The Tattooist of Auschwitz

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a historical novel by New Zealand author Heather Morris. Published in 2018, the narrative retells the true story of Lale Sokolov (born Ludwig Eisenberg), a Slovakian Jew and Holocaust survivor. The novel centers on the love between Lale and Gita, a young woman he meets while tattooing prisoners. Lale is the titular tattooist, forever marking his fellow Jews and other prisoners with the numbers that replace their identities in the genocide known as the Holocaust. The Tattooist of Auschwitz recounts many episodes from Lale and Gita’s time in the concentration camp, depicting moments of tenderness and humanity as well as cruelty and evil. It is the first book in Morris’s Tattooist of Auschwitz trilogy, which also includes Cilka’s Journey (2019) and Three Sisters (2021).

Content Warning: This source text and study guide depict genocide, torture, and rape.

Plot Summary

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 progresses, this only gets worse. The other prisoners turn to Lale for advice and guidance, and a young Jewish man named Aron grows particularly attached to him.

The train arrives at Auschwitz, specifically to the Auschwitz Two Birkenau work camp. His first night there, Lale witnesses the SS (Schutzstaffel) murder two men, a scene of violence he never forgets even as he slowly grows accustomed to the daily toil and horror of life in Birkenau.

However, after witnessing the gassing of a bus of naked prisoners, Lale faints and succumbs to typhus. When he comes to a week later, he is in the care of Pepan, the concentration camp’s tattooist. Aron saved Lale by bringing him to Pepan—sacrificing his own life by doing so.

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

Lale becomes the main tattooist afterPepan disappears (which most likely signifies his execution). A sadistic SS officer named Baretski presides over him. When Lale asks Baretski for an assistant, the Nazi arbitrarily selects a young prisoner named Leon.

Using Baretski as a go-between, Lale establishes first a written and then a personal connection with the beautiful young woman. Her name is Gita, and they quickly fall for each other, though their relationship develops slowly since they can only meet on Sundays.

Lale also establishes a relationship with two sympathetic Polish construction workers: Victor and his son, Yuri. Lale then starts a new enterprise: He gets Gita’s friends, who work in the warehouse storing the prisoners’ confiscated belongings, to smuggle him valuable items and paper money.

He uses these items to pay Victor and Yuri to bring him food; the payment justifies the financial and mortal risk they assume in doing so. Lale then redistributes this food among his fellow prisoners to help them survive. This system of exchange allows Lale to save Gita’s life; when Gita falls deathly ill with typhus, Lale manages to obtain penicillin from Victor.

Despite the relative prestige illicit trade brings Lale, it also gets him into trouble. The SS discover his treasure trove, and 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 an SS officer named Shwarzhuber, he regains his position as tattooist.

Lale 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 SS physician Josef Mengele, is taken away and never seen again.

More prisoners arrive at Auschwitz. A flyover by a US 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 SS herd female prisoners through the open gates. Despite Lale’s efforts, Gita is swept away in the crowd. Before she leaves, she tells Lale her last name, which she heretofore refused to tell him: Furman.

Gita and the female prisoners are forced to march 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 from the Nazis in the forest during the day.

Lale, meanwhile, escapes Birkenau a little while later. He boards 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 returns 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 live out the rest of their lives together.

Throughout his ordeal, Lale never loses his humanity despite being subject to a system designed to dehumanize and destroy. His 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 others to survive since Lale uses his relative privilege to trade for food, medicine, and other comforts that save an unknown number of lives, including 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.