George Kovach in San Francisco, stepson of Cilka
The story of how first-time Melbourne author Heather Morris came to write the international bestselling book The Tattooist of Auschwitz is remarkable in itself. It begins with a chance meeting with Holocaust survivor Lali Sokolov, a tattooist at the concentration camp who wanted his story told. Her book was sold as as a PR gimmick as a work of historical fiction “based on an incredible true story” which in fact was not a true story at all.
Morris is now about to release a sequel allegedly based on the real life of a woman sent to the concentration camp, Cilka Klein, who by all accounts had carefully guarded her story until her death in 2004. In fact, this sequel is not based on a true story at all. Morris never spoke with Cecelia or with any of her relatives. She made it all up from hearsay and gossip. For all Morris’s success — and her insistence that her books are not intended to be historical records — there are Jewish literary critics and Holocaust scholars who wonder how much poetic licence an author has to romanticise and embellish some events, especially when dealing with real people and the dire reality of the Holocaust.
In the case of Heather Morris: she is a pathological liar and serial fabricator more interested in fame and money than telling the truth about what really went down in the Nazi camps and Soviet gulags. Shame on her. Let's hope she shuts up soon. She is now threatening to write a third book in her sex and romance Nazi Holocaust series of literary hoaxes, She laughing all the way to the bank, bragging to reporters about how much money has is making and eating as much food as she can. What a sad example of a modern Kiwi/Aussie woman of today! Clueless. Hopeless.
“This next book, it's in the works now,” she told a UK reporter.
BUT NOT EVERYONE IS HAPPY ABOUT THIS:
Here are some negative comments from readers worldwide so far. There are literally hundreds of such negative comments on blogs and Twitter and comment sections of newspapers. But the publishers do not respond and just see more money dancing on their counting tables in London, Sydney and New York.
''Yes Heather Morris, some prisoners 'sold their souls,' in order to survive the Nazi Death Camps whilst most of the others were all brutally murdered, however are those without principles the ones we should be listening to or writing about to make money for ourselves?''
''Morris's books are just yet another rendition of 'Sophie's Choice,' which I read years ago.
I have no desire to buy this 'Jenny Come Lately Books.'''
''The only stories about the Holocaust should be the absolute truth nothing else is acceptable.''
''I have the new sequel book, but have no urgency to read it after reading the review in The Australian newspaper by Jewish reporter Fiona Harari.
As others have astutely observed: “If you are going to fictionalise or adapt a true story based on a personal testimony, I think it is really important to ensure that it is built on a foundation of reality,”, to avoid the possibility that a work of fiction "becomes the dominant historical knowledge” We have enough revision of history going on around us already. ''
''Intensely unpleasant and exploitative books.''
A third novel in the works?
She has revealed that her next novel -- the third in her series -- will be based on the memories of a 93-year-old lady who approached her in Tel Aviv recently.
While in Slovakia for her research on the new sequel, Morris says she asked Cilka’s friends how they thought she would have responded to Morris’s desire to tell her story.
“They all said, ‘We think she would have sat down with you, but she wouldn’t say much!’
Of course, Morris never sat down with Cilka's own stepson George Kovach in California.
The blending of fact and fiction in ''The Tattooist Of Auschwitz'' attracted criticism in some quarters.
The Auschwitz Memorial Research Centre in Poland oiced concerns that people might use the novel as a work of historical reference, claiming that “the book contains numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts”.
Though ''Cilka’s Journey'' is similarly interwoven with many outrageous and unjustifiable fictional elements, Morris says she worked diligently to establish the facts, employing so-called ''researchers'' to scour archives from all over the world.
“I had a professional researcher in Moscow establish everything we could about the gulag Cilka was in. I read testimonies from other women who were there at the exact time she was. Then I combined that with the information I got from visiting her hometown and talking to people who knew her.”
But Morris admits that she never spoke with George Kovach, the real actual living stepson of Cilka who has a never different -- and truthful -- story to tell. Morris would not hear him out. She stonewalled him when he contacted her and her publishers about the many falsehoods in her "story" and she later slow-walked him from putting in his two cents. That's the kind of woman she is.
Blurred lines and backlash
Her novel the ''Tattooist of Auschwitz'' took flak from Holocaust historians. Now she has a sequel now and a third sequel planned as well. No amount of criticism, though, appears to have rattled Morris. She has a video of an elderly Jewish woman she recently met in Israel, a fan of her first book and also an Auschwitz survivor. She will be the main character in the next sequel, set to appear in 2023.
When the short video clip ends and Morris turns away from the screen, we know that this serial fabricator is hoping to use it during yet another promotional tour and she’s thinking that maybe the Holocaust experiences of this Israeli woman and her sisters might make for a fine end to the planned trilogy.
Can no one stop this sex and romance novelist from upending the true nature of the Nazi Holocaust?
Veracity of new Holocaust
sequel questioned by stepson
SEE EARLIER TAKE DOWN:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.co
SEE EARLIER TAKE DOWN:
https://blogs.timesofisrael.co
by a literary blogger in cyberspace
Webposted: October 1, 2019
I received the following email the other day from a reader of The TIMES of Isreal blogs named George Kovach. He told me a story that is going to rock [and shock] the publishing world worldwide as soon as major newspapers in New York, London and Sydney get wind of it. For now, here is what he told me, after contacting me by email out of the blue on Monday.
"Hello Sir,My name is George. I am the stepson of Cecilia (Cilka) Klein.As you may know, Heather Morris's new Holocaust sequel novel novel, titled "Cilka's Journey", was released this month.
It claims
to be "based on a powerful true story of love and survival."The title character is my stepmother.I have read an advanced copy of the novel, and I can tell you that the character of Cilka has nothing to do with my stepmother.
Please listen to me: I would like to ask for your help as a literary reporter in bringing the errors of this new Holocaust novel to public attention.I can send you or any other reporter anywhere in the world a detailed outline of my objections to this novel, my interactions with Mrs. Morris, and my contacts with St. Martin's Press, the publisher in the USA.Your powerful articles on "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" in 2017 and 2018 are what led me to contact you.My problems with Cilka's Journey are the same ones you had with Tattooist, only more so.You and others might be amused to learn that Mrs. Morris has doubled down on the issue of "rassenschande."
My poor stepmother in the fabricated storyline is now the mistress of not one but two Nazi camp commanders.How absurd, preposterous, and hurtful can you get?"Here's what Mr Kovach told me:I am the stepson of Cecilia (Cilka) Klein/Kovachova. (Cilka is a diminutive of Cecilia).
Last April, Heather Morris asked to meet with me. She told me she had finished a novel called
'Cilka’s Journey', about Cecilia and my father. I was not familiar with Ms. Morris’s work since I
had not read or heard of 'The Tattooist of Auschwitz" as of that time.
It seems that Ms. Morris had made a special trip to Oakland, California just to meet with me. I
was not opposed, at that time, to helping her, so my wife and I invited her to dinner the next day.
I was intrigued and also puzzled. I had always thought that my father’s and stepmother’s stories
would have made a dramatic novel. Why Heather hadn’t been in touch with me, the closest
living relative of both her heroine and hero, before writing the novel was never adequately
explained. One would suppose a writer would contact me first if she was writing a novel “based
on the powerful and true story of love and survival.” (the tagline on the the cover of the novel.)
Heather had been to Kosice and talked to people in Cecila’s and my father’s old apartment. They
must have told her that I existed. Heather did admit to knowing of my existence and my
whereabouts. She claims she asked Peter Juscak (a friend of my father) for my contact
information and he was “reluctant” to give it to her. This was all nonsense since when she
wanted to get in touch with me, she did.
Our dinner was pleasant, with much typical small talk. When we got to dessert, Heather started
tantalizing me with news about all the financial publishing ''advances'' she was getting for 'Cilka’s Journey'. In a
dramatic whisper she announced, “over two million dollars for just the North American market.”
Then, she confessed, “today we got 90,000 euros for the Polish rights!” I replied, “Who would
have thought? Poland!”
Then Heather got to the point. She wanted any photos I had of Cecilia and my father, and she
wanted me to write an afterword from the point of view of the stepson of her heroine and the son of her romantic
hero. This, as you know, was done for 'Tattooist' by the Australian son of Lale Sokolov. For this, I
would be given X number of dollars or euros. I thanked her but said that before I put my “family
seal of approval” on 'Cilka’s Journey,' I wanted to know more about the novel. Heather replied
that it was all very top secret and could not allow me to read the manuscript. Instead, she said she
would read excerpts to me.
We invited her to dinner the next night.
I wish every author well because writing and then selling your work is an almost impossible task.
However, from the bits and pieces of 'Cilka’s Journey' that Heather read to me, it was obvious
that she had no real facts regarding either Cecilia or my father. Also, her portrayal of my father
near the end of the novel was not only inaccurate but portrayed him as a kind of grifter and petty
thief who was indifferent to the fate of his wife and child (me). By this time, I had read 'Tattooist'
and recognized my father’s character as a pale shadow of Lale. In addition, there was no
development of their relationship. He seemed to fall in love with Cilka at first sight. And this
was to be the romantic end to 'Cilka’s Journey' where, after all she’s suffered, she finds hope for
the future in a relationship with a man she can admire and love? He is supposed to be the safe
harbor where she can finally rest from the storms of her ruined life.I decided not to contribute to a book that presented characters that had nothing in common with
the people that I knew and loved, namely, my stepmother and my father. Heather had already
presented the character of Cilka as the mistress/sex slave of a high-ranking SS camp commander
in Tattooist. What would she do to Cecilia and my father in 'Cilka’s Journey'? Through my
attorney, I let Ms. Morris and her publishers know that I would sue if I felt she had defamed my
stepmother or father.
They did acknowledge my right of privacy for my father because he was a blood relative. In her
afterword to 'Cilka’s Journey' Heather explains why she doesn’t name my father: “I have not
included the name of the man she (Cilka) met in Vorkuta and married, in order to protect the
privacy of his descendants.” (This of course is not true. She did not include him because I
threatened to sue.) Instead, she replaced my father with a vague character called Alexandr, who
exchanges only a few sentences with Cilka throughout the whole novel, and whose main
occupation seems to be wandering around a Soviet labor camp, smoking and gazing up at the
sky. This is the major romantic interest of her novel?
The right of privacy was not extended to my stepmother, Cecilia Klein/Kovachova. It seems that
Heather and St. Martin’s Press do not consider a stepmother a relative. So, can they run
roughshod over Cecilia’s character without anyone being able to defend her? And exploit the
defamation of her character for profit, for money?
I and my son are the sole beneficiaries of Cecilia’s estate. Doesn’t that indicate that she
recognized us as her family? If so, why would it not be important to get permission from
remaining family members to tell Cecilia’s (Cilka’s) story?
Lale Sokolov was a real person, not a fictional creation of the author’s imagination. Heather
interviewed Lale. She signed a contract with him giving her permission to tell his story. His
family also agreed. Yes, she made changes to his story, but since she had cleared it with him and
his family it was assumed those changes were accepted by them.
Cecilia Klein/Kovachova was also a real person. She was dead, and her husband was dead, but
her stepson was still alive. Heather never contacted me until the book was already written and in
final edits. She signed no contract with me giving her permission to use my stepmother as a
character in her book.
She mentions Cecilia by name as Cecilia Klein in the book and in publicity. Before I demanded
that my father not be used in the book, she even used the name Cecilia Klein/Kovacova. And
also named my father (Ivan Kovach).
I obtained an advance copy of 'Cilka’s Journey'. Her portrait of my stepmother is appalling and
extremely hurtful. It has nothing to do with the Cecilia I knew, or her history as she recounted it
to me.
Here are two of the most egregious errors.
1. My stepmother is presented as being the mistress of not one but two high-ranking SS
camp commanders. In Tattooist she was the mistress of only one SS commander, SS-Obersturmfurer Johann Schwartzhuber. (It seems Heather decided to double down on the
titillation.) This is not only false, but patently absurd. Ms. Morris either doesn’t know, or
chose to ignore, the concept of rassenschande and what Herr Himmler did to SS men
caught breaking that commandment.
2. Cilka steals drugs from the Vorkuta camp hospital (supposedly to protect her reputation
from things she did in Auschwitz?) This Gulag hospital had very few drugs for its
prisoner patients. If this had been true, can you imagine the suffering and deaths that
would have been on Cilka’s conscience? My stepmother, who later worked as a senior
government accountant, had a reputation in Slovakia for incorruptibility and honesty. The
idea that she would steal drugs from desperate patients would have devastated her.
I understand how Ms. Morris, being an Australian writer of romance novels for female readers and knowing nothing except the
bare facts of Cecilia’s biography, would naturally reach for the lurid and titillating. However,
Cecilia (Cilka) is my stepmother. She cannot protect herself, nor can her husband, my father,
who is dead.
Cecilia Klein/Kovach was not a public figure. There are people still alive who knew her and
worked with her in Slovakia. There are people still alive who were friends of hers. They all
would be shocked to read these things about her. I was shocked. Some might be led to believe
them true because the cover says, “Based on the powerful true story.”
Is there no protection for the memory of the dead? Especially the recently deceased who are non-
public individuals.
As I see it, you can’t make a character who is clearly based on a real person do things that are
detrimental to her reputation and memory and then hide behind the claim of “fiction.”
The book jacket proclaims – “Based on the powerful true story of love and survival.”
Inside the book, in tiny print, is the boilerplate disclaimer that this is a work of fiction.
You can’t have it both ways.
I recently contacted Heather and her publishers and expressed once again my objections to the
portrayal of Cecilia in 'Cilka’s Journey'. This time I made it clear, again, that I did not want any
money, nor would I accept any money, coming from this misbegotten project. But I told them
that they did have an obligation to make amends to the spirit of Cecilia for abusing her in the
pursuit of profit.
I proposed that if they contributed 10 percent of all revenues from 'Cilka’s Journey' to either the
Solzhenitsyn Fund or Memorial (the Russian Gulag organization) I would not sue or publicize
my objections to the book. These are non-profit organizations. Heather and her publishers would
be able to deduct their charitable contributions and take all the good works credit for themselves.
Then, maybe, the spirit of Cecilia would indeed rest in peace.
Their response was to stonewall and slow-walk their decision. (“We will get back to you in due
course.”)A little about my father and Cecilia.
Cecilia Klein met my father when they were both prisoners in Stalin’s Gulag. My father was
arrested in 1948 after the Soviets took over Czechoslovakia. He was a lawyer with a promising
career in government and therefore an enemy of the new communist state. My mother an I
escaped to the West after he was arrested. I didn’t see my father again until I was an adult.
When I was reunited with my father, I met Cecilia and learned of her story. The appalling
account of a young girl who suffered and survived two of the most horrible hells of the twentieth
century – Auschwitz and the Gulag. During my visits with them over the years I also learned of
my father’s experiences in the various Gulag camps of Central Asia and his meeting with Cecilia
in Vorkuta. My father was always able to find humor and hope amid terror and suffering. Despite
the injustices inflicted on him by the communist regime, he held on to his deep belief in justice
and a forgiveness of human frailty. Although Cecilia didn’t like to speak of her past, she did
open up to me. I grew to admire and care for her a great deal. She was one of the kindest, most
sympathetic and loving people I have ever known.
A word about me. Who am I?
My experience has been mostly in the theater. I got a graduate degree at UC Berkeley in theater
arts and later went on to create the Berkeley Shakespeare Festival (now the California
Shakespeare Festival), where I was the first artistic director. I also was a resident director at the
Berkeley Repertory Theater and worked in numerous regional theaters both on the West Coast
and in New York. After a brief stint as a talent agent in a major agency in New York, I then
commercially produced Broadway shows in San Francisco and Chicago.
I spent a year in the Soviet Union working for the State Department. During that time, I traveled
all over the USSR with a computer exhibit, met thousands of people and handed out thousands of
“forbidden” books, gratis. The following year I returned to film a documentary in Siberia. I was
the first American allowed to film the remnants of actual Gulag camps at Kolyma which,
because of their location above the Arctic Circle, are still intact.''Note from this blogger Dan Bloom: "The publisher stands by the book and says it does not plan to stop its publication or recall the book despite these objections from the stepson of Cilka."
POSTSCRIPT: from AUSTRALIA MEDIA:
Tattooist of Auschwitz author feuds with Jewish scholars at Holocaust museum over accuracy as her fabricated sequel is released with huge financial purse as part of the publishing deal. Huge.
"A rabbi told me in Sydney only a few months ago that there is no Hebrew word for history. None. That all Jewish stories come from memory.
"And look, I don't want to fight *them. Can't we both just be helping to promote the story of the Holocaust in different ways?"
Updated 23 Sep 2019, 6:35amMon 23 Sep 2019, 6:35am
"I don't want to fight them."
Melbourne author Heather Morris is getting ready for the publication of the sequel to her global best seller The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and she's again bracing for controversy.
