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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 HISTORICIZING THE PAST: UNFURLING THE TRUTHS OF NAZI REGIME THROUGH HEATHER MORRIS’ THE TATTOOIST OF AUSCHWITZ
Riya mary peter
Guest Lecturer, Department of English, Catholicate College,Pathanamthitta, Kerala, India.
Email: [email protected]
Received: 14 March 2020 Revised and Accepted: 8 July 2020
ABSTRACT: History of Nazi regime provides people with the most crucial and penetrating accounts of life at the concentration camps and explains how due to the religious, ethnic discriminations, Jews are tortured and killed eventually. One name which sends chills down the society was Auschwitz and even in 2020, the stories and movies which deal with Holocaust along with the situation inside the camp are unbearable to audience. It is impossible to think and imagine the horrors of tragic cruelty harrowing widely in this place. Life was not valued and German officers acted like God because they could do whatever they want inside the camp. Most terrifying and shocking accounts have found their way into novels, where prisoners forget how to smile or rather they are denied that human right. Once they enter the camp, there is no going back. Torture cells, electrifying fence, electric bus, crematorium, death cart are the unforgettable locale in the camp discussed in Heather Morris‟ The Tattooist of Auschwitz. This 2018 novel is about the brutality, inhumanity and death prevalent in Auschwitz. The tale tells the extraordinary love story of the protagonist Lale Sokolv and Gita Furman highlighting the rampant underlying tortures in the camp. Morris essentially focuses on the condition endured by the prisoners through the autobiographical traumatic accounts of Lale in 2003. Anti-Semitism, Harassment, violence, rape, abuse remains poignant themes of the novel which forms main analysis of the paper. By historicizing the past, the paper vividly explains the politics and condition of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during the 1940s.
KEYWORDS: Nazi regime; Holocaust; Auschwitz; Traumatic; Anti-Semitic; Historicizing the past
I. INTODUCTION
A poignant reminder of the haunting horrors of war and perilous circumstances of tragedy inside the Auschwitz camp, the novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz has evidently showcased the pathetic living conditions of Jews and how they strive to survive. Heather Morris is from Te Awamutu, New Zealand, a small rural town in the middle of the North Island, now resident in while working in a large public Australia. She in her early career wrote screenplays, one of which was selected by an Academy Award-winning screenwriter in the US. In 2003, Heather met the elderly gentleman Lale which created a strong bond between them and Lale confided deepest of secrets and Holocaust horrors to Morris resulting in the publication of novel.
Ludwig Eisenberg, the one savior in the camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau, who was just twenty-four year old when he was forcefully taken away from his family in 1942. A Slovakian Jew from Krompachy, having a father, mother, sister and brother, he decided that he won‟t die in the “stinkhole” of the camp. The strong determination and survival instinct pushed him off to extreme trauma, worst living conditions but he never gave up. His Dunkrik spirit along with a strong stroke of luck saved him out of the second brutal camp in the world after Poland. Gita was obviously the reason for his salvation and coming out of the camp, at the age of 82, Lale retold the conditions and tortures he and fellow prisoners encountered:
My name is Lou Sokolov…I was born Ludwig Eisenberg. They call me Lale… I was married... Gita Sokolov…we met in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I was the tattooist “tatowierer” in Auschwitz-Birkenau. I tattooed a number on her left hand, She tattooed her name in my heart. I was twenty four years of age when taken from my parents‟ home and transported like an animal to an unknown place.
He is crying while thinking about how he was able to come out alive and how heartbroken he really is thinking about the dire condition of camps.
