The Tattooist of Auschwitz: Chapter 2 Summary & Analysis

The next morning, the prisoners are shunted outside to receive orders. As an SS officer speaks, the prisoners go quiet, knowing better than to point out that many of them can’t understand German. Lale, for his part, speaks perfect German and so he translates the instructions when the guard is finished, relaying that they will receive two meals a day—one in the morning and one in the evening (if, that is, they survive until evening). During the days, the prisoners will work to continue building the facilities at Birkenau. The officer explains that all prisoners must follow the orders of their kapo. After listening to these instructions, the prisoners line up for breakfast while their kapo introduces himself, presenting himself as harsh and watchful.

Lale receives a cup of weak liquid and pinches his nose to swallow, afraid he might throw up. Aron notes that he received a piece of potato in his portion and he asks how Lale’s cup tasted. “Best meal I’ve had in ages,” Lale jokes, and when Aron asks if he’s always so chipper, Lale tells him to ask again at day’s end. As if on cue, their kapo screams at the group, calling them “lazy bastards” and telling them to finish eating because there’s work to be done. Lale is assigned to work on the roof of a partially-constructed building. When he climbs up a ladder, he encounters two Russian men. Lale tries to introduce himself to the men, but they tell him that they’ll talk later. Before falling silent, though, the men express their surprise that Lale can speak Russian—yet another one of the languages he has at his disposal.

During a break, Lale starts to climb down the ladder when one of his Russian companions tells him to stay put, explaining that it’s safer to remain on the roof where the kapo or guards can’t bother him. The Russian man then explains that he and his friend were captured for being enemy soldiers. He notes that some SS officers have been bragging that Auschwitz-Birkenau will be the biggest concentration camp to exist, and Lale shudders to think about what kind of building he’s helping construct. He then asks his new Russian friends about the different insignias that prisoners wear on their clothes—there are people with green triangles, red triangles, black triangles, and yellow stars. The green triangles, the Russian men explain, are the most vicious since they have been put in the camp because they’re criminals. One of the Russian men adds that rapists and killers excel in Auschwitz.

Lale learns from the Russian men that the prisoners wearing red stars have been put in the camps because of their anti-Nazi political beliefs. The prisoners with black stars are simply “lazy bastards” who tend not to survive, and the people wearing yellow stars are—as Lale knows from his own star—Jewish. Finally, former Russian soldiers have no insignia at all, simply wearing their military uniforms like the rest of the prisoners.

That night, Lale comes upon some of his fellow prisoners as they pray in Block 7, but he doesn’t join them. In the coming days, he listens to the SS officers as they speak German, picking up whatever information he can. This is valuable, especially since they assume Lale can’t understand what they’re saying. In this way, Lale feels as if he’s gaining the only kind of  “ammunition” he’s capable of obtaining: knowledge. He also notices that there are a group of workers each day who don’t wear uniforms, instead dressing in civilian clothes. Furthermore, he wonders how he could get a job like his kapo, who never seems to do anything but walk around and who’s never forced by the SS officers to work.

Wanting to find a way to minimize the amount of physical labor he’s forced to do, Lale tries to impress his kapo one day by yelling at his fellow workers, urging them to toil faster because there’s so much to do. Hearing this, Lale’s kapo calls him over and asks him in Polish—another language Lale speaks—if he enjoys working as a roofer. In response, Lale says he’ll do anything he’s told to do, and then the kapo offers him a job as his assistant, saying that he needs somebody to fetch him things and generally do whatever he says. If Lale does this well, the kapo says, he will enjoy an easier time in the camp. If he lets the kapo down, though, he will suffer. Lale accepts the offer, though he wonders as he stands next to the kapo if he has made “a deal with the devil.” 

One day, Lale sees a truck full of prisoners pull up next to a strange converted bus. Following it to see what’s happening, he watches as Nazis force a large group of naked prisoners from the truck. The officers push the prisoners into the bus until the vehicle is completely packed, at which point they close the doors and they check to make sure everything has been securely locked. An officer then climbs to the top of the bus, opens a hatch in the roof, and drops a cannister inside before closing it again. Immediately, the bus fills with chemicals and it begins to shake; Lale hears screams coming from within. Unable to stand, Lale falls to his knees and he vomits as the bus finally goes quiet. When the officers open the doors, piles of dead bodies fall out, and Lale faints.