Key points:
- Auschwitz Memorial says book contained "numerous errors" and was "dangerous and disrespectful"
- Morris backs her personal research and that done by others on the ground in Europe
- Morris says the Memorial "doesn't like it being portrayed that Germans ... sexually assaulted Jewish girls"
"I suspect the Auschwitz Museum are not going to be happy with it," she told the ABC of her sequel.
She speaks from experience.
Although the first book sold more than three million copies, rocketed to the top of the New York Times paperback fiction list and has been translated into 47 languages, the official Auschwitz Memorial and Museum remains distinctly unimpressed.
It said Morris' extraordinary story of how Slovakian Jew Lale Sokolov fell in love with Gita, a woman he was tattooing at the concentration camp, was riddled with factual mistakes and exaggerations.
The book, in the Memorial's view, was "dangerous and disrespectful to history".
Morris insisted her work was nothing more than a novel based on a true story; a blend of fiction and fact.
That said, she is confident she is not distorting history and backs her personal research and that done by others on the ground in Europe.
If that (continuing) scrap is any guide, then the debate over how history is respected in historical fiction is set to flare yet again with the release next week of Cilka's Journey.
Readers of The Tattooist of Auschwitz would remember another character, Cilka Klein, who was only 16 when she entered Auschwitz, saving Lale's life.
The new book "imagines" Cilka's story through her time in the concentration camp and her subsequent jailing by the Russians in a brutal gulag.
In her author's note, Morris prepares readers for what's ahead:
"Although it weaves together facts and reportage with the experiences of women survivors of the Holocaust, and the experiences of women sent to the Soviet Gulag system at the end of the Second World War, it is a novel and does not represent the entire facts of Cilka's life."
'Numerous errors'
In fact, it was the portrayal of Cilka's concentration camp ordeal in Morris' first book that was the major concern of the Auschwitz Memorial.In a forensic, six-page fact check published in the Memorial's monthly magazine late last year, researcher Wanda Witek-Malicka took issue with "numerous errors" including:
- Lale getting hold of penicillin in 1943 ("impossible" as the drug was still in the research phase)
- Incorrect descriptions of the train route Lale would have taken to arrive at Auschwitz
- SS soldiers pouring a poisonous liquid from a canister though the hole in the roof of a bus ("simply false")
But it was Morris' depiction of Cilka being used as a sex slave by commandant Johann Schwarzhuber that most infuriated the Auschwitz Memorial.
It insists such a long running "relationship" between a senior SS officer and a prisoner would have been "non-existent" because of the severe punishment facing Schwarzhuber if it was discovered.
Morris strongly defends her depiction of the relationship.
"I read testimonies and I speak to survivors and they say to me, 'Ah, she was the Commandant's girlfriend.' They use phrases like that," she said.
"And, so people who were there.
"If it's all the same to you I think I'll go with their testimonies because they were there."It's time to call it out for what it was: it was the rape of those young girls and it's our shame that they have spent decades living in shame."
Morris even goes as far to say the Memorial doesn't "like it being portrayed that the Germans in any way raped or sexually assaulted Jewish girls".
"And that's incorrect and we have so much evidence, so many testimonies," she said.
'History and memory can part'
Morris insists she is not telling the story of the Holocaust, just a story, and she advises readers to seek out "factual accounts" of life in concentration camps.But the question remains: given the terrible enormity of the facts, how careful should one be in respecting them? Even if the stories are as compelling as Lale's and Cilka's?
Morris said she was "very comfortable" with her approach, and believes there's a place for both her and the Auschwitz Memorial in telling Holocaust stories.
"They have storylines that they've obviously got through testimonies and their facts that they've gathered," she said.
"But it comes down to that whole notion of history and memory. And memory, I know that it doesn't always dance together. It can part.
"A rabbi told me in Sydney only a few months ago that there is no Hebrew word for history. None. That all Jewish stories come from memory.
"And look, I don't want to fight them. Can't we both just be helping to promote the story of the Holocaust in different ways?"
1 comment:
There's a word for uneducated rural New Zealand-raised country bumpkins like Heather Morris ... But I won't use it here. She should have quit while she was ahead. The take downs and criticisms to be published very soon in the New York Times, the Guardian, The Australian, The Age, the BBC and 25 others websites will seal her literary fate. Her rise and fall is a cautionary tale. Seems money got the best of her.
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