The Tattooist of Auschwitz

by Heather Morris

Lale looks at these young women and realizes that there is nothing left to say. They were brought to this camp as girls, and now—not one of them having yet reached the age of twenty-one—they are broken, damaged young women. He 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, travelers, and lovers, will forever be tainted by what they’ve witnessed and endured.

  He leaves them to go in search of Baretski and information about what the next day will bring. The officer is nowhere to be found. Lale trudges back to his block, where he finds the Hungarian men anxious and worried. He tells them what he knows, but it’s of little comfort.

  * * *

  IN THE NIGHT, SS OFFICERS ENTER EVERY BLOCK IN THE women’s camp and paint a bright-red slash down the back of each girl’s coat. Once again, the women are marked for whatever fate awaits them. Gita, Dana, Cilka, and Ivana take comfort in all of them having been marked alike. Whatever happens tomorrow will happen to all of them—together they will live or die.

  * * *

  SOMETIME DURING THE NIGHT LALE FINALLY FELL ASLEEP. He is woken by a great commotion. It takes a few moments for the noises to penetrate his groggy brain. Memories of the night the Romany were taken flood back. What is this new horror? The sounds of rifle shots jolt him fully awake. Putting on his shoes and wrapping a blanket around his shoulders, he cautiously goes outside. Thousands of women prisoners are being corralled into rows. There is obvious confusion, as if neither guards nor prisoners know quite what is expected. The SS pay Lale no attention as he walks quickly up and down the rows of women, who are bunched together from the cold and in fear of what is to come. Snow continues to fall. Running is impossible. Lale watches as a dog snaps at the legs of one woman and brings her to the ground. A friend reaches down to help her to her feet, but the SS officer holding the dog draws his pistol and shoots the fallen woman.

  Lale hurries on, looking down the rows, searching, desperate. Finally he sees her. Gita and her friends are being pushed toward the main gates, clinging to each other, but he can’t see Cilka among them, or anywhere in the sea of faces. He focuses back on Gita. She has her head down, and Lale can tell by the movement of her shoulders that she is sobbing. At last she is crying, but I can’t comfort her. Dana spots him. She pulls Gita toward the outside of their row and points Lale out to her. Gita finally looks up and sees him. Their eyes meet, hers wet, pleading, his full of sorrow. Focused on Gita, Lale doesn’t see the SS officer. He is unable to move out of the way of the rifle that swings at him, connecting with his face and sending him to his knees. Gita and Dana both scream and try to force their way back through the column of women. To no avail. They are swept up in the tide of moving bodies. Lale struggles to his feet, blood streaming down his face from a large gash above his right eye. Frantic now, he plunges into the moving crowd, searching each row of distraught women. As he gets near the gates, he sees her again—within arm’s length. A guard steps in front of him and pushes the muzzle of his rifle into Lale’s chest.

  “Gita!” he screams.

  Lale’s world is spinning. He looks up at the sky, which seems only to be getting darker as the morning breaks. Above the noise of screaming guards and barking dogs, he hears her.

  “Furman. My name is Gita Furman!”

  Sinking to his knees in front of the unmoving guard, he shouts, “I love you.”

  Nothing comes back. Lale remains on his knees. The guard moves away. The cries of the women have stopped. The dogs cease barking.

  The gates of Birkenau are shut.

  Lale kneels in the snow, which continues to fall heavily. Blood from the wound in his forehead covers his face. He’s locked in, alone. He’s failed. An officer comes over to him. “You’ll freeze to death. Come on, go back to your block.”

  He reaches a hand down and pulls Lale to his feet. An act of kindness from the enemy at the eleventh hour.

  * * *

  CANNON FIRE AND EXPLOSIONS WAKE LALE THE NEXT MORNING. He rushes outside with the Hungarians, to be greeted by panicked SS and a chaos of prisoners and captors on the move, seemingly oblivious to each other.

  The main gates are wide open.

