Their extraordinary relationship, which was documented by Heather following extensive conversations with Lale, a Slovakian Jew who was deported to Auschwitz in 1942, is the beating heart of the six-part series, which cycles between two timelines: Lale’s life as a prisoner under Nazi rule, where he’s played by Jonah Hauer-King, and his time living in Melbourne, 60 years on, where he’s portrayed by Harvey Keitel – although the emotional scars of his unimaginable ordeal remain, as does his ID, which is inked onto his forearm shortly after he enters the camp, his selfhood reduced to a number.
As Lale opens up to Heather (Melanie Lynskey), some of his memories are so painful, in part due to the guilt he feels about some of his own choices in his efforts to protect Gita, that he gives her several false accounts of what really transpired, before then correcting himself.
“It’s not just what was done to us, it was what it made us into,” he says.
It’s an interesting detail to include, highlighting how easy it can be to distort narratives and offer up competing versions, and the vital role that those documenting historical events play in capturing the past as it was, and not how some would like it to be.
That’s also particularly interesting when you consider that in 2018, the Auschwitz Memorial claimed that Heather Morris’s book contains “numerous errors and information inconsistent with the facts, as well as exaggerations, misinterpretations and understatements”.
Morris told The Guardian: “Ninety-five per cent of it is as it happened; researched and confirmed. What has been fictionalised is where I’ve put Lale and Gita (played here by Anna Próchniak) into events where really they weren’t.
“They weren’t together when the American planes flew over the camps, for example. Lale was on his own at that point. I put him and Gita together for dramatic licence.”
Heather, who isn’t a published author when we first meet her in the series, instead working as an office manager at a medical centre, also isn’t Jewish.
“Perhaps you need someone who is,” she says to Lale.
“No, no I don’t,” he responds.
An array of Jewish talent worked on this production, both in front of and behind the camera, and while there’s no knowing if the quality of the show would be lesser without their input, it can only have helped, with Keitel a particular standout, as you’d expect from such a decorated performer.
It’s the scenes in which he’s alone, wrapped up in thoughts of Gita or paralysed by the memory of a past horror without warning, in which he’s at his most brilliant and devastating. While his role is much more pared back than Hauer-King’s, who also deserves praise for navigating such emotionally and physically challenging material, Keitel’s ability to say so much with so little, or nothing at all, is breathtaking.
Part of Lale’s aforementioned guilt is tied to his role as a tattooist, for which he offers a heartfelt “sorry” to every prisoner he’s tasked with branding. There are also the ‘benefits’ bestowed upon him as a signifier of his somewhat elevated standing within the camp, such as being given his own bed in his own room, rather than squeezing into a tightly-packed bunk.
But that discomfort is what ultimately leads him to Gita.
After she makes an observation about the colour of his eyes, their connection blooms instantaneously as they hold one another’s gaze, the closeness of the shot emphasising their immediate intimacy. And on many of the occasions that follow when they’re able to steal a moment with one another, either alone or while crossing paths, director Tali Shalom Ezer uses close-ups of their eyes and mouths to heighten both their emotional closeness and physical desire for one another.
Tenderness and sexual yearning aren’t words typically associated with Auschwitz, but their pull is palpable, heightened by the fear that at any moment, they could be ripped away from another.
Death is ever looming here, the sky stained with plumes of black smoke from the gas chambers.
Every time someone we’ve come to know through Lale or Gita dies, the deceased flash up before the viewer one final time. They look directly into the camera, as if having their portrait taken, while a haunting, muffled toll signals their end.
It’s an effective, artful flourish, both intimate and confronting. Stats can render victims faceless; the dead become one hulking great mass, stripped of their identities, which in turn can dilute the horror. But the six million Jews who were murdered by the Nazis, alongside hundreds of thousands of Polish and Roma people, prisoners of war, gay people and Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others, had names, lives, families, ambitions and hopes, all of which were prised from them as death became an inevitability.
What happened was an abomination – and their faces demand that you never forget.
But crucially, even though there is violence and cruelty at almost every turn, despite the myriad of stomach churning moments that turn you inside out, such is the level of inhumanity enacted by the guards and other personnel employed by the regime, the camera’s eye isn’t malicious or voyeuristic. It doesn’t luxuriate in the savagery, showing precisely what needs to be shown to communicate the full horror of life inside a concentration camp, but also knowing when to pull away.
There are also minute moments of joy, even in the midst of all that is ghastly and deeply frightening, such as a square of contraband chocolate.
“This is the best day of my life,” says one character on finding some toilet paper, a slice of much-needed normalcy and levity in an otherwise pitch-black tale.
It doesn’t release the pressure valve. How could it? But it’s familiar and a window into a world before this hell, offering some comfort, both for those imprisoned and viewers, who also need those moments, however fleeting.
But just as quickly as those small pleasures materialise, they are snatched away. Terror abounds whenever Stefan Baretzki (Jonas Nay) is near.
The dynamic between Lale and the Auschwitz guard who becomes his minder, so to speak, is the most striking aspect of this story. Despite the power imbalance, which Stefan is all too quick to remind him of if he dare displease him, the Nazi officer seemingly believes that the two men share some sort of brotherhood, or certainly wills it so.
Stefan confides in Lale about his love life, and even asks him to write something romantic that he can recite to the woman he’s dating, a strangely personal arrangement. And he also steps in on a number of occasions to protect Lale from being beaten or killed by other guards.
While there are moments when it is absolutely about Stefan exercising his power over Lale for his own amusement or benefit, there are other occasions when his loneliness bleeds through and he seeks out companionship, which is as disturbing as it is bizarre.
Lale is the one in dire straits, but Stefan is infinitely more pitiful. He’s throughly dissatisfied with his lot in life, in large part due to the apparent absence of a real meaningful connection, which stands in stark contrast to the love between Lale and Gita, and the fullness of their lives before the creeping hand of Nazism secured its vice-like grip.
But, regardless of The Tattooist of Auschwitz’s merits, one of the central questions viewers might have before sitting down to watch is: do we need to revisit the Holocaust on screen when there is already so much preexisting material? Does it justify its existence?
It does, and there are two reasons why.
A survey carried out as recently as 2023 by a New York-based Jewish group found “a disturbing lack of awareness of key historical facts about the Holocaust”. That includes 23 percent of adults under 40, and 12 percent of all respondents surveyed believing the Holocaust to be a myth, or the number of Jews who were murdered to be much lower than the official figures.
Clearly, there is still work to be done and television, as we saw with Mr Bates vs the Post Office, can reach people in a way that news reports and history books aren’t always capable of doing.
It’s also impossible to talk about the state-orchestrated destruction of a people, as witnessed in this drama, without discussing the situation in Gaza. The Palestinian people are being killed on a mass scale by the Israeli military, with the “daily death rate in Gaza higher than any other major 21st Century conflict”, according to Oxfam.
UN human rights expert Francesca Albanese has described the Palestinian plight as a “genocide”, which Israel strongly refutes, but there are many who stand with her.
“It doesn’t matter your race or religion, we all bleed the same,” says Lale to Heather during one of their many conversations.
It’s a statement that’s so incredibly simple, it shouldn’t have to be verbalised and yet, here we are. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a focused retelling of the Holocaust, but its moral cry for humanity remains ever-pressing.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is coming 2nd May to Sky Atlantic and NOW. Sign up for Sky TV here.
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