Lale volunteers for transport to Auschwitz

Lale volunteers for transport to Auschwitz is the founding act of sacrifice from which the entire story of The Tattooist of Auschwitz unfolds. It is the moment a young Slovakian Jew, born Ludwig Eisenberg on October 28, 1916, in Krompachy, chooses to surrender his freedom so that his brother might keep his. This single decision—made in a local government office among men who had once been his school friends—transforms a private family loyalty into the engine of a harrowing survival epic, carrying Lale from the Arbeit Macht Frei gate to the tattooist's chair, from the gas-van horrors of Birkenau to a love that would outlast the war itself. Without this voluntary offering, there would be no Tätowierer, no prisoner 32407, and no story to tell.

The Poster and the Family Decision

The crisis that forces Lale's choice arrives in the form of a poster. In the spring of 1942, Lale has returned to his parents' home in Krompachy, Slovakia, after hearing that Jews in small towns were being rounded up and transported to work for the Germans. Jews were no longer allowed to work; their businesses had been confiscated. For nearly four weeks, Lale helps around the house, fixing things with his father and brother, building new beds for his young nephews who had outgrown their cribs. His sister is the only family member earning an income, working as a seamstress who must travel to and from her job in secret, before dawn and after dark, because her boss is prepared to take the risk for his best employee.

One evening, the sister returns home with a poster her boss had been asked to put in the shop window. It demands that each Jewish family hand over a child aged eighteen or older to work for the German government. The whispers and rumors about what had been happening in other towns have finally come to Krompachy. The poster warns in bold type that if any family has such a child and does not surrender them, the whole family will be taken to a concentration camp. Max, Lale's older brother, immediately says he will go. But Lale will not hear of it. Max has a wife and two young children; he is needed at home. The logic is simple and absolute: the family's future rests on Max, so Lale, the unmarried younger brother, must be the one to go.

The Act of Volunteering

Lale reports to the local government department in Krompachy, offering himself for transportation. The officials he deals with are not strangers—they had gone to school together and knew each other's families. This intimacy makes the transaction all the more chilling: the men who process Lale's surrender are former friends, now functionaries of a regime that sees him only as a quota to be filled. He is told to make his way to Prague, report to the appropriate authorities, and await further instructions. The bureaucratic ordinariness of the procedure—the familiar faces, the routine paperwork—underscores how completely the Slovakian government has acquiesced to Hitler, giving him whatever he wanted.

The decision carries an immediate and terrible cost. Lale's parents, Jozef and Serena Eisenberg, are transported to Auschwitz on March 26, 1942, while Lale is still in Prague. Research has uncovered that they were killed immediately upon arrival at Auschwitz. Lale never knew this; it was discovered only after his death. The irony is devastating: Lale volunteered to spare his brother, but his parents were taken anyway, and he would spend the rest of his life unaware of their fate. The sacrifice that was meant to protect the family could not protect them.

The Journey to Auschwitz

After two days, the cattle train stops again, and there is a great commotion outside. Dogs bark, orders are yelled in German, bolts are released, and wagon doors clang open. Lale places his suitcase on the ground, realizing with a shiver that he is unlikely to see the case or its contents again. He touches his hand to his heart, to the money hidden in his jacket pocket, looks to the heavens, breathes in the fresh, cool air, and reminds himself that at least he is outdoors. A gunshot rings out and Lale jumps. Before him stands an SS officer, weapon pointed skyward, shouting "Move!" Lale glances back at the emptied train. Clothing blows away and books flap open. Several trucks arrive, and small boys clamber out, snatching up the abandoned belongings and throwing them into the trucks. A heaviness settles between Lale's shoulder blades as he thinks of his mother's books.

The men trudge toward the looming, dirty pink-brick buildings with picture windows. Trees line the entrances, flush with new spring growth. As Lale walks through the open iron gates, he looks up at the German words wrought from the metal: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. He does not know where he is or what work he will be expected to do, but the idea that it will set him free has the feeling of a sick joke. SS, rifles, dogs, his belongings taken—this he had been unable to imagine. He is tattooed with the number 32407, becoming prisoner 32407, the identity that will define him for the next three years.

The Tätowierer and the Weight of the Choice

Lale's voluntary arrival sets him on a path that transforms him from an anonymous prisoner into the camp's Tätowierer. He is given a single room immediately inside the door of a new block, isolated from the friends he misses in Block 7, and told he will take his meals near the administration building with extra rations. "We want our workers to have their strength," his SS overseer explains. The privilege is a form of survival, but it is also a burden. When he tattoos the young women, he finds it horrifying—defiling the bodies of young girls is worse than tattooing the arms of men. When a man in a white coat inspects the face and body of a terrified young woman, Lale squeezes her arm tightly to stop her from speaking, mouthing "Shh." The choice to volunteer, which once seemed so clear, now entangles him in the machinery of the camp's dehumanization.

The weight of his position is made explicit when he encounters Josef Mengele, who asks, "Something wrong, Tätowierer? You are the Tätowierer, are you not?" The voice sends chills down Lale's spine. Yet Lale also uses his role to resist. When he changes a prisoner's number into a snake to conceal it, he explains: "Where Mendel is going, no one is numbered. It wouldn't take long for his number to be seen, and then he would be right back here, to keep his appointment with the hangman." The act of volunteering, which began as a family duty, becomes the foundation of a larger moral project—using his position to save others, one rescue at a time.

Memory, History, and the Meaning of the Choice

Lale's decision to volunteer is inseparable from the way his story is told. As the teller of Lale's story, the author had to identify how memory and history sometimes waltz in step and sometimes strain to part. Lale's memories were, on the whole, remarkably clear and precise, matching research into people, dates, and places. There was no parting of memory and history for this beautiful old man—they waltzed perfectly in step. The choice to volunteer, made in a moment of family loyalty, becomes the lens through which Lale's entire survival is understood: a man who gave himself up to save his brother, and who then spent years in Auschwitz using his position to save others.

Lale lived his life by the motto: "If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day." The morning of his funeral, the author woke knowing it was not a good day, but that it would have been for him—he was now with Gita. The act of volunteering, which sent Lale through the gates of Auschwitz on April 23, 1942, ultimately led him to Gita, to the love that would define his life, and to the story that would be told sixty years later. The sacrifice that began as a brother's duty became the foundation of a life lived in defiance of the camp's attempt to strip him of his name, his identity, and his humanity.