In April 1942, Lale Sokolov, a 25-year-old man from Slovakia, finds himself on a cattle train heading into the night. For five days, Lale and hundreds of men are shuttled cross-country in carriages packed so tightly with bodies, they have to stand for the entire journey. Lale, like most of the young men on the train, has volunteered to work for the Germans in exchange for his family’s safety.
Lale is dressed in a suit and tie. He believes in dressing well and making a good first impression. In his suitcase, he’s packed his other suits and books from his mother. He also has a small sum of money stuffed into his suit pocket. He hopes that between the money, his ability to speak 6 languages, and his professional appearance, he’ll be able to secure a high-level job once they reach the labor camp.
At last, the train stops, and the men are herded off. In front of them stands the gates to Auschwitz, the concentration camp that will take many of their lives in the years to come. The men are told to leave their possessions by the train. Some men refuse and are shot on the spot. Lale sets his suitcase down and joins the line of men waiting to get tattooed with their camp numbers. He wonders how they’ll know which suitcase is his.
In the flurry of barking dogs and screaming SS officials, Lale witnesses other men gunned down for no reason. He begins to realize he will never see his possessions again. He also realizes he may never see the outside world again. He makes a promise to survive however he can and one day walk away a free man.
Lale was always a fast-talking charmer back home in Bratislava, and his charm comes in handy at the camp. He inspires the other men around him and works his way into the good graces of the guards. Some of the men believe that Lale is the chosen one who will save them all. This belief ends up saving his life when he falls ill with typhus. At the onset of the illness, Lale is so weak and sickly, the SS officers throw his body on a transport out of the camp filled with dead bodies. But one young man pulls him down and hides him in their barracks.
The other prisoners rally to nurse Lale back to health. One of these prisoners is a French professor, who also wants to help the man so many are risking their lives to save. He offers Lale the opportunity to work with him as a tattooist, a job that comes with many perks. Lale isn’t sure he wants to help the Nazis defile his people, but he’d rather it be him than someone less caring, so he accepts.
For weeks, Lale helps brand the hundreds to thousands of new arrivals entering the camp daily. One day, Lale tattoos the arm of a woman who captivates his heart. He knows nothing else about her but her camp number, but he vows to learn more. After the French professor vanishes, Lale is made head tattooist. This position earns him private sleeping quarters, better food and bigger rations, and the ability to move freely through the camp.
Lale uses his good fortune to help feed the other prisoners and devises a plan to do more. He arranges for women working in the warehouses where the confiscated possessions are sorted to smuggle jewelry and cash to him in exchange for extra food. He uses the valuables to pay a civilian worker from a nearby town to bring him supplies, including medicine and chocolate.
Lale’s business enterprise runs smoothly, and he gets a reputation for being able to help prisoners in difficult situations. He also uses his power to court the young woman he can’t stop thinking about. He sends her a letter through a friendly SS officer, and the two finally meet. Her name is Gita, and she is as enchanted by Lale as he is by her. They begin meeting in secret, and their love blooms despite their horrifying surroundings.
Lale’s promise to escape the camp now includes Gita, and everything he does is now attached to making her life at the camp easier. He feeds her chocolate and watches her face come to life. He steals a chocolate-y kiss, and they swoon like teenagers. He also arranges for her to work in the administration building where it’s warm and safe. He tells her that one day they will marry and have a family, and despite her despair, Gita starts to believe him.
During spring 1943, thousands of Romanian nomads, referred to as gypsies, are brought to the camp and become Lale’s neighbors in his block. Lale and the Romany grow close, especially one older woman named Nadya, who reminds Lale of his mother. He spends his nights talking to the men and learning about their culture, and he encourages the older women to start an informal school for the children.
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.
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.
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.
The story of The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on the accounts of the real-life survivor, Lali Sokolov, as told to the author 70 years after the events. The author has stated that 95% of the story is based on Lali’s retelling and the rest imagined as creative license. However, certain historical organizations have reported that many of the events described in the novel are inaccurate or outright impossible. Therefore, this story should be viewed as a dramatized account of the characters’ lives based more on memory than factual data and not be taken as a true historical account of what life at Auschwitz was like for the thousands of prisoners held there.
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.
Lale Sokolov keeps his eyes focused on the slip of paper, not the girl handing it to him. In his most gentle way, he holds her arm and punctures her skin over and over with his needle. Blood spills out, but he has to go deeper. She doesn’t protest, as she knows better than to do.
Someone tells him to hurry up. He’s being too delicate with this girl. He doesn’t like to tattoo women. He thinks of it as defiling them. A man in a white coat moves down the row examining all the young girls receiving their brand. The man reaches for the girl’s face. She looks like she wants to say something, but Lale squeezes her arm. Sshh.
When the man leaves, Lale finishes her tattoo and finally looks up. He meets her eyes and smiles, and she smiles slightly in return. In one instant, his heart begins to pound heavily in his chest. He grows dizzy but is pulled out of his lovestruck stupor when another slip of paper is passed to him. He looks up. The girl is already gone.
The cattle car surges through the countryside, one of many in a long line. Lale Eisenberg is among hundreds of men shoved into the train wagons normally used to transport cattle. There are too many heads to count, and they’re packed in so tightly that they can’t even sit. Lale has been fortunate to get a wall spot where a slight breeze trickles in through the wooden slats. It’s enough to partially relieve the stench of his filthy hair and skin and that of the others.
In this 10-foot-wide train car, a man sleeps against Lale’s shoulders. The other men don’t like Lale much. He’s dressed in a suit, tie, and pressed white shirt, his normal attire for travel. And why not? He’s on his way to work for the Germans. That’s the deal he made to keep his family safe back home in Krompachy, Slovakia, and he always dresses to impress. He has one suitcase and a little money stashed in his jacket pocket. He hopes he can buy his way into a better, higher-ranking work duty. He hopes his four languages will make him valuable.
People keep asking him where they’re headed. He assumes it’s because he’s dressed so well, but he doesn’t know why they’re asking him or where they’re headed. All he knows is that he’s been on this train for three days, and he’s as confused and scared as everyone else, even if he doesn’t show it. Lale tries to answer with something encouraging. A young man suddenly pushes his way through the stacked men and asks Lale why he’s so calm. His name is Aron, and he wonders if they shouldn’t try to fight when they get off the train. Lale reminds him that the Germans have guns. Fists can’t beat guns.
Lale keeps his mind from the final destination. He concentrates on his family, on the word “safe.” Through the slats, he catches a glimpse of a field of poppies. He never knew they grew wild like that. The next time he gives a girl flowers, they will be handpicked, he thinks. This thought leads to others, and soon he is making a list of all the things he will do when he’s home. He is 25. His whole life is ahead of him.
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 reported for duty and was processed by two friends he’d grown up with. They told him to go to Prague and wait for his assignment. Never in his imagination did he think his decision would land him on a cattle car stuffed like sardines with other young Jewish men. But he knew that if given another chance, he’d make the same choice again.
Lale and the men rattle through the countryside for two more days. There’d been a few stops along the way, but never for more than an hour, and they were never let off the train. At one stop, the men in one car tried to burst through the wooden walls boxing them in, which created a domino effect in the other cars. But the guards did nothing, and neither did Lale. They both knew there was no way to escape.
The train stops again, and this time, the doors are flung open. The air is filled with the vicious barks of dogs and the more vicious commands of the German soldiers. The men are ordered to get off and leave their belongings on the train. Some of the men don’t understand the language and take their possessions with them. The possessions get snatched and the men beaten. Lale is one of the last to exit. He sees the dead body of one passenger and says a prayer before stumbling out.
Lale struggles to comprehend the scene around him. The dogs, the men stumbling on numb legs from the journey, the violence, the soldiers. He notices their uniforms—black, sharp, two lightning bolts on the collar—the SS. If he didn’t fear them so much, he’d be in awe of the fine craftsmanship of their attire. But he does fear them, so he places his suitcase on the ground, wondering how they’ll know it’s his. At least he still has the money in his pocket. He touches his breast to make sure.
All hope of seeing his things again disappears when trucks arrive and the soldiers toss in all the bags, books, and other items the men believed they needed. He says a silent apology to his mother for losing her books. An officer fires a gun and tells Lale to get going. He walks through the gates. The phrase “Work makes you free” is written in German across the top.
Through the mayhem, Aron finds Lale. Lale tells him to do whatever they tell him to do and everything will be fine. He doesn’t even believe these words, but he repeats them to himself nonetheless. A commander approaches the group of dumbfounded men. He introduces himself as Commandant Rudolf Hoess and welcomes the men to Auschwitz. Lale can’t believe the geniality of this man. He listens as the commander says that if they work hard and follow the rules, they’ll be free to leave.
Everything moves quickly. Lale is shoved into a line, processed, and roughly tattooed with the number 32407. He notices that all the men processing the workers are Jews, and they all wear the same striped pajamas. Lale stares at his tattoo and wonders how something like this is possible. He tries not to think about himself being reduced to nothing but this number, but he can’t help it.
Dehydration begins to take over, and Lale is more thirsty than he’s ever been before. An ounce of relief returns when he learns they’ll be able to shower. The men are marched into a building and told to strip. They’re told they can collect their clothes afterward, but Lale has started to realize he and the others have been hoodwinked. He knows he won’t see his clothes again.
