The Tattooist of Auschwitz - Heather Morris (2018)

I was apprehensive about reading this book because of its subject matter alone. I like WWII fiction in general - it’s a morbidly fascinating era of history for me that I love to delve into, and I know I’m not alone with this. But it’s one thing to read about the horrors of war from a soldier’s perspective, or from a civilian who’s far removed from the front – it’s quite another to read the accoount of a concentration camp survivor. To put it simply, I’m a huge coward when it comes to experiencing the sheer level of emotion I would expect from a book like this, which is also the reason why I keep putting off watching Schindler’s List: I know it has somewhat of a „happy ending”, but at what cost? I keep waiting for the right state of mind to watch it, even though I’m not entirely sure that will ever arrive. So I was somewhat in the same boat with this book, wanting to read it but being afraid of it at the same time, but since it became my first ever ARC request to be approved, that pretty much made the deicison for me.

Well, turns out I didn’t have anything to worry about. This book is almost completely devoid of any emotion, and yes, I realize that’s the weirdest possible sentence I could write about a story taking place in Auschwitz-Birkenau. For me, nevertheless, it’s true: most of the sadness, anger and disgust I felt while reading it was only because I knew that’s what I should feel. The book itself describes everything in a rather detached, matter of fact way. The initiation of Lale and and the other prisoners into the camp feels like it’s being read off a checklist. Arriving on the train, check. Being examined and tattooed, check. Head shaven, check. Shower, check. In fact, that’s how Lale desribes most of his experiences going forward. That might be partly because, and again this feels horrible to say but I’m trying to be honest here, the narrative makes it seem like he had a relatively easy time at the camp. After arrival, he does manual labor for about a week, then falls into a typhoid-induced coma, and when he gets back on his feet he immediately gets reassgined to be the tattooist, which makes him eligible for extra food rations, a room just for himself, and protection from the guards. After that, things mostly just happen around him, and he occassionally comments on how angry it all makes him feel, but none of that is conveyed properly in order to make me feel it. 

As for the character of Lale himself, well, the blurb describes him as someone who has an „incredible zest for life”. But the thing is, I knew a Soviet Gulag survivor like that once. Well, more like saw, not knew personally. Father Placid was a priest who spent ten years as a prisoner in Siberia, and he was invited once to my high school to tell us about his experiences. If you ever spent any time with a group of teenagers (and even if you haven’t, chances are you used to be one yourself), you know how diffciult it is to make them pay attention to lectures of more than ten minutes long. Now imagine about two hundred teenagers not only paying attention but being absolutely riveted to every single word this tiny old man uttered for about two hours. That’s how incredibly lively, funny, profound and wise he was (I’ll share some of that wisdom at the end of this review because it’s not entirely unrelated to the book at hand). Sadly, he passed away last year at the age of 101, but I’m 100% certain I’m not the only one of those present that day who still gets chills just by thinking about his tale.

Anyway, that’s how I imagine the real Lale Sokolov to have been like, and it’s a damn shame that none of it came through these pages for me. I truly hope that some years from now another author will pick his story up - a non-fiction author, maybe – and do him and Gita, as well as their son, proper justice

Father Placid Olofsson’s four rules of survival:

1. Don’t dramatize your suffering – you will only become weaker if you waste your energy on complaining

2. Look for the little pleasures in life – it can be as little two extra pieces of ptato in your soup, or a Soviet officer letting you keep your hat on while doing a body search in -20 °C weather

3. We’re better than our jailors – taking pride in this is not a sin, but quite the opposite

4. Those who have something to cling onto, can bear pain easier

„The Lord really does have a sense of humour! The Soviet Union did everything in their power to destroy me. Yet I’m still here, over 90. And where’s the Soviet Union…?”

(Summarized and translated from this Hungarian article)

Thank you a thousand times to Edelweiss+ for my review copy!