Hello everyone,
Congratulations to our regular Book Club members who attended the Science & Engineering Challenge during the last week of Term 2. It was great to hear about how well the day went for participating Cerdon students. I’m sure that you all found the Challenge to be a positive learning experience.
Special thanks to Mrs Ryan who hosted the 14th Book Club meeting and Ms McNamara for sharing news about attending a recent book talk with Heather Morris, author of ‘The tattooist of Auschwitz’, at Sutherland Public Library.
Here is an edited transcript from Ms McNamara’s chat at Book Club on the 1st July about listening to Heather Morris:
Attending author talks give you the opportunity to hear about how a story came to be developed. ‘The tattooist of Auschwitz’ is about Lali who lived in Melbourne (he died a few years ago), he and his wife (Gita) were survivors of the Holocaust. They survived one of the concentration camps in Auschwitz and Lali’s job at the camp was to be the tattooist (he was the person who would mark prisoners with a number). Heather Morris, the author of ‘The tattooist of Auschwitz’, lives in Melbourne. Lali wanted to tell his story of surviving the Holocaust to someone who wasn’t Jewish. He wanted to have a non-Jewish person tell his story as he felt that, while a Jewish person would have a deep understanding of the Holocaust, each Jewish person would have their own unique personal story (e.g lost a family member, or possibly many family members). So he didn’t want his story to be affected by another Jewish person’s story, he wanted his story to be free of that, which is why Heather, who is not Jewish, got to write this story. Heather spoke about how she met him and developed trust with him so that he could actually tell her his story. And the way that came about was through his dogs. Lali had a couple of big dogs and he was a bit wary about whether he could trust Heather and relate to her. When playing with his dogs he would throw a ball and they would return it to him. During the second meeting with Heather, he threw the ball and the dogs went and got the ball but they took it back to Heather. After this Lali said to Heather “you are accepted, my dogs think you are okay, so now I can tell you my story of surviving the Holocaust.” Heather is a social worker and she had worked in a hospital emergency department in Melbourne for twenty years. This experience was important as Heather was used to helping people who have been traumatised tell their stories, she had a lot of skills (such as listening skills, and hearing people describe what has happened to them).
One of the questions raised was “… was Lali a collaborator with the Nazis?” (as he was the one tattooing the numbers onto the prisoners)? In doing this role, he was able to survive and at the same time, he was able to help save some people.
He met his wife in the camp and they fell in love in the camp. After surviving the camp, she would never talk about it. She would say that “it is past and it is finished, I’m not going there.” It was not until she had passed away, that Lali was able to talk about his experience in the camp.
In the book, Heather mentions a young girl called Cilka. Cilka was a young girl that the Nazis kind of groomed to work for them. She didn’t have a choice, none of these people had a choice, it was either work for us or die basically. But when the Russians came and liberated the camps after WWII, they actually took her and sent her to prison for ten years because they said “you have been a collaborator with the Nazis.” Heather, since writing this book, has had contact from many other people who are survivors of the Holocaust and, when she did our talk at Sutherland, she had just come back from Tel Aviv in Israel, where she had been interviewing another woman who was 93, telling her story. Heather has written the story about Cilka and it’s coming out in October. ‘Cilka’s Journey’ is the sequel to ‘The tattooist of Auschwitz’.
Ms McNamara shared a photo taken with Heather Morris who has signed a copy of the YA version of the book for Book Club.
You can access details about ‘The tattooist of Auschwitz’ by Heather Morris here.
You might also like to read this article published in The New York Times on November, 8, 2018: ‘The Tattooist of Auschwitz’ and the History in Historical Fiction.
This recent podcast on Radio National’s: Sum Of All Parts is interesting to listen to. You can access it here: 12.0 The Tattoowierer
For students interested in reading books about the holocaust, you might like to access this Padlet Reading List: WWII and the Holocaust (you can click on the pink link below the title of each book to take you to the book’s details in eLibrary).
Other books discussed included:
- The Greatcoats series by Sebastian de Castell (recommended by Ashley)
- King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (recommended by Emma)
- The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly (Book 2 in the Tea Rose trilogy) (recommended by Anjana)
- Beautiful Demons (eBook series) (recommended by Jade)
As discussed, for our next book meeting, we will be reading books by Australian authors including:
Lenny’s Book of Everything by Karen Foxlee
Catching Teller Crow by Ambelin and Ezekial Kwaymullina
Promise me happy by Robert Newton
Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Finally, you might like to vote in this year’s INKY Awards. Voting closes on the 18th August and you can enter the draw to win a fantastic prize. One of our past Book Club books is on the shortlist!
Looking forward to our next meeting,
Mrs Sylaprany, Mrs Ryan & Mrs Hanratty