He thinks about the money in his pocket, and rage boils inside. He takes a pack of matches from his pants and discreetly lights his shirt on fire. He hustles away with the line. A raucous breaks out when someone notices the fire. A soldier tries to stamp it out. Reality sinks in, and he realizes that was a careless thing to do. He’s been counseling all the men to keep their heads down and do as they're told, and then he goes and sets a fire? He admonishes himself and makes a vow to stay alive and leave the camp one day a free man.
All the men drink as much shower water as they can. They’re shaved nearly bald and given Russian uniforms to wear. Then, the men are marched a few miles to their barracks at Birkenau, the secondary compound at Auschwitz, through rain and mud. Some men fall and are shot.
The rain provides more hydration, but there is no food. Someone asks the soldiers for food once they are in the barracks—a large hut with three bunks stacked in rows. Aron has again found Lale, and they climb to a top bunk, which they’ll share with two others. Someone suggests they eat the hay from the mattresses like cattle. A flutter of chuckles follows, but the laughter fades, and the men finally sleep.
Lale wakes in the night. He needs to use the restroom. He goes to the back of the hut and is grateful to see at least a ditch dug out for their waste. Three other prisoners, as he now realizes they are, sit on the wooden toilet boards chatting. Lale sees them, but he also sees two SS officers rounding the opposite corner. He waits despite the pressure in his bladder.
One second the soldiers are smoking and laughing, and the next, they shoot the three men. Lale hides until they’ve passed. One of the soldiers is just a boy. When he climbs back onto the bunk, Aron says he needs to go too, but Lale stops him. He says to hold it until morning.
Lale’s first morning at the camp starts with shouting, whistles, and barking dogs. The prisoners exit Block 7, Lale’s new home, and stand outside awaiting orders. An SS officer performs a roll call. Two numbers are not spoken for. The two men are found dead inside the barracks.
The officer explains that they will eat once in the morning and once at night. He then slyly adds, “If you survive.” He tells them they will be given work duty and will help build the camp to accommodate the many other Jews arriving soon. Breakfast arrives next. Lale gets to the front of the line and receives a cup full of slop. He can’t identify what it is, but he dumps it down his throat before he can think about it.
After breakfast, Lale is assigned to roof duty. He is to sit on the roof and lay down tiles handed up from men below. Two men are already on the roof when he climbs up. They tell him to watch what they do and follow it. It’s not hard work, but it must be done quickly. The men have Russian accents, and Lale responds in Russian, which makes them both smile.
Lale works alongside the Russians for hours, his stomach cramping from hunger. Finally, the officer tells them they can take a break. The Russians tell Lale to stay on the roof out of sight of the officers on the ground. If they can’t see them, they can’t kill them. Lale learns that the men are Russian soldiers who were captured. They’d been at the camp for two months already.
From atop the roof, the whole of Birkenau is spread before them. Lale sees the long line of barracks leading off into the distance. Some are filled, and others are waiting to be filled soon. Horror runs through Lale’s body at the prospect of so many more prisoners coming to the camp, and he tries to hide his emotions from the other men. The men fill Lale in on who is at the camp. Red stars signify political prisoners, yellow stars the Jews, and green stars the kapos. The kapos are former criminals, which makes them perfect for guard duty. The Russian soldiers aren’t given stars.
The three men continue working together for the rest of the week, but they haven’t spoken much since that first day. Lale is fully in prisoner mode, forcing himself to keep his head down and do the work. He does what he is asked, doesn’t argue, and stays alive. Still, he watches everything happening at the camp, making mental notes. He eavesdrops on SS conversations. The officers don’t realize he can understand German, so they speak freely about the disposition of different officers and the commander. Lale stores all this intel in his mind.
Lale sees a group of men wearing normal clothes and interacting freely with the SS without fear of repercussions. Another group strolls through the compound without working. Lale makes a note to find out who those different groups are and how to become one of them.
Lale has taken to showing strength in front of his kapo. When the man is near, he shouts orders to the other roof workers. He always catches the kapo’s eye and gives him a respectful nod. When he speaks to the kapo, he speaks in Polish. His actions work. One day, the kapo tells Lale that he’ll be his assistant. He will do whatever the kapo asks, and in return, he will have an easier life. Lale quickly accepts but can’t help feeling uneasy about the alliance.
Not long after, Lale is in the yard and notices a truck driving behind the administrative building, which is weird because supply trucks usually stop at a different spot. He turns on an air of confidence and strolls behind the building to get a better look. The truck pulls up next to a bus enclosed in metal. Dozens of naked men file out of the truck and onto the bus. There are so many men, the bus can hardly hold them.
An SS officer climbs onto the bus holding a canister. He opens the top hatch, dumps the contents inside, closes the hatch, and quickly scrambles to the ground. Within the seconds, the bus begins to shake. Lale hears the men screaming from inside and realizes the canister contained a noxious gas. He falls to his knees and tries to vomit, but there is nothing to bring up. He can’t move. He is stuck in this hell.
The next morning, Lale can’t get out of bed. He is hot with fever and passes out. When he finally regains consciousness, he feels someone feeding him water and cooling his forehead with a rag. The person is an old man, who looks down at Lale compassionately. Lale is disoriented but tries to sit up. The old man helps him outside and finds a place for them to rest.
The old man introduces himself as Pepan. He is the Tätowierer—the tattooist. Lale bristles when he realizes this is the man that marked him the first day, but he knows the man had no choice. Pepan is French. He was an economics professor captured for his anti-German political beliefs. He says Lale was sick with typhus for seven days. Everyone thought he was a goner.
Lale doesn’t understand how he survived. Pepan explains that the SS had found him collapsed in the yard and added his body to the truck of bodies hauled out each day. A young man tried to convince the officers that Lale wasn't dead, but they wouldn’t listen. So when the officers weren’t looking, the young man pulled Lale from the truck and took him to Block 7. Pepan was passing by and helped the man pull Lale inside.
Later that night, Lale learns that the men in his block, along with Pepan, shared their rations with him, forcing food and water down his throat. They changed his soiled clothes, exchanging them with the clothes of men who’d died. He also learned that Aron was gone. When the kapo had asked Aron where Lale was, Aron lied and said Lale had died. The kapo was so mad, he took Aron instead. No one had seen him since.
Lale doesn’t understand why these men saved him. They tell him that Aron believed that Lale was the chosen one who would save him. So after Aron disappeared, they kept caring for him just in case Aron was right. That was also why Pepan had taken an interest in Lale.
There are many more loads of prisoners coming to the camp, and Pepan will need help tattooing them on arrival. He offers Lale the opportunity to work with him. He says this work will help Lale survive. Lale doesn’t think he can do it. He remembers how it felt to be branded and doesn’t want to be the one to inflict that kind of pain on his people. But he realizes that if he doesn’t do it, someone who doesn’t care as much will and will hurt the men. Lale agrees.
Pepan takes Lale to the main compound the next morning, where new prisoners are unloaded. Lale freezes when he sees the hundreds of men, all young and frightened, surrounded by the SS and dogs, both chomping at the bit to tear these men apart. Pepan guides him to the table where the tattooing equipment is laid out.
An older immaculately dressed officer, Officer Houstek, approaches with an entourage of younger officers. Houstek’s attire and demeanor remind Lale of the rich men he used to dress at a department store in Bratislava. Pepan introduces Lale as his new helper. Houstek looks at Lale with a steely gaze and asks how many languages he speaks. Lale rattles off Slovak, German, Russian, French, Hungarian, and Polish, all while holding the officer’s eyes.
The officer grunts and walks away, but Pepan is livid. He tells Lale never to look that man in the eye and never underestimate the power he holds in the camp. Lale understands and again admonishes himself for his brazenness.
Weeks go by, with Lale working diligently next to Pepan. He has tattooed hundreds of prisoners, both men and women, including the woman from the Prologue, who stole his heart. One day, Lale shows up to work and finds the table and equipment set up, but Pepan is not there. The new arrivals start to line up, and Lale grows anxious. Houstek is suddenly in front of him with an SS officer, Officer Baretski. Lale keeps his eyes low as Houstek says he’ll be tattooing alone that day. There is no mention of Pepan, and Lale receives no answer when he asks.
Lale is now the new tattooist, and Baretski is his new direct supervisor. Their fates are now entwined, Baretski tells Lale, and he knows Lale will not do anything to embarrass or endanger him. As a perk of the job, Lale will be moved to a new room. He is now part of the political branch of the SS and needs to be isolated for protection.
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.
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 nervous about his new status. He’s now living like a king, relatively speaking, and people may try to befriend him for the wrong reasons. He also knows that the others may resent him for associating with the Germans. He’s almost sure he heard one of the men in Block 7 call him a collaborator when he visited Leon. He feels alone on his island, but he is protected now. And that is no small thing.
Baretski instructs Lale to get his assignments daily from the clerk in the administration building. He can also get whatever supplies he needs for the work. The clerk tells Lale to always carry his supply bag with him and say that he is with the political department if anyone asks. No one will bother him if he does these things. Baretski seconds the clerk’s remarks but makes it clear that he won’t hesitate to kill Lale if he messes up.
