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 4-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary
Walking together from Birkenau to Auschwitz, Lale gets to know Baretski a little better. Like Lale, Baretski is obsessed with women; unlike Lale, he does not treat them respectfully, viewing them solely as sexual objects. Baretski is Romanian, not German, and “ran away from home to Berlin and joined the Hitler Youth and then the SS” (54-55).
Lale takes Baretski up on his offer to send a message to the girl with the number 34902. Baretski arrives in Lale’s room in the middle of the night with a pencil and paper for him. He gives Lale two hours to come up with a message for the girl.
Lale decides to go with a simple message. He introduces himself and asks her to wait for him by the administration building the following Sunday. He realizes this puts her in danger, but he cannot help but risk it.
Her response the next day is short as well: she, like Lale, is from Slovakia; she has been in Auschwitz longer than he has and works in a warehouse. She agrees to meet him at the appointed time and place; however, she does not leave her name.
The next day, Baretski teases Lale about his relationship with the girl. Baretski reveals that he has a girlfriend; she is impressed by his SS uniform. Lale slips up and nearly insults Baretski. He ends up giving the SS officer advice about women to smooth things over, though it is against his morals. Lale sees Baretski as a monster; he actually “hopes Baretski will not survive this place to be with any woman ever again” (59).
Chapter 5 Summary
Sunday arrives and Lale nervously anticipates his first words to the girl. He saves his extra bread for her and sets out to find her. He eventually sees her in a group of female prisoners near the appointed place. He asks her name; it is Gita. Gita’s friends sweep her away and he is left to fantasize about her.
Gita and her friends, Dana and Ivana, discuss Lale back in their block. She has already committed Lale’s letter to memory.
The next morning, the girls, arm in arm and smiling, are met by an SS officer. The officer forbids them from eating to punish them for their happiness. Gita is sustained by the prospect of seeing Lale next Sunday.
The next Sunday, Lale finds Gita and takes her behind the administration building, where they can speak in relative privacy. They get along, nervous but happy to be in each other’s presence. Lale introduces himself properly, giving Gita a bit of his background. Gita merely says, “‘I am prisoner 34902 in Birkenau, Poland’” (66). Lale manages to get her to promise that she will tell him her name before they get out of Birkenau.
Gita tells him a bit about her job in the Canada warehouse, where prisoners’ confiscated belongings are sorted. Lale promises to bring her some extra food next time, and the two part for the week.
Chapter 6 Summary
Weeks pass and the year advances toward winter. Lale wonders about the civilian construction workers who enter and exit the camp day to day. He approaches a group of them and questions two of them, a father-and-son duo named Victor and Yuri. Victor warns Lale that the building under construction is called “‘Crematorium One,’” which, Lale realizes, implies there will eventually be more than one crematorium (71).
Victor offers Lale a sausage, to which Yuri objects. Victor says, “‘Hell, if we can help just one of you, we’ll do it’” (72). Victor offers to help get Lale more food in the future; Lale asks if he could try to get him some chocolate. On his way back to his block, it begins to snow, and Lale is overcome with emotion.
Portioning and wrapping the sausage, he is struck by the difference between his current life and his old one, when he had all the food he could wish for. He then heads to the Canada warehouse, a place that owned the sobriquet because of the prisoners’ view that Canada is “‘a place far away where there is plenty of everything and life can be what they want it to be’” (73).
He gives a portion of sausage to some girls exiting the warehouse, asking for them to try to smuggle him some of the jewels and/or money they occasionally find. Lale plans on using the contraband to pay to smuggle more food into the camp.
Meeting once again with Victor and Yuri, Lale insists upon not taking any food from them until he can pay them properly. Victor gives him food anyway.
Victor has given Lale sausage and chocolate. He obsessively divvies up the food for the girls and the men of Block 7, hoping they keep quiet about the source. The two girls give him “coins and Polish zloty bills, loose diamonds, rubies and sapphires, [and] gold and silver rings emblazoned with precious stones” (76). These riches present both opportunity and danger: if Lale is caught with them, he will be executed.
The next morning, he pays Victor with a ruby and a ring. Victor wishes him a happy new year. It is now 1943.