  Hundreds of prisoners walk through, unchallenged. Dazed, weak from malnourishment. Some stumble around and then choose to return to their block to escape the cold. Lale walks through gates he has been through hundreds of times before on the way to Auschwitz. A train is standing nearby, belching smoke into the sky, ready to leave. Guards and dogs begin rounding up men and pushing them toward the train. Lale gets caught up in the scrum and finds himself scrambling aboard. The gates of his wagon are slammed closed. He pushes his way to the side and peers out. Hundreds of prisoners are still wandering around aimlessly. As the train pulls away, he sees SS open fire on those who remain.

  He stands, staring through the slats of the wagon, through the snow falling heavily, mercilessly, as Birkenau disappears.

  25

  GITA AND HER FRIENDS ARE ON THE MARCH WITH THOUSANDS of other women from Birkenau and Auschwitz, trudging along a narrow track through ankle-deep snow. As carefully as they can, Gita and Dana search the rows, all too aware that any straggling is dealt with by a bullet. They ask a hundred times, “Have you seen Cilka? Have you seen Ivana?” The answer is always the same. The women try to support each other by linking arms. At seemingly random times, they are halted and told to take a rest. Despite the cold they sit in the snow, anything to give their feet some relief. Many remain there when the order to move on comes: dead or dying, unable to take another step.

  Day becomes night, and still they march. Their numbers dwindle, which only makes it harder to escape the watchful eye of the SS. During the night, Dana drops to her knees. She can go on no longer. Gita stops with her and for a while they are unseen, screened by other women. Dana keeps telling Gita to go on, to leave her. Gita protests. She would rather die here with her friend, in a field somewhere in Poland. Four young girls offer to help carry Dana. Dana will not hear of it. She tells them to take Gita and go. As an SS officer advances on them, the four girls pull Gita to her feet and drag her with them. Gita looks back at the officer, who has stopped beside Dana but moves on without drawing his pistol. No shot rings out. Clearly he thinks she is already dead. The girls continue to drag Gita. They will not let her go as she attempts to break free and get back to Dana.

  Through the dark, the women stumble on, the sound of random shots barely even registering now. No longer do they turn around to see who has fallen.

  As day breaks, they are brought to a halt in a field by a train track. An engine and several cattle wagons stand waiting. They brought me here. Now they will take me away, thinks Gita.

  She has learned that the four girls she is now traveling with are Polish and not Jewish. Polish girls who were taken from their families for reasons they do not know. They come from four different towns and hadn’t known each other before Birkenau.

  Across the field stands a lone house. Behind it, a dense wood spreads out. SS bark out orders as the train engine is stoked with coal. The Polish girls turn to Gita. One of them says, “We’re going to make a run for that house. If we get shot, then we will die here, but we’re not going any farther. Do you want to come with us?”

  Gita stands up.

  Once the girls are running, they don’t look back. The act of loading thousands of exhausted women onto the train takes all the guards’ attention. The door to the house is opened before they reach it. Inside, they collapse in front of a roaring fire, adrenaline and relief surging through them. Hot drinks are placed in their hands, along with bread. The Polish girls talk frantically to the homeowners, who shake their heads in disbelief. Gita says nothing, not wanting her accent to give away the fact that she isn’t Polish. It’s better their saviors think she is one of them—the quiet one. The man of the house says they can’t stay with them, as the Ge
rmans often search the premises. He tells them to take their coats off. He takes them out behind the house. When he returns, the red slashes are gone and the coats smell of petrol.

  Outside, they hear repeated shooting, and peering through the curtains, they watch as all the surviving women are finally herded onto the train. Bodies litter the snow beside the tracks. The man gives the girls the address of a relative in a nearby village, as well as a supply of bread and a blanket. They leave the house and enter the woods, where they spend the night on the freezing ground, curled up together in a vain attempt to stay warm. The bare trees provide little in the way of protection, either from being seen or from the elements.

  * * *

  IT IS EARLY EVENING BEFORE THEY ARRIVE IN THE NEXT VILLAGE. The sun has gone down, and the weak streetlamps cast little light. They are forced to ask a passerby for help finding the address they have been given. The kind woman takes them to the house they seek and stays with them while they knock on the door.

