Pepan

Pepan is the Tätowierer, the camp tattooist at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the man who indelibly marks Lale Sokolov with the number 32407. He is the first person Lale encounters who offers him a genuine chance at survival, and his decision to train Lale as his successor sets the entire course of Lale's camp life in motion. Pepan's significance lies not only in his mechanical role of branding prisoners but in his quiet, pragmatic mentorship, which recognizes Lale's strength before anyone else does and hands him the tools—both literal and figurative—to endure the camp.

Identity and Introduction

Pepan first appears to Lale not as a rescuer but as the man responsible for Lale's own branding. After Lale is processed and tattooed with the number 32407, he is later escorted outside into a cloudless day, his world spinning and his legs staggering. A stranger supports him and leads him to a nearby pile of timber. Pulling up Lale's sleeve, the stranger points to the tattooed number and introduces himself: "My name is Pepan. I am the Tätowierer. What do you think of my handiwork?" When Lale, stunned, asks if Pepan is the one who did this to him, Pepan shrugs, looks Lale directly in the eye, and answers, "I wasn't given a choice." This exchange establishes Pepan's defining characteristic: he is a man who performs the camp's brutal work not out of cruelty but out of compulsion, and he is candid about that lack of choice. His honesty in that first meeting is what draws Lale to him, and it is the foundation of the trust that grows between them.

Mentorship and the Offer of Survival

Pepan's role in Lale's life quickly deepens from that of a stranger to that of a mentor. He tells Lale that he was drawn to him, saying, "You intrigue me, Lale. I was drawn to you. You had a strength that even your sick body couldn't hide. It brought you to this point, sitting in front of me today." This observation is the first acknowledgment of the inner resilience that will define Lale's entire camp experience. Pepan then offers Lale a way to survive, asking, "Well, then maybe I can help you survive in here." When Lale asks if Pepan has friends in high places, Pepan laughs and slaps him on the back, saying, "No. No friends in high places. Like I told you, I am the Tätowierer. And I have been told that the number of people coming here will be increasing very soon." This statement reveals Pepan's practical understanding of the camp's trajectory: he knows that the scale of the killing will grow, and he sees in Lale a potential successor who might survive by taking on the tattooist's role. The offer is not sentimental but strategic, grounded in Pepan's clear-eyed assessment of both the camp's future and Lale's character.

The Tattooing of the Girls and the First Meeting with Gita

Pepan's most consequential act as a mentor is bringing Lale to the day that will change his life forever. One day, Pepan tells Lale, "Something a bit different today, Lale—they've moved some girls from Auschwitz to here, and some of them need their numbers redone." When Lale asks what he means, Pepan explains that the girls' numbers were made with a stamp, which was inefficient, and that they need to be done properly. He warns Lale, "No time to admire them, Lale—just do your job." As the girls are escorted toward them, Lale is stunned at the sight of dozens of young women, having believed there were girls in Auschwitz but not in Birkenau, which he calls "this hell of hells." During the tattooing, Pepan repeatedly urges Lale to hurry, whispering, "Hurry up!" and "Hurry up, Lale!" as Lale takes too long, horrified by the task of defiling the bodies of young girls. It is during this session that Lale tattoos Gita Furman, prisoner 34902, and experiences the moment his heart "seems simultaneously to stop and to begin beating for the first time." Pepan's impatience in this scene is the counterpoint to Lale's dawning love; while Pepan sees only the mechanical task, Lale is being transformed by the face before him. When Lale looks up again after finishing, the girl is gone, and Pepan's urgency has already moved them on to the next piece of paper. Pepan's role here is that of the pragmatic overseer who inadvertently presides over the most important moment of Lale's life.

Legacy and the Passing of the Role

Pepan's legacy is the role he passes on. By training Lale to become the Tätowierer, Pepan ensures that the camp's brutal work continues while also giving Lale a position of relative privilege that allows him to survive, to move about the camp, and eventually to conduct his black-market operations. The role of Tätowierer becomes so associated with Lale that later, when Josef Mengele approaches him during a tattooing session and asks, "Something wrong, Tätowierer? You are the Tätowierer, are you not?", Lale stammers in response, "Sir, I mean, yes, sir . . . I am the Tätowierer, Herr Doktor." This moment shows how completely Lale has absorbed the identity that Pepan gave him. Pepan's own fate is not detailed in the narrative, but his influence persists throughout Lale's time in the camp. The role Pepan held and then transferred becomes the vehicle for Lale's survival, his love for Gita, and his acts of resistance, such as when he alters Mendel Bauer's number into a snake to save him from the hangman, explaining, "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." In this way, Pepan's legacy extends far beyond his own actions, enabling Lale to save others as Pepan once saved him.

Thematic Significance

Pepan embodies the moral ambiguity of survival in the camp. He is neither a hero nor a villain but a man who does what is necessary to live, tattooing prisoners because he "wasn't given a choice." His pragmatism is a form of resistance in itself: by training Lale, he creates a chain of survival that outlasts his own role. Pepan's recognition of Lale's strength—"You had a strength that even your sick body couldn't hide"—is the first articulation of the novel's central theme that inner resilience can outlast physical suffering. His warning that the number of people coming to the camp will increase foreshadows the industrial scale of the Holocaust, and his decision to prepare Lale for that future is an act of quiet defiance against the dehumanizing machinery of the camp. Pepan's legacy is ultimately one of continuity: the Tätowierer's role, born of compulsion, becomes through Lale a means of love, resistance, and survival.