Chapter 7 Summary
On a freezing Sunday, Lale waits for Gita, only to find out from Dana that she is very sick, possibly with typhus. Dana is in a panic; they need penicillin. Lale tells Dana to smuggle Gita into Canada, hide her and give her as much water as possible, and to not take her to the hospital, where she will surely be killed. Lale says he will try to get medicine.
Lale is in a state of panicked shock. Every day, he sees the “death cart,” “Black Mary, it’s called. [Gita] cannot end up there. That must not be her fate” (80). The next day, he goes immediately to Victor and Yuri. Victor agrees to obtain penicillin or some other medicine. He then watches as Dana and Ivana smuggle Gita out of their block.
Lale returns to Birkenau that afternoon and gives Dana “all his rations from breakfast” (82). Lale wonders, “I barely know Gita, yet how can I live if she does not?” (83). Victor gives Lale medicine the next day, and Lale gives it to Dana.
Gita is in a bad state because “[t]he pull of typhus is stronger than they are; the black stillness has completely overtaken her” (83). Dana and Ivana administer the medicine and hope for the best.
The next day, Lale asks Baretski for a favor: he wants the SS officer to get Gita to be transferred into administration, where the heating will do her good. Baretski agrees to try.
Gita is gradually recovering. Several days later, she is taken into administration, where “[w]hat strikes her is the warmth. The SS work here too, so of course there is heating” (85). Gita is put to work, transcribing names and details of prisoners.
Chapter 8 Summary
Hitler’s efforts to eradicate the Jews increases. The increase in work for Lale and Leon means Lale often cannot collect contraband from the Canada girls. Lale tattoos a giant of a man named Jakub. He takes pity on Jakub and tells him to wait in the shadows behind him, then takes Jakub back to his room and feeds him bread and sausage.
It turns out Jakub is actually from America: he was visiting family in Poland, got trapped, and was imprisoned. Lale reassures Jakub that he will do well in the camp. Because of his size, the Germans will no doubt find him a suitable job.
Lale has worked five Sundays in a row and misses Gita. Searching for her on his next free Sunday, he is shocked to hear cheering. Jakub is performing for an audience of prisoners and SS, showing off his strength by tossing logs and bending metal. Houstek arrives and Jakub is escorted off at gunpoint.
Gita meets up with Lale; the two are happy to reunite. He feeds her chocolate behind the administration building, and they kiss. He jokes about giving her a beautiful diamond ring, but she wants him to use it for bartering. Baretski again interrupts; they are needed at Auschwitz.
Baretski’s behavior is off; he is in a bad mood. As they walk to the other camp, he shoots and kills three prisoners. Lale reflects on the cruelty, though he can do nothing but curse “whatever god may be listening” (95).
Chapters 4-8 Analysis
Much of Lale’s life both before and during his imprisonment at Birkenau centers on his relationships with women. While it would be easy to describe Lale as a ladies’ man—he certainly lived a playboy bachelor lifestyle back in Slovakia—this would be selling his character short. Lale fundamentally respects women. This belief shows in his horrified response when female prisoners are first taken into Birkenau.
Baretski again stands in stark contrast to Lale. While Lale is chivalric and comes close to putting women on a pedestal, Baretski views women as objects. Lale respects them not only for their beauty, but their insights and the caring role they have played in his life. He even tries to give Baretski advice on how to treat women. Baretski “talks about women like a teenager,” while Lale tries to tell him “it’s all about respecting them and what they’d care about” (53). Baretski fails to see his point, insisting that it does not matter what women think or feel.
It is ironic, then, that Baretski is the one who initially facilitates Lale’s relationship with Gita. Whatever his motives may be, Lale would likely never have gotten to know her were it not for the SS officer acting as a go-between. Inside the camp, Lale and Gita’s devotion to each other is a means of survival: their love is an anchor that keeps them being swept away in the tide of cruelty they are subject to daily. Perhaps most critically, it gives them something to look forward to, both short term and long term. They eagerly anticipate meeting each Sunday, giving them something else to focus on beyond mere survival. Finally, their relationship gives Lale a concrete vision of the future, a reason for living and fighting for what lies ahead.
