The Deep Transformation from "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" by Heather Morris

Picture the scene: the ScotRail train coasting eastwards half-asleep against an early Scottish morning, with the dewy, dreary Western Scotland clashing against the awakening buzz of a clear work-day sky of the Eastern side. I'm sitting around the middle of the train, staring at nothing across the passing-by backdrop of the Scottish lowlands, tears streaming endlessly down my face, with a copy of The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris laid across my lap.

This is the second time this very train ride I was so moved reading this book that I had to pause and sit there crying from a deep well of churning emotions. This book had me bawling my eyes out four times total in the first reading, and this is significant because I never have had a book that I've read make me cry in the first place.

Now what is this book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz? It is a telling, through the composite of interviews, research, and historic confirmation conducted by Heather Morris, of the real life story of Lale Sokolov and his wife Gita Furman, both imprisoned and meeting at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II and whose love story withstood the sheer horrors and atrocities of Auschwitz, and ultimately Nazi Germany. Although the story is about ninety-five percent nonfiction, with Morris confirming this to the UK Guardian, to me what is most important about this story is how even in the center of some of the most inhumane and terrifying things to have ever happened in history, love and the human spirit held steadfastedly, and triumphed.

But why did this affect me so much, and why is my personal connection to this so deep?

I picked up this book after a dear friend and conservatoire colleague urged me emphatically to read this, during a very solemn resumption of the academic year in the fall of 2020. Not only was this smack dab in the middle of the pandemic, but about a month prior my first relationship suddenly came crashing down when I was dumped over FaceTime. This very relationship began right at the start of 2020, and when we were stuck in lockdown together I honestly admit to you that I truly fell in love with this man. When I did not know university was going to reopen, or what was going to happen to me as an international student in Scotland, he was the rock I leaned on and my anchor. As Glasgow reopened around the summer, I made sure to travel to and from there and Edinburgh, as most of my books and study notes were at my flat over on the West Coast.

My heart shattered and bled deeply on that fateful FaceTime evening.

What The Tattooist of Auschwitz showed me - nay, reminded me in my broken, bleeding-heart state - that love, of all forms, should be cherished; love should never be taken for granted. Think about it: what if Lale and Gita never met while prisoners of Auschwitz? Would either of them still be alive without the bond and hope to see the light of day together out of the shadow of Nazi Germany?

It's these questions that brought about an even greater love and respect to people as a whole, and invariably the strength of the human spirit. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is without a doubt sobering: it places you right alongside Lale and Gita as if you're one of the prisoners, and there are parts that fill me with dread helplessly watching the actions of the darkest iterations of humanity unfold before your eyes. This bond that I felt to these people held me so hard to the point where it actually felt wrong if I did not see these events through with them with the turn of every page.

This pull, this lasting hope: this is what I carry inside my mended heart three years on, and it is speaking through this hope that I speak to you on this book.

And it is through this where I hope it inspires you, in turn, to read on this life-changing book.