Prisoners are pumped into the camp at all hours, and Lale and Leon work through the night at times. Baretski also has to stay up to supervise them, and he takes his frustrations out on Leon. Lale never reacts, learning that the abuse gets worse if he tries to intervene. But one day, Leon drops his needle after a boy screams during his tattoo, and Baretski knocks him to the ground with his rifle. He stands on Leon’s back, pressing him into the ground. Lale can’t stay silent.
Lale says as casually as possible that he needs the manpower to get the work done. Before Baretski can reply, Houstek appears and whispers something to Baretski, then moves on. Baretski removes his boot and Leon gets up. Baretski tells Lale he is lucky he told Houstek about his language abilities. He has wormed his way into Houstek’s good graces and is now protected. Baretski suggests he and Lale become friends in the hopes of benefitting from Lale’s new powerful connection.
Sundays are the prisoners’ day off at the camp, and the men and women gather in the yard in groups. Lale is usually one of those men, but one Sunday, he stumbles across the young woman he tattooed who caused his heart to skip a beat. Like before, their eyes lock, and he feels the breath leave his body. They hold each other’s gaze until Baretski interrupts.
The girl’s companions scatter, but she doesn’t move, seemingly as transfixed by Lale as he is by her. Baretski quickly notices and begins to tease Lale. He says he’ll get him some paper and a pencil so Lale can write her a note, but Lale doesn’t respond. Paper and a pencil are contraband. They both know what will happen if he is caught.
Baretski takes Lale to the main compound of Auschwitz for a special work assignment. He is extra talkative today and asks Lale how old he is and where he’s from. Lale answers to appease Baretski and asks him similar questions. Once he sees that Baretski enjoys talking about himself more than listening, Lale keeps it up. He learns that Baretski is from Romania, not Germany, and his town is only 100 miles from Lale’s. His father was abusive, and he has two sisters still at home. He left home at a young age to become one of Hitler’s youth, and the rest is history.
Baretski is one year younger than Lale, but his personality is more like a teenager. He talks about girls in crude ways and knows nothing about matters of the heart. Lale tries to give him advice on how to treat a woman, seeing an opportunity to get on Baretski’s good side. But Baretski scoffs. He would never consider giving a woman flowers or asking her questions about herself. Still, Lale feels less wary of Baretski after this conversation and accepts the offer of paper and pen.
That night, Lale writes the girl a message. He tells her his name, where he’s from, and that he wants to meet her Sunday in the yard. Baretski reads the letter and makes fun of Lale for not being more forward. He brags about what he would say, especially if he didn’t know how much longer he’d be alive, like Lale. Despite these insults, he takes the letter and promises to deliver it.
The next day, Baretski delivers the girl’s response to Lale. She writes that she is also from Slovakia and was brought to the camp a few weeks before Lale. She works in the warehouse sorting through the prisoner’s possessions. But she doesn’t tell him her name, which drives Lale crazy with desire.
Sunday comes, and Lale rushes through breakfast. He shoves half of his bread up his sleeve to give to this girl when they meet. For a long time, he looks for the girl but doesn’t see her. Then, he spots her with a group of friends. Like the teenagers they are, the girl’s friends giggle at the sight of Lale. Lale gives her the bread and asks her name. One of her friends tells him it’s Gita, then whisks her away. It isn’t the meeting he imagined, but at least he gets her name.
In the privacy of the women’s barracks, Gita reads Lale’s note again and again and gossips with her friends. The next Sunday, she searches for Lale in the yard. She’s distraught that she can’t find him, but suddenly, he swoops in from behind and grabs her hand. Gita’s friends giggle when he pulls her away and takes her behind the administration building. They sit against the wall, and Gita asks if they’re safe. Lale doubts it, but he had to be close to her.
Their conversation is light. They joke about how their days are going, giving answers that would have been true back in the real world. Their hands drift closer and touch. Lale says he wants to know everything about her, but she says there is nothing to know except what her number is in the camp. For her, the outside world doesn’t exist anymore. But he does learn that she works in one of the warehouses where they take the confiscated possessions from the Jews. Lale says he’s heard they find jewels and cash sometimes. But Gita says all she finds is moldy food.
When the siren blares, signaling the end of “free” time, Lale helps Gita to her feet. He says he will bring her food next time. He also tells her to be careful at her job and always be on the lookout for the SS. They stare into each other’s eyes for longer than is safe, then walk back to join the others.
Summer turns to fall, and the days grow shorter as winter approaches. All this time, Lale has continued to be curious about the men working in civilian clothes. With the protection his tool bag provides, he decides it’s safe to ask them. He approaches two workers, a father and son, laying bricks for a new building. Without looking at them, Lale asks why they aren’t branded with a star and in uniforms like everyone else. At first, the son, Yuri, tells Lale to mind his own business. But the father, Victor, admonishes his son for his rudeness. Victor explains that they live in town and come here to work. They’re paid for their labor and allowed to return home in the evenings.
Lale can’t believe that anyone would choose to work in the camps. He tells them that he is the tattooist, and Victor looks regretful when he says it must be a busy job and that it’s about to get busier. The building they’re constructing is slated to be Crematorium One. Lale doesn’t miss the suggestion that there will be a Crematorium Two.
Victor offers Lale a piece of hard sausage from his lunch. Yuri throws a fit and tries to stop him, but Victor reminds him that they have plenty where they live. He tells Lale to come back the next day, and he’ll try to bring more. If they can help even one prisoner, they’ll do it. Lale gets an idea. He asks if he can find a way to pay Victor, can he get some chocolate. Lale wants it to give to Gita, like he would in the real world. Victor says he’ll try. Lale walks away as snow begins to fall.
In his room, Lale becomes overwhelmed with emotion at the news of the crematoriums. But there is no time for emotions. There is work to do. He divides the sausage into small strips and wraps them in waxed paper. He looks at his fingers—soiled, thin, and calloused, not like the smooth, clean, and fleshy hands that once held rich foods at bountiful tables. How long ago that seems.
Lale takes the bits of sausage to one of the confiscated possessions warehouses, but not the one Gita works in. He stops two girls leaving work and offers them the sausage. He says he’ll bring more if they’ll smuggle some jewelry out for him, and the girls agree. He reminds them not to tell anyone about their agreement or where they got the food. Their lives depend on it.
The next day, Lale tells Victor he isn’t able to pay him yet but will be soon. Victor doesn’t mind. He has plenty to share. Yuri is also friendly this time and shakes Lale’s hand with a smile. Apparently, he received a talking-to about manners from his mother. Victor gives Lale two packages, one full of sausage, and the other full of chocolate.
Lale performs the same dissection and takes the wrapped pieces to the girls. He gives the girls extra to share with others, and they drop four bundles into his bag. The bundles contain cash, diamonds, rubies, and several rings. When Lale sees these items back in his room, he feels grief for the people who once loved these valuables. He also feels fear. The extra food was already risky, but getting caught with jewels means certain death.
He shoves the packages under his mattress and takes one ruby and a ring to Victor the next day. Lale passes the jewels through a handshake, and Victor drops the food into Lale’s open bag. Their business relationship is now official. Before Lale leaves, Victor tells him Happy New Year. It is now 1943.
As the winter of 1943 progresses, Lale’s relationships with both Victor and Gita grow stronger. Lale and Gita continue to meet on Sundays, but keeping their interactions secret gets harder because of the snow and cold. Many prisoners choose to stay in the barracks because of the bitter winter. Still, a stolen glance or passing touch of hands sustains them.
One Sunday, Lale can’t find Gita. He circles the yard, but when he doesn’t see her or her friends, he risks punishment by moving closer to the women’s camp. Suddenly, Gita’s friend Dana appears outside their block. She tells Lale that Gita has typhus and is very sick. The kapo wants to transfer her to the hospital, but Lale’s seen what happens to people at the hospital at the hands of the doctors and fears for Gita. He tells Dana to help Gita go to work each day and pretend that everything is fine until he can get some medicine.
The next morning, Lale takes all the bounty he’s collected, a small fortune, and gives it to Victor in exchange for penicillin. Victor agrees to bring some the next day. Afterward, Lale and Leon go to work. Lale tries to focus on tattooing the newcomers, but he’s consumed with worry about Gita’s health and future at the camp.
As soon as the last person is tattooed, Lale packs up and hurries toward Gita’s block. Dana tells him they were successful in getting her to work and keeping her hydrated. Lale gives Dana all of his breakfast rations and says he’ll have medicine soon. He doesn’t have to wait long. Victor brings him a small vial of penicillin the next day, along with the usual food packages.
A couple days later, Lale is relieved to see Dana and their other friend Ivana carrying a slightly improved Gita to work. The medicine has started to work already. Lale wants to make sure Gita never gets sick again, so he goes to Baretski and does something he never thought he’d do—asks for a favor. Lale asks for Gita to be transferred to work in the administration office, where there is heat. Baretski says he’ll try and finds great enjoyment in telling Lale that this favor will need to be returned in the future.
