All the things you expect from a classic drama are here: heroism, suspense, stirring music. But against a backdrop of true horror, this well-intentioned show becomes utterly grotesque
There is that word, that name, sitting there in the title, coming up before each ad break: Auschwitz. There had better be a good reason to invoke it. The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a drama that raises the question of whether fiction can ever be an appropriate response to the Holocaust; on this evidence, perhaps not.
In 1942, a young Slovakian Jew named Lali (Jonah Hauer-King) is deported to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland. He is soon given the task of tattooing serial numbers on to the arms of new arrivals – one of them is Gita (Anna Próchniak), with whom Lali falls instantly in love. Thanks to the privileges Lali’s job brings, and the protection given to the couple by the unstable SS officer Stefan Baretzki (Jonas Nay), Lali and Gita are able to pursue their romance and survive. Decades later, in Australia, the widowed Lali (Harvey Keitel) invites rookie writer Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey) to hear his story, of the Holocaust and of his life afterwards with Gita.
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