The Tattooist of Auschwitz attacked as inauthentic by camp memorial centre

Report for the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre claims inaccuracies in Heather Morris’s hit novel ‘blur the authenticity’ of the true history

Heather Morris’s The Tattooist of Auschwitz, the story of how Slovakian Jew Lale Sokolov fell in love with a girl he was tattooing at the concentration camp, has been one of the year’s bestselling novels. Its cover proclaims that it is “based on the powerful true story of love and survival”; inside, its publisher notes that “every reasonable attempt to verify the facts against available documentation has been made”. But a detailed broadside from the Auschwitz Memorial has disputed this, claiming that “the book contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements”.

The report from Wanda Witek-Malicka of the Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre lays out concerns that the book’s claims of factual authenticity will lead readers to treat it as “a source of knowledge and imagination about the reality of life” in the camp.

The number of different errors in the book can sometimes create more confusion than understanding

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