“To save one is to save the world.”
It’s been twenty-five days since my last post. Not to point out my obvious inadequacies, but twenty-five days? Wow. Would you believe me if I said I’ve been around the world in a quick 24? I didn’t think so. Delivering “toys” to my five good girls and boys this year felt like a lot—so much so that I may be ready for a little hyperphagia. Please make me a booksloth 2019!
Enough lamenting and dreaming. Let me tell you about the book I gave away most this Christmas: The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Like Beneath the Scarlet Sky, The Tattooist is based on a true story but qualifies as historical fiction. Like Mark Sullivan, Heather Morris interviewed a holocaust survivor late in his life to share his remarkable story with the world. Lali Sokolov was forced to tattoo thousands of Jewish prisoners with identification numbers for two and a half grueling years. When he inked an incoming Slovakian girl, Gita Furman, it was love at first sight.
I liked what Graeme Simsion, The Rosie Project’s brainchild, had to say: “The Tattooist of Auschwitz is an extraordinary document, a story about the extremes of human behavior existing side by side: calculated brutality alongside impulsive and selfless acts of love. I find it hard to imagine anyone who would not be drawn in, confronted and moved. I would recommend it unreservedly to anyone, whether they’d read a hundred Holocaust stories or none.”