Published: 4 January 2019
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The Tattooist of Auschwitz attacked as inauthentic by camp memorial centre (Guardian)
Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz, the story of how Slovakian Jew Lali Sokolov fell in love with a girl he was tattooing at the concentration camp, has been one of the year’s bestselling novels.
Its cover proclaims that it is “based on the powerful true story of love and survival”; inside, its publisher notes that “every reasonable attempt to verify the facts against available documentation has been made”.
But a detailed broadside from the Auschwitz Memorial has disputed this, claiming that “the book contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements”.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is 2018's publishing sensation - but how accurate is it? (Jewish Chronicle)
The book is a fictional version of the lives of real people. Writer Heather Morris met Lale Sokolov, as an old man, living in Australia. He was mourning his wife, Gita, and wanted to tell their love story.
I read the report from the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre with great interest, because this time last year I was asked to edit a younger readers’ version of the book.
Tattooist of Auschwitz distorting reality, say custodians (Australian)
FIONA HARARI The administrators of Auschwitz have warned historical errors in The Tattooist of Auschwitz are distorting wider understanding about Nazi Germany’s biggest concentration camp, saying the best-selling book is “almost without any value as a document”.
Pawel Sawicki, press officer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, said that while there was no issue with fictionalising the Holocaust in general, “in this case there are too many inaccuracies that in a way distorted the image of Auschwitz as it was”.
Now, one of Australia’s leading Holocaust historians has revealed he refused to endorse the book because he was alarmed at its historical blunders. Konrad Kwiet, chief historian to Australia’s War Crimes Commission, was sent a copy of the manuscript last year, before it was published.
“From the beginning I was very sceptical,” said Professor Kwiet, resident historian at the Sydney Jewish Museum. He added that as an historian he was not able to appraise fiction. “It’s a sex story of Auschwitz that has very little historical accuracy,” he said.
Bram Presser, whose novel about his grandfather’s Holocaust experiences, The Book of Dirt, won the Christina Stead prize for fiction at the 2018 NSW Premier’s Literary awards, said: “I think that the story is extraordinary but I have deep reservations about the telling of it. That people should believe that this is a true representation of the Holocaust is problematic.
“If you write a Holocaust book you have an ethical responsibility to do proper research, proper fact-checking. Otherwise you are doing Holocaust memory disservice and potentially flaming Holocaust deniers.”
Morris told The Australian: “I have written a story of the Holocaust, not the story of the Holocaust. I have written Lale’s story.” Asked her reaction to the extent of the fact-checking, she said: “I am surprised it has taken so long.” She refused to comment on errors highlighted in the report.
Photo: Lale and Gita Sokolov with their son Gary
