waiting in line to be tattooed, terrified and shaking, was a young girl. For Lale - a dandy, a jack-the-lad, a bit of a chancer - it was love at first sight. And he was determined not only to survive himself, but to ensure this woman, Gita, did, too.

So begins one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust: the love story of the tattooist of Auschwitz."

This story survived because Lale Sokolov, the tattooist, told his story to the author when he was 87, after his wife Gita died.

There are many differing opinions of the book. I was absorbed because of the context though I was aware that the writing was not of the best. Some people love the book, others hate it, partly because not all the facts are accurate and partly because of the writing quality. So far as the facts are concerned we could be charitable and say that 60 years on a man of 87 could be forgiven for not necessarily remembering accurately all the details of a traumatic period of his life.

Perhaps the most stringent criticism is from the office of the Auschwitz museum who pointed out a number of basic facts that were incorrect. The following is from the review in the Guardian:

“At the back of the book, Morris thanks two researchers for their brilliant investigative skills in researching ’facts’ to ensure history and memory waltzed perfectly in step.

“But according to the Auschwitz Memorial magazine, Memoria, numerous historical details of the camp are wrong. Their factchecking, which runs to more than seven pages, takes issue with a range of storylines, from the route taken to the camp (the transport could not have travelled through Ostrava and Pszczyna), to Morris’s account of the murder of prisoners in a bus being used as a gas chamber, which does not find confirmation in any sources”. In response a spokesperson for the publisher told the Guardian: “The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a novel based on the personal recollections and experiences of one man. It is not, and has never claimed to be, an official history. If it inspires people to engage with the terrible events of the Holocaust more deeply, then it will have achieved everything that Lale himself wished for”.

But Sawicki (from the Auschwitz Museum) took issue with Morris’s response.

“Can a story be told without paying attention to the reality of the story? If this would be a complete fictional story, we could