Bestselling author accused of betraying Holocaust survivor

A bestselling auth­or has been ­accused of breaching the privacy of a late Holocaust survivor who had fought to keep her personal history secret.

Melbourne-based Heather Morris has become one of the country’s most successful debut writers, with her first book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, selling more than three million copies internationally in just 18 months. Her new book, Cilka’s Journey, is being published on October 1.

According to data provided to The Weekend Australian by Nielsen Book, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, based on the wartime experiences of Melbourne man Lali Sokolov, is the fastest Australian fiction debut title to have sold 200,000 print copies since Australian BookScan records began in December 2002. That record was achieved in 75 weeks — 10 weeks faster than the previous record holder, Nikki Gemmell’s The Bride Stripped Bare, which was originally published anonymously.

In just over a year and a half, The Tattooist of Auschwitz has become one of the all-time top 30 adult fiction books on record. It has also proved to be contentious.

Alarmed that details in the book might be distorting history, in November the administrators of the Auschwitz concentration camp released an extensive fact-finding report, outlining a series of historical inaccuracies in Morris’s book. They were concerned that increasing numbers of visitors to the camp believed it was true when in fact it was “almost without any value as a document”.

Read the article by Fiona Harari in The Australian.

[Refer to editor’s letter in The Australian]