This might have been a straight biography, but in dealing with love that started at Auschwitz-Birkenau, perhaps it paradoxically needed the sheen of fiction to ever make us believe it.

Today on 11th November, I started a book about a tattooist in Auschwitz..I was not expecting to find the book an easy read but I was so wrong!!
I brilliantly written book that told the story of a love affair of two young people who fall in love in a concentration camp. Against all odds they survive, marry and live a happy life together.
Reading some of the things that the SS did, was hard to read but it also made me want to visit Auschwitz even more.
A book that I don't think will leave me for a long time.

When I saw this book on Goodreads, I knew I just had to read it and so I put it on my Christmas list, but was elated to find it on Netgalley that very same day, requested to read it and was accepted!

Historical books are great at giving you a glimpse into the past but NOTHING can beat the true story of someone actually in that moment in time and Nazi Germany, for me, is one of the most intriguing parts of history. I have especially read a lot about Josef Mengele (The Angel of Death) and was quite shocked to see that he was a part of Lale's story, but not shocked to see how slimey he was as a person.

When I began reading this book, I reached the stage of the first disappearance of someone Lale had become close to and was so heartbroken, but I thought it's okay, you always find out what happens to these characters. And then I remembered that I wasn't reading a normal book, I was reading a real account of war and I knew then that the chances of ever finding out what actually happened were slim. And I was right. And that was when I realised I was already completely emotionally attached to the story, and also to Lale, and I knew I was already feeling just a slight fragment of what he was going through at the time.

This was such an emotional read, so many highs of Lale and Gita and then so many lows of friends lost along the way. I can't even imagine how they felt, or how they even managed to gather the strength to survive, but I am so glad that they did, and that Lale got to tell his story.

The photos of Lale and Gita at the end are so amazing, as I had a picture of them in my head, but to actually see the characters I'd become so attached to was something else. I did have Lale spot on in my head, although perhaps more handsome in real life than I imagined, but was shocked to see Gita looking so different to how I'd been seeing her. The information gathered at the end about what happened to other people mentioned in the story was also a really nice touch, although I will forever wonder about Dana.

This heart-rending story is based on the true story of Lale Sokolov, a survivor of the Auschwitz internment camp at the end of WW2.
Lale was picked by chance to tattoo the numbers on the wrist of each of the inmates who were interned in Auchwitz by the Germans and this is the harrowing story of his survival . It is also a love story because Lale met his future wife, Gita, in the camp. Their love flourished despite the unimaginable horrors and cruelty they experienced every day.
Heather Morris has done a superb job in telling this story without excess emotion. The facts are presented without over dramatising them - the reality that these people lived through these experiences and suffered so much really makes you stop and think.
This book will stay with you for a long time.

Received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for a review.

This book was rather incredible... I felt like I couldn’t possibly be reading a true story. All the things that Lale went through, had to do... they were heart-breaking and amazing all at the same time. At times it felt like it dragged on but at other times, I couldn’t put it down. I felt both happy and sad when the book was over.

A beautifully written harrowing story of one man's will to survive in Auschwitz concentration camp during the 2WW. Lale Sokolov is transported from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942; an educated man fluent in many languages who also happens to be a Jew. His proud bearing and individuality immediately sets him apart from his fellow detainees and when he is offered the privileged job as tatowierer "the tattooist" he readily accepts. His job is quite simply to "mark" his fellow prisoners as and when they arrive, stamping them with a 5 digit number that will forever remind them (that is those who survive) of the hell of Auschwitz. He uses his position to help and befriend where possible fellow inmates and early on in his arrival meets and falls instantly in love with a young woman called Gita.

The centre of this remarkable story is the relationship of Lale and Gita and how they managed to sustain their love whilst all around death and slaughter is the order of the day, and it seemed only a matter of time before they met the same fate. We witness firsthand the cruelty of man and the barbaric acts carried out on the weak by those who saw themselves as true followers of the Fuhrer adhering to his orders by cleansing society of undesirables. The reality was that they themselves were no better than murderers and robbers. Yet Lale's account is much more than this; it is a story of hope and endurance and a beauty that emerges when all around is painted in black. As a reader you cannot help but be affected by this account the simplicity of the story telling only adds to the poignancy of the moment the sense of dread, the unexpected and the wait for the knock when death comes calling.

Many thanks to the good people at netgalley for sending me a gratis copy in return for an honest review and that is what I have written.

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris is an incredibly sad story of a young mans experience as a prisoner in the concentration camp during the holocaust. The cruelty and horrors that he went through just to stay alive were heartbreaking. This is a true story and one that will stay with me. I would like to thank NetGalley and Bonnier Zaffre for my e-copy in exchange for an honest review.

It was great to read about something beautiful coming out of the inexpilicable horrors of Auschwitz and also that the main protagonists could be viewed by some as collaborators, making this story slightly different from others I had read about the Holocaust. However the writing style was not really for me. I felt there was not enough description of things like the camp and day to day activities which would have enabled me to understand a bit more of what it was like. Also the plot jumped several weeks at a time and the ending was very rushed. This was a true story but if it was fiction I'd have been shouting how everything was too convenient! Lale was clearly a very lucky man! I would however recommend it as a starting point for anyone interested in the Holocaust.

This is an interestingly written story, in some places nearly a Dear Diary of horrors, the sentences are barren of flourishes, simple, mostly spoken from the main person, sometimes from other people's point of view in order to fill up the gaps.

The story itself? A young Jewish good-looking, charming guy, like so many others, is sent to Auschwitz, where, by luck, cunning, and sheer willpower, will survive to tell the tale. More astonishingly, he meets there the woman who will be the love of his life.

From the moment the tattooist of Auschwitz arrives, we know part of the story too well; other survivors have described the horrors of the Holocaust, and what it entailed. What makes this book unique and odd is that it's not just a survivor's story. It's a love story with the background of the concentration camp.

The narrator skips on many of the horrors, but we know they are there, he doesn't need to give lengthy descriptions, the little he says is the tip of a horrid, inhumane iceberg; he is not interested in telling us about the Holocaust, he wants to tell us how his met the love of his life, and what they had to endure to make it through these years.

I couldn't read this book fast enough, I was hooked, I loved it. I came out of it a little bit incredulous, wondering whether things really happened the way he described it, but the author's subsequent research seems to support, certainly more than a few of the events as told. Maybe he embellished a bit, maybe he smoothed some unsavoury angles; As we are repeatedly told: "People did what they had to do to survive".

Perfect 5 stars for the The Tattooist of Auschwitz! This book follows the true story of Slovakians Lale and Gita who experienced spending several years in the Nazi concentration camp during the Holocaust period. Lale was a linguist; a Jew; prisoner 34902; and was a Tetovierer (tattooist in German) in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Birkenau, Poland.

I'm always fascinated on this darkest period of the history, hence I read books that contains the said theme whenever I have the chance. Reading another memoir of one of the survivors made me envisioned what happened to the prisoners of Nazi Germany. However, Lale and Gita were very lucky to survived and after the liberation, they had a better life when they migrated to the land down under.

If you are like me who are into reading memoir and anything about the Holocaust, you should try to read The Tattoist of Auschwitz because I'm certain that you will also like it.

I cannot possibly begin to find adequate wording that will give justice to this wonderful, stirring and emotional book. Written simply and without sensationalism this true story grips you from the first page and is totally engrossing and unputdownable.. It’s contents will live with me for a long time to come. 5* awarded to this compassionate and caring author.

This is a very dry, step-by-step kind of story. In one paragraph the same name is repeated so many times that it’s jarring how badly written this book is. It needs major editing.

All stories about WW2 have value. It is a constant reminder of the horrors of our collective past.

My parents were born in the middle of WW2 which means I am only one generation removed from that war. Every time I think of that it sends shivers down my spine.

I have never written a book in my life and can only imagine how difficult it must be, so I am always weary to criticize an author’s writing, especially if there is nothing obviously horrible about it. But I do feel that the writing did not captivate me as much as I expected it to.

I was reading with my head not my heart.

There was no one specific thing that prevented me from really enjoying this but more an amalgamation of little things. The author clearly didn’t want to leave out any detail, no matter how small which means that there were sections that felt unnecessary. Other times big events that deserved deeper exploration were glanced over, in favour of the next incident, and the next and the next. Granted a lot happened but I think I would have preferred if only a handful of things were focused on properly and a richer story built around that.

Lale’s story of survival in Auschwitz is almost fantastical in scope and I would recommend this for people who, unlike myself, have not read many books about Auschwitz or concentration camps.

Author, Heather Morris, was introduced to this book’s main character, Lale Sokolov, in 2003. From that meeting first grew a screenplay and eventually this ‘novel’ about Lale’s life as the main tattooist at Auschwitz. I write ‘novel’ in quotes because it’s hard for me to figure out if this is a biography, or historical fiction. To me, it feels like a biography, but the author has stated that it is a novel, so that is the genre I will use too.

We meet Lale as a young man on an overcrowded train cattle car heading to, he knows not where. He is one of the early Slovakian Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp in Poland. He volunteered to leave his family on the assurance that the rest of his family would be spared further deportation efforts. (Which we now know was a lie.) He struggles to keep his equilibrium in the face of the inhumanity surrounding him. Unexpectedly he is selected by a fellow prisoner to be his aide in task if tattooing all incoming prisoners on their arm with their six-digit camp identifier number. The original “tetovierer”, Lale’s mentor, failed to show up at the tattoo tables one day. Lale never saw him again. That day he became the camp tetovierer.
In his new capacity at camp he is assigned his own SS minder who is sadistic but at times a sad character. Lale moves to better housing accommodations, gets extra food, and can move around the camp relatively freely. He is afraid that because of his job and these privileges, he is seen as a Nazi collaborator. Improbably in camp he meets the love of his life, Gita. He looks up from refreshing the tattoo on a young woman’s arm, and is captivated by the woman he sees. Through the years that Gita and Lale spend in camp together they develop first a friendship and then a romance.

Through some subterfuge and bargaining, Lale is able to trade jewels and money found by the women tasked with going through the discarded clothing of new arrivals, for food and medicine provided by Polish bricklayers who come to camp daily to build the gas chambers and other camp buildings. He walks a tightrope trying to get aid to those he can while not endangering the Polish workers or those he is helping. There is one section of the book that describes a brutal two weeks in what I’d describe as a torture prison after loose jewels and jewelry are found stuffed in his mattress. But miraculously, he is one of the very few (if only) prisoners to survive that stint and eventually return to his camp duties.

Even the story about how Gita and Lale were separated at the end of the war, and his effort to reunite with her, even though he only found out her last name as she was being driven from the camp, was nail-biting with suspense. Eventually the couple reunites, and are soon married. They live in Slovakia until that country starts to imprison folks for no good reason when the Communists really start to clamp down on the country. When the situation in Slovakia worsen, they move to Australia.

I’m so glad that Lale overcame his fear about being labeled a collaborator enough to share his story with Heather Morris. I’m also thankful that Heather spent the years she did with him to glean his story and tell it in such a straightforward was. This was a very moving story about one couple’s journey to survive one of the blackest periods of human history. May we never forget the horror of the Holocaust!

"Thank-you" to the author, NetGalley, and the Zaffre imprint of the Bonnier Zaffre publishing house for providing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This story, wow, it made me feel so many emotions. The Tattooist of Auschwitz was at times very, very hard hitting. This book grabbed my heart, squeezed it so tight I was feeling a whole range of emotions and then let go, while leaving an indent from what I had experienced when it grabbed me. The journey of Lale and Gita is one which will haunt me forever. Obviously, we all know what happened during the holocaust but Lale, while I’m sure he’s not one of a kind, was in my eyes the bravest and courageous of them all. His story is portrayed by Heather Morris who could not have wrote a more beautifully perfect version of it. The story, the writing style and the bravery of a character who really does believe he could be conceived a villain makes you feel all sorts of emotions. It is hard hitting, but there is hope. Even when as the reader you’re thinking the worst, Lale is still positive and hopeful. Knowing that this story is one that is real, the events truly took place is something which whenever I think of will remind me to be so grateful for what I have. Lale is the hero of this story. It burdens me truly that he thought for a second he would be thought of as a ‘bad guy’. Lale uses his position of higher regard, the tattooist, to help others. He knows the whole while that he is doing this that he could be killed. By doing this, he saves numerous lives of those around him, and not just those close to him. He collects food for other people, to save them from a dangerous fate. However, being the tattooist is what makes him think people will think of him as a bad person, because he ‘assisted’ in what took place. I do not believe that is the case. I think Lale had to do what he had to do, to survive. While some may have say he could have refused, he would then have been shot. Lale saved lives by tattooing these people. He is a hero. In the midst of his working, he meets Gita. Their story is one of romance, which is hard to believe can happen in such dire circumstances. This is what raises my hopes, however the whole time being deathly afraid of what could happen to them. I cannot express how well written this book is that you don’t want to put it down. You need to know what happens. It makes you feel everything, things you never thought were possible. I hope everyone reads this book. It’s certainly one I think I will never forget. I feel that from these stories I know Lale and Gita, that’s the sign of a perfect book. Thank you Heather Morris for enabling us to know their story.

I got this book from @netgalley and I’m so glad I got to read this. It’s published by @bonnierzaffre
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I don’t like reading war time books because they get too depressing or too political. But this one was so different, it gave you hope, that even in the darkest of times if your will power and faith is strong you can come out successful. And to top it all off, it’s a true story!!
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It will be released on 11th January 2018. So add this to your TBR guys for your winter reads!!

I’ve always held a deep respect for books that remind us how terribly bad human nature can be if left unbridled, so it went without question that this book was a must-read. It means so much more when you consider and appreciate that the book is based on fact, and whenever possible, historical documentation was used to adhere as closely as possible to actual events. The author, Heather Morris, spent years with Lale Sokolov, the protagonist of the story, and I can only imagine the deep love and respect she must feel for this amazing human being. Their initial conversation, so simple and poignant, “I might just have a story worth telling”, led her to write this book so others can remember and appreciate the undying human spirit.
The treatment of the Jews by Hitler was incomprehensible. Lale, who voluntarily turned himself in, believing this would save the lives of his family, has a heart of gold and a strong will that helps him and those around him stay as sane as possible, given the circumstances. He learns quickly how to manipulate and respect the officers in order to place himself in a safer job. He doesn’t stop there; he uses his job to trade goods and provide food to numerous others, rarely just for himself.
One day in the never-ending line of poor souls offering their arm to be tattooed, Lale looks up into the eyes of a young lady, Gita, which affects him instantly. He dedicates the remainder of his time in prison to ensuring that she survives, no matter what. Lale crosses paths with the monster Josef Mengele and numerous other hateful officers and soldiers who abuse, torture and quite easily kill whomever they wish. His job of staying alive and keeping Gita alive gives him the will to go above and beyond, using his privileges for others even more than himself.
There are parts in the book where the treatment of the prisoners seem a bit more humane than what history has detailed, and this may be the way Lale prefers to remember it for others. Instead of embellishing what was truly awful to begin with, Lale softens the edges in his interpretations. This is consistent with the way he conducted himself with others while imprisoned, reminding them to be positive and try to laugh in a ghastly, deadly, evil world.
There are parts where the writing seems somewhat simple, but I think the writer is trying to stick to the thoughts and feelings of Lale, Gita and their fellow prisoners, avoiding dwelling on the deep history and background of the daily status of the war. I appreciate that style; it dedicates all emotion to the story of their love and their will to survive and help others survive with them.
I very much enjoyed reading this, and I envy the author for the precious hours she was able to spend with such a forgiving, peaceful human being. It would be an honor to have met Lale Sokolov.
(I received an advance copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an unbiased review. Thank you to Zaffre and NetGalley for making it available.)

Thank you for the opportunity to read 'The Tattooist of Auschwitz'. I found this to be a moving and insightful book and admire the incredible courage and determination of Lale and Gita. I found it fascinating to read about the daily life of Auschwitz inmates and the camaraderie between different groups of people. The brutal treatment they received is hard to read about but it is important that the world continues to remember what happened to try to stop it ever happening again.

This is based on a true story of Lale Sokolov. He volunteered to work for the Nazi in exchange for his family's safety. He left his very comfortable life and stylish clothes for the unknown. He was lucky enough to get a job being the person that applies the tattoos to all the new Jew that came into Auschwitz. One day he become mesmerized by a woman that he is to tattoo and wants to know more about her. What will he do to be with her?

This Holocaust story is unlike any other that I have read because the point of view. Lale has a job working for the Nazis and is allowed to have a private room as well as more rations. He is also allowed to move about the camp in ways that others are not.

By the end of the book I was sobbing. It was beautifully written. I never wanted to put it down.

I highly recommend this book to anyone, especially if you like reading about the Holocaust. This gives such a different angle than most other books.