The #1 International Bestseller & New York Times Bestseller
This beautiful, illuminating tale of hope and courage is based on interviews that were conducted with Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov—an unforgettable love story in the midst of atrocity.
“The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior … Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they’d read a hundred Holocaust stories or none.”—Graeme Simsion, internationally-bestselling author of The Rosie Project
In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew, is forcibly transported to the concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau. When his captors discover that he speaks several languages, he is put to work as a Tätowierer (the German word for tattooist), tasked with permanently marking his fellow prisoners.
Imprisoned for over two and a half years, Lale witnesses horrific atrocities and barbarism—but also incredible acts of bravery and compassion. Risking his own life, he uses his privileged position to exchange jewels and money from murdered Jews for food to keep his fellow prisoners alive.
One day in July 1942, Lale, prisoner 32407, comforts a trembling young woman waiting in line to have the number 34902 tattooed onto her arm. Her name is Gita, and in that first encounter, Lale vows to somehow survive the camp and marry her.
A vivid, harrowing, and ultimately hopeful re-creation of Lale Sokolov’s experiences as the man who tattooed the arms of thousands of prisoners with what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is also a testament to the endurance of love and humanity under the darkest possible conditions.
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Loved the human spirit.
Loved this book…
Based on true story. A story of survival in the direst circumstances.
This was a great story but not well written.
Good read. Unfortunately it is a true story and it will give you a lot to think about.
Absolutely mesmerized, the story and characters were inspirational love/hate so intertwined just hard to put down. A page of the world’s history that was so horrible and love found it’s way through it all.
Amazing man and woman story was based on…….
For someone like me, who is perpetually interested in reading about the Holocaust as a way of trying to understand it, I have to admit I was disappointed in this novel. Though telling a true story, it simply didn’t come anywhere close to capturing the emotional dimension of a concentration camp experience.
The book relays the story of Lale and Gita, two Slovakian Jews who were survivors of Auschwitz. They meet at the camp because Lale was assigned the job of tattooing new arrivals with their identification number. So, this novel is a chronological accounting of their three years of captivity, with occasional tidbits about Lale’s life before the war. Along the way, it relates many instances of Nazi brutality, prisoner sufferings, and risk-taking by one person trying to protect another.
Heather Morris explains in her Afterword that she interviewed Lale multiple times over a period of three years to collect the details of their story (Gita had already died at this point). And it’s a fascinating story.
But it reads like a second-hand account. Despite Morris’s attempt at recreating dialog, the narrative feels more like the reader is observing the difficulties and stress of living in a death camp — rather than experiencing them the way a prisoner would. I felt emotionally distant the entire time I was reading.
Morris says she originally envisioned the story of Lale and Gita as a movie (which never happened) and then launched a Kickstarter campaign to make this story into a book. I am guessing that she is not an experienced writer since this appears to be her first book. And that may be the reason for these shortcomings.
I think this book is awesome
A well-written account of two people finding each other and surviving the inhumanity of Nazi concentration camps. In reading the author’s notes, you learn that Morris originally intended the story as a screenplay, and it would have made an excellent movie. Once the war is over, though, the story wrapped up too quickly, for my taste: short on any in-depth details of the rest of their lives. But that would work fine for a film that might need to deal with time constraints. Nonetheless, a worthwhile read.