The way "The Tattooist of Auschwitz" handles historical realities defies any standards, but remains consistent with a marketing strategy that is as disgusting as it is profitable, whereby the survivor (or survivress) becomes an extremely profitable commodity.
This text has been auto-translated from Polish.
Karolina Korwin-Piotrowska begins her instagram post dedicated to the screen adaptation of The Tattooist of Auschwitz as follows: "I don't know the book. I don't read holo polo, but I am aware of the huge controversy surrounding the book, which is now coming to life with the film adaptation, clearly trying to correct the misrepresentations and misrepresentations of the literary original. It's worth doing some reading on the subject, because holo polo is a pretty hideous way to cash in on the Holocaust."
It's also worth correcting a few things right away. First, starting each episode by stating that the on-screen realities may differ from the historical ones, and declaring that they have done their homework and corrected the glaring mistakes of the literary original are purely posturing. The reality of the concentration camps and the Holocaust continues to be treated with lancinating fantasy and alarming disinclination. Second, holo polo - recalling Sylvia Chutnik's term - is just a local variation of a global pop culture phenomenon. Reading "bestsellers from Auschwitz" drives it as much as watching their screen adaptations.
The Tattooist of Auschwitz is a bottomless series, devoid of drama, infantile, caricaturedly stupid and naive. The pair of main characters, Lale (Jonah Hauer-King) and Gita (Anna Próchniak), alternately smile at each other, shed tears or shower each other with kisses. The two have enough freedom and free time during their stay at the camp to nurture the affection born in a scene that euphemistically could be called conventional, while bluntly: curmudgeonly. (In the novel, they chat, kiss and even have passionate sex together nonstop).
Harvey Keitel, playing the title character at the end of his life, may physically resemble the original of this character, but otherwise remains a wimpy senior citizen in tinted glasses who, in unbearably redundant scenes, transports himself back in memory to his lagging days. The greatest - though, due to the construction of the script, wasted - potential lies in the creation of Jonas Nay, the on-screen villain, Blockführer Stefan Baretzky. Finally: Melanie Lynskey as Heather Morris irritates with extreme naiveté and self-centeredness - in terms of credibility, therefore, this creation should probably be considered successful.
It lacks virtually everything: pace, drama, interestingly developed characters and plots. Instead, it is full of factually derogatory simplifications, pornography of violence and death, kitschy plot barbs and script holes. In one episode, we watch a scene of childbirth in the women's barracks for a few minutes (the female prisoners and the block leader are then united by the intoxication of maternal instinct). As it turns out, the girl survived the war; nay, she even lived to see her offspring and grandchildren.
It's all beautiful, but instead of wiping away tears of emotion - I'm a little disbelieving, because after all, these two sequences are separated by a thread of extremely devastating death marches. However, no one bothers to explain how the infant survived under such conditions. Given the degree of probability of the events in the series, we can assume that the mother transported them in a cart to the next gulag, while good-natured SS women helped push the vehicle through the snowdrifts and warmed the baby's cold fists with a chuckle.
Ludwig of Krompach
Let's start at the beginning, however: Lale Sokolov - the prototype of the book and TV series character The Tattooist of Auschwitz - is born as Ludwig Eisenberg in 1916, in Krompachy (today's Slovakia). In April 1942, he is sent to Auschwitz, where he is soon given the position of tattoo artist and thus joins the ranks of the camp's prominence. It is in the camp that he meets Gisela "Gita" Furman, his great love.
Eight days before the liberation of the gulag, he is transferred to Mauthausen, from where, however, he manages to escape and reach Bratislava. There he finds Gita, gets married, establishes a clothing factory, and financially supports the formation of the state of Israel. He adopts the Russian name of his sister's husband, but this does not protect him from repression by the Communist government; his factory is nationalized and he is imprisoned.
At the end of the 1940s, the couple emigrates to Australia. In 1961, their only son, Gary, is born. In the 1990s, both give oral accounts for the USC Shoah Foundation (Sokolov is also interviewed by the Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne). In 2003, already a widower, Lale meets Heather Morris - a medical clinic worker with writing ambitions. She is the one to listen to his story and then write it down.
Over the next three years, Lale and Heather meet repeatedly. Initially, the man's story is to serve as the basis for a screenplay; it eventually takes the form of a novel. Sokolov dies in 2006; The Tattooist of Auschwitz is published twelve years later and is advertised as the only survivor's testimony in existence. The book remains to this day an infamous emblem of a genre that is referred to in English as Auschwitz novel and in Polish as "Auschwitz fiction."
