Sequel to controversial ‘Tattooist of Auschwitz’ book to be published next month

A sequel to controversial bestseller The Tattooist of Auschwitz will be published next month.

Author Heather Morris, whose story of concentration camp love sold 1.8 million copies in the UK alone, will visit London for the launch of Cilka’s Journey, in October.

Morris claimed The Tattooist of Auschwitz was “95 per cent accurate” with the story of how the camp’s tattooist – Slovakian Jew Lali Sokolov – falls in love with prisoner Gita Furman as “researched and confirmed”, but the book came under heavy scrutiny by Holocaust researchers shortly after publication.

Her second book follows Cilka Klein, a 16-year-old girl sent to Auschwitz in 1942, who was separated at the selection process by the camp’s commandant, after he noticed her long, beautiful hair. After liberation, she is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to Siberia.

The sequel, which explores the female experience of war and sexual violence in conflict will launch at an event as part of the London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre, next month.

It comes after The Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre (AMRC) listed a catalogue of errors in The ‘Tattooist of Auschwitz’ December 2018. Its report led to a stinging rebuke from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, which noted that the novel gives “an impression about Auschwitz inspired by authentic events,” but that it was “almost without any value as a document”.

A museum statement added: “Given the number of factual errors, therefore, this book cannot be recommended as a valuable title for persons who want to explore and understand the history of Auschwitz.”