I don’t
understand why the story of Lale and Gita was not written as non-fiction. Why tell a fictionalized version? This latter approach leaves the reader
wondering what is true and what is the creation of the author’s imagination.
In 1942, Ludwig
Eisenberg (Lale), a Slovakian Jew, is taken to Auschwitz and becomes its
tattooist, tasked with numbering each new inmate upon arrival at the
concentration camp. It is love at first
sight when Lale tattoos the arm of a new arrival, Gita Furman. What follows is the story of how they strive
to survive their time in Auschwitz; their wish is to be together after the war.
Lale’s
portrayal makes him almost too good to be true.
As the Tätowierer, he has a rather privileged,
position in both Auschwitz and Birkenau.
He has a private room, is given extra food, and has freedom of movement
within the camps. He always shares his
extra food, and any black market items he manages to procure are used for the
benefit of others. He always responds
“with words of encouragement, trying to turn their fear into hope” and when
faced with abuse, “he tries to shrug the words off and meet the glares with a smile.” He befriends people who immediately risk much
to help him. Because of these
acquaintances who see him as “someone worth saving,” he survives typhus and
evades execution. He even manages to
manipulate Baretski, his sadistic SS guard, into doing favours for him? By his own definition, he is a hero because “’Choosing
to live is an act of defiance, a form of heroism.’”
So much is
left unexplored in this novel. For
instance, Lale says, “’I can only hope I am not one day judged a perpetrator or
a collaborator.’” Certainly there are
ambiguities in Lale’s protected position:
is he doing just what he needs to do to survive or is he facilitating
the functioning of the camps? This theme
of forced collaboration deserves more than just a mention, especially since one
inmate who has much less choice than Lale is eventually convicted as a Nazi
conspirator and sentenced to fifteen years of hard labour. Lale experiences no survivor’s guilt?
So much
about this book feels flat. There is
certainly a lack of emotional depth.
When Lale learns that thousands of Romany, many of whom are his friends,
were sent to the gas chamber, the author describes his reaction: “Lale is seeing red. He is out of control.” The romantic scenes between Lale and Gita are
reduced to romance novel clichés. The
plot follows a he-did-this and then-this-happened structure. Coincidences abound.
The author,
in a note at the end, writes about how she became close with Lale, visiting him
two or three times a week for three years.
I think the problem is she became so close to him that she could not
portray him objectively. There is also
the impression that she embellished his story in a way that makes it less
convincing. I know British prisoners of
war played football in a camp adjacent to Auschwitz, but would SS officers
really play soccer against prisoners in Auschwitz, prisoners who would have
been emaciated and exhausted?
I think
Lale and Gita’s story is worth telling; unfortunately, it is not well told
here.
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