Numerous literatures have opened up niche for numerous data on the tragic situation and a horrific aura lurks over them as one reads and studies about them. One can‟t imagine how people live and die terribly inside them. They are just numbers and not persons to Nazi government and SS officers. During the1940s, Hitler “demanded
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 that each Jewish family hand over a child aged eighteen or older to work for the German government…It seemed that the Slovakian government was acquiescing further to Hitler, giving him whatever he wanted” (8). This process happened in all towns, finally in Krompachy making Lale to surrender for the call. The genesis of the death camps can be traced as follows:
After the start of World War II, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), the chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, implemented a policy that came to be known as the “Final Solution.” Hitler was determined not just to isolate Jews in Germany and countries annexed by the Nazis, subjecting them to dehumanizing regulations and random acts of violence. Instead, he became convinced that his “Jewish problem” would be solved only with the elimination of every Jew in his domain, along with artists, educators, Romas, communists, homosexuals, the mentally and physically handicapped and others deemed unfit for survival in Nazi Germany.
The beginning of the story shows how Lale along with others are transported to a “cattle train”. A skirmish had broken inside the train and someone is killed. Lale sees his dead body when he gets off. Someone mutters that he is “lucky bastard” because he doesn‟t have to suffer inside the camp anymore. They are transported in a cattle train and it was a journey which lasted for two days. The wagon was about two half meter wide and the back and legs of people were aching and a man is killed. It was tiresome as people crowded against each other and people with all the tension inside them made desperate efforts either to escape or to protest:
In the crowded wagon they can‟t sit, let alone lie down. Two buckets substitute for toilets. As they fill, a fight breaks out as men try to get away from the stench. The buckets are knocked over, spilling their contents. Lale clings to his suitcase, hoping that with the money and clothes he has, he might be able to buy himself out from wherever they are headed, or at the very least buy himself into a safe job. Maybe there‟ll be work where I can use my languages… He hears the grumbling of empty stomachs and the rasping of dry windpipes. He smells piss and shit and the odour of bodies too long unwashed. The men take advantage of not being thrown around to rest without the need to push and shove for a piece of turf…Another fight breaks out. Scuffling. Yells. Lale can‟t see what is going on, but he feels the squirming and pushing of bodies. Then there is silence. And from the gloom: the words, „You‟ve killed him.‟
„Lucky bastard,‟ someone mutters. (5-6)
Violence begins in the early pages when people are hit with rifles by the SS officers. Violence is rampant throughout the novel. Lale and other young men shared fear, youth and their religion and they all were angry when “the bastards (German officers) pointed rifles” at them (Jews) and “forced them into the cattle train” (4). The politics and situation of the youth in April 1942 is depicted in the first paragraph in the first chapter, “He (Any Jew) is just one among countless young men stuffed into wagons designed to transport livestock. Having been given no idea where they were headed…” (3), the inhuman way in which young Jews are “transported like an animal” denied of any rights striped of the possessions they had, devoid of possessions:
After five days of sitting around, bored, frightened, mostly bored, Lale and the others were told to gather up their possessions and were marched to the railway station. They were told nothing of where they were going. A train designed to transport cattle pulled up, and the men were ordered to climb aboard. Some objected, explaining that the filthy wagon insulted their dignity. Lale watched the response, seeing for first time his fellow countrymen raise their rifles at Jews, and strike the ones who continued protesting. He climbed onboard along with all the others. When no one else could be pushed into his wagon, Lale watched as the doors were slammed shut and heard them bolted by members of the Slovakian army, men whose job it should have been to protect him. Over and over he hears the sound of the doors being slammed and bolted, slammed and bolted.(184)
Lale and all others have to leave their belongings and clothes at the entrance and move hurriedly inside naked, “Having been forced from his home and transported like an animal, now surrounded by heavily armed SS, he is now being welcomed – welcomed!” (11).Those who move slowly are snapped and bitten by dogs. The people who are heavily exhausted, gasps and are painfully thirsty. Many people stumble as the muscles in their static legs refuse to work after the journey of two days without any particular movement. When Commandment Rudolf Hors speaks his advises or orders the people to “Work hard. Do as you are told and you will go free” as the first and only lesson, the condition of Jews is made an irony as Jews will not get out at all. Lale addresses Auschwitz and Birkenau as “new home” which is a paradox along with the German words “Arbeit Macht Frei”- Work will make you free. Both of them, obviously, are not going to happen. The long processing of men begins soon as they are required their name, address, occupation and parents‟ name and “a piece of paper with a number on it”. The painful and sudden tattooing begins and “an SS officer pulls off Lale‟s jacket rips his shirtsleeve and pushes his left forearm flat on the table”(12).The tattooing only takes a few seconds and then people are directed to a large brick building and asked to strip themselves and take a shower:
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 Hundreds of shivering men stand shoulder to shoulder as coldwater rains down on them. They tilt their heads back and drink it in desperately, despite its rankness. Many try to lessen their embarrassment by covering their genitals with their hands. Lale washes the sweat, grime and stink from his body and hair. Water hisses through the pipes and hammers the floor. When it ceases, the doors to the changing room reopen, and without command they walk back to what has now replaced their clothes – old Russian army uniforms and boots.(14)
Prisoners deprived of their identity, first by tattooing a number into their hands, then bestowing them with some old Russian army uniforms and boots, finally shaving off their hair. The SS officers assault “the naked prisoners with the end of their weapons offering insults” and “cruel laughter”. On their way to a vast area of residence, Lale also observes an electrified fence. People starve a lot during the days and no food is provided to them at all and as result “men fall asleep, stomachs rumbling”. Their sleeping „hut‟ is a large one with “triple bunks down one wall” where approximately, dozens of men lay claim to occupy: “Having had no food for days, there isn‟t much fight left in them. As best he can, Lale curls up onto the straw-filled sack that passes for a mattress. He pushes his hands against his stomach in an attempt to quell the cramps invading his guts. Several men call out to their guards, „We need food.‟”(16).Prisoners couldn‟t even piss because they are afraid that they will be shot. Aron is advised to hold on till morning as Lale heard shots outside. The next morning, prisoners assemble as whistles blow outside the huts to order everyone “outside”. Then an SS officer stands and a prisoner calls out numbers from a clipboard. Officers ask to check if anyone is left inside, but, it is clear that two of them are dead. Prisoners stand with their mouths shut obediently wanting to what officers say:
„You will have two meals a day. One in the morning and one in the evening. If you survive until evening.‟He pauses, a grim smile on his face. „After your morning meal you will work until we tell you to stop. You will continue with the construction of this camp. We have many more people to transport here.‟ His smile becomes a proud grin. „Follow the instructions of your kapo and those in charge of the building programme and you will see the sun go down.‟(22)
The first food given to the prisoners is in a small tin cup containing neither a solid nor liquid content but with some stench. The meal is nauseating and Lale describes it as “foul liquid” and “stale bread”. The job assigned to Lale is to assist men working in roof. One of them introduces himself as a Jew brought from Slovakia. Lale helps to construct an electrified fence and comes to know about all the necessary details about the camp from a Russian fellow including the fact that camp is “going to be the biggest concentration camp of all”.(34)It was a crime to be Jew and the anti-German political views are suppressed. The accommodation and luxuries for the officers is larger at Auschwitz than Birkenau. Even cigarettes or beer are readily available here.
An elaborative article “Auschwitz” pinpoints every detail about the Aushwitz-Birkenau camp -its location, its powerful officers, history, and conditions of prisoners in real- which matches exactly with Morris‟s (or Lale‟s) words:
Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, opened in 1940 and was the largest of the Nazi concentration and death camps. Located in southern Poland, Auschwitz initially served as a detention center for political prisoners. However, it evolved into a network of camps where Jewish people and other perceived enemies of the Nazi state were exterminated, often in gas chambers, or used as slave labor. Some prisoners were also subjected to barbaric medical experiments led by Josef Mengele (1911-79). During World War II (1939-45), more than 1 million people, by some accounts, lost their lives at Auschwitz. In January 1945, with the Soviet army approaching, Nazi officials ordered the camp abandoned and sent an estimated 60,000 prisoners on a forced march to other locations. When the Soviets entered Auschwitz, they found thousands of emaciated detainees and piles of corpses left behind.
SS officers address the prisoners as “bastards” treating them as inhuman as possible. They are all powerful inside the camp with ominous, threatening presence, possessing the ultimate right to kill anyone. Though the officers are way too young, they are superior to the prisoners. They treat men like „animals‟ for slaughter. The inhumanness among the officers is clearly visible in chapter fifteen in gas chambers: “Baretski(German officer) is just a kid, an uneducated kid. But Lale can‟t help wondering how he can feel nothing for the people they have just seen, the agony of death inscribed on their faces and twisted bodies” (143).SS officers are all powerful God like creatures inside the camp. They can kill anyone anywhere without anyone to question them. The brutality imposed upon Jews is inhuman and unimaginable acts: “Now Leon stares directly into Lale‟s eyes. „He cut my fucking balls off, Lale,‟ he says, his voice strong and steady. „Somehow you lose your appetite when they cut your balls off.‟”(138).Mengale cuts off Leon‟s balls off when he is taken away. The most cruelest and gruesome activities are done by the officers inside the camp and they get a sadistic pinch of happiness in the desperate helplessness of the poor prisoners. “As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, They kill us for their sport.”(King Lear Act 4, scene 1, 32–37).The SS officers are the one who keeps “determining who should live
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 and die” (139) At some juncture, Lale remarks that being friend with the “enemy” SS officer, Baretski, “brings acute shame” but he does it for survival. Baretski however is compassionate to Lale as he puts on power and attempts to kill Lale but doesn‟t as he is attached to Lale. At a certain instant, Baretski kills off three prisoners when he is in distress. No one questions Senior officers rape young beautiful women. Lale is threatened by Mengale, Herr Doktor to remember his name always as he doesn‟t seem to like Lale. His eyes are “black as coal, devoid of compassion”. Lale describes his soul as “colder than his scalpel”.
The traumatic incident which shook Lale off grounds is when he witnessed the terrible murder of “dozens of naked men” electrified in a bus. This “unimaginable act” raises an inferno of feelings raging inside Lale and he feels as if he‟s standing on “the threshold of hell”. Lale takes seven days to regain consciousness and he is saved by Aron who pulled out Lale from death cart (which means he was discarded to die in an early grave). Pepan makes it clear to Lale that this place where they sit “in a place where people are dying every day, every hour, every minute” (33).Lale calls later Birkenau “a hell of hells”. Baretski says that if Lale carries the bag with him all the time, identify himself with the two words “Politische Abteiling” no one will question him. Transports came to Auschwitz-Birkenau during all the time of the day and night and Lale have to tattoo them:
Lale and Leon have been working round the clock as the Germans storm every city, town and village and empty them of Jews; those from France, Belgium, Yugoslavia, Italy, Moravia, Greece and Norway join prisoners already taken from Germany, Austria, Poland and Slovakia. At Auschwitz they tattoo those unfortunate enough to be selected by the „medical team‟ there. Those designated to work are brought in trains to Birkenau, which saves Lale and Leon a round-trip walk of eight kilometres. But with this many new arrivals Lale is unable to collect the loot from the girls in the Canada, and Victor‟s treats go back home with him each day. Once in awhile, when the numbers are dwindling and the time of day is right... (91)
Another important aspect is that any one in possession of pen or paper is to be greeted with death.
The novel expands the horizon of picture of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp vividly through descriptions. Lale details how the camp is structured and details about the buildings inside the camp. The Canadian warehouses are the place where some girls are working to sort out the confisticated belongings of the fellow victims arriving in the camp. There is an administration block and main office. There is a death cart, Black Mary where the discarded prisoners are dropped off to die. There is a red building with “large windows” which is with “horrifying true nature” where dead bodies die over and over (141). The corpses are removed from gas chambers and put into the ovens, “a job no one on earth would volunteer for”, by Sonderkommandos. There is a large brick building inside to the “final stretch of the road to death at Birkenau”. Block 10 and 11 are notorious for its reputation as “punishment blocks” and behind the “secluded houses stands the Black Wall, the execution wall. Lale expects that he will be taken there after being tortured” (173).
