PDF Summary:The Tattooist of Auschwitz, by Heather Morris
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During World War II, six million Jews died at the hands of the Nazis—many at concentration camps. One of the worst camps was Auschwitz-Birkenau, where hundreds of thousands of Jews and other German enemies were imprisoned. Yet one man found a way to survive the camp. He became the tattooist, marking each arriving prisoner with a six-digit number that would become their new identity. This work protected him from the worst treatment and helped him meet the young woman he would fall madly in love with. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is the fictionalized harrowing tale of love and perseverance in one of the darkest moments in history.
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Lale settles into a routine at the camp. He does his work diligently and continues his extracurricular activities, acquiring a stash of jewels and food that barely fits under his mattress. His relationships with both the Romany, whom he now considers his new family, and Gita also flourish.
Yet amid these successes, Lale witnesses many horrors. A new doctor comes to camp and abuses and tortures hundreds of prisoners, mostly women. Five crematoriums are built, and the ashes of murdered prisoners rain down over the camp almost daily. More prisoners are transported to the camp regularly, sometimes numbering in the thousands, and Lale often works around the clock tattooing all of them.
The harsh winter takes many lives that year. Lale uses his connections to try to help as many prisoners as he can, including Gita when she falls ill, but death abounds. He struggles with his protected position, knowing he is helping the enemy and living a better life because of it. Still, if his position helps him and Gita live to see the end of the war, it’s worth it.
One day, a small glimmer of hope settles over the camp. An American bomber plane flies over several times. Prisoners cheer and wave to get the pilot’s attention, and some urge the pilot to bomb the crematoriums. But the plane flies away, and the SS open fire on the dissenters. Some of the Romany children Lale is fond of are shot in this firestorm, and he mourns them greatly.
Year Three: 1944-1945
Lale learns some disturbing news from Gita one night. Her friend, Cilka, has been forced to carry on a sexual affair with one of the commanding officers for a year. Lale is outraged, even more so that there is little he can do about it. But this information comes in handy in the coming weeks.
One day, Lale returns to his room to find SS officers waiting for him, his stash of valuables discovered. He is taken to the punishment barracks and beaten to entice him to turn over the names of the people who helped him. Fortunately, the person torturing Lale is another prisoner, a large Jewish man the SS have ordered to perform these beatings, who Lale helped the night the man arrived at camp. He was starving, and Lale gave him all of his food rations. Because of this, the man feigns his abuse and convinces the officers that Lale has no information to give.
Lale is sent to work hard labor after that. He and other men are forced to carry heavy boulders back and forth across an open field. The last man to cross the line is shot. Lale is weak from the beatings and knows he won’t survive. He asks his friendly SS officer to tell Gita and Cilka where he is. Cilka convinces her abuser to help Lale, and the next day, Lale is back in his old room and given his old job back.
Although Lale almost dies, this isn’t the worst thing that happens to him. The tipping point for Lale is when the Romany are rounded up one night and taken away. He tries to convince Nadya to stay with him, but she has no choice but to go with her people. The next day, Lale is tattooing new arrivals when an ash lands on his arm. He looks up and sees a thick plume of smoke rising from a crematorium. He knows the ashes belong to the Romany, and he falls apart. Over the next few weeks, with Gita’s help, Lale recovers from his despair, but a new fury is born.
Afterward: 1945 and Beyond
Lale and the other prisoners hear news of a Russian invasion, and an uprising occurs. Two crematoriums are destroyed by homemade bombs made from sardine cans and gunpowder smuggled out under the fingernails of munitions workers. Although many die as a result of the uprising and the Russians never come, the Germans are clearly shaken. They start shipping prisoners to other camps. The end of Auschwitz is near.
Gita and the other women are rounded up and marched out of the camp late one night. Lale tries to catch up to her before she leaves, but he’s stopped by the SS. He yells over the crowd that he loves her, and Gita yells her last name, Furman, something she had said she wouldn’t tell him until they were free.
Gita and the other women are forced to march for days. After her only friend dies along the journey, Gita befriends four Polish girls. When they reach a train waiting to take them to another camp, the five women decide to flee. There are so many women and so few guards, nobody notices when they take off through a nearby field.
