Heather Morris - The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Heather Morris – The Tattooist of Auschwitz.

Rating: 5 out of 5 Stars.

Hi everyone! My reviews have been pretty YA based with a couple exceptions, so here’s a little mix up of everything. This review is for The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. This is a very popular book, a lot of people I know have read it and they loved it so I read it. I didn’t know what to expect when I started it but I am so glad I did. Here are some deeper thoughts.

Synopsis:

In April 1942, Lale Sokolov was transported by cattle train to Auschwitz-Birkenau, imprisoned, as were millions of others, for being born Jewish. He was given the task of tattooing numbers onto his fellow victims’ arms to create what would become one of the most potent symbols of the Holocaust.

Waiting in line, shaking with terror, was a young woman called Gita. For Lale – full of life, even in this place of death – it was love at first sight. And he was determined that not only would he survive, but that Gita would too.

Based on real events, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is one of the most life-affirming, courageous, unforgettable and human stories of the Holocaust.

A little about the author:

Heather Morris is a native of New Zealand, now resident in Australia. For several years, while working in a large public hospital in Melbourne, she studied and wrote screenplays, one of which was optioned by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in the US. In 2003, Heather was introduced to an elderly gentleman who ‘might just have a story worth telling’. The day she met Lale Sokolov changed both their lives. Their friendship grew and Lale embarked on a journey of self-scrutiny, entrusting the innermost details of his life during the Holocaust to her. Heather originally wrote Lale’s story as a screenplay – which ranked high in international competitions – before reshaping it into her debut novel.

A little about the story:

This book is fiction, but it is based off a first hand account of the Holocaust and being in a concentration camp. It followed Lale and how he survived the monstrosities of Auschwitz. We get to watch as Lale falls in love with a girl, we see how he plays his cards to survive. Lale tattoos the people coming into Auschwitz every day. Every day he saw the new faces that were possibly coming to their death. He was surrounded by death and the possibility that he or one the people he cared for could be next.

My favourite person in this story was Lale. After all he had been through he deserved happiness. He did what he needed to do to survive. And somehow with everything going on around him he still found it in his heart to fall in love.

This isn’t a story I can relate to. It’s a story that not many people alive can relate to. I can only imagine what happened in Auschwitz, I can’t even think of how it felt to be there, I can never know the fear they must have felt. This book gripped me right from the first page. The way it was written pulled me in, in a way a book has never done before. Learning about what happened to these people is usually done using quantitative methods such as statistics, very rarely do we read something that has been transcribed and put into a novel, but was initially a first hand account. So where I can not now, or ever, relate to Lale, or anyone from this story I do feel I understand a little bit more about what they went through.

This book was wonderfully written. Morris took someone’s personal tragedy and turned it into an informational yet gripping novel. I was rooting for the victim’s the whole way through, I felt invested in them. Thank you Heather Morris.

My favourite part of the book was the ending. This is my usual answer for books I know. But I like the way that Lale and Gita’s story was wrapped up. I am not going to spoil it for those who haven’t read it. But it was beautiful.

I recommend this book to people who would like to learn more about what the Holocaust was like for individual people. We learn in schools about the statistics of it all, but not about individual stories. I feel like me reading this story had more of an impact on me than the statistics did when I was at school. We got to know this person, and the horrors they witnessed and experienced. The fact that this shook me more than the numbers of deaths says a lot about both Lale’s experience, and Morris’ writing.

My opinions and thoughts on this book are not varied. It was incredible to read, it is the best experience I have had reading a book. If you have read it, what did you think of it? Let me know!

Stay Curious!

J x