Gita recovers and is able to walk in the yard again. Lale continues to give her extra food to help her regain her strength. He doesn’t tell her about the favor, not knowing whether Baretski will be able to pull it off. So Gita is surprised the next day when she is called to the office. Fear overtakes her. Do they think she is too weak to work? What will become of her? Then, she is taken to a desk and told to learn her new duties from Cilka, another Jewish woman who has somehow managed to keep her beautiful long brown hair. When Gita sees Lale enter the office to receive his duties and receives a wink, she realizes he’s responsible for her new position.
Over the next few weeks, Lale and Leon are overwhelmed with work. The prisoners get shipped in faster than ever when the Germans start cleansing more of Europe of Jews. Now, French, Greek, and Italian Jews, among others, join those from Poland, Germany, and the surrounding regions at the camp. With so much work, Lale is unable to keep up his appointments with either the warehouse girls or Victor. He takes bathroom breaks just so he can retrieve the items the girls have smuggled out. But without his ability to trade with Victor, the collection under his mattress grows larger.
The increase in prisoners has also required Lale and Leon to work on Sundays. Five Sundays come and go before Lale is able to see Gita again. When they finally reunite, Lale takes Gita to their spot behind the administration building. He tells her to close her eyes and open her mouth. When she does, he teases her with a piece of chocolate before dropping a chunk on her tongue. Gita opens her eyes and savors this luscious treat. She takes a piece and does the same thing to Lale, teasing him first before dropping the chocolate in his mouth. They share a passionate, chocolaty kiss, and Lale cries with joy.
Lale confesses his arrangement with the warehouse girls and Victor. This action is a testament to his feelings for Gita. Entrusting her with this dangerous information is the same as entrusting her with his life. He gives her the rest of the chocolate to share with her friends and says he’ll bring more. They walk back hand-in-hand as far into the yard as they can before parting ways without a second glance. Lale hates leaving her so informally, but it’s too risky to be seen together, a fact hammered home when he sees Baretski watching them.
After Gita leaves, Baretski marches up and says Lale is needed in Auschwitz. Something is off about him, and Lale feels uneasy. As the two walk the few miles to Auschwitz, SS officers say hello to Baretski, but he ignores them. When they come upon three prisoners hunched together on the ground, Baretski wastes no time in shooting them. Lale is stunned. This unprovoked killing is something he hasn’t seen since that first night when he got up to use the bathroom. He doesn’t know what’s wrong with Baretski, but he doesn’t want to be next. He follows along dutifully, cursing God.
In the spring, Lale and Leon report to work one day to find a new shipment of people like they’ve never seen before. There are the usual men and women, but now there are children and the elderly, as well. Leon cringes at the thought of tattooing children, but Lale tells him to keep his mouth shut. Baretski informs them that the people are Gypsies, lower than Jews, and that there will be a lot of them. The tattooists are relieved that the children are not to be tattooed, but their presence is still unnerving.
That afternoon, Lale returns to his room to find that his empty block is now overrun with Gypsies. He always assumed his solitude would eventually be disturbed, but he never expected that his new neighbors would be families comprising several generations.
Lale doesn’t know much about Gypsies, but he worries about the safety of his stash of valuables. He decides to get to know them to assess the risk and walks into the block. He shakes hands with everyone, spending extra time with the old women. He says he will do his best to relay any information he has about their safety, and they are grateful. For many of them, Lale is the first Jew they’ve ever met. That night, Lale struggles to sleep in his new world of crying babies and fussy children. But over time, he gets used to it, and the Gypsies accept him as one of them.
Lale spends many nights talking with his new companions. He learns about their culture and that the word “Gypsy” is derogatory. They refer to themselves as the Romany. The children love Lale and often swarm him for treats when he comes back from work. Lale suggests that the Romany create a sort of school for the children, even just to educate them about their heritage. He often sits in on the lessons and asks questions to help further the discussion for the children. These lessons, taught by the older women, seem to give them a sense of purpose and a bit of peace.
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.
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 but can’t place it. The whistling gets louder. Lale finally glances up and sees a new doctor walking toward him.
There is something more sinister about this doctor than the others he’s seen. Lale tries to focus on his work, but his concentration is disrupted when the doctor leans over and inspects the tattoo he’s giving. Lale holds his breath until the doctor walks away. Baretski tells Lale the doctor is named Mengele and is so scary, even he is afraid of him.
Later, the whistling returns behind Lale. He becomes so nervous, he accidentally stabs a woman with his tattoo needle. Blood oozes from the wound. Mengele comes closer and asks Lale if anything is the matter. Lale finally looks into the man’s face and sees eyes as black as coal. The doctor smiles a wicked smile and moves on.
Back in his room, Lale tries to wash the blood out of his shirt but then stops. He stares at the stain and decides to leave it. It will be a good reminder to stay alert when the doctor is around. Mengele is dangerous and heartless, and he doesn’t want to draw his attention again.
This reminder fails to work the next day. Mengele walks up and down the line of arrivals, studying the young women. He separates the women into groups, and Lale can’t discern what his criteria might be. The women all look healthy. Lale can’t stop staring, and Mengele catches him and whispers in the ear of an SS officer. The officer approaches Lale’s table, but instead of addressing Lale, he orders Leon to follow him. Lale tries to intervene, but he stops when the nose of a rifle is pointed at his face. Leon is taken away, and Lale sinks with guilt.
One morning, Baretski comes to Lale’s room and says that he and the other SS officers thought it would be fun to organize a game of soccer versus the prisoners. He wants Lale to put a team together and have them ready for a match on Sunday. He gives Lale the day off to figure it out.
After Baretski leaves, Lale organizes his stash of valuables and food into little bundles. He puts aside food for the Romany, the men in Block 7, and Gita and her friends. He takes the jewels to Victor and Yuri for the day’s trade. When his business is finished, he sets to work convincing the other men to play in the soccer match.
At first, the other men are stupefied. Why would they want to play soccer with the officers? Many refuse, but one young man agrees. He says he knows of men who used to play professionally and will do his best to recruit them. Lale shows his gratitude by handing out the bundles of food. He’s heartened by the way the men share equally with each other. Not everything in this place is bad.
When Sunday comes, Lale is surprised to find six semi-pro players on his team. He’s grateful for them for agreeing to play, but he knows they’re not allowed to win. It’s too dangerous. If they embarrass the SS, who knows what sort of revenge they’ll take on the team and the many prisoners crowding the field as spectators. Among them is Gita and her crew. Lale wishes he could forget the game and take her to their spot, but all he can do is wave.
The prisoner team scores two goals quickly, jumping out to a 2-0 lead. Lale gets into the winning spirit, but his gut tells him it’s time for the team to pull back. He convinces the players to allow the officers to catch up. They’ll put on a good show so the prisoners watching can feel proud, but they need to make sure they lose the game. The reality of where they are and the stakes involved hits home as ashes from the crematorium rain down on the field.
Midway through the second half, Lale realizes he has no need to worry. The prisoners are so weak from starvation, they can barely make it up and down the field. The SS win by two goals, and Lale earns an “atta boy” from one of the senior officers.
After the game, Lale and Gita sneak away to their spot. Gita is engrossed in searching through patches of grass. She tells Lale she’s looking for four-leaf clovers. They’re everywhere in the camp, and the women use them to curry favor with the guards. The SS are notoriously superstitious, and if they offer a four-leaf clover, they can avoid beatings and sometimes get extra food. Lale is incensed that he can’t protect the woman he loves.
Gita playfully throws a handful of grass at Lale, and they begin to play-wrestle. Lale pins her down and asks if he can kiss her. Gita raises her face to his. Their kiss is passionate, ignited by the long yearning each has felt since that first chocolatey kiss. The passion consumes them, and they lose themselves in it until the sound of a barking dog brings them back to reality.
Lale returns Gita to her friends in the yard and notices that something is off about Gita’s co-worker Cilka. He asks Gita what’s wrong with her, but she won’t say. She tells him there is nothing he can do to help and adds “my love” at the end. Lale forgets all about his concern for Cilka. He swims with delight in the bliss of those two words. However, when he sees Cilka looking distraught next to Gita the next day at the administration office, he makes a note to force the truth from Gita.
That afternoon, Baretski takes Lale to Auschwitz, but instead of setting up his table for work, he is told to report to Block 10. Lale quickly notices that Block 10 is not set up for residents like the others. He’s instructed to enter from the back, and when he turns the corner, he freezes. In front of him stands a fenced-in compound filled with dozens of naked women, their faces gaunt and lifeless.
Inside, Lale passes several prisoners lying on the ground like abandoned puppets. He is taken to a room full of at least 50 women matching the description of those outside. Mengele examines each one, touching them inappropriately as they silently cry. Some are sent away, but others are sent to Lale to tattoo. When the work is over, Mengele tells Lale that he will come for him one day. Lale shakes as he collects his tools. He exits the way he came. The compound is now empty of women.
That night, Gita enters her block after work to find a group of new arrivals. New arrivals are always met with hostility. The current prisoners know they will be peppered with questions they don’t want to answer. But one woman steps forward and calls Gita’s name. She is Gita’s old neighbor from home, Hilda Goldstein. Hilda tells Gita that everyone from home was rounded up and taken away, all but her brothers, who joined the resistance. Hilda also says that Gita’s parents and sister did not make it. Gita crumbles to the ground, the other women watching silently, knowing the grief she feels.
Gita knows that Hilda will surely die if she is assigned to hard labor. She asks her kapo to spare Hilda and suggests Hilda clean the latrine, a job usually performed by whichever woman angers the kapo. The kapo agrees for a price. Rumors of Lale’s enterprises have abounded, and she wants a diamond ring. Gita promises to make it happen.
By late summer, five crematoriums are operating at full steam. More and more people arrive daily, and Lale is swamped with work, especially since Leon has still not returned. He’s so busy, he hasn’t had a day off in weeks. And because there is always work, he has no need to get instructions from the administration office. He knows Gita will be consumed with worry and asks Baretski to explain where he is and that he’s alright. Baretski promises to tell her.
Lale finally gets a break from the constant stream of prisoners. He runs back to Birkenau to catch Gita after work. When Gita sees him, she almost faints with relief. She thought something had happened to him. Baretski did not deliver Lale’s message. The time away and her relief at seeing him fill Lale with the sensation of love. He finally tells her he loves her and feels as though he’s been waiting to tell her that his entire life. He tells her about his vow to make it out alive and that it now includes her.
The next day, Leon returns to work. He is pale, thinner, and more defeated than before. He struggles when he walks, and Lale can feel his ribs when he hugs him. Leon tells Lale that Mengele held him captive. He was starved, tortured, and castrated. Lale rails, cursing Mengele and promising to exact his revenge. But he sees that rage is not what his friend needs, and at the moment, there is nothing he can do anyway. He tells Leon to go to his room and help himself to the food hidden under the mattress.
Lale is despondent after learning about his friend. He feels like things can’t get much worse, but he is mistaken. Baretski tracks him down to perform a special job, one that doesn’t require his bag of tools. Lale sinks with fear when he is taken to one of the crematoriums. He doesn’t feel much better when he learns that the special job is differentiating between two dead men’s tattoos that look the same.
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.
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 kapo a bar of chocolate and asks for Gita to be brought to him. The other women are at work, so he waits inside the empty block.
Soon, the door opens, and Gita walks in. When she sees Lale, she glares and backs away from him when he tries to approach her. Lale doesn’t understand why she’s being so cold until she starts to speak. Gita explains that when the SS come and take you away, you assume you’re about to die. When her kapo came to get Gita for Lale, she thought she was going to be killed, and the only thought she had was about never seeing Lale again. And now here he is, expecting love.
Lale doesn’t know what to say. His privilege has kept him from understanding the fears the others live with daily. It was selfish of him to have scared her for his own pleasure. Lale doesn’t have time to relay his shame to Gita. Suddenly, she charges and begins to thrash him with her fists. Lale stands still until she is finished, then kisses her. Gita’s fury turns to passion, and the two make love for the first time. They are now bonded, and he knows he will never feel this way about another woman. Gita is his love for life. When he leaves the block, Gita’s kapo tells Lale she likes sausage, too.
Lale gets a chance to repent for his manipulation of Gita when he is able to use his privilege for good. Three young boys knock on his door in the middle of the night and ask for his help. Lale lets them in, at first annoyed and less than sympathetic when they say one of them is in trouble. This boy had escaped but was captured, and now they don’t know what’s going to happen to him. Lale makes it clear. The boy will be hanged. Lale wants to know how this young man managed to make it out and why he was stupid enough to get caught.
The boy was using the restroom in the woods, but when he returned, his work group was already walking away. He feared being shot if he tried to catch up to them, so he went back into the woods. He was discovered when he tried to steal food in a nearby town. Lale can’t believe how careless this boy was, but he softens, remembering his recent lesson regarding his privilege. He leaves with his bag and sneaks through the searchlights.
He creeps into the administration building and finds his usual contact behind the desk. He arranges for the boy to be added to a transport leaving at midnight for a boys’ camp. When he returns to his room, he uses his tattooing tools to turn the boy’s number into a snake. None of the other boys in the transport have been tattooed yet. He tells the other boys to say goodbye to their friend and go back to bed. At midnight, he takes the boy to the transport and watches him board. He waits until the truck drives off, then sneaks back to his own waiting bed.
Many people die over the following months. Some fall sick, some starve to death, some die from the harsh winter elements, others use the electrical fences to end their misery, and others are shot for various reasons. More arrivals come in by the thousands, and Lale and Leon are busier than ever. He rarely gets to see Gita, and only when they meet up in her block when the other women are at work. This arrangement always includes bribes to the kapo, and she starts to fill out her uniform from all the extra chocolate and sausage.
Things start to look up as the long winter transforms into spring. Even Baretski is in high spirits. Apparently, he’s been taking Lale’s advice about women, and his relationship with his girlfriend has grown stronger. Lale is surprised. He didn’t think Baretski had a soft bone in his body. But his surprise turns to dismay when Baretski asks him to get his girlfriend some nylon stockings.
Lale has kept his smuggling activities a secret from Baretski. The officer is young and emotionally unstable, and that kind of power over Lale could prove disastrous. But Baretski has found out, and try as he might, Lale isn’t able to deny it. He feels even worse when Baretski says he thinks of Lale as a brother. Perhaps Lale really has crossed over to the dark side. He tells Baretski he’ll have the nylons in a couple of days. Baretski, ever the comedian, jokes that Lale better or he’ll shoot him.
Lale heads to the women’s compound, but the whir of an airplane brings him to a halt. Up above, a small aircraft flies over the camp. At one point, it comes so low that Lale and other prisoners can make out the distinctive emblem of the U.S. Airforce. Lale’s heart jumps. What does this mean? Are they saved? Will the Americans finally see what’s happening to them and intervene? Will the world learn the truth?
Some of the prisoners shout and wave with joy. Others rush toward the crematoriums, pointing and yelling for the pilot to drop bombs on those buildings. The plane passes overhead three times, and each time, more and more prisoners urge it to destroy the crematoriums. Lale watches the whole thing in wonder. Finally, the plane flies off, and Lale snaps back to life. He slowly backs up until he is against a building. The firestorm of bullets starts almost immediately. Dozens of people fall to their death.
Lale heads back to his block. When he arrives, many of the Romany are distraught and crying. Some of the young children playing outside were hit by the bullets. Lale stares at this new horror. He begins to recite the kaddish to himself, a Jewish passage meant to honor the dead.
One day, Lale realizes it is early April, just weeks away from his two-year anniversary at the camp. He can’t believe he’s made it this long and can’t fathom how he’s done it. He also remembers the vow he made that first day. He tells himself to hold tight to that promise. It will be the thing that helps him keep moving forward.
Lale and Gita grow closer, and he daydreams with her about escaping the camp and starting a family someday. Gita thinks it’s a beautiful dream, but she has a hard time believing it. She can’t muster the same hope and has even refused to tell him her last name until they are free, as though revealing that piece of her would make her a real person.
At some point, Gita finally tells Lale what’s wrong with Cilka. A year ago, Schwarzhuber, a senior officer, summoned Cilka to a secret room. When she arrived and saw a four-poster bed, she knew what she would have to do if she wanted to live. This was also why she was allowed to keep her long hair. She’d been going to the room ever since. Lale is beside himself. He tells Gita that Cilka is a hero for doing what she needs to do to survive. It’s a form of resistance to not allow the Nazi’s to take her life. Gita asks if Lale considers himself a hero. Lale doesn’t know. He’s willingly defiled his people for his own benefit. What he hopes is to not be considered a collaborator when all was said and done.
After leaving Gita, Lale visits with Leon and other men from Block 7. It’s a sunny day, and he enjoys the small moment of community and peace. The siren blares, and he heads back to his block. The Romany children are out playing, but when they see Lale, they stop. Lale knows something is not right. When he opens the door to his room, he finds two SS officers standing next to his bed, the entirety of his secret stash displayed.
The officers march Lale at gunpoint out of the camp. Lale assumes he will be shot, but he is taken to Houstek’s office instead. Houstek demands to know the names of the women who smuggled the possessions out of the warehouses. Lale says he doesn’t know because he never asked for their names. Houstek is furious. Not only does he not get the information he wants, but now he has to find a new tattooer, too. He tells the officers to put Lale in Block 11.
During the ride to Auschwitz, Lale says goodbye to Gita and to the promises he made her. He takes a moment to remember the faces and names of his family members, reaching for the best memory he can find. He knows what his fate is. He saw what happened in Block 10 with Mengele, and Block 11 was the same. Men are tortured and often shot against the execution wall behind then, known as the Black Wall.
Lale sits in a dark cell for two days without one word from anyone. Then, on the third day, a large Jewish man enters the cell. Lale recognizes him immediately. The man’s name is Jakob, and Lale helped him his first night at the camp. He was bigger than two men, and Lale could see that he wasn’t going to survive on the meager rations he was given. Lale gave him his extra food that night. The last time he saw Jakob was when he was performing feats of strength to entertain the prisoners. SS officers had taken him away. Lale assumed he was dead, but now here Jakob was, working as a guard at death’s door.
Jakob is surprised to see Lale in the cell. Like everyone else, including Lale, he thought Lale was untouchable. Jakob is truly hurt when he tells Lale that he must beat him until he turns over the names of the women. He tells Lale he has no choice. He, too, must do his duty if he wants to survive. Lale understands and starts to think of a way out of this, but then Jakob surprises him by saying he will not accept any names from him.
