Lali Eisenberg Sokolov and Gita Fuhrmannova Sokolov

Valentine’s Day is almost upon us, and those in the flower, chocolate, and greeting card businesses are licking their lips in anticipation.

But for those short on cash and long on genuine sentiment, the love letter is always a good choice. I’m not talking about a love text, heaven forbid! But an honest to goodness, pen-to-paper love letter. This is the kind of letter that remains in its original envelope safely nestled in a place among keepsakes, a letter that may physically yellow and fade over the years, but that never loses its impact on the heart. In this type of letter, writers bare their souls in unabashed prose or poetry intended for a precious audience of one.

A would-be love letter writer could take note from Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov’s words to his wife, Vera:

I need you, my fairy tale. Because you are the only person I can talk with about the shade of a cloud, about the song of a thought–and about how, when I went out to work today and looked a tall sunflower in the face, it smile at me with all its seeds.

Or English poet John Keats to fiancee and muse, Fanny Brawne:

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days–three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

If you’re a man or woman of few words, you might look for mentors in New Zealand short story writer, Katherine Mansfield who wrote You might drop your heart into me and you’d never hear it touch bottom or Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote I don’t want to live–I want to love first, and live incidentally.

I grew up in a house of words. My father, a teacher and poet, genetically instilled in me a reverence for the spoken and written word. At the supper table, I listened as he spoke. As a child, I took in the rhythms and sounds of a language that seemed other-worldly and infinitely more beautiful than anything I’d ever heard. As a young woman, I became his student, eager to read the words he’d written on the essays I submitted for his classes. Later, as I began to teach and write, I read my father’s poetry–often attached to the bottom of a letter or email. I have known my father as a writer for most of my life.

But it wasn’t until recently, however, that I came to know my father as love letter-writer. I remember the day the manila envelope stuffed with a bundle of letters–rubber-banded and in their original envelopes–arrived at my home. My mother had sent them to me, graciously granting me a look at a father I had sensed but had never truly seen.

The sheer quantity of letters astounded me. Each was written in his distinctive hand, the signature loops and angles, the way one word leaned eagerly into the next. This was my father before he was my father. This was a man who loved a woman with every pen stroke, every word. The most expensive box of chocolates, bouquet of flowers, or greeting card are no match for a single line of a single letter written by my father to my mother.

As I read through my father’s love letters, I was also reading Heather Morris’s novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Although criticized by some for historical inaccuracies, the novel shines as a love story between Lali (Ludwig) Eisenberg and Gita (Gisela) Fuhrmann. Lali, the Tätovierer, first meets Gita when he tattoos her number. As he recounted his story to Morris, he said: As I tattooed her number on her left arm, she tattooed her number in my heart.

Budding love in one of the worst concentration camps the world has known may seem unlikely. But Lale’s and Gita’s love story began and continued through love letters delivered, astonishingly, through Lale’s SS guard. Lale’s desire to meet and know Gita was so strong that he dared to bargain with his SS guard to ensure that Gita received his letters. Initially, he simply wanted to know her name, for he didn’t want to know her as the four-digit number he tattooed on her arm. Their correspondence progressed from simple requests for information and plans for when and where to meet to declarations of love.

Lale and Gita survived unimaginable horror in the camp, only to be separated as the Russians approached, and the Nazis began their retreat. But the love that had sustained them in Auschwitz-Birkenau drove them both to wake each morning, in hopes that this day would be the day they would find each other. After weeks of searching passengers from every train that stopped in Bratislava, Lale was headed to the Red Cross when a woman literally stepped in front of his horse-drawn cart. This was Gita, the love of his life.

Lale and Gita were married and changed their names to Sokolov, a safer name in Soviet-controlled Czechoslovakia. When life there became too dangerous, they escaped and moved to Melbourne, Australia where they lived out the rest of their lives. There, Gita gave birth to Gary, their only child. Gita died in 2003, and only after her death did Lale share their incredible story with author Heather Morris. Lale died in 2006.

Lale’s risk-taking not only included sending love letters to Gita; he also took tremendous risks to buy food from locals who worked inside the camps. The women who sorted clothing and personal items taken from incoming prisoners would smuggle money and jewels to him, so that he could buy food to distribute to those most in need. Lale even changed a prisoner’s tattoo so that he might escape the gas chambers and helped another prisoner escape. Although much of his life he feared he might be regarded as a Nazi collaborator because his role as tattooist had garnered him some special privileges, this same role afforded him opportunities to move about the camp more freely and to make connections with villagers who worked inside the camps. Certainly, the countless prisoners whom Lale helped would consider him a hero. Lale, himself, denied this label and told Morris that he just did the right thing.

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote to Zelda:

I don’t ask you to love me always like this, but I ask you to remember. Somewhere inside of me there will always be the person I am tonight.

This is the enduring essence of the greatest love letters. In them, we write words that capture the extraordinary love of single moments, single days and nights. Through them, we remember the people we were when we wrote and received them. And when we are separated from the one we love? We can read them. Again and again. We can live and love again through words that have only grown more lovely over the years.

There are 7 days before Valentine’s Day. This is more than enough time to pen a great love letter: one from your true heart, one that will remain its original envelope safely stowed with other treasures, one to be taken out and read. Again and again.

Read Lale’s and Gita’s love story:

Morris, Heather. The Tattooist of Auschwitz. Harper, 2018.