  “Look after them,” she says when the door opens, and walks away.

  A woman stands aside as the girls enter her home. Once the door is closed, they explain who sent them here.

  “Do you know who that was just now?” the woman stammers.

  “No,” one of the girls answers.

  “She’s SS. A senior SS officer.”

  “Do you think she knows who we are?”

  “She’s not stupid. I’ve heard stories about her being one of the cruelest people in the concentration camps.”

  An elderly woman comes out of the kitchen.

  “Mother, we have some guests. These poor things were in one of the camps. We must give them something warm to eat.”

  The older woman makes a fuss over the girls, taking them into the kitchen, sitting them at the table. Gita can’t remember the last time she sat on a chair at a kitchen table. The older woman ladles hot soup for them from a stove and then peppers them with questions. The owners decide it is not safe for them to stay here. They are afraid the SS officer will report the girls’ presence.

  The older woman excuses herself and leaves the house. A short while later, she returns with a neighbor. Her house has both a roof cavity and a cellar. She is willing to let the five of them sleep in the roof. With the heat from the fireplace rising, it will be warmer up there than in the cellar. They won’t be able to stay in the house during the day, though, as every house can be searched at any time by the Germans, even though they seem to be retreating.

  Gita and her four Polish friends sleep in the roof space each night and spend the days hiding in the nearby woods. Word sweeps through the small village, and the local priest has his parishioners bring food to the house’s owner each day. After a few weeks the remaining Germans are flushed out by the advancing Russian soldiers, several of whom set up house in the property directly opposite where Gita and her friends sleep. One morning, the girls are late leaving for the woods and are stopped by a Russian standing guard outside the building. They show him their tattoos and try to explain where they have been and how they are here now. Sympathetic to their plight, he offers to place a guard outside the house. This means they no longer have to spend their days in the woods. Where they live is no longer a secret, and they receive a smile or a wave from the soldiers when they come and go.

  One day one of the soldiers asks Gita a direct question, and when she answers he immediately recognizes that she isn’t Polish. She tells him she is from Slovakia. That evening, he knocks on the door and introduces a young man dressed in a Russian uniform but who is in fact from Slovakia. The two of them talk into the night.

  The girls have been pushing their luck in staying by the fire later into the evening. A degree of complacency has set in. One evening, they are caught off guard when the front door bursts open and a drunk Russian staggers in. The girls can see their “guard” lying unconscious outside. Waving a pistol, the intruder singles out one of the girls and attempts to rip her clothes off. At the same time, he drops his trousers. Gita and the others scream. Several Russian soldiers burst into the room. Seeing their comrade on top of one of the girls, one of them pulls out his pistol and shoots him in the head. He and his comrades drag the would-be rapist from the house, apologizing profusely.

  Traumatized, the girls decide they must move on. One of them had a sister living in Krakow. Maybe she is still there. As a further apology for the attack the previous night, a senior Russian soldier arranges a driver and a small truck to take them to Krakow.

  * * *

  THEY FIND THE SISTER STILL LIVING IN HER SMALL APARTMENT above a grocery store. The flat is crowded with people, friends who had fled the city and are now returning, homeless. No one has any money. To get by, they visit a market every day and each person steals one item of food. From these pickings they make a nightly meal.

  One day at the market, Gita’s ears prick up at the sound of her native language being spoken by a truck driver unloading produce. She learns from him that several trucks travel every week from Bratislava to Krakow, bringing fresh fruit and vegetables. He accepts her request to travel back with them. She runs and tells the people she has been living with that she is leaving. Saying goodbye to the four friends she escaped with is very difficult. They come with her to the market and wave her off as the truck carrying her and two of her countrymen leaves in the direction of a host of unknowns. She has long accepted that her parents and two young sisters are dead, but she prays that at least one of her brothers has survived. Becoming partisan fighters for the Russians might have kept them safe.