Tomato
It is ironic that Morris' literary debut is being released on the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Soon after its release, the novel gains bestseller status: it hits the top of the New York Times charts, sells more than three million copies and is translated into seventeen languages. All this within its first year on the market.
An appalling number of silences, distortions and factual errors - first in the book and later in its episode film adaptation - are identified by Dr. Wanda Witek-Malicka of the Auschwitz Museum Research Center. They irrefutably prove not only the ignorance, but also the far-reaching ignorance of the author and those around her (including the director, Tali Shalom-Ezer). The topography of the camp, the rules in place, or the division of roles are irrelevant here. In the lagorian wonderland, of which Morris remains a leading representative, Auschwitz functions only as a decoration, becoming a kind of non-place detached from historical concreteness, nothing more than a conventional background element (besides smoky chimneys, barbed wire and stripling, we also have a gate with the infamous inscription, Dr. Mengele, soccer matches, smuggling chocolate, sausages and diamonds).
This Holocaust "authenticity game" is a hugely profitable business for everyone - authors, publishers, retail chains, streaming platforms - so the marketing machine doesn't slow down for a moment when it comes to screen adaptations: Hans Zimmer composes the soundtrack, while Barbra Streisand records a lashing song about how "love survives." Through the thicket of posts, hashtags and exalted social media comments, factual, even alarming messages are struggling to break through. For example, such as this: in order to reconstruct Sokolov's transportation route to the camp, Morris is most likely using a contemporary railroad search engine (in addition, from the period of detours caused by repairs). His own claims to be "the only tattoo artist at Auschwitz."
In fact, Sokolov was a member of the Aufnahmeschreiber, a special command of the Politische Abteilung responsible for registering newly arrived prisoners. Contrary to his disjointed declaration about Gita ("I tattooed a number on her left forearm, and she tattooed her number in my heart") it remains highly unlikely that the circumstances of their first meeting match the official version of events. After all, a male camp inmate could not tattoo a female camp inmate.
What's more, in a 1997 interview with the USC Shoah Foundation, Gita identifies her number as much lower than the one with which Lali was branded - so despite the lack of surviving documentation, it must be assumed that she was sent to the camp much earlier (there was no mention of "refreshing" the faded numbers either).
The witness herself can hardly be faulted for romanticizing her own story and filling it with very glamorous episodes (interactions with Dr. Mengele and verbal tussles with Baretzki; participation in a soccer match of prisoners versus SS men; a visit to the gas chamber; sharing space with Roma families incarcerated in the camp). However, from Morris - at least in theory - we have the right to expect verification of the information she receives.
Meanwhile, her strategy - in this and many other questionable cases - can be described in one word: "tomato." This strategy avoids confronting any substantive allegation - whether from an individual or an institution - in two ways. Either by appealing to the authority of the survivor (it's his story, his version of events, so what, recalled from memory more than half a century later), or to the category of fictionality (it's a literary transformation of the facts, not a faithful reflection of them, although, after all, the book is called a "remarkable document"). In both cases, the goal is to avoid discussion and at the same time undermine its validity. Morris juggles these two arguments alternately, making them a convenient alibi for his own indolence.
Christine Kenneally - a journalist who repeatedly interviewed not only the author herself, but also her publishers, relatives of those she portrayed, and survivors - describes Morris' methods and ethics in an insightful essay from 2020. We learn from it, for example, that she dedicated her first screenplay to a terminally ill child at the clinic where she worked. Although - as she states - as a child she read the Encyclopedia Britannica and marveled that "everything in it was true," she knew absolutely nothing about the Holocaust. She confronted Sokolov's story as a person lacking basic historical context and competence. However, she showed considerable cleverness: for she built her writing authority and symbolic position on emotional blackmail.
By the time she managed to find a publisher, Sokolov had long been dead, so he had no influence on either the final version of the content or the legend of the boundless trust he placed in her. It was the extraordinary bond with the survivor - and, portrayed in equally idyllic terms, the relationship with his son - that became one of the pillars of the promotional machine. It is also a key element from an image point of view: it ennobles the author, who refers to her numerous conversations with survivors as if to a supreme authority always prejudging in her favor.
Ojejism
The issue of fictionality, invoked time and again in discussions surrounding The Tattooist... - and other such creations - remains problematic for several reasons. Morris convinces in interviews that the book is "95 percent true." Her publishers clearly have trouble clearly defining the genