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.
Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 13 Summary
Lale goes to bed happy. Gita falls asleep fantasizing about Lale. Cilka sleeps with Schwarzhuber in numb resignation. Hoess relaxes with a glass of wine. Baretski staggers to bed drunk and shoots his lightbulb.
The next morning, Lale notices Cilka’s downcast demeanor and vows to get Gita to tell her what happened to her. A hungover Baretski instructs Lale that they are to report to Auschwitz Block 10.
Lale has never been to Block 10. The prisoners here are “girls, dozens of them, naked—many lying down, some sitting, some standing, hardly any of them moving” (125). Lale is horrified. An officer makes him enter the building.
Inside, Mengele examines and rejects naked girls in a line. Mengele seems to enjoy Lale’s obvious discomfort. He tells Lale to tattoo the girls he has selected, adding, “‘One day soon, Tätowierer, I will take you’” (126). Lale tries to overcome his fear and attempts to reassure the girls he tattoos. When he leaves the “hospital,” he sees the fenced-in area has been emptied.
Back in her block, Gita discovers that one of the new arrivals is her neighbor, Hilda Goldstein, from her hometown, Vranov and Topl’ou. From Hilda, she learns that her parents and sisters were taken weeks ago, and her brothers left to join the resistance. Gita weeps for her family.
Mrs. Goldstein explains that back home, families were taken one by one. Rumors of what went on in the concentration camps trickled out, but nobody was sure what to think. Gita realizes that “Mrs. Goldstein will not survive long if she is made to labor here” (128). In return for a diamond ring from Lale, she gets the kapo to allow Mrs. Goldstein to work around the block, rather than partaking in hard labor.
Lale works at Auschwitz for the next few weeks. He learns from Baretski that the international Red Cross will be inspecting the concentration camp, so the prisoners will be given extra blankets and rations. Lale wonders, “Will the outside world finally see what is happening here?” (129). However, though they do receive some extra rations, Lale sees no other evidence of a visit. Baretski agrees to tell Gita that Lale is fine; however, he winds up not telling Gita anything. When Lale finally gets to see her, she is incredibly relieved, as she thought he died. He tells her he loves her and that he wants to build a future with her. He is adamant that they do have a future, and that they will both make it out of Auschwitz.
Later, Ivana and Dana ask Gita why she did not tell Lale about her family. She says she wanted to escape herself for a time. She promises her friends she will never keep secrets from them.
Chapter 14 Summary
The next day, while setting up at the selection area, Leon returns, “pale, thinner, stooped, carefully placing one foot in front of the other” (136). Leon has been under Mengele’s “care” and is skin and bones. Leon tells Lale that he has been castrated. Lale is shocked, and tries to hide his reaction from his friend. He sends Leon back to his room to eat and gets back to work, “determining who should live and die” (137).
Lale has the next day off and spends it with Leon; however, Baretski appears and tells Lale that he has work to do. They head to the crematorium. Lale is immediately suspicious and begins to panic. It turns out two prisoners were given the same number; Lale must determine who is who.
Inside the crematorium, Lale sees the Sonderkommandos, the Jews made to move and burn the bodies of the dead. Lale realizes “he, too, is despised for the role he plays at the camp” (139).
Lale and Baretski enter the gas chamber. The room is full of “[b]odies, hundreds of naked bodies […] [m]en, young and old; children at the bottom. Blood, vomit, urine, and feces” (139). It is almost impossible to stand upright in “the well of inhumanity that Lale is drowning in” (140). He identifies the mistaken tattoo on one of the dead men; an 8 that has faded and looks like a 3.
Outside, Lale rounds on Baretski, saying, “‘You bastards. How many more of us must you kill?” (140). Baretski sadistically sees the situation in a humorous way. He tells Lale, “‘You know something, Tätowierer? I bet you’re the only Jew who ever walked into an oven and then walked back out of it’” (141).
Chapter 15 Summary
Lale goes to visit Gita in Block 29; the kapo has been warned by Baretski not to interfere in Lale and Gita’s relationship. When the kapo fetches Gita, she accosts Lale, thinking he was the SS coming to take her away for good. Gita attacks him, but her anger dissolves into passion.
After restraining their need for physical intimacy for so long, the two make love for the first time. This seals Lale’s commitment to Gita; he “knows at this moment that he can love no other” (145). It reaffirms his will to live and “[t]o be free to make love wherever, whenever we want to” (145). Gita falls asleep in Lale’s arms. He wonders at the changes Auschwitz has wrought in himself. He vows never to frighten her like he did that day again.
Gita wakes and questions him ; Lale says he was distressed, when he came to see her, due to what he saw in the gas chamber. He says he will never tell her what he saw. The two part; Lale promises the kapo he will bring her sausage soon as a bribe.
Chapter 16 Summary: “March 1944”
Two boys wake Lale from a deep sleep. They need help: a friend of theirs got caught after escaping and is slated for execution. The boy is outside; they bring him in and Lale questions him. The boy was left behind by his detail while he relieved himself; instead of catching up, he just walked off. He was caught in a nearby village while attempting to steal food.
Lale goes to the administration building, where he finds his friend, Bella, working. He asks if she can add the boy to a list of prisoners being transferred to another camp. He has to go back to his room to learn the boy’s name, which is Mendel Bauer.
Bella adds Mendel to the list. She believes the SS will not question the addition. Lale gives Bella a ruby ring in return.
The prisoners being transferred do not have numbered tattoos, so Lale changes Mendel’s number into a tattooed snake. Mendel’s friend’s part with him, vowing to meet up again “on the other side of this nightmare” (153). Lale sneaks Mendel out into the compound, where he slips in with the prisoners getting ready to be transported to their unknown destination.
Chapters 13-16 Analysis
Doctor Josef Mengele, a real-life historical figure, was one of the most vicious criminals in the Nazi regime. In fact, Lale is lucky to have crossed paths with him as many times as he does and survive. Working his way up the ranks of the SS, Mengele became the head doctor at Auschwitz II Birkenau. Mengele used the lawlessness of the Holocaust to perform horrific human experimentation projects that would otherwise have been absolutely condemned by the scientific and medical communities. He castrates Leon, partially to get at Lale, and Leon is lucky to survive.
Castration is a punishment that runs deeper than the obvious physical effects. Mengele could simply have killed Leon. Instead, he has removed the option of futurity from Leon’s life. Even if he survives the death camp, he will not be able to have children. His legacy ends with him.
Lale’s episode in the gas chamber is one of the most impactful moments in his imprisonment in Auschwitz. Until now, the Nazi mechanisms of death have been imminent, yet removed from the narrative. Were Lale or any of the other characters to visit the execution block, it would likely be for the first last time—a fact that Baretski, in his typical, sadistic way, finds humorous. He tells Lale, “‘You know something, Tätowierer? I bet you’re the only Jew who ever walked into an oven and then walked back out of it’” (141).
This assessment, of course, ignores the presence of the Sonderkommandos, the Jewish prisoners who are charged with the horrible task of removing the dead from the gas chambers. Lale identifies somewhat with these poor souls, as they, too, have taken up a morally-compromising task in order to survive.