The women find a small village where someone agrees to hide them. Finally, the Russians arrive and force the Germans out, and the women are allowed to move around freely. Gita finds a ride with a produce delivery man to her hometown of Bratislava. She’s heard rumors that her parents and sister are dead, but she is overjoyed when she returns home and finds her two brothers are still alive. She registers with the Red Cross and starts her life over.
Lale leaves on a transport of men and is sent to another camp in Austria. Eventually, he is transferred again to Vienna, where he finally makes his escape. But instead of finding help, he ends up in the hands of Russian officials, who capture him and put him to work as a pimp for the commanding officers. The best part about this job is that Lale is given cash and jewelry to entice his female targets. He is able to pocket a few gems and bides his time. After earning the Russians’ trust, Lale is allowed to visit the women in the village on his own. He takes his collection of jewels and runs away as soon as he is by himself. He uses the jewels to buy transport back home.
Lale arrives home to find his parents and brother gone, but his younger sister is still alive. He tells her about Gita, and she encourages him to go find her. Lale goes to Bratislava, where he’s heard survivors are heading. He searches for Gita and finds her information through the Red Cross registry. The two are reunited, and in October 1945, Gita and Lale are married. They eventually move to Australia and have a son. For more than 50 years, they live happily together, loving each other as much as they did during those long years in captivity.
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PDF Summary Shortform Introduction
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Finally, the novel is organized in several chapters of varying size that cover several different events. We have chosen to group the story according to main events and themes into fewer chapters for coherence.
PDF Summary Prologue
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PDF Summary Chapter 1: Spring 1942—Becoming 32407
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Back Home
News spread across the region that Jews in small communities were being sent to work for the Germans. They were no longer allowed to work normal jobs or own their businesses. Lale had decided to leave his home in Bratislava to help out around his parents’ house. For four weeks, he worked on the house with his father and older brother, Max, both also forced out of work.
His sister, Goldie, was more fortunate. She was still working as a seamstress, which meant she was the sole breadwinner in the family. She traveled to and from work in the dark. Her superior skills were the only reason her boss risked the wrath of the Germans to keep her on.
One night, Goldie returned with a poster stating that all Jewish families had to offer up one adult child for work duty. They would work for the German government, and the rest of the family would be safe. If they refused, the entire family would be sent to a concentration camp. Lale couldn’t believe that the Slovakian government had bent to Hitler’s demands.
Lale volunteered to go because he was unattached, not like Max, who had a wife and two children. He was willing to make this sacrifice for his family. He...
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Learn more about our summaries →PDF Summary Chapter 2: The Chosen One
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Lale isn’t sure what to say, but he doesn’t want to do the job alone. He convinces Baretski to give him an assistant to make the work go faster and keep Houstek happy. Baretski pulls a random man from the line and tells him he is now Lale’s assistant. Lale looks at the young man, Leon, and delivers the same speech Pepan gave him. If he worked hard, it could save his life.
A New Vocation in a Dark World
The tattooist job comes with other perks, not all of which Lale is happy about. His new room is the kapo’s quarters of an empty block near the construction zone. Stretching out in bed for the first time in months is a treat, but Lale misses the camaraderie of the men in Block 7. He also gets to take his meals in the administration building. The food is better than the prisoner slop, and he is offered a second portion as soon as he devours the first. Extra rations are allowed for political workers, so he takes a hunk of bread and hides it in his sleeve. Later, he gives the bread to Leon in Block 7 and promises to bring more for Leon and the others when he can.
Lale tells Leon to keep his extra rations a secret in case he isn’t able to come through. He also feels a bit...
PDF Summary Chapter 3: New Arrivals and New Nightmares
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Lale is fascinated by the nomadic life of these people, so different from his own. But there is one woman who stands out to him. She is older and, unlike the others, seems to have no family at the camp. One night, he finds her outside alone and sits next to her. They begin to talk, and he learns that her name, Nadya, means “hope.” She once had a son and husband, but both died of typhus years before. Lale tells her about his family. Something about Nadya reminds Lale of his mother, and he becomes overwhelmed with homesickness.
He thinks about his family, something he hasn’t allowed himself to do much of in the year he’s been gone. He prefers to think of them as safe at home, but now, he can’t help but wonder whether or not they are still safe. He reasons that there’s nothing he can do to help them, and allowing himself to fall down this rabbit hole of worry will lead to trouble. He decides that if he can’t be there for this family, he can at least be there for Nadya.
