The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris


This book was on my TBR list since I saw a WW2 documentary years ago. Briefly, the book tells of survival and hope. Hope, which was taboo at Auschwitz.

The story revolves around Lale who is taken to Auschwitz and in that place devoid of any humanity, falls in love with Gita. The task he has to undertake for his own survival questions the basics of right or wrong and makes you wonder what you would've done if you were in his place.

I have watched quite a few documentaries on the camps and the atrocities committed there. I couldn't get through many of them and I couldn't finish reading quite a few books either because it just didn't make any sense how someone could be so inhumane and how human life was so worthless. It's hard. It's true.

Author @heathermorrisauthor book offers a story that reads like a portrait photo we take on our phones. You touch a point of focus and everything blurs in the background. The destruction at Auschwitz is slightly muted. That's the point of this book - focus on one story of hope among the countless tales of horrors.

Lale is offered a job of tattooing the prisoners brought into Auschwitz, a job that commands respect (however marginal) and contempt in equal measure. He himself remains conflicted right to the end if he did the right thing or the wrong for his survival. He helps whoever he can, in any way he can and that's saying a lot given where he was.

This is a story of hope, in many ways, and their final release and life thereafter reminds you of the millions of people who didn't make it out. Like every other information about the Holocaust, this book will also remind you of your humanity. Would you stand by when your friends are tortured? Would you ensure your survival by doing whatever is asked of you? Would you join the perpetrators if given a chance because they remotely make sense to you? Would you have hope?

I give it a 3.5/5

Read it for history, for those who made it out and especially for those who didn't.

#thetattooistofauschwitz #heathermorris #thetattooistofauschwitzbook #holocaust #holocaustsurvivor

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