what is the series broadcast on M6 worth?

Inspired by a true story, this six-episode mini-series is based on the testimony of survivor Lale Sokolov. Worn by Jonah Hauer-King (The little mermaid), Anna Próchniak (Yellowjackets) et Harvey Keitel (Reservoir Dogs), the production combines artistic ambition and a duty to remember by telling a love story at the heart of horror. But by reconstituting daily life at Auschwitz-Birkenau, it also revives the debate on the representation of the Shoah in fiction.

A love story born in horror

In 1942, Lale Sokolov, a Slovak Jew, was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Assigned to the position of tattooist, he engraves the registration numbers on the arms of the deportees. This is how he meets Gita, with whom he immediately falls in love. Despite the atrocities and dangers, a bond is forged, Lale finding in this love a reason to hope and survive.

Decades later, Lale, now in his eighties, tells his story to Heather Morris, a young writer. These interviews, which began in 2003 in Melbourne, gave birth to a novel that sold more than 13 million copies. If the main lines of the story are true, Morris’s work, like the series, takes narrative liberties, a choice which has divided critics and historians.

A controversial fiction

Some, like CNNappreciated the way in which this work managed to capture “the horror of this experience while revealing bursts of grace through the survival of its narrator”. The media also praises the performance of Harvey Keitel for the role of elderly Lale Sokolov.

But behind these praises lie deeper reflections, raising the question of the representation of the Shoah on screen. The Guardian asks: can we truly “dramatize the unspeakable” ? The daily believes that reducing the Holocaust to a fiction that combines heroism, suspense and coincidences amounts to betraying the singularity of this historical horror.

“Auschwitz cannot entertain”he underlines, pointing out the difficulty of restoring this reality without mitigating its seriousness. The romantic elements, such as the love at first sight between Lale and Gita, are considered inappropriate, even problematic.

Teleramamore severe, denounces an approach “indecent tout” which uses the concentration camp context as the backdrop for a great love story. The frontal evocation of torture and summary executions, devoid of nuance, fuels, according to the magazine, a reflection on the very legitimacy of representing the Holocaust in fiction. This criticism is an extension of the questions of Claude Lanzmann, director of Shoahfor whom the representation of the unspeakable through fiction necessarily borders on obscenity.

Participate in the memory duty?

For his part, West France takes a more nuanced position. While sharing the questions of its colleagues on the fictional representation of the death camps, the daily recognizes in the series a sincerity carried by a true duty of memory, despite an emotional intensity difficult to sustain.

The scenes taking place at Auschwitz, as trying as they are, question the moral choices imposed by the instinct for survival. The review emphasizes that the production manages, despite its limitations, to reflect the duality of the human condition: love at the heart of horror.

Between emotion and controversy, The Auschwitz tattooist illustrates the challenges that fiction encounters when it takes hold of History. Can we reconstruct the unspeakable without risking distorting it? And to what extent can fiction take liberties without betraying memory? Questions which remind us that transmitting History remains an essential exercise, always perilous.