How the tattooist of Auschwitz fell in love
The man who had the grim job of etching ID numbers into the arms of every Jewish prisoner caught the eye of a teenage inmate and was smitten instantly
THE 17-year-old girl who looked deep into his eyes was as terrified as everyone else in the line. After etching the number 34902 into her arm and rubbing the indelible green ink into the wound Lale Eisenberg held the shavenheaded teenager’s arm a moment longer than necessary.
He looked into those eyes, gave her a small smile and his heart pounded. In a place as inhumane as the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz it is hard to believe that romance could flourish.
But the story of Lale and Gita Furman, who would go on to be his wife after the German defeat, is a tale of love surviving in the most horrific conditions. Lale, a Jewish Slovakian, was transported to Auschwitz in April 1942 aged 26. He had volunteered to go to work for the Germans in the hope it would save his family.
His story of survival in the death camp is remarkable in itself. Soon after arriving he developed typhus – usually fatal for prisoners as if the disease didn’t kill them the Germans would because they preferred to execute sufferers rather than use medicines on them. Lale was nursed back to health by fellow inmates in his block before the camp tattooist – known in German as the Tetovierer – chose him as his deputy.
While the elderly and ill among the thousands of prisoners who were brought to the camp on a daily basis were killed immediately in one of the camp’s gas chamber crematoriums, it was their job to tattoo identification numbers on to all those who were deemed fit enough to work.
Many were fellow Jews but others included gypsies, Russian soldiers, criminals and political opponents of the regime. It was a role that Lale found distressing – to hurt someone, to physically scar someone for life for the Germans.
BUT his boss told him it was a way to survive the atrocities and that he would be a Nazi puppet whatever role he fulfilled in the camp. “Whether it is with me or building blocks you are still doing their dirty work,” he told Lale. When the tattooist was killed by the Nazis soon afterwards it was Lale who was promoted to Tetovierer.
The position gave Lale some privileges and freedoms. Extra rations, his own room, a bed that he did not have to share – and the ability to move around the camp. It was a freedom he made the most of to improve the lives of others in the camp and make sure that he and his beloved Gita could survive.
In concert with some of the women detailed to search through the belongings of new prisoners that had been seized by the SS when they arrived in the camp, he set up an illicit scheme.
They managed to smuggle out diamonds, emeralds and cash to Lale, who traded the items with outside workers who were employed in the camp. It meant extra food, supplies and medicines could be shared out to make life just a little more bearable. He helped several escape the gas chambers and dozens of others owed their lives – or at least the chance to survive another day – to his bravery and humanity.
He also persuaded his SS guard Stefan Baretski to pass on love letters to Gita and move her to a safer, more comfortable job as an office administrator. His privileged position led to whispers that he was a collaborator but Lale strived to keep his dignity and integrity intact and to aid others trapped in the hellish conditions.
As he told Gita one night: “Choosing to live is an act of defiance, a form of heroism. I have been given the choice of participating in the destruction of our people and I have chosen to do so in order to survive. I can only hope I am not one day judged as a perpetrator or a collaborator.”
However his position did not shield him from the horrors of Auschwitz. On one occasion he was taken into a gas chamber where hundreds of men, women and children had been murdered. Their naked bodies were piled on each other, the youngest and weakest at the bottom.
An officer showed him two men who both appeared to have the same number tattooed on their arms – the Germans wanted to identify the bodies correctly before they were put in the crematorium oven. Lale identified where a three was in fact a faded eight and staggered out.
Baretski laughed at him, adding: “I bet you’re the only Jew who ever walked into an oven and then walked back out of it.”
Lale also tattooed patients of the evil Dr Josef Mengele and witnessed the effects of some of his vile experiments in the medical centre at the camp. His own assistant tattooist Leon was even castrated by Mengele.
A group of Romani gypsies, including mothers and children, whom Lale befriended as a second family when they were moved into his block, were taken away en masse and murdered by the Nazis.
But Lale had a remarkable determination to survive, a zest for life – and also good fortune.
He told Gita: “There will be a tomorrow for us. On the night I arrived here I made a vow to myself that I would survive this hell. We will survive and make a life where we are free to kiss when we want to, make love when we want to.”
Even when he was caught with a treasure trove of jewellery and cash under his bed he survived the infamous Auschwitz torture block as the Nazis attempted to make him reveal who had passed on the loot.
HE RETURNED after a month in the penal unit when no one else had. Baretski dubbed him the cat because of his nine lives.
He was then forced into stone-carrying in a field with other prisoners – where the last man to transport his stone across the field was shot dead by the guards.
It is a task that Lale knew he would struggle to survive after his beating. But he was saved when a female friend of Gita managed to persuade the camp’s SS deputy commander – whom she had been forced to sleep with – to reprieve him from the death sentence.
Lale and Gita finally escaped the death camp just as Auschwitz was on the point of being overrun by the Russian army. They were split up but remarkably were reunited weeks later in Bratislava. The couple married in October 1945.
Lale was arrested by the communist authorities in Czechoslovakia in 1948 for smuggling money out of the country. It had been to help the movement to establish a Jewish state in Israel rather than any personal gain. When he managed to escape they left for Australia. There they set up a textile business and in 1961 had a son Gary.
Tragically Lale’s parents were taken to Auschwitz just weeks after he had arrived in 1942 and were immediately killed by the Nazis. He never knew that his efforts to help his family had been in vain.
Baretski was sentenced to life imprisonment for war crimes before committing suicide in 1988.
Gita died in 2003 aged 78. Lale died three years later aged 90 after a long life supported by a love that no hardship had been able to break.
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