105 pages • 3 hours read
Heather MorrisThe Tattooist of Auschwitz
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2018A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Symbols & Motifs
Currency
Money, as a symbolic exchange of the value of human labor, is a nearly universal concept, no matter the situation people find themselves in. In the concentration camps, currency takes many forms and value fluctuates wildly. Lale and his fellow prisoners are not allowed to own property. They are also subject to starvation and malnutrition. This means that traditional forms of material wealth—paper money, gold, jewels—hold no intrinsic value in Auschwitz. Initially, currency exchange in the camp comes in the form of salvaged bits of the poor-quality bread that they are given to eat at mealtimes. Money cannot be spent in Auschwitz, so it has no real value. Bread, however, has an immediate use: it can be eaten. In the face of malnutrition and starvation, it is incredibly valuable.
Currency exchange transforms with the advent of Lale’s black-market operation with Victor and Yuri. Jewels and money regain value for the prisoners, albeit at grossly-deflated prices. Lale exchanges diamonds for ordinarily cheap items such as sausage and chocolate. While it may seem to be an unfair exchange, it is important to remember that Victor and Yuri risk their lives to get these goods to Lale. The value of the items Lale gives him is incentive to continue doing so, despite the danger.
Hair
Prisoners in Auschwitz are forced to frequently have their heads shaved, keeping only a bare minimum of stubble. This is done partly to dehumanize prisoners: how one wears their hair is an expression of their personality. Keeping the prisoners bald serves to standardize their appearance. This has an especially negative impact on the female prisoners.
Gita, for example, frequently frets that she is not beautiful, partially because of her bald head. When Lale expresses his love for her for the first time, Gita says, “Why? Why would you say that? Look at me. I’m ugly, I’m dirty. My hair…I used to have lovely hair” (131). Gita connects her hair and appearance directly with her innate worthiness. Lale, however, sees the beauty in Gita that shines through, despite the maltreatment she has suffered.
Hair also has great value to the SS in the concentration camp. Cilka is one of the few Jewish women who is allowed to keep her hair. Though Cilka is “unaware of her beauty” (87), Schwarzhuber, one of the SS officials, is not. Cilka retains her “long dark hair cascading down her back,” which maintains her beauty mainly for Schwarzhuber’s benefit and arousal (87). Cilka is given an administration job, which is relatively safe. But the cost is great: it destroys her mental health and well-being.
Diamonds, Jewelry, and Money
One of the stereotypes the Nazis used to perpetuate the extermination of the Jewish people of Europe is the false notion that they hoarded material wealth while the rest of the country suffered during the depression era of the Weimar Republic. Consequently, during the early years of persecution, when Jews were forced tom move into ghettos, much of their material wealth was confiscated by the Nazi government. In the concentration camps, all possessions were taken from the prisoners.
Lale’s contacts in warehouse “Canada” help smuggle diamonds, jewelry, and other forms of currency. Their official job is to sort through the vast amount of items stolen from the prisoners of Auschwitz and Birkenau. By giving these items to Lale, they enable him to trade for goods with Victor and Yuri. Money and value is inherently symbolic in nature. The value of jewels changes completely in Auschwitz: bread, sausage, chocolate, and medicine are worth far more to the prisoners than precious stones.
Tattoos and Identification Badges
The most overt symbol in the novel, tattoos as identification badges were used to sort and identify victims of the concentration camps. Nazi Germany was obsessed with symbols, and graphic design consequently factored this into their treatment of their victims. Lale and his fellow Jewish prisoners were made to wear a yellow Star of David, the six-pointed star associated with the Hebrew religion. Before the Holocaust, Jews sequestered to ghettos in Germany wore this badge at all times in public. This practice of forcing Jews to identify themselves dates back to the European Renaissance, and it is symbolic of their persecution throughout the centuries.
Tattoos replaced the prisoners’ identity within the concentration camp system. Lale knows Gita, for example, only by her tattooed number. This numeric system helped automate genocide. When he arrives in the Saurer-Werke work camps, Lale is surprised to discover that, unlike in death camps, prisoners in work camps are identified by name.
