World War II

World War II is the catastrophic historical force that engulfs every character in The Tattooist of Auschwitz, transforming ordinary European lives into a struggle for survival. For Lale Sokolov, the war begins not with a declaration but with a bureaucratic decision: in February 1942, he receives advance warning that the German Foreign Office has requested the Slovak government begin transporting Jews out of the country as a source of labor. Despite his worry about the rise of Hitler and the horrors the Führer was inflicting on other small nations, Lale cannot accept that the Nazis would invade Slovakia. He believes the government is giving them what they want, when they want it, and poses no threat. At dinners and gatherings with family and friends, they discuss reports of persecution of Jews in other countries, but they do not consider that Slovak Jews as a group are particularly at risk. This miscalculation proves fatal, as the war's machinery reaches into Slovakia not through invasion but through collaboration, and Lale finds himself transported to Auschwitz on April 23, 1942, tattooed with the number 32407.

The War's Arrival and Its First Horrors

The war's true nature is revealed to Lale gradually, beginning with his journey in a cattle train designed to transport livestock. Dressed in a pressed suit, clean white shirt, and tie, the twenty-five-year-old tries to maintain composure, responding to frightened men with words of encouragement, telling them, "We stand in shit but let us not drown in it." He clings to his suitcase, hoping that with the money and clothes he has, he might be able to buy himself out from wherever they are headed, or at the very least buy himself into a safe job. The war's brutality becomes undeniable when he arrives at Auschwitz and walks through the open iron gates, looking up at the German words wrought from the metal: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. He doesn't 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. The war's true horror is confirmed when he witnesses the gas-van murders at Birkenau, watching as dozens of naked men are herded out of a truck and led toward an adapted bus with steel plates nailed across the window frames. Some enter willingly; those who resist are hit with a rifle butt. When the doors are slammed shut, an officer climbs onto the roof with a canister, opens a small hatch, and upends it. As the bus shakes violently and muffled screams can be heard, Lale drops to his knees, retching, remaining there sick in the dirt as the screams fade.

The War's Transformation of Identity and Relationships

The war fundamentally reshapes Lale's identity, forcing him to become the Tätowierer, the camp tattooist, a role that grants him privileges but also isolates him. He is given a single room immediately inside the door of a new block, and he learns he will take his meals near the administration building with extra rations. The war also transforms his relationship with Gita Furman, whom he first meets when he tattoos her prisoner number 34902. Their courtship unfolds against the war's constant threat, with Gita's bitter irony about her day—"Got up, had a big breakfast, kissed Mama and Papa goodbye before catching the bus to work"—serving as a painful reminder of the normal life the war has stolen. When Lale finally declares, "My beautiful Gita. You've bewitched me. I've fallen in love with you," it is an act of defiance against a war that seeks to strip them of their humanity. The war also creates strange alliances and enmities, from Lale's friendship with Leon to his fraught relationship with Stefan Baretski, the SS officer who becomes his overseer. Even as the war rages, Lale maintains his black-market smuggling operation, using his position to obtain penicillin for Gita and other necessities, turning the war's chaos into a means of survival.

The War's Escalation and Its Personal Toll

As the war intensifies, so does its cruelty. Lale is imprisoned in the Strafkompanie (penal unit) from June 16 to July 10, 1944, where he is tortured by Jakub, a fellow prisoner turned tormentor. No one is expected to survive or be released from that unit, yet Lale endures. The war's reach extends even to Lale's family: his parents, Jozef and Serena Eisenberg, were transported to Auschwitz on March 26, 1942, while Lale was still in Prague, and were killed immediately upon arrival—a fact Lale never learns in his lifetime. The war also claims Gita's neighbor Hilda Goldstein, who survives and makes her way home to Vranov nad Topl'ou. The war's violence is not limited to the camps; it follows the characters even after liberation. Cilka, who had asked Schwarzhuber to free Lale, is charged as a Nazi conspirator and sentenced to fifteen years' hard labor in Siberia, returning to Bratislava only afterward. The war's aftermath brings its own reckonings: in 1961, Stefan Baretski is tried for war crimes in Frankfurt and sentenced to life imprisonment, committing suicide on June 21, 1988, in the Konitzky-Stift Hospital in Bad Nauheim, Germany.

The War's End and Its Lingering Shadow

The war's conclusion does not bring immediate peace for Lale. After the evacuation of Birkenau and his separation from Gita, he is shunted from camp to camp, eventually arriving in Vienna, a dream destination from his playboy days that now fails to live up to its romantic perception. His thoughts are dominated by Gita and by how he can get to her, and he cannot bear being moved much longer. The war's end brings a strange interlude when Lale works for a Russian general, trusted enough to be told, "You've proven you can be trusted; the general's very impressed with you. Just keep doing what you're doing, and when it's time for everyone to leave here, there might even be a little bonus for you." Even in this relative safety, the war's shadow persists, with the warning, "Look after yourself; there's still a war going on out there." Lale's eventual reunion with Gita in Bratislava and their flight from Czechoslovakia mark the war's true end for him, but its effects endure for decades. The war's legacy is carried by the survivors, as the author notes that Lale lived his life by the motto, "If you wake up in the morning, it is a good day." The war's final toll is measured in the dates of death: Gita died on October 3, 2003, and Lale died on October 31, 2006. The war, which began as a distant threat and became an all-consuming horror, ultimately defines the arc of their lives, from the cattle train to the tattoo parlor to the quiet deaths of old age, a testament to survival against the greatest catastrophe of the twentieth century.