The Tattooist of Auschwitz - book club discussion

[ufcasey]

Sorry this is a day late, all the impeachment stuff had me distracted LOL!

So this month's book club pick is The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. Please feel free to just discuss whatever you would like to about the book. I feel weird about posting book discussion questions this time because of the 'based on a true story' nature of the book.

[ufcasey]

Tagging people who may have read this book:
bullygirl979, TR, dontlook, just, sarahswim, travella, rainbowchip, Nonny

[ufcasey]

Alright I will start this off because I have a feeling it will be an unpopular opinion: I kinda of hated this book on several levels.

1) This is a real man and woman's life that this book was based on and yet it was partially fictionalized for no discernible reason. I mean, even his name! It's Lali, not Lale as shown in the book. Online I could only find that the author gives the one example of what parts she fictionalized: she said she wrote that Lali and Gita were together when a plane flys overhead but in reality they were not together when that happened. That's a random thing to choose to change, and it did not in any way improve the story so why change that? And what else was also changed? Quite a lot as far as the Auschwitz Museum is concerned. Which isn't something that I think should be considered lightly because a lot of people are going to read this and assume that perhaps only the names of minor characters or perhaps the dialogue are invented. It's tricky to say something as important as a story placed in the Holocaust is BASED on a true story because you run the risk of unintentionally altering people's perceptions of the real Holocaust. And so to choose to run the risk of doing that you should have a compelling reason to make changes - and I found nothing that warranted it. I think Lali's story would have been more impactful if we learned his actual non-fictional account as he gave it to the author over a three year span of time.

2) I am not putting down the value of Lali and Gita's story, but I would not recommend their story to be the ONLY 'true' story someone reads about Auschwitz, even when ignoring some of the aforementioned concerns about fictionalized parts. Why? Because their story is the exception not the rule to how life was for those in Auschwitz, particularly in regards to Lali. They starved, they didn't get extra rations like he did. They didn't have access to extra clothes from 'Canada', they froze in the winter. They didn't have access to money/jewels that they could barter for food and other goods from workers who lived on the outside, they just survived on what meager things were provided by the Nazis. They didn't have jobs that were not labor intensive like being a tattooist or working in the heated administration building, instead they mostly did very labor intensive jobs under cruel conditions. They didn't have a bed to themselves like Lali did, they shared a 'bed' with 6 people or more that would maybe only fit three people comfortably. They had major issues with lice and rats and illness and no access to medicine. I hate to say this because it feels like it's denigrating his experience, but he had it mostly physically easy compared to majority of the other prisoners. So I feel like ONLY reading his story would give this false impression that it was bad but not as bad as it really was for most people who were imprisoned there.

3) The writing is terrible. I'm sorry, it reads like a YA book. Supposedly the author at first wanted this to be a screenplay because she is a screenplay writer and then she tried turning it into a novel and it shows. At no point did I get emotional during this book. And it's about the HOLOCAUST! It's like she was depending on the actors to emote the scene and didn't know how to write it emotionally.


I will say that I have a high bar for any fictional book written about the Holocaust. Mainly due to the fact that my Grandfather and several of his siblings managed to survive the war through various ways but unfortunately his parents and his two youngest siblings were murdered at Auschwitz. So this is a bit more personal to me and I have visited Auschwitz. I would recommend reading other books, particularly non-fiction books on this subject. My go to recommendation is Rena's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz. It reads like fiction, but it's non-fiction and that makes it all the more terrible and inspiring.

[minzy]

I didn’t love it either. After reading the earlier link that was posted, I also felt like the author manipulated the story. I don’t know why she did that and it made me think less of the book. As for the writing, I also did not feel as attached to the characters as I might have if it was told differently. I really only felt a little emotional when Gita finally blurted out her last name when she thought he was going to be killed. It seemed unrealistic to me that they were able to sneak away so frequently and he was able to transfer the gems and food all the time, usually without consequence. Obviously they went on to be free and marry and have a child and live together for decades, but at the beginning it seemed the power balance was tilted way in favor of him. I think he was nine years older than her, and even though he did not identify with them at all, he assisted the Nazis. Would she even have had a choice at first if she wasn’t also interested in him?

The episodes highlighted were so horrible. May we never, ever return to such depraved treatment of other human beings. ☹️

[dontlook]

I liked the book but I did have a hard time until I realized it was written by a screenwriter. Once I got that piece of info I spent my time picturing how it would play out if I were watching a movie (I don’t know if that makes sense).

I didn’t know all of the stuff about her changing parts until well after I read it so with that info I probably wouldn’t recommend it to others.

It didn’t make emotional which is odd given the subject matter. Some of it seemed highly unlikely to have happened the way it was written but I excused it based on the fact that memories aren’t always perfect.