Jakob will beat Lale and will make it look bad, but he’s not going to torture him like they want. He will kill Lale to keep him from suffering if he has to, but he will not take names. He doesn’t want any more innocent blood on his hands. If killing Lale means saving several others, he’ll do it for both their sakes. Lale tells Jakob to do what he must. When he is alone, Lale comes to terms with his impending death. He hopes someone will tell Gita.
The next day, Jakob takes Lale from his cell. He drags him into another room, one with handcuffs attached to the ceiling and a long switch on the floor. Two SS officers are there to observe, but they look thoroughly bored. Jakob punches Lale in the face. Lale sees Jakob rearing a leg back for a kick and backs up just as the foot lands. He feigns more pain than he actually feels. Another punch lands, this time breaking Lale’s nose. Blood gushes, and suddenly the officers are more intrigued.
Jakob puts Lale in the handcuffs and whips him several times on his back and behind with the switch. This time, Lale is not feigning the pain. Jakob grabs Lale by the hair and pulls his head back. He screams for Lale to talk, but then he quickly whispers that Lale should say nothing and pretend to pass out. Another punch lands in Lale’s gut, and he passes out. Jakob tells the officers that Lale doesn’t know anything. If he did, he would have said it. The officers leave, and Jakob takes Lale back to his cell.
For the next few days, Jakob brings Lale food and water and gives him clean shirts to wear over his wounds. Lale will be scarred for life, Jakob says, but he’ll survive. Lale isn’t so sure Jakob’s words are true when officers pull him from the cell the following day. He’s delivered back to Houstek, who accepts that Lale has no information. Still, he must be punished. He sends Lale to live in a block designated for hard labor.
Lale’s new job is one he’s seen several times during his walks from Birkenau to Auschwitz. He and the other men are taken to the fields between the compounds and are forced to move large boulders from one side of a field to the other. When all the boulders have been moved, they must move them back. The last man to arrive is shot.
Lale performs as best as he can in his weakened state. He comes in second-to-last once, but he makes it through the day. On the way back to camp, Baretski appears by Lale’s side. Lale knows that talking to Baretski informally will make him seem like a traitor to the others, but he has a plan and must risk it. He tells Baretski to let Gita know where he is and to make sure she tells Cilka.
Baretski follows through and passes on Lale’s message. Gita’s relief that Lale is alive consumes her. She runs to her friends to share the good news and tells Cilka what Lale said. Cilka doesn’t know what she can do to help, but there must be something if he wants her to know. She finally understands that night lying next to Schwarzhuber in bed. She says she has never asked for anything or refused him before, but now she needs a favor.
The next day, Lale struggles through another grueling day of boulder moving. His body aches so badly, he feels resentment for a dead body he and another man are tasked with carrying. He stops, wondering who he has become. Back inside the camp, Lale sees Cilka and Schwarzhuber standing off to the side. A guard tells Lale he is being sent back to his old block. Cilka came through.
When Lale returns to his block, the Romany stare in disbelief. They all thought he was surely dead. Through the sea of people waiting to welcome him back, Lale sees Nadya. He walks to her and wipes away her tears. He is overcome with emotion and runs to his room, not wanting everyone to see him break down. He lies on his bed, unable to believe he is still alive.
Lale wakes up to a familiar, albeit undesirable, voice. Baretski stands above his bed, marveling that Lale is still alive. He’s never heard of anyone surviving the punishment blocks before. He also tells Lale that Schwarzhuber requested that Lale get his old job back. Lale can’t believe it. Are they really letting him tattoo again?
But it was true, and after making the long walk to Auschwitz, Lale rejoins Leon at their work table. Leon is so overjoyed, he spills a bottle of ink. The men celebrate Lale’s return for a few seconds more before Lale suggests they get back to work. He doesn’t need any trouble his first day back.
Lale’s first order of business as soon as he has a break is to see Gita. He waits outside the women’s compound at the end of the work day. When Gita and Dana see Lale, they throw their arms around him. Dana kisses Lale on the cheek and moves on to give the lovebirds some privacy. Gita can barely speak. His disappearance shook her to her core, and she is still wary about being too relieved. What if it happened again? But Lale assures her it won’t. He reiterates his promise to get them both out alive. Gita finally relaxes and says she trusts him.
On his way back to his room, two teenage boys ask if he can get them some extra food. Lale tells them those days are over, but when they show him a small diamond, he can’t resist. He takes the diamond and wonders how much luck one person is allowed in life.
Lale takes the diamond to Victor and Yuri the next morning. He says his business is on a smaller scale than before, but if they could bring a little extra food and some chocolate, he’d appreciate it. Victor and Yuri are happy to see Lale after his long absence. Yuri gives Lale a block of chocolate, and they agree to meet up again tomorrow.
Without a second thought, Lale takes the chocolate to Gita’s kapo. A moment later, Gita walks into her block to find Lale waiting for her. She finally asks what happened to him after he was taken away, but he won’t tell her. The only thing he’ll do is show her his back, now gashed with long welts from the whipping. Gita kisses his wounds, and the two make love, savoring each moment together. Lale has never felt anything so beautiful in his life.
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 work to distract his mind. Mengele is up to his regular routine of picking and choosing prisoners from the line of arrivals for whatever experiments he’s conducting. As always, he makes his way over to the tattooing station and hovers over Lale and Leon. Lale does his best to ignore Mengele’s leering, but then Mengele leans down and tells Lale again that one day he will take him. Maybe that day is today.
Lale holds it together long enough for Mengele to get bored and walk away, but then an ash lands on his hand. He looks to the sky and sees it filled with ashes bursting from one of the crematorium chimneys. Lale knows whose ashes those are and cracks. He drops his tool and begins to shake. Leon tries to calm him down, not knowing what is wrong. But it doesn’t work. Lale begins to weep and curses loudly.
Lale’s breakdown draws Mengele’s attention again. He comes back over and leans close to Lale’s face. He says maybe Lale should come to his examination room to be checked out. Lale mumbles that he’s fine without looking Mengele in the face. Suddenly, Mengele pulls out his pistol and points it at Lale. He says he should shoot Lale for his insolence. He tells Lale to look at him and places the pistol to Lale’s head. Begrudgingly, Lale raises his eyes to the doctor and apologizes. The doctor sneers and moves on.
Lale struggles for weeks to get over his sorrow about the murder of the Romany. Gita does what she can to help him, but she doesn’t know how. He doesn’t talk and has lost the playfulness he used to have with her. She understands how he feels, but she doesn’t feel the same level of despair. She never met the Romany because Lale won’t allow her to come to his block. Further, after two and a half years of abuse and watching their people suffer incomprehensible horrors, she finds this first real display of emotion from Lale maddening.
Gita accuses him of not caring about his own people. What about the thousands of Jews killed at Auschwitz? What about the women he saw abused by Mengele? Lale realizes that because of his job, he has only seen most people as numbers, not humans. But Gita has to process the paperwork of the new arrivals. She sees their names, ages, and family details, which makes them real to her. He apologizes for his insensitivity and promises to do better.
Just as Lale is about to kiss Gita, an explosion sounds. They jump up from their secret spot and run to the courtyard. Another explosion booms, and they see that one of the crematoriums is destroyed. People are running everywhere, and the crematorium workers flee the building. On top of the roof, one of the workers has a gun and is shooting at the SS below. He is quickly taken down by return fire.
Chaos ensues. Bullets fly, and the SS seem to be shooting anything that moves. Lale grabs Gita’s hand and pulls her against a wall. Another crematorium explodes. A voice comes over the camp speaker and informs the prisoners that they will be allowed to return to their blocks without incident if they go now. Lale tells Gita to hurry to her block, but she wants to stay with him. He says she can’t. She needs to get back to her group and go on with business as usual. She can’t make herself a target. She must stay alive.
That night, Lale decides to become acquainted with the Hungarian Jews who have replaced the Romany in his block. Up to now, he’s avoided them, but he’s eager to learn anything he can about the uprising. The Hungarians tell him that several women working in ammunitions started smuggling gun powder under their fingernails. They also stole several weapons and grenades. The gunpowder was used to make homemade bombs from sardine cans.
The uprising was in response to rumors that the Russians were about to liberate the camp, and the prisoners wanted to help. That didn’t happen, but there is still hope that the Russians are on their way. Lale can’t believe it. He hasn’t seen any sign of help since the Americans flew over months ago. But this news gives him hope. Could this nightmare really be over soon?
Months go by with no sign of the Russians. A cold fall turns into a colder winter. The year changes to 1945, and the prisoners struggle as another dire year of life at the camp looms before them. The never-ending stream of new arrivals ceases, and Lale and the crematorium workers find themselves without work.
Victor and Yuri, as well as their crew, no longer come to the camp. Nothing new is built. In fact, the Germans have started shipping prisoners out of Auschwitz-Birkenau. No one is sure where they’re headed. Gita and Cilka are in charge of processing the paperwork, but it doesn’t state the destination.