Devil in a White Coat
Lale encounters a new member of the SS staff one day while tattooing arrivals. It starts with a whistle, an eerie sound within the confines of Auschwitz. He recognizes the tune...
PDF Summary Chapter 4: Dark Days
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Inside the crematorium, Lale sees other prisoners at work, moving corpses from the gas chambers to the oven. None of them look at Lale when he passes. Lale can’t help but feel a kinship to these men. They are treated better because of the jobs they do, like him, but he knows the other prisoners don’t like them because they do the enemy’s dirty work. He wonders if they feel the same way about him.
Lale is taken to a pile of naked bodies. Death is all that exists in this room, and Lale wants out as soon as possible. Even Baretski seems unable to stomach the scene. Lale clears up the tattoo confusion and leaves the building without waiting to be excused. Baretski catches up to him and asks if Lale is okay. Lale is livid. He wants to know how many more innocent people must die at the hands of the Germans. Baretski is unfazed. He jokes that Lale is the only Jew to ever go inside an oven and leave alive.
Abuse of Power
Lale leaves the crematorium in a fury and marches toward the women’s compound, barely registering two officers who stop him along the way. He tells them he is with the political department, and they let him pass. When he reaches Gita’s block, he hands the...
PDF Summary Chapter 5: Back in the Saddle
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Disaster Strikes
It’s business as usual for Lale. Thousands of Jews are brought to the camps each week, and he and Leon have their hands full with work. He still sees Gita from time to time, but even when they aren’t together, Lale is always thinking of her. There is a strange sense of stability to Lale’s life. With his work, his life with the Romany, and his relationship with Gita, he has as much of a normal routine as he can in the camp.
But his world comes crashing down one night when he wakes up to shouting and barking dogs. Lale is stunned when he sees the Romany being forced out of the block. Thousands of them are forced onto trucks, even the children and elderly, and the ones who refuse to go are shot. Lale catches sight of Nadya. He rushes to her and asks her not to go, but she says she has no choice. She must stay with her people.
The trucks drive off, and Lale slinks against the wall. Eventually, he goes back to bed, but he can’t sleep. Lale is depressed about the Romany being taken in a way he hasn’t been since arriving, not even when he thought he was going to die. They were his family, and he suffers greatly.
The next day, Lale throws himself into...
PDF Summary Chapter 6: The Long Journey Home
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Longing for Freedom
In Vienna, the guards are even more lax than at Mauthausen. They simply tell the prisoners to find a bunk and where to get their meals. Lale keeps to himself in this new camp, having nothing in common with the other prisoners. With an unoccupied mind, Lale can’t stop thinking about Gita. He knows that moving from camp to camp is going to make it harder to catch up to her, wherever she is.
One day, two men ask Lale if he was the tattooist at Auschwitz. Lale says he was and asks who wants to know. The men say they were just curious and move on, but a few minutes later, SS officers grab Lale and take him to see the commanding officer. They pull up his sleeve, revealing his tattoo. The commander asks if Lale is Jewish. Lale says that he’s Catholic, but the officer is dubious. He asks Lale twice more if he is Jewish, seeming ready to force the truth out of him. But the subject is quickly dropped when Lale starts to take off his pants to prove he is not a Jew.
After this visit, something changes inside Lale. He’s had enough of these interrogations and decides he won’t be a prisoner for one more day. He finds a weak spot in the fence at the back of...
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PDF Summary Chapter 7: Reclaiming the Life Left Behind
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In Bratislava, Lale wanders the city thinking about what his life for the past three years was supposed to have been like here. Much of the city is destroyed, and he realizes there is nothing left for him there. He decides to head to his parents’ home in Krompachy. Without realizing that Gita is so close, Lale sets out to travel the 250 miles home. After four days of walking and hitching rides, he finally turns down his childhood street. He stands across from the house, now in a state of disrepair, wondering if there is anyone left to find.
Reunited
An old woman comes out of the house Lale is standing in front of. She carries a heavy wooden spoon and tries to chase him off. Lale explains that he used to live in the house across the street. The woman looks at him closely, and it suddenly hits her. Lale and the woman, Mrs. Molnar, embrace, neither having recognized the other after so many hard years. When she tells Lale that his sister Goldie still lives there, Lale runs to the door and bangs until it opens. Goldie faints when she sees her brother.
When Goldie regains consciousness, she cries in Lale’s arms. Neither has the ability to speak for a long time. Later,...