I never felt like the book was trying to educate me on the holocaust, but tell a love story that happened during the holocaust so I don’t take issue with the author getting facts wrong other than it makes her seem lazy not to research better. It didn’t hinder my ability to enjoy the love story. Again, I wouldn’t recommend it under the pretense of a great holocaust story.

Those are my very rambling thoughts. I read the book back in December 2018 or early January 2019 so it’s been a while since I read it.

[rainbowchip]

I enjoyed the book. I read it really quickly. It kept me interested in knowing what happened to these characters.

I didn't realize it was based on a true story until the end. I spent most of the book thinking that there was no way this guy would have gotten that lucky. So I was surprised when I got to the end and found out that it did happen.

I don't really have an opinion on the changes made. Part of me agrees, why change it. But "true stories" take artistic licenses all the time for various reasons. I think this book was labeled as a historical fiction so I wouldn't expect it to be a biography or memoir.

[CrazyLucky]

This one was just ok for me. I like historical fiction, but don't like romances, and it was more romance than historical to me. The part that I did like, if that's the right word, was seeing what the concentration camp was like for Lale. When I read about terrible things like the Holocaust, it's usually more of a macro picture. So hearing from his point of view what the train ride was like, how he felt tattooing the elderly, seeing the men gassed on the bus. You don't often read the survivor's perspective.
The Holocaust is obviously disturbing and horrible on the macro level, but then reading about it on the micro level gives it another level of evil. The guards didn't have to shoot at prisoners while the were trying to poop or just for no reason at all. The part about Mengele is really just revolting. I'm glad there wasn't a whole lot of detail about him.

[wildrice]

I liked the book fine, but ufcasey's second point is exactly what bothered me about it. I feel like the comforts described were probably exaggerated? I definitely got the feeling that it was bad and hard being there, but not quite as awful as what's been described in so many other books.

I listened to the audiobook, which probably helped with the screenwriter problem. It was read by actors and they did a good job with the characters so the writing didn't bother me.

I don't know. I didn't feel a strong love for the book, but I didn't hate it either. I think it was interesting, if unbelievable. I can't believe it is based on a true story. I just feel like so much was likely embellished.

[Nonny]

I liked it OK, but after thinking about it more I ended up going back on Goodreads and revising my star rating down to a 2, because it annoyed me that the author couldn't be bothered to do some basic fact checking.  I've read a lot of WWII and holocaust history (fiction and non-fiction; my high school history teacher was obsessed, and he happened to be married to my AP English teacher), so I when stuff didn't ring true as I was reading it, I wasn't super surprised to find articles debunking some of the exaggerations.

[Nonny]

Oct 1, 2019 9:15:05 GMT -5 CrazyLucky said:

This one was just ok for me. I like historical fiction, but don't like romances, and it was more romance than historical to me. The part that I did like, if that's the right word, was seeing what the concentration camp was like for Lale. When I read about terrible things like the Holocaust, it's usually more of a macro picture. So hearing from his point of view what the train ride was like, how he felt tattooing the elderly, seeing the men gassed on the bus. You don't often read the survivor's perspective.
The Holocaust is obviously disturbing and horrible on the macro level, but then reading about it on the micro level gives it another level of evil. The guards didn't have to shoot at prisoners while the were trying to poop or just for no reason at all. The part about Mengele is really just revolting. I'm glad there wasn't a whole lot of detail about him.

Except that the part about the men gassed on the bus likely wasn't true (pg 10-11, second column), and Mengele was an absolute shit person, but it's also doubtful he castrated that guy (pg 10-11, mid-bottom first column). (Mengele kept horrifically detailed records, so I'm willing to take their word on this over this author who had already take numerous liberties with the history.)

view.joomag.com/memoria-en-no-14-11-2018/0766192001543510530/p6?short

I know that Eli Weisel is problematic, but his story, Night, was one of the first first-person accounts I read of the actual camps and trains, and that kind of framed my thinking of the camps from when I was a teenager.  Especially when followed by seeing Schindler's List around the same time.

[aurora]

I told several people partway through (before coming in to this thread!) that the writing was jaring for the story. I didn't put it together until afterwards that she wanted to write a screenplay, but it makes a lot of sense now. The sentences are just so short and to-the-point, and I felt like the writing didn't evoke the horrors of the Holocaust (though obviously the words did).

I didn't read the controversy with the Auschwitz Museum until after I finished. I guess I don't mind changing some storytelling elements like whether two individuals were together when the planes flew overhead (as long as the book isn't categorized as non-fiction), but on the other hand it seems like it's fairly close to non-fiction,* so what it's the actual value of changing those facts? In the end, I was left confused about what she was really trying to do.

*By which I mean: the list of factual errors published by the Auschwitz Museum wasn't that long, and none of them seemed like they would change the story of Lali's and Gita's love