When it comes to tragedy, there has long been tales of love that flourishes under the most brutal of circumstances. But how successfully can these themes be portrayed when simultaneously exploring an environment as bleak as Auschwitz?
★★★½
Adapted from Heather Morris’ 2018 #1 New York Times bestseller of the same name, The Tattooist of Auschwitz, developed as a Sky Original, tells the ‘real life’ tale of Lale Sokolov (Jonah Hauer-King), a Slovakian Jew transported to Auschwitz II-Birkenau in 1942. Over the course of the three years, preceding the end of the Second World War, Lale encounters every horror one can expect to find in a concentration camp, whilst simultaneously finding love in fellow inmate Gita (Anna Próchniak).
With such a delicate subject matter at hand, and an invaluable tale to tell, separating shock factor from true insight can be remarkably difficult. After the first few of the six episodes, I began to question the true value of being subjected to such consistent abhorrence, and whether the lessons at hand can be effectively passed forward, and not washed out, by the historically accurate misery the audience witnesses.
Outside of the events that take place in the camp, and certainly to the benefit of the adaptation, The Tattooist of Auschwitz differs from the book in its more meta approach. Instead of telling Lale’s story in a linear format, we are alternatively introduced to characterisations of both an older Lale, portrayed by Harvey Keitel, and the author Heather (Melanie Lynskey). With these two actors fronting the show, we see Heather interviewing Lale for the book that will become The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and it’s this approach that allows for relief that would otherwise be missing. WIth Lale telling his story retroactively and establishing a bond with Heather, there is room to breathe in an otherwise suffocating tale of hardship. The chemistry between the two of them is impressive, too, and to see an 84-year-old Keitel display such fragility is both sobering and refreshing.
In creating and casting the series, director Tali Shalom-Ezer sought out actors of various backgrounds to fill the screen with the diverse characters that fell victim to the Nazi regime, including actors of Jewish descent. This alone makes The Tattooist a more sincere tale, if not too much so. As the series progresses and the world of Auschwitz is better developed, the obscenities never get easier to swallow, which I don’t doubt is deliberate, making for a wildly difficult viewing experience.
However, though Lale and Gita’s love remains sweet, their lack of screen time in the camp itself doesn’t fully convince us of their bond, and it’s here that the romantic aspects of the series struggle.
Whilst Shalom-Ezer produces content that is resoundingly faithful to history, down to the very last clothing detail, this reliance on accuracy pulls the viewer away from investing in the central love story. Due to the nature of a concentration camp, I’m sure that Lale and Gita rarely had time to interact, but in a narrative setting this prevents the viewer from connecting better to their love story; the very love that played a key part in their survival.
Where The Tattooist of Auschwitz truly succeeds is in its display of morality amidst true evil. When Lale is recruited by the SS to draw prison numbers on inmates’ arms, he finds himself in an impossible position. Working on behalf of his oppressor, Lale is provided with better accommodation, food and rest. These benefits may give him a stronger chance of survival, but his peers face constant risks in working hard labour. The series focuses on these issues and its understanding of what human beings will do in order to survive allows the content to stand out stronger than many other Holocaust dramas.
In focusing equally on Lale’s life as an old man telling his story, the question of normalcy after experiencing trauma remains pertinent and unanswered, and few other projects span enough of a time period to present the aftereffects of such an experience. How is someone who has witnessed the very worst humanity has to offer ever meant to return to a world of mundanity; a world where the horrors may not persist in reality but live forever in your mind?
A key part of this permanence lives through the series’ commitment to representing victims above all else. For every inmate Lale gets to know, who is later murdered, we are confronted with these victims staring down the lens of the camera, straight at us, asking us to see humanity amidst the inhumane.
Many of these individuals appear as apparitions to the older Lale, alongside the threatening presence of Stefan Baretzki, an SS guard tasked with looking over him during his time as a tattooist. For Baretzki, a real Nazi who was later sentenced at the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials, the casting of Jonas Nay is perhaps the very best the series has to offer. Nay’s magnetic turn as a genuine psychopath who cultivated a perverse and violent relationship of give-and-take with Lale is absolutely terrifying. Baretzki’s volatility is well known to historians, and Nay’s commitment to keeping both Lale and the audience on their toes provides the viewer with just an ounce of the anxiety prisoners were subjected to on the daily.
With both the series and the war drawing to a close, Gita’s position as a light in Lale’s otherwise dark existence is better cemented. As the Russians approach, it is Gita who reminds Lale of a dark truth – “in the camps, there is bad news, or there is worse news”. It is this sentiment that serves as the bleak summary of these people’s experience, part of a world so terrible that no rules apply.
For all of the series’ flaws in its relentless recalling of abhorrence, you can’t deny its success as not just dramatic documentation of an important piece of history, but a representation of the human spirit at both its very worst and very best. Through it all, even if we don’t bear witness to all the facets, Lale and Gita’s love survives the unsurvivable, and that in itself is an essential story, too.
Words by Ben Carpenter
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