By Mitchell Clarke
A best-selling Berwick author, who rose to fame by telling the heartbreaking story of a holocaust survivor that lived through the horrors of Auschwitz, never thought she’d write a book. As she told MITCHELL CLARKE, it was the chance meeting with a remarkable 87-year-old that changed her life.
Before she was an author, Heather Morris hated talking about herself, however after releasing three best-selling books, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Cilka’s Journey and Stories of Hope, she felt compelled to find the courage to “open up”.
“I’ve received thousands of emails from around the world, filled with personal stories from readers about their lives, loves, losses and learnings, and I thought if these people that have wrote to me, have found the courage to tell their story, I thought I should find the courage to tell my story,” she told the Gazette.
And it’s a remarkable story she has.
Much of it revolves around the life and legacy of Lale Sokolov, who many have come to know as the ‘tattooist of Auschwitz’.
It was a coffee catch up with a friend in 2003 which provided the chance meeting.
“My friend had a friend whose mother had just died and his father had said ‘find a person that can tell my story, but that person can’t be Jewish,” Heather explained.
A week later, Heather was knocking on the door of the 87-year-old widow.
“I had no idea if he had a story worth telling. I was just intrigued to meet him,” she said.
It was December 2003. As she drove from Sherbrooke to Balaclava, and noticed Christmas decorations, she instead practiced how to say ‘Happy Hanukkah’. She vividly recalls that very first meeting.
“My first impression … it was just weird. He opened the door and had a dog on either side of him – one was the size of a small pony, the other was the size of my kitten,” she explained.
“He didn’t look at me. He just said the word ‘come’, so I followed him as he turned around. He pointed to a chair at the table and said ‘sit’.”
That was the beginning of a remarkable friendship.
Heather and Lale would spend countless days together, discussing the horrors he experienced.
“One day he said to me ‘my dogs like you, I like you, you can tell my story’,” Heather said.
“I still didn’t know if there was even going to be a book. It was a case of his grief being so strong that he just couldn’t get anything out into the open.
“He was so grief stricken – he’d always say ‘have you finished my book yet?’ and I’d say ‘no I haven’t’ and he’d say ‘well hurry up, you know I need to be with Gita’.”
As detailed in The Tattooist of Auschwitz, Lale Sokolov was on the first transport from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942. He was put to work as the ‘Tätowierer’ or the tattooist – to mark his fellow prisoners, forever. One of those prisoners was Gita, the young woman who stole his heart at first glance.
With a new purpose and a lot to live for, Lale and Gita, once referred to as prisoners ‘32407 and 4562’ managed to survive the horrors of the Holocaust. They moved to Melbourne and lived happily for 58 years.
After opening up to Heather, Lale’s perspective on life began to change. He eventually stopped saying he needed to be with Gita again.
Heather, who had wanted to tell the inspirational story through film, told Lale a production crew had expressed interest in turning his story into a feature film.
“He said ‘You want to make a movie about me? Who will play me? Brad Pitt is a good looking boy, I’m a good looking boy. He’s a good pick.’ I think he finally settled on Ryan Gosling,” Heather laughed.
“He was such a charmer. I remember he used to say to my husband ‘she may be your wife, but she’s my girlfriend’.”
That film didn’t eventuate, but Heather remained defiant. She sent her script to Hollywood. She entered various screenwriting competitions – and did quite well, often placing in the top 10 of competitions, many featuring up to 100,000 entrants.
“But nobody was picking it up, despite people telling me that this story needed to be told’,” she said.
It was in 2016, when Heather was visiting family in San Diego, that she was complaining about “those buggers” in Hollywood, who “wouldn’t know a decent story if it hit them across the head”.
“My sister-in-law just said ‘for goodness sake Heather. Just write it as a bloody book and get it over with’,” she laughed.
In early 2017, Heather moved to Big Bear Village in California for a month where she knuckled down to adapt her screenplay into a book.
“Then and there, I knew I was going to finish it. It was absolute jubilation for me. As far as I was concerned, I had knocked the bastard off,” she said.
But she never expected to sell six million copies and have the book translated in 47 languages.
“I was going to self-publish and give away 100 copies and I’d have fulfilled my promise to Lale,” Heather said.
Sadly, Lale never lived to see the impact his remarkable story had on the world. He passed away on 31 October 2016, aged 90.
The last thing Heather said to him was: “I will never stop telling your story”.
“(His passing) was a mix of emotions for me. I was heartbroken that this man, who was part of my life, had gone, but the other part was like ‘he can now be with Gita, and that’s all he really wanted’,” she explained.
When asked what he’d make of his story’s successful reception, Heather said Lale would be dancing around his lounge room with his big dog, while also talking to everyone and anyone who would listen.
“We’d be having a ball together. I think he’d probably say to me ‘you shush, I tell’,” she laughed.
“This is what he wanted. He always said ‘tell the world my story to ensure it never happens again’.”
Prior to writing the book, Heather hadn’t been to Auschwitz-Birkenau. She wanted to describe that place through Lale’s eyes, not hers.
Three months before his death, Lale, who hadn’t left Australia since he arrived in 1949, said he needed to be taken back to “that place”.
“He said to me ‘do you know there’s a concrete step in crematoria three. I have to go there and I need to stand there and say sorry to the millions of people I didn’t save’,” Heather recalled.
“Those words chilled me then and they chill me now.”
Once the book was done, Heather made the journey to the darkest place on Earth.
“I just went numb. I started looking down at the ground and I thought ‘I’m walking in his footsteps’.”
She also found the step.
“I did get pretty emotional. I thought I had to step on it for him. I looked down into that evil pit,” she said.
“He was this one person, but he’s just one amongst millions.”
In a fitting tribute to the life of Lale, a screenplay written by Heather in 2004, will be adapted into a six-part mini-series in the UK.
“It’s absolutely come full circle,” she laughed.
“And the story of Lale and I will be woven into it.”
