The Tattooist of Auschwitz

The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a novel by the New Zealand writer Heather Morris, first published in 2018, and it is built on the account of a man who lived through the events it describes.

Its subject is Lale Sokolov, a Slovak Jew imprisoned at Auschwitz in 1942 and put to work as the camp tattooist, marking the arms of people as they arrive. The job gives him privileges that almost nobody else inside the wire has, and it also means that every new transport passes in front of him, so he is a witness to the machinery of the place as well as a prisoner held by it.

It is while he is working that Lale meets Gita Furman, and the book follows the two of them as they try to hold on to each other in a system built to strip people of everything ordinary. Morris wrote from the story Lale told her over several years of meetings before his death in 2006, and the novel stays close to his memory of himself, of Gita and of the time they spent there together. It is the account of two particular people rather than a history of the camp, and the exchanges and small kindnesses that keep them going are what the book follows.