Upon waking up, Lale hobbles back to Block 7 but he’s unable to get up the next morning because his body has been overtaken by a fever. He doesn’t come back to full consciousness until seven days later, when he wakes up to an old man pouring water into his mouth. This man helps Lale up and he takes him outside to get some air, explaining that his name is Pepan and that he is the Tätowierer who tattoos the identification numbers on new prisoners’ arms. When Pepan asks what Lale thinks of his work, Lale jokes that the number he received wouldn’t have been his first choice of a tattoo. Pepan assumes that Lale would rather have had a woman’s name, so he asks the name of Lale’s “sweetheart.” Lale simply replies, “I don’t know. We haven’t met yet.”

Pepan tells Lale that he was walking by Block 7 the previous week when he saw a young man pleading with an SS officer not to put Lale on a “cart for the dead and dying.” The officer refused, but when he turned away, this young man pulled Lale off the cart, at which point Pepan rushed over to help. Since then, Pepan and the men in Block 7 have cared for Lale, who was suffering from typhus. During the nights, Lale’s bunkmates looked after him, and Pepan stayed with him when he could during the days. When Lale tries to thank him, Pepan says that the person he should really thank is the man who pulled Lale off the cart, though Pepan doesn’t know the man’s name.

Lale asks about Pepan’s background, noticing that he wears a red star. Pepan tells him that he’s an academic from Paris who was rounded up by the Nazis for expressing anti-German sentiments. When Lale asks if Pepan will continue to teach such things when he returns to his normal life, Pepan laughs at Lale’s optimism. He then asks Lale if his character is as strong as his physical makeup, and Lale assures him that he’s a “survivor,” though Pepan points out that sometimes certain strengths can become weaknesses in the concentration camps. “Charm and an easy smile will get you in trouble,” he says.

Pepan goes on to offer Lale a job as his assistant, a posting he says will make it easier to survive. At first, Lale is hesitant to accept because he doesn’t think he can tattoo unwilling prisoners, but Pepan notes that somebody else will fill the position if Lale doesn’t. What’s more, somebody who has less “soul” than Lale might accept the job and tattoo people in a way that hurts them even more. Thinking this over, Lale accepts the job offer. Before Pepan leaves, though, Lale asks him why he wants him as an assistant. In response, Pepan says that he can tell Lale must be an extraordinary person, since Pepan saw another prisoner risk his own life to save Lale. 

Back in Block 7, Lale discovers that Aron is gone. Lale’s bunkmates tell him that the kapo took Aron away: the kapo was looking for Lale but he couldn’t find him, and Aron didn’t want to tell the kapo that Lale was sick because he knew doing so would mean the end for Lale. Accordingly, Aron told the kapo that Lale had already died, but this irked the kapo, who took Aron instead. Hearing this, Lale begins to weep as his bunkmates explain that they kept caring for him after Aron was taken away, wanting to finish what Aron started. They were, they say, inspired by Aron’s desire to save “the one”—a phrase Lale recognizes. He completes the rest of the saying: “To save one is to save the world.” Turning to these men, Lale thanks them with all his heart and he hopes he can someday repay them, though he senses that he won’t be able to.

The next morning, Pepan takes Lale back to the building where new prisoners are processed. Seeing the chaos there, Lale realizes that he is now helping the Nazis defile his fellow prisoners, but he doesn’t have time to think about this because Pepan introduces him to an SS officer, Oberscharführer Houstek, who is their boss. Houstek comes up to Lale and he studies him, asking what languages he speaks. “Slovak, German, Russian, French, Hungarian, and a little Polish,” Lale replies. With a grunt, Houstek walks away and Lale jokingly whispers to Pepan that he must have gotten the job. Viciously, Pepan whirls around and he stares at Lale, telling him not to underestimate Houstek. “Lose your bravado, or you will lose your life,” he says, instructing Lale to not look above Houstek’s boots the next time he encounters him.