The prisoners can‟t smile inside the camps the SS officers chides the girls with hatred and snarls; “Wipe the smile from your face” (66).The people are not “safe” in the camp. The people are starving inside the camp and stale food is provided. Their lives depend on being mute, with eyes down never questioning anything and on how they say nothing. Lale also metaphorizes the prisoners‟ existence to a flower as both are transient and short- lived. “Death alone persists in this place” (116).Prisoners are treated cruelly and once, asked to play football to lose.
“Lale disturbingly gives a sketch of how distraught the condition of woman is during the Holocaust is”; the state of young women noted as “broken, damaged young women” are also highlighted, they are even denied of the right of giving birth as Gita says that she‟s “all mixed up inside”:
He(Lale) knows they will never grow to be the women they were meant to be. Their futures have been derailed and there will be no getting back on the same track. The visions they once had of themselves, as daughters, sisters, wives and mothers, workers, travellers, and lovers, will forever be tainted by what they‟ve witnessed and endured. …each row of distraught women.(211)
Dozens of girls are brought at Auschwitz-Birkenau and are been forced to be naked in order to be examined by some and also they closely evaluated by the beastly eyes of superior officers, Mengele in order to find „good‟ girls to have sex. These exhausted girls with vacant silent faces approach Lale for tattooing. “Mengele is examining one of the girls, roughly” (127) The novels provides crisp detailing to the cruelty and brutality inflicted on female bodies during war. Mercilessly men run their hands over the ladies. He admits that he is “keeping” certain women and he is to do their “numbers”. He even threatens Lale that one day; he will “take him” down:
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 The first thing he sees as he rounds the corner of the building is the wire fence that encloses part of the back yard. Slowly he registers small movements in the enclosed area. He stumbles forward, transfixed at what lies beyond the fence: girls, dozens of them, naked – many lying down, some sitting, some standing, hardly any of them moving. Paralysed, Lale watches as a guard comes into the enclosure and walks through the girls, picking up their left arms, looking for a number, one possibly made by Lale. Finding the girl he wants, the guard drags her through the bodies. Lale looks at the girls „faces. Vacant. Silent. He notices several leaning against the wire fence. Unlike the other fences at Auschwitz and Birkenau, this one is not electrified. The option of self destruction has been taken from them. (126)
The Sonderkommandos stands at the gate of the red brick building with horrifying chimneys ready to “do” (141). At that point Lale realizes how there is a differentiation between privileged officers and poor prisoners. The Germans counter Lale as the “other”, a stereotype different from them. Inside the building is the cruelest “agony of death” Lale has ever witnessed:
Bodies, hundreds of naked bodies, fill the room. They are piled up on each other, their distorted. Dead eyes stare. Men, young and old; children at the bottom. Blood, vomit, urine and faeces. The smell of death pervades the entire space. Lale tries to holds his breath. His lungs burn. His legs threaten to give way beneath him. Behind him Baretski says, „Shit.‟ That one word from a sadist only deepens the well of inhumanity that Lale is drowning in. (142)
When Baretski utters “shit” as a response to the brutal sight, Lale sinks deep into the sadness and makes the “well of inhumanity” where Lale is slowly drowning in. Baretski is a “sadist” according to Lale. Lale is “the only Jew who ever walked into an oven and then walked back out of it” (143) and the SS officers are just kids who get to control all the elderly prisoners.
The punishment meted out to the prisoners who try to escape the camp, they will be straight way hanged to escape. This aids the others in their survival with enough food which is the most necessary key in the camp. Such a situation is revealed in a conversation between Lale and a boy who is to be hanged on later. Another camp “Mauthausen, in Austria is not as terrible as Auschwitz-Birkenau”.
In Chapter 17, a vivid description is given out of how people die each minute just like Lale told that we are alive in a place where death is everywhere and people die each moment. People are killed brutally every time using different ways:
The months that follow are particularly harsh. Prisoners die in all manner of ways. Many are taken by disease, malnutrition and exposure to the cold. A few make it to an electrified fence, killing themselves. Others are shot by a tower guard before they can. The gas chambers and crematoria are also working overtime, and Lale and Leon‟s tattooing stations teem with people as tens of thousands are transported to Auschwitz and Birkenau. (157)
The SS officers Baretski threatens to shot Lale if he couldn‟t produce a pair of nylon stockings to him for his girlfriend‟s birthday.
