A son's painful pilgrimage
Like millions of others, Gary Sokolov learnt the full extent of how his parents survived the Holocaust from The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Now, 80 years after the camp’s liberation, he is retracing their steps
Alamy
- Amy Raphael
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When Heather Morris’s novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz was published in 2018, millions learnt about the real-life against-the-odds love affair of Lale and Gita Sokolov amid the incomprehensible horrors of the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Among them was Lale and Gita’s son, Gary, who discovered the full story of how his father, a Slovakian Jew ordered to tattoo ID numbers on new arrivals after he was imprisoned in 1942, had inked the identifying number onto his mother’s left arm at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Lale and Gita Sokolov with their son Gary. Sky
Growing up in Melbourne, Gary knew that his parents had spent time in a prison camp in occupied Poland during the war, but they had never discussed their experiences with him. Aged 12, he was made to watch The World at War, ITV’s landmark 26-part series detailing the key events of the Second World War. “I sat on my own in the TV room for an hour each week while they were in the kitchen,” he remembers. “At the end of each episode, Mum would come into the TV room with some snacks and then I’d go to bed. They wanted me to watch it so that I had a sense of what happened, but not through them.”
Later, when his mother came home one day and announced that she’d had the tattoo on her arm removed, she explained simply that she couldn’t cope with looking at it any more. Gary knew that if he asked any questions he would be met with silence.
My knees were shaking so hard that I could barely walk
Gary Sokolov
Five decades later, Gary still had unanswered questions about his parents. Last year, he agreed to take part in The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz, a new Sky History documentary airing on the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Initially, he travels to Slovakia, where he visits the towns where his parents grew up, and eventually to the concentration camp where they met and fell in love.
“I didn’t know my mum had three sisters who were sent to a Nazi extermination camp in Lublin, Poland, because she never mentioned them,” he says. “In Krompachy, I took a handful of stones from outside my dad’s front door to lay on his grave [a Jewish tradition that honours the deceased]. I did the same in Vranov nad Topl’ou, but Mum’s house no longer exists, so the stones I took were from the remaining walls of the former synagogue.”
On previous occasions, Gary had been unable to face the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where Nazi Germany murdered at least 1.1 million people; around one million of whom were Jews. He had previously turned back at the Polish border and then at the gates. “Even this time, with the support of a guide from the Auschwitz Museum, my knees were shaking so hard that I could barely walk.”
Gary Sokolov at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. Sky
In the documentary, Gary sees the everyday things that were left behind – the endless suitcases, the mountains of shoes, and walks, slowly, speechless, around the gas chambers. “The efforts the Nazis made to create the camp, the way they analysed the productivity of the gas chambers so they didn’t waste a minute in killing as many people as possible…” His voice trails off. “And then the guide took me to Birkenau. I’ve seen it in documentaries and in movies, but the sheer vastness of it is impossible to understand until you’re there.”
He cries often in the documentary. Now, on our video call, he looks stunned, uncomprehending. How did his parents not only survive, but also manage to meet again after the war, move to Australia alongside over 35,000 other European Jews to make a new life and never discuss their past?
During the documentary Gary visits Dr George Halasz, a psychiatrist and Holocaust trauma researcher, to learn about intergenerational trauma – the passing of trauma from survivors to their descendants. “I wasn’t even aware of the concept until I met George,” he says.
Jonah Hauer-King as Lale Sokolov and Anna Próchniak as Gita Furman in The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Sky
At the start of the programme, Gary’s face is tight and lined with grief. By the end, he is comforted by knowing more about his parents’ story. He takes his daughters, aged eight and 12, to his parents’ graves in Melbourne for the first time, and together they place the stones he collected in Slovakia. One day, when they are older, he plans to take the girls to Auschwitz-Birkenau to see where their grandparents met and where so many Jewish people were murdered.
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“As I was getting older, I wanted to know more about them. I now have information about them and their families, and I can do some investigating on my own. I still look for my mum and dad when I see footage from the Holocaust, but thanks to the documentary, I also have pictures of them at school and as happy teenagers.” He looks sad again for a moment. “Teenagers who had no idea what was coming.”
Authors
Amy Raphael
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