Just as I finished the book, I began my research and I am still reeling from all the information that I have gathered about the book and its people. So, I can’t promise you the best of the reviews around here but I can certainly help you decide whether you’d want to pick this book up or not.
I have been eyeing this book for more than a year but never did it occur to me to read its blurb or a review. I think it’s partly because I assumed this would be like the other holocaust fiction I have read so far. I certainly didn’t expect it to be a love story of two Holocaust survivors.
So definitely, this book is based on true anecdotes derived from The Tattooist of Auschwitz named Lali Sokolov (Named in the book as Lale). It is about how he met Gita Furman (Gisela Fuhrmannova), another prisoner in the Auschwitz - Birkenau concentration camp, and how they fell in love with each other and survived the holocaust because of the Russian army invading the camps and releasing the prisoners back in 1945.
So what went wrong while I was reading?
I had a hard time connecting with the characters. The narration is in the third person and is in the present tense for some weird reason. I failed to understand such an implication. There were obviously some lapses in the narration of the story as Morris herself admits to towards the end of the book, in a section titled ‘Postscript’. She writes, and I quote, “He told his story piecemeal, sometimes slowly, sometimes at bullet - pace and without clear connections between the many, many episodes.”
Hence, I have come to the conclusion that it was a very tough job to extract information from an aging and dying man, telling a story of an event that happened around 60 years ago. Not to mention, Holocaust survivors often have trouble remembering a lot of details about their lives inside the camps. The sheer trauma makes them really forgetful of the incidents many times.
But what really, really bugged me was the fact that the narration could have been made better regardless. Since Morris has mentioned right at the beginning of the book that ‘it is not an authoritative record of the events of the holocaust’ implying that she did take creative liberties in creating more characters and placing them in situations where they were not, she could have explored more on the character arcs of both Lale and Gita and maybe some other crucial characters.
I have been frantically reading articles and reviews on the internet about the book and how it came to be published and I have come across an article from The Guardian (you can find the link down below) that lists the factual inaccuracies in the book and there are not one but several such incorrect information and incidents that have no historical basis. Morris has defended all of it in a newer addition to the reprint of the book but I still found it bothersome because the book mentions that it is ‘based on the powerful true story of Lale Sokolov’. She could have just passed it on as ‘Derived from the true incidents as narrated by Lale Sokolov’ and it would have still been acceptable to history nerds like me!
The fact that young readers might be misled through this book is actually very bothersome. They might not know how to distinguish fact from fiction and might read this book and believe the incidents just like they are mentioned. I don’t think that is desirable since the holocaust still remains the most debated topic of world history and it would be better if everyone is educated with the correct information that is available on official sites.
Coming to the part that I enjoyed the most in this book: the pictures and the personal anecdotes of Gary Sokolov; Lali and Gita’s son. He talks about how their past experiences shaped his parents as more compassionate human beings, giving so much value to family life and advocating to live one’s life to the fullest because we never know what might happen. By the time I finished the book, I was kind of misty-eyed; I am not gonna lie. Surely, this book is a story of hope, survival, and love. It is moving to know about Lale and Gita’s undying love and devotion for each other. But the fictional account itself failed to propagate it to me.
Heather Morris’ own experiences of visiting Lale’s hometown (Krompachy) and the Auschwitz - Birkenau camp are also insightful towards the experiences of the people that once lived the horror of the holocaust.
All in all, I think I will forever be conflicted about this narrative but I am really excited to start with Cilka’s story, which is the sequel to the book.
Important links: https://amp.theguardian.com/books/2018/dec/07/the-tattooist-of-auschwitz-attacked-as-inauthentic-by-camp-memorial-centre
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.timesofisrael.com/bestselling-tattooist-of-auschwitz-love-story-blurs-facts-experts-allege/amp/
You can find the shorter version of this review on my Instagram page:
https://www.instagram.com/the.boi.poka/
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