M6 offers the first two new episodes of the mini-series The Auschwitz tattooistthis Wednesday, January 22, 2025, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp. This fiction is inspired by the eponymous book by Heather Morris, itself based on a true story, that of Lale Sokolov.
This Wednesday, January 22, 2025 from 9:10 p.m., M6 is showing the first two new episodes of the mini-series The Auschwitz tattooist (our opinion). This fiction is inspired by the eponymous novel by Heather Morrisitself being a story of the memories of Lale Sokolov, a Jewish man who was a prisoner of the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War, a period of history also covered in the moving series The German house on Disney+. In the series, Lale is played by two actors: Harvey Keitel for the elderly version, and Jonah Hauer-King for the prison period.
The Auschwitz tattooist : What is the mini-series with Harvey Keitel about?
The story of the series The Auschwitz tattooist is organized according to two different eras. On the one hand, viewers discover Lale, an octogenarian, recounting his memories of his detention at Auschwitz to Heather Morris, a nurse and future author. On the other hand, Lale, 26 years old, arrives in the concentration camp and is requisitioned, by a combination of circumstances, to tattoo the number of his fellow prisoners on their arms. He then catches the eye of one of them, Gita (Anna Próchniak), and they fall in love with each other instantly.
The Auschwitz tattooist : The moving true story behind the fiction
Translated into more than 40 languages and sold 14 million copies worldwide (400,000 in France), the book The Auschwitz tattooist published in 2018 relates the memories of Lale Sokolov, a Jew of Austro-Hungarian origin sent to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp during the Second World War. The origin of this extraordinary story dates back to 2003, in Melbourne (Australia), when Heather Morris met Lale, 87, a few months after the death of his wife Gita. “He wanted his story written down to pass on to their son, because neither he nor his wife had ever discussed their detention during the Holocaust. He had to know“, confided the writer during a press conference. For three years, Heather Morris collected the testimony of the Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor every week. In 2006, at the bedside of her dying friend, she made him the promise of born “never give up telling their story“. The publication of the book twelve years later, however, earned it criticism: “Academics have criticized me for historical errors. We recognized several of them and corrected them in the following edition. But regarding Lale’s memories, I will not correct. His memories belong to him.“