Not long after, Baretski tells Lale that Leon is no longer at the camp. Lale demands to know what happened to him, but Baretski warns that if Lale keeps up the questions, he could find himself in the same boat. Leon’s disappearance does something to Lale. He feels a new fighting spirit enter him, and he tells Baretski that he looks forward to watching Baretski’s world crumble around him. Baretski grips his holster and tells Lale to get inside where it’s warm. The cold is clouding his judgment.
A few weeks later, Gita dashes to Lale’s block in the snow. She tells him that the SS are running around in a panic at the administration building destroying documents. Lale tells Gita to find her friends and stay in the block, then he runs to the building to investigate. He runs into a female SS worker and finds out that the Germans are going to empty the camp starting tomorrow. The Russians are getting closer.
Lale rushes to Gita’s block with this news. He walks right in, her kapo nowhere to be found. He finds the women huddled with fear. He tells them the news and says they should stay in their block until further notice. Before he leaves, he delivers personal messages to each of Gita’s friends. He thanks Dana for helping to keep Gita alive all the times when she was ready to give up. He thanks Cilka for her help and tells her she is the strongest person he knows. When he turns to Gita, she refuses to let him speak. He will not say goodbye to her, she says. She’ll see him tomorrow, period.
As Lale leaves the block, he looks at the group of women. All young, all taken when they were barely women. Their futures, once full of promise and hope, have been taken. Even if they are set free, they will never be able to lead a normal life. He wishes them well and leaves.
The commotion at the camp dies down, and Lale is able to fall asleep. But he wakes up in the middle of the night to gunshots and loud voices. He walks outside and sees thousands of women lined up in rows awaiting a fate no one seems to have any information about, not even the SS. It’s pandemonium. Lale rushes through the rows searching for Gita. At last, he sees her near the main gate. Only Dana is with her, and they’re both crying.
Dana sees Lale first, and the two women move back in the line to try to get closer. Lale and Gita lock eyes across the yard. He wants to run to her, but an officer smacks him with a rifle across the face. Blood spurts from a large cut on his forehead, but he manages to stand. He pushes forward and screams Gita’s name. Somehow, amid the shouting and barking, he hears her call to him. She shouts her name, revealing her last name for the first time—Gita Furman. Lale watches his love get swept out with the rest of the women and stands helpless as the gate closes behind them.
The next morning, the chaos from the night before has bled into another day. The gate is open, and prisoners seem to stumble through, unsure of what to do. The guards are too crazed with panic to notice or care. Lale moves through the gate and sees a train idling down the road. A sea of men are pushed toward it, and Lale can’t get out of the way fast enough. He is shoved into a car, and the door closes. He peers through a crack and sees the remaining prisoners dropping to the ground as bullets fly from SS guns. The train begins to move, and through the falling snow, Lale watches Auschwitz-Birkenau get smaller and smaller until they’re gone.
Farther down the road, Gita, Dana, and the other women march through a thick layer of snow. The two search through the crowd for Ivana and Cilka, but they don’t see them. They march for hours, and many of the women succumb to exhaustion or the cold. When they fall, they’re shot. The group shrinks in size as another full day of marching comes and goes. Finally, Dana can go on no longer. She falls, and Gita tries desperately to pull her up, but it’s no use. Dana urges Gita to go on without her, but Gita doesn’t move until four girls pull her away. She waits for the shot to sound behind her, but she doesn’t hear it. A small moment of mercy.
Finally, the women make it to a train station, where several cattle wagons wait to be loaded. Across the field is an old farmhouse, and the girls, who Gita has learned are not Jewish but Polish, decide to make a run for it, and Gita joins them. The guards are so busy herding the women onto the train that they don’t notice Gita and the girls running off across the field. The door to the farmhouse opens as they approach, and suddenly they are on the floor in front of a fire. The owners give them bread and warm beverages and listen to their harrowing tale. The husband says they can’t stay with them because their house is often searched, but he gives them the address of a relative in a nearby town. That night, the girls sleep in a pile on the frozen forest floor, hoping they make it through the night.
Lale’s train travels throughout the day. Like that first train ride back in 1942, he has no idea where he’s going. The train finally slows to a stop in front of Mauthausen, another concentration camp in Austria. Lale left most of his new bounty of treasures in his room, but a few jewels are hidden in pouches inside his pants.
The men at this camp seem worse off than those at Birkenau. They’re like walking skeletons. The guards are more relaxed at this camp and simply instruct the new arrivals to find a place to sleep for the night. It takes Lale four tries before he finds an empty bunk to call his own.
Morning comes, and Lale leaves his block to find a long line of naked men. He realizes they are going to be strip-searched, and his precious stones will be found. Quickly, he shoves three diamonds in his mouth and rushes back to the block to hide the rest. When the officers check the mouths of the men in front of Lale, he shoves the diamonds under his tongue and opens his mouth. When the guards get to Lale’s waiting mouth, they glance in and move on.
Lale is at Mauthausen for several weeks. He never would have believed that boredom would be his predominant emotion in a concentration camp, but after his busy life at Auschwitz, he languishes with nothing to do. He observes the guards to determine which one might make a good ally. He speaks German to one officer who walks by, and the two strike up a conversation. Lale tells this man all about Auschwitz, making it sound more like Disneyland than a camp. He doesn’t see the point in dredging up the horrible truth.
Days later, this same officer tells Lale that he can get him transferred to a different camp in Vienna where there might be work opportunities. The only catch is that they don’t accept Jews. He tells Lale to hide his tattoo and to give them his name at the truck. Lale almost doesn’t understand what he’s hearing. He hasn’t been anything but a number in so long, he has forgotten he could be addressed by his name. Lale gives the officer a diamond for his troubles.
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 the camp and crawls through. For the rest of the day and night, Lale walks through a forest. He hears and sees gunfire in front of him and moves closer, hoping it’s the Russians or Americans. But when he hears a shot only a few feet away, he jumps in the river and pretends to be a dead body floating by. Cold and exhausted, he climbs up onto the bank and collapses.
The next day, Lale makes it to a road overrun by Russian soldiers heading in one direction. He steps out from the forest, hoping to find help, but the Russians could care less about him. He decides to risk walking in the opposite direction in search of a town. Lale doesn’t get far before a jeep carrying a Russian official stops next to him. This man has never heard of Auschwitz and seems unfazed by Lale’s tattoo. What does interest him is Lale’s perfect Russian. After learning that Lale speaks five other languages, the official orders Lale into the jeep.
The jeep pulls into a circular drive of a large chalet atop a hill, the wide Vienna countryside spread out below. Luxury vehicles are parked along the drive, and inside the chalet, the furnishings and artwork are exquisite. Lale can hardly handle the level of wealth and sophistication in this place compared with where he’s been for the last three years. He’s led into a large study, where a senior Russian officer sits behind a beautiful mahogany desk.
It doesn’t take long before Lale learns what his job will be. He is tasked with finding women in the village down the hill willing to party with the Russians. He’s taken to a large room with a four-poster bed, a private bathroom, a desk holding a Tiffany lamp, and a balcony with french doors. Of course, his first thought is that Gita would love it there, but he pushes the thought away. It hurts too much, and he’s not free to search for her yet.
Lale is shown a closet full of men’s clothing and told to find something nice that will fit him. Suits, dress shirts, polished dress shoes, and ties are neatly displayed in the closet. Lale runs his hands over the fine fabrics. In a drawer, he finds woolen socks and cotton underwear. A small spark lights up inside. This is the wardrobe of the old Lale. After picking out a suit for tomorrow, Lale runs a hot bath. He sits in it for a long time, replenishing the hot water once. This is his first bath in three years, and he soaks for as long as possible.
After the bath, a man named Friedrich enters Lale’s room. He will be Lale’s handler, and he has been ordered to shoot Lale if he tries to escape. He shows Lale a vault filled with cash and jewels, a much larger collection than Lale’s at camp. Lale will take cash and jewelry to entice the village women, and he can make whatever deal he wants. The money and jewelry are meticulously catalogued, and Lale must return whatever he doesn’t use at the end of the day.
Once his duties are explained, Lale is introduced to the chalet chefs. Friedrich tells him to ask for anything he wants, and it will be made. That night, Lale receives a dinner tray in his room. The meal consists of lamb in a rich sauce and carrots with butter and parsley. The food is rich and flavorful, but he struggles to enjoy it. Without knowing what has happened to Gita, the delectable meal is unsatisfying. He eats half and saves the rest, the way he did at camp.
Lale does well in the village the next morning. He meets a group of women at a boutique who are familiar with the Russian parties. Five of them volunteer right away, and he gives them a little cash, promising more when they are picked up that night. He stops a few women on the street, and before long, he has 10 lined up for the Russian officers. That night, he and Friedrich pick up the women and bring them to the chalet. Lale retires to his room, in no mood to party, but he is pleased to hear laughter downstairs. At least no one is getting hurt.
For weeks, Lale performs his duties daily dressed in a sharp suit. All the women in town know him by now, and they adore him. When he walks down the street, he receives shouts and waves from many. Women have started coming to the boutique when they know he’ll be there to either be chosen for the party or to see Lale. One woman asks if he’ll marry her, but he says his heart is already spoken for.
Each day, Lale takes a small gem and hides it in the cuff of his trousers. He returns the rest to the vault keeper and stores his stolen treasure in a sock. One night, Lale is overcome with a longing for home. He has a hard time remembering anything good from his past. His whole life is now tarnished by the horrors of the camp. To cheer himself up, he empties the gem sock on the bed and looks at the small mound.