  * * *

  IN BRATISLAVA, JUST AS IN KRAKOW, GITA JOINS OTHER SURVIVORS of the camps in crowded shared apartments. She registers her name and address with the Red Cross, having been told that all returning prisoners are doing this in the hope they can find missing relatives and friends.

  One afternoon she looks out of her apartment window to see two young Russian soldiers jumping over the back fence into the property where she lives. She is terrified, but as they come closer she recognizes her two brothers, Doddo and Latslo. Running down the stairs, she flings open the door and hugs them with all her strength. They dare not stay, they tell her. Even though the Russians liberated the town from the Germans, the locals are suspicious of anyone wearing a Russian uniform. Not wanting to spoil the brief sweetness of their reunion, Gita keeps what she knows about the rest of the family to herself. They will find out soon enough, and this is not something to be spoken of in a few snatched minutes.

  Before they separate, Gita tells them how she, too, has worn a Russian uniform: it was the first clothing she was given on arrival at Auschwitz. She says she looked better in it than they do, and they all laugh.

  26

  LALE’S TRAIN MOVES ACROSS THE COUNTRYSIDE. HE LEANS against the compartment wall, fiddling with the two pouches tied inside his trousers that contain the gems he’s risked bringing with him. The bulk of them he left under his mattress. Whoever searches his room can have them.

  Later that evening, the train grinds to a halt and rifle-toting SS order everyone to scramble out, just as they had nearly three years ago in Birkenau. Another concentration camp. One of the men in Lale’s wagon jumps down with him.

  “I know this place. I’ve been here before.”

  “Yeah?” Lale says.

  “Mauthausen, in Austria. Not quite as terrible as Birkenau, but nearly.”

  “I’m Lale.”

  “Joseph, pleased to meet you.”

  Once the men have all disembarked, the SS wave them through, telling them to go and find themselves a place to sleep. Lale follows Joseph into a block. The men here are starving—skin-covered skeletons—yet they still have enough life in them to be territorial.

  “Piss off, there’s no room in here.”

  One man per bunk, each has claimed his space and looks prepared to fight to defend it. Two more blocks elicit the same response. Finally they find one with more space and claim their turf. As others come into the block, searching f
or a place to sleep, they call out the accepted greeting: “Piss off, we’re full here.”

  The next morning, Lale sees men from the blocks near him lining up. He realizes he is to be strip-searched and asked for information about who he is and where he has come from. Again. From his gem pouches, he takes the three largest diamonds and puts them in his mouth. He rushes to the back of the block while the rest of the men are still gathering and scatters the remaining gems there. The inspection of the line of naked men begins. He watches the guards yanking open the mouths of those before him, so he rolls the diamonds under his tongue. He has his mouth open before the inspecting party reaches him. After a quick glance, they walk on by.

  * * *

  FOR SEVERAL WEEKS LALE, ALONG WITH ALL THE OTHER PRISONERS, sits around doing virtually nothing. Almost all he can do is watch, in particular the SS guarding them, and he tries to work out who can be approached and who must be avoided. He starts to talk occasionally to one of them. The guard is impressed that Lale speaks fluent German. He has heard about Auschwitz and Birkenau but has not been there, and wants to hear about it. Lale paints a picture removed from reality. Nothing can be gained by telling this German the true nature of the treatment of prisoners there. He tells him what he did there and how he much preferred to work than to sit around. A few days later, the guard asks him if he’d like to move to a subcamp of Mauthausen, at Saurer-Werke in Vienna. Thinking it cannot be any worse than here, and with assurances from the guard that conditions are slightly better and the commandant is too old to care, Lale accepts the offer. The guard points out that this camp does not take Jews, so he should keep quiet about his religion.

  The next day the guard tells Lale, “Gather your things. You’re out of here.”

  Lale looks around. “Gathered.”

  “You leave by truck in about an hour. Line up at the gate. Your name is on the list,” he laughs.

  “My name?”

  “Yes. You need to keep your arm with its number hidden, OK?”