What they all share is fear. And youth. And their religion.

（Heather Morris/The Tattooist of Auschwitz)

タトゥー係として実際に収容所を生き延びた人の話を基にした小説。「生きてここを出る」という意志の強さ。そこにほんの偶然や、奇跡みたいな巡り合わせが何度も何度もあって生き延びたことがわかる。

同時に、こうして世に出た話の陰に、ついに語られることなく奪われた人生が一体どれだけあったかと改めて思う。

心に残ったシーンをいくつか抜き書き。想像を絶する状況にあっても営みをあきらめなかった主人公と、彼が出会った人々、交わされた言葉たち。

Occasionally they pass fields ablaze with spring flowers and Lale smiles to himself. Flowers.[...]He vows himself that the next flowers he gives to someone he will pick himself.

“I saw a half-starved young man risk his life to save you. I figure you must be someone worth saving.”

Another picks up the story. He rises from the bunk below, haggard, with cloudy blue eyes, his voice flat but still full of the need to tell his part of the story.

“Mmmm. I want to stay here with you, forever.”
”Forever is a long time.”
”Or it could be tomorrow,” she says.
”No, it won’t be.”

”I know it’s a strange thing for me to say, but you will honor them by staying alive, surviving this place and telling the world what happened here.”