The Tattooist of Auschwitz: Limited Series

May 5, 2024 8:30 AM - Season 1 (Full Season)

[TRAILER] Lali Sokolov (Jonah Hauer-King) arrives at Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942, and shortly after arrival, he is made a tätowierer. He meets Gita (Anna Próchniak) when tattooing her prisoner number on her arm. Under constant guard from a volatile Nazi SS officer Baretzki (Jonas Nay), Lali and Gita become determined to keep each other alive. Also starring Harvey Keitel as Lali in 2003, as he recounts his story to his aspiring biographer (Melanie Lynskey).

Based on the novel by Heather Morris. A Peacock limited series. JustWatch.

posted by DirtyOldTown (2 comments total)

We are going to give this another episode at least. But the first episode was all of the same sad things you have heard many times before and recounted without any particular new insight, such that treading that ground again felt unseemly and kind of gross.

When we tell the story of the Holocaust, it feels like it should be done in a way that is visceral and essential and not just revisiting suffering humanity's greatest hits. This feels a bit like tragedy porn.

I will watch another episode or two and am open to being wrong.

But just to pick one thing, the author inserting herself into the story, her process of certifying this as An Important Story That Must Be Told, feels like the wrong starting point.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:34 AM on May 5

We stuck with this and it ends up getting better. It ends up being a story about the things people have to do to survive... not the heroic things, but the moments of capitulation, of compliance, of complicity. And Lali telling his story to the author gives it the remove where we have to watch him decide what he will tell and what he cannot. It's still not perfectly executed, but it justifies itself.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 6:25 PM on June 24