Having started life as a film screenplay before becoming a bestselling novel, The Tattooist of Auschwitz has now become a television series, one in which the book’s Melbourne-based New Zealand author Heather Morris becomes a character. Played by Melanie Lynskey, Morris appears in scenes depicting the three years in the early 2000s she spent recording the life story of Auschwitz survivor Lale Sokolov, who is portrayed by Harvey Keitel.
Sokolov’s recollections about his time in the camp and his duties as the tattooist inscribing prisoner numbers on the arms of new arrivals, including his future wife Gisela “Gita” Fuhrmannova, became the basis of the book. It has sold some 12 million copies since it was published in 2018.
Morris sold the screen rights before the book was published. A decade-plus attempt to get her screenplay of Sokolov’s story made into a film had amounted to nothing. The series has been co-commissioned by Stan in Australia, Sky in the UK, and NBC streaming platform Peacock in the US.
Tattooist and Morris’s two further Auschwitz-based novels have come in for criticism for accuracy – including from the Auschwitz Memorial Museum – for rendering real-life characters as more sympathetic, and indulging in Holocaust clichés. The television series is likely to bring up more questions about veracity and her interpretations based on the recollections of Sokolov, who died in 2006. Morris told journalists that The Tattooist was 95% true and when Sokolov’s memory and recorded history clashed, she opted for his viewpoint.
As well, some might find it problematic that Auschwitz – where an estimated million-plus people were killed – is the setting of a melodrama, complete with a Barbra Streisand theme song entitled Love Will Survive.
The show’s Australian lead writer Jacquelin Perske told the Sydney Morning Herald that by showing Morris and Sokolov’s encounters, it addresses the fallibility of memory. In publicity for the series, Morris says she was initially resistant at being portrayed in the show.
“I wasn’t sure how the millions of people who have read my book would react when Melanie appears in the series playing me. I wasn’t concerned, I just wasn’t sure how the new narrative would work.”
The script convinced her otherwise. Also happy with the miniseries is Gary Sokolov, the only son of Lale and Gita, who reportedly fell out with Morris after the book became a runaway bestseller.
“I always believed in my heart this was a story that needed to be told and a book or a film can only go so far – a miniseries has more time to explore the story in depth. Mum and Dad’s story has everything: romance, love, survival and hope, all set against a backdrop of some of the worst of conditions that have existed,” he says.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is streaming on Neon from Monday, May 6, and screening on SoHo, Wednesdays from May 8, 9.30pm
