The tattooist of Auschwitz

The tattooist of Auschwitz

Stefany B. Larios

Is it possible to find love in a survival story? Is it possible to find love when the horror of surviving almost three years in a concentration camp, condemn someone to a lifetime of fear and paranoia? Is it possible to find love having the fear of being seen as a collaborator of the Nazis? The thought of protect your family by keeping the secret or what can be described as a burden of guilt. Is it enough to offer yourself as a strong young man in good physical condition, in the hope of saving the rest of your family from being separated? Is it possible to find love when the Nazis erase who you are and mark in you, a number? 32407. Is it a God miracle when you contract typhus and the man who has engraved your new identification on the skin, is the one who takes care of you, saving you from death? When this man puts you to work as his assistant, teaches you not only the trade, but also how to keep your head down and your mouth shut? Is it possible to find love when this kind man disappears and you never discover what happened to him? Is it possible to find love when you become the main tattoo artist, the tetovierer, of a death camp? What can you think about yourself, when you are forced to accept what you are given? When you take it and thank it because it means you can wake up the next morning. Live a step further from death. But even that doesn’t make you feel calm, because the next day this man at the command tells you “One day, tetovierer, I'll take you, someday”. Is it possible to find love when those forced tattoos you engrave of trembling and rigid numbers on pale forearms, have become one of the most recognizable symbols of the Holocaust and its most lethal camp? Is it possible to find love when you know that tattooing a man is one thing, but when you hold a young woman's thin arm in your hands, it feels horrible? Is it possible to find love when there is something about this girl and her

bright eyes? That while tattooing this number on her left arm, she tattooes her number in your heart? When you know that the young woman’s name is Gita? When you try to take care of her, passing your extra portions of food and even getting her a better job? When you try to give her hope? Is it possible to find love when you, deep down, always know that you are going to survive? You don’t know how, but you know is the idea of being a survivor, survive luckily, for being in the right place at the right time and taking advantage of the opportunities you see. But even though, she sees no future? Is it possible to find love when, in 1945, the Nazis begin to send prisoners outside the death camp before the Russians arrive? When Gita is one of the women chosen to leave Auschwitz? When the woman you have fallen in love with is gone? When you only know her name, but not where she came from? Is it possible to find love when you also leave the camp and return to your home, when you paid for the trip with the jewels you had stolen from the Nazis? When your sister has survived and your house still belongs to your family? And let me ask you, is it possible to find love when in the way there, a young woman stops in the street and has a really familiar face? A pair of bright eyes. For you, everything is reduced to look at them. And the answer will be yes, because after all, it is possible to find it.

This text was based in the true story of Lale Sokolov and some of the things he said were used to write it.