Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Survival and Morality
Faith, Love, and Optimism
Unity, Sacrifice, and Empathy
Knowledge, Uncertainty, and Power
Summary
Analysis
It is March, 1944. Late at night, Lale wakes to a knock on his door. When he opens it, he finds two prisoners outside and he lets them in. They explain that they need help because their friend escaped but that the friend was caught. This astounds Lale, who wants to know how the prisoner escaped, though the two men don’t know. Still, they’re worried that he’ll be executed the following morning and they want to know if Lale can help. They then bring the young man into Lale’s room, and the man explains that he was working outside the camp when he told an officer that he needed to go to the bathroom. The officer told him to go in the woods, but when the prisoner tried to rejoin the group he saw that that they’d already started leaving. Worried that an officer might shoot him if he ran after them, he turned around and snuck into the woods.
When the young man who escaped tells Lale his story, readers see the overwhelmingly difficult situations in which the Nazis often put the prisoners. Although this man hadn’t planned on escaping, he was left with virtually no choice but to run into the woods, since he knew that running to rejoin the other prisoners would mean risking his life. In order to survive, then, the man had to take a different kind of risk, bolting away and hoping he wouldn’t be found. On another note, the mere fact that Lale has invited these men into his room most likely puts him in danger as it associates him with an attempted escapee. And yet, Lale doesn’t think about this because that is not the way he moves through the world. Instead of kicking the men out, Lale empathizes with the young man who was caught, once more demonstrating his selfless perspective on life.
Themes
Lale tells the condemned prisoner to stay in his room while Lale goes to see if he can save him from execution. Slipping out, Lale sneaks over to the administration building where he asks a worker named Bella if he correctly heard earlier that day that there is a transport of prisoners scheduled to leave the camp that night. Bella says this is indeed the case, so Lale asks her to add the condemned prisoner to the list of people being taken away to another camp, though he has to run back to his room to ask the man his name, which is Mendel Bauer. Returning to Bella, he relays Mendel’s name and he arranges for him to slip out on the transport that night, giving Bella a precious ring in exchange for her help. The next morning, Lale sneaks Mendel to the bus, telling him to never get caught again.
Once more, Lale puts himself in danger in order to help somebody he doesn’t even know. By sneaking out at night, covertly entering the administration building, and bribing Bella to put Mendel’s name on the transport list, he puts his own safety at risk. However, Lale doesn’t hesitate to do anything of these things since he firmly believes in the value of coming to the aid of his fellow prisoners, ultimately abiding by the idea that “to save one is to save the world.”
Themes