A knock on his door brings him back to reality. He throws a blanket over the mound of jewels and opens the door to Friedrich. Lale learns that Friedrich is being transferred in the morning. The commander has decided that Lale is trustworthy and can handle the village business alone. The men share a few nice words, having had many conversations on their drives, but then Friedrich sees something glittering on the floor.
In his rush to hide the jewels, Lale failed to notice a ruby fall to the ground. Friedrich picks it up and asks Lale to explain himself. Lale is genuinely surprised to see the stone, which works in his favor. He said it must have gotten stuck in his pants lining. He reasons that if he’d been trying to steal it, he wouldn’t have left it lying around. Friedrich accepts this excuse and takes the ruby back to the vault.
The next morning, Lale dresses in a fine suit and shirt. He wears four pairs of underwear and three pairs of socks. He takes his gem collection and gives the room a long last look. In the garage, no one thinks twice as Lale jumps in the usual truck and drives away. He arrives at the village and parks down one of the streets. He steals a bicycle from outside a cafe and rides away, a prisoner no more.
When Gita and the four Polish girls arrive in the relative’s village, the sun is just setting. It gets dark quickly, and they struggle to read the house numbers. They have no choice but to ask a woman walking by for directions. Gita lets the girls do all the talking to hide the fact that she’s Jewish. The woman agrees to take them to the house and waits with them until someone comes to the door. The woman tells the owner to take care of the girls and walks away.
Once inside the house, the girls explain why they’re there. The homeowner, an older woman, asks if they know who it was that brought them to her house. She seems nervous. The girls find out that the woman who helped them is an SS officer, rumored to be one of the meanest officers at the camps. The owner fears that this officer will be back for the girls, which means they can’t stay at the house. Gita and her friends are disappointed, but they’re served hot soup at the kitchen table. Gita doesn’t remember the last time she ate at a table.
Before long, a neighbor shows up and says the girls can stay in her attic. They can sleep there, but with home searches still happening, they have to leave during the day. Each morning, the five girls hide in the woods nearby until dark. The locals find out about them and take food to the home where they sleep.
After a few weeks, the Germans are run out of the village and replaced by Russian soldiers. One soldier catches the girls sneaking out of the woods one night. They show him their tattoos and explain their journey here. The Russian takes pity on them and offers to guard the house so they can stay during the day.
This new arrangement works so well, Gita and her friends get a little too comfortable. They lower their guards and start becoming more visible in town. One night, the house door bursts open, and a drunken soldier rushes in. He attacks one of the girls and tries to assault her, but the commotion draws the attention of other officers, who shoot the offender in the head. The girls are traumatized and decide it’s time to move on.
As an apology for the abusive soldier, a senior officer arranges for transport to take the girls to Krakow, where the sister of one of the Polish girls lives.
The sister’s place in Krakow is crowded with other displaced people. None of them has any possessions or money, so they each steal one item a day from a market and make a meal for everyone. On one of these market trips, Gita hears someone speaking in her regional dialect. She approaches him and learns that he drives a produce truck to and from her hometown of Bratislava every week. Gita asks if she can catch a ride, and he agrees.
Gita and the Polish girls struggle as they say goodbye. They’ve been through so much together. But they wish her well and see her off at the market. Gita doesn’t know what she will find at home. She knows her parents and sister are dead, but she hopes that at least one brother might still be alive.
In Bratislava, Gita stays in another apartment cramped with people, most of them camp survivors. She registers with the Red Cross, as many do in hopes of finding lost family and friends. On an afternoon not long after arriving, Gita looks out the window and panics at the sight of two Russian soldiers sneaking onto the property. But then she realizes they are her brothers. She rushes to them and jumps in their arms.
The reunion is short-lived. The brothers are partisan fighters for the Russians, and people are wary of soldiers these days. The siblings sit and talk for as long as they can. Gita doesn’t tell them about the rest of their family, not wanting to dampen their small amount of time together.
Another familiar face enters the streets of Bratislava. After a long journey, Lale finally steps off the train in the city where he once lived. His trip away from the Russians had been anything but easy. A Russian soldier took his bicycle not long after Lale left town, so he walked through the night until he came upon a train station.
The train was an unfriendly sight, but after he saw that the carriages were for travelers, he purchased a ticket with one of the gems. The train attendant saw Lale’s tattoo and told him where to sit so he wouldn’t be bothered. He also gave Lale a sandwich and thermos of coffee. Both men had tears in their eyes when Lale thanked him. When the train crossed the border to Slovakia, an official asked for Lale’s papers. Lale showed him the only identification he had—his tattoo. He told the official he was Slovak. The official welcomed him home.
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.
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, she tells him about the rest of their family. His parents were taken a few days after Lale left, but she doesn't know where they went. Max, his brother, was a partisan fighter and died battling the Germans. Max’s wife and two boys were also taken, but again, she doesn’t know any more. Goldie married a Russian businessman and changed her name to Sokolov. He was gone on a trip.
Lale is less forthcoming with Goldie. He doesn’t tell her about the real nature of the camps or conditions. He merely says he was at a labor camp in Poland and now he’s back. Lale tells Goldie and Mrs. Molnar about Gita and his belief that she is still out there somewhere. He says he doesn’t know how to find her or where to even start.
Goldie and Mrs. Molnar are captivated by this love story and urge him to leave at once to begin his search. They make food for his journey, and Lale buys a cart with one horse. He’s sad to say goodbye to Goldie so soon, but she tells him not to come back until Gita is with him.
Lale travels across the country for three days and finally makes it back to Bratislava. By now, he’s learned that many survivors are traveling to the city by train, so he heads to the station. For two weeks, Lale checks each arriving passenger but doesn’t find Gita. Occasionally, he comes across another Birkenau woman, but none know of his love. One of the station workers suggests that Lale register Gita with the Red Cross. He figures it’s as good a plan as any and heads toward the main district.
It’s a lovely afternoon when Gita and two friends see a strange horse-driven cart coming toward them on the street. There’s a man standing in the back, a man who looks familiar. The cart slows, and so does her heartbeat. As the man climbs down, Gita moves away from her friends to get a closer look. When she sees Lale, she steps forward, but he does not move. It is only after Lale hears Gita’s voice that he falls to his knees.
Gita tells her friends that Lale is the man she always talks about. Her friends take the horse and cart away, giving them some privacy. Gita kneels before Lale, and he asks her to marry him. When she says yes, his strength returns, and he picks her up and kisses her. Wrapped in each other’s arms, they walk down the street and mix with the crowd, just another pair of lovers out for a walk.
Lale took his sister’s married name, Sokolov, to avoid trouble with the Russians, and married Gita in October 1945. They stayed in the city, and Lale opened a business importing expensive textiles from around the world. Business was good, as many local clothes makers were eager to pick back up where they’d left off before the war. His business was a success, and he found a partner to help him run it.
He and Gita lived a good life. They had a lavish lifestyle of resort vacations and fine dining. They were also part of the efforts to create the Israeli Jewish state and gave much of their money to the cause. Gita was instrumental in smuggling donations from wealthy supporters over the border. But everything came to a screeching halt when Lale’s partner got divorced and his ex-wife turned Lale and Gita in to the police.
Lale was arrested in April 1948 for illegal exports of valuables, which was likened to stealing from the newly formed Czechoslovakian government. He was sentenced to two years in jail. Gita used some money they’d hidden to bribe some of their political contacts to help. A plan was made wherein Lale feigned psychological distress. A bribed psychiatrist suggested that Lale take a few days at home before complete madness set in. Once home, Lale and Gita were smuggled out of town.
They first landed in Austria, then lived in Paris for several months. They even saw Josephine Baker, the great American jazz singer, at a cabaret. But no one was hiring foreigners, so they purchased fake identification and boarded a ship to Sydney. In 1949, the couple moved to Melbourne, and Lale started importing fabric again. Gita took a class in dressmaking and added her creations to the business.
After years of struggle and disappointment, Lale and Gita finally had a son, Gary, in 1961 when Gita was 36 and Lale 44. They lived a life full of love and joy, facing every challenge together and with a grain of salt. When 16-year-old Gary asked how Gita could be so chipper after the business closed and they were forced to move, Gita said that after what they’d survived, there wasn’t much she couldn’t handle. If they were alive and well, life was good.
Their time in Auschwitz-Birkenau never left them, but they didn’t dwell on it. When Gary was growing up, Lale and Gita made him watch documentaries about the camps, but they never watched with him. Gita still searched for four-leaf clovers, and Lale lost his emotional core. Gary remembers his father crying only once, and that was when Gita died. They were married for more than 50 years, and they never stopped being in love. They were devoted to each other until the very end. A love born in darkness shining bright forever.
Lale’s tale is one of fortitude and cunning. Without the sacrifices Lale made and the risks he took, he likely would have suffered the same terminal fate of so many.
How does Lale’s story of survival make you think about challenges you have faced in life?
What would you have done differently in Lale’s shoes?
How does this novel make you think about the social and racial issues in today’s world?
In what ways will Lale’s journey help you move through your life differently?