“Lale makes a vow to himself: I will live to leave this place. I will walk out a free man. If there is a hell, I will see these murderers burn in it.” - The Tattooist of Auschwitz

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Lale strives to get out of this horrible place. More than one million people died in Auschwitz.  The Holocaust is a tragic event in human history. As someone writing a blog post about a book set during this time, I feel it is a challenging subject to read on and talk about afterwards. What occurred during this time was incredibly horrendous. 

                        

I wonder, what does it take to have the courage to hold on and live through something like this? Especially when surrounded by a horrific nightmare everyday. 

It is my understanding or at least from the point of view of Lale that he did what he could to survive. He made certain sacrifices. 

It was discovered that Lale could speak certain languages that was useful to the Nazis. He was given the job of tattooing incoming prisoners, it was his way "out" and something that could keep him alive. 

Of course it was not as simple as that. 

Lale chooses to make risks to help people in the camp which could jeopardize his life. He meets Gita and is survival becomes about the possibility of a life with her. 

Along the way he has the help of a SS guard to stay connected to Gita.

Everyday survival is on the forefront of Lale's mind - which in this place seems impossible. For many it would be. 

The survivors would have witnessed atrocities that I don't think anyone would ever want to imagine. 

In watching a short video about Auschwitz - a survivor takes us on a tour of the camp and talks through ways in which people there made decisions that could mean possible survival. In this video she mentions how for some it was "luck" - sometimes people were chosen at a whim, sometimes there were reasons behind the Nazis decisions. She talks about the electric fence around the camp and how people would purposefully jump onto this fence to die. 

If like Lale they were wanted to live by the end of it-then as it is also talked about in this video, certain choices had to be made. Those choices came with obstacles, strategy and risk. 

In the book Lale says "if you are awake in the morning, then it is a good day". 

Lale's survival is not the end. The survivors would return to a world changed, family members who had died, homes destroyed and their lives altered forever.

Lale had to find ways to keep his freedom in a version of the world outside of Auschwitz. 

This story becomes an interesting insight of what becomes of Lale. 

The tattooist of Auschwitz is very well written. One that is difficult to put down, we as the reader are hoping for some good to come out of it. 

It is however based on true events and a real person - and is therefore not going to be for everyone. It may even at times be too confronting to read.