For more than 50 years, Lale Sokolov lived with a secret – one born in the horrors of wartime Europe, in a place that witnessed some of the worst of man’s inhumanity to man.
It would not be shared until he was in his 80s, thousands of miles from that place.
Lale had been the Tattooist of Auschwitz.
Living out his life in a suburb of Melbourne, the man who had been born Ludwig “Lale” Eisenberg to Jewish parents in Slovakia in 1916 decided to share his story.
“This man, the tattooist from the most infamous concentration camp, kept his secret safe in the mistaken belief that he had something to hide,” says Heather Morris, who spent three years recording Lale’s story before he died in 2006.
She has now written a book – The Tattooist of Auschwitz – based on how he tattooed a serial number on the arms of those at the camp who weren’t sent to the gas chambers.
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