Merciless politics happen when people joyfully approach a U.S Air force aircraft. Bullets are showered upon the prisoners when they rejoice themselves are unexpectedly shot down: “Lale begins to back up against a nearby building. Only just in time. Bullets rain down from the towers onto those in the compound, hitting dozens of people too slow to move to safety” (163). Lale notes that the guards are “trigger-happy” which show how cynical the guards are. Younger boys and girls suffered bullet wounds. They don‟t consider whether old/young, girl/boy, good/bad etc...but just killed all. The inhumanness is rearticulated here, the sight adds to the “silent state of trauma” in them for the rest of their lives if they survive at all. Lale sees “the small lifeless forms being…”and gets disturbed.
The conditions were changing politically for all the Jewish citizens when Nazi‟s came into power. The culmination of the division between any two races in the world is tiresome for humane people. Lale, the protagonist of the novel lead a pretty wonderful life in Krompachy. In camp, he reminisces himself partying with ladies and how convincing he was around people. All the time he lived in the nostalgia of past and the beautiful memories of his mother. Towards the middle of the story readers gets an idea of the life Lale had lead and how colorful life before the camp was for Jews. Now the recent of “BLACK LIVES MATTER” is the modern manifestation of the 1940‟s Nazi /Jew binary:
And yet here he is now. Two years have passed. He lives in a community largely split into two – Jewish and Romani –identified by their race, not their nationality, and this is something Lale still cannot understand.
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 Nations threaten other nations. They have the power, they have the military. How can a race spread out across multiple countries be considered a threat? For as long as he lives, be it short or long, he knows he will never comprehend this. (168)
When Lale is caught red-handed with the gems and the currency under his mattress, he is produced before Houstek Oberscharfuheur, the contents of his bags displayed over the desk. The crime, it confirmed that he is going to die. The officer Houstek is revengeful to Lale as he discloses his hatred to Lale for assurance of infinite punishment. The punishment meted out to Lale is pathetic:
Lale is dragged from the office. He tries to keep pace with the SS officers. But halfway across the compound he gives up and sacrifices the skin on the top of his feet to the gravel. The officers open the door to Block 31 and toss him inside before taking their leave. Lale lies on the floor, exhausted in body andsoul. Several inmates approach him cautiously. Two try to help him up, but Lale cries out in pain and they stop. One of the men pulls up Lale‟s shirt, revealing the large welts across his back and buttocks. More gently this time they pick him up and place him on a bunk. He soon falls asleep.(181-182)
But if the tatowierer is found with this much brutally, it needs to be pondered what normal citizens will undergo if they do some crime. Chapter 22 showcases the internal condition of politics and life of people in the camp from the point of view of an eye-witness:
Thousands of Hungarian Jews are now arriving in Auschwitz and Birkenau every week. As a result, unrest breaks out in both the men‟s and women‟s camps. Lale has worked out why. The higher the number on a person‟s arm, the less respect they receive from everyone else. Every time another nationality arrives in large numbers, turf wars ensue. Gita has told him about the women‟s camp. The Slovakian girls, who have been in there longest, resent the Hungarian girls, who refuse to accept that they aren‟t entitled to the same small perks that the Slovakians have worked hard to negotiate. She and her friends feel that surviving what they have should count for something. They have, for example, obtained casual clothing from the Canada. No more blue-and- white striped pyjamas for them. And they are not prepared to share. The SS do not take sides when fights break out; all involved are punished with an equal lack of mercy: denied their meager food rations; they might be flogged, sometimes just the one blow with a rifle butt or swagger stick, at other times they are beaten savagely, while their fellow prisoners are forced to look on.(197)
Horror filled scenes fill up the page through the book. Towards the end, people are forced to move out from the camp to somewhere, it is not disclosed where but one can imagine that they would not live long. All the men, women and infant are “shoved brutally into the night... Thousands of people are herded out nearby trucks get on truck!”(199)When Lale enquires where are they being taken, officer asks him do he too want to join them. Lale sinks into the shallowness of depression “paralyzed” after seeing this scene that “sleep will not come” in the “eerily silent block”. After this incident, Lale sinks deep into depression but recovers soon. Towards the end, the news of Russians coming to liberate the camp reaches everyone and there is a “glimmer of hope” (206) Heather Morris recounts that Lale was very sad when he talked about the Auschwitz days:
Part of Lale‟s burden passed to me as I sat with him at his kitchen table, this dear man with his trembling hands, his quivering voice, his eyes that still moistened sixty years after experiencing these most horrifying events in human history… As the teller of Lale‟s story, it became important for me to identify how memory and history sometimes waltz in step and sometimes strain to part, to present not a lesson in history, of which there are many, but a unique lesson in humanity...Getting to know a person for whom such terrible facts had been a lived reality made them all the more horrific. There was no parting of memory and history for this beautiful old man – they waltzed perfectly in step. (259)
An extraordinary document of world history, a real life experience of a traumatized man and a tale accounting the viciousness meted out to several dead young men and women, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, with its rarest story of Holocaust brings out the scariest spine-chilling times, hopelessness and dearth of birdsong. Irish Times remarked the book as “A valuable historical account, this is both a fresh reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust and an ode to the persistence of humanity even in the darkest of times.” The historisation of the past with its strong articulation of real historical facts, the novel has lighted upon the horrors of Auschwitz camp clearly. During 1940s, Germany demanded to send Jewish children eighteen or above to the nightmarish camps. Every single detail of camp, attitude of German officers and the conditions in which Jews strived with difficulty is portrayed in here. Lale with other survivors “sit in a place where people are dying every day, every hour, every minute” which marks the meager chances of survival. The novel has chronicled life of a survivor Lale Eisenberg in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp who is the representation of all Jews of that time, with most of them unable to survive the camp. The anti-Semitic values and attitudes exhibited by Germans to Jews is history and
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ISSN- 2394-5125 VOL 7, ISSUE 13, 2020 the novel enables readers to analyze this brutal history of Nazi regime where Jews are not „humans but animals‟ who can be slaughtered unlawfully and relentlessly inside the camps in lucid terms.
II. CONCLUSION
Youth, a time when young men and women indulge themselves in wild fantasies, chocolates, timely pleasures, flowers and enjoy attention from others. Only the pursuit of the „self‟ matters at that time and young people seek to explore their lives in their twenties and thirties, which is the colorful time of their life. But in 1940s Germany, the Nazi regime has subverted this image drastically and terribly that the young Jews do not recognize themselves their true self any more due to identity crisis, trauma and displacement. The politics of the country reduced them into a combination of numbers, unidentified by name, dead by time and lost in memory. The anti- Semitism, Holocaust and grave condition of prisoners in Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in skillfully and exactly depicted in Heather Morris‟ novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz by the prototype of Lale Eisenberg „the man who survived‟. The paper has analyzed how Morris has carved an exact replica of the historical period which was the most horrific event in the human history, explaining every detail of the circumstances, environment, and state of prisoners vividly. Cutting off men‟s balls, evaluating naked, being a sex slave, getting electrified, being thrown into the death cart, shot at while urinating, beaten mercilessly, living on edges of hunger etc...are some of the deadly details of the Holocaust. No one can bear to live in this condition and readers after completing reading are forced to be thankful that they did not have to encounter a Hitler or the Nazi regime. The novel is an eye- opener to all the modern readers and through the paper, one who wants to know the 1940s politics in Germany and anti-Semitic composition of Jews is contended within the paper to acquire its particular minute analysis of historical streaks of the Nazi regime period and cruelty of Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.
III. REFERENCES
[1] “About Heather.” Heather Morris, 2019, www.heathermorrisauthor.com/about-heather/. [2] Editors, History.com. "Auschwitz." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 15 Dec. 2009. Web. 01 July 2020.
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