Who am I to judge a book written out of tortured life experience? I recently read Heather Morris’s “The Tattooist of Auschwitz” which is based on the experiences of Lale Sokolov, a Slovakian Jew who survived the Holocaust. I never write book reviews, unless it’s fiction and is horribly well written or the opposite. Ha!

The book follows the story of 24 year old Lale, who’s among the thousands of new arrivals in Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. We see that he’s assigned to perform the duty of tattooing prisoner numbers in the arms of his fellow prisoners. This sickening “duty” saves his life on several occasions. Lale is adamant about surviving the camp, he sources food for his friends from the local villagers in exchange for pearls, diamonds, and other fortunes of dead prisoners. He even pretends to befriend the Nazi SS officer Baretski for passing messages to his beloved.

Hunger, torture, dear, barbarianism, and mostly every second of not knowing if they will breathe the next morning- sums up the life of Auschwitz camp workers. If you woke up in the morning, it is a good day. Those unfit are executed immediately upon arrival. Those with some life left in them are used (yes, used) for hard labor. Lale and some others are lucky enough to be exempted from manual work. But their work is no less scarring. Lale drowns in the guilt of scarring his fellow sufferers, Jakub is made to torture/kill his prison mates who try to escape, Cilka is forced to be the mistress to Lagerfuhrer. Surviving is the only mission.

Anyone reading this book would want to finish it as soon as they can. It’s not because there are any graphic details surrounding the torture, but your desire to see Lale and the others liberated. My meager knowledge of Auschwitz made me wait for a “liberation day”. War isn’t that easy and won't give you a movie-like happy ending. Episodes of the American air force flying over the camp, rumors of Russians approaching and news of resistance from prisoners make us root for a big ending. But this is Lale’s story, how he leaves the camp, where he ends up, and what happens to him. One who lived to tell the story of survival.

The book did face the criticism of focusing on Lale’s love story when all of humanity was suffering. I’m sure numerous books portray the horrors of concentration camps. And this book isn’t wholly deprived of the horrors because there are incidents that shook me to the core. However, we find hope through Lale’s story. We see how he finds love at an odd place and time, which gives him the strength to fight for his life, to survive, and to be free. In the end, it’s always relieving to find tiny scarps of happiness in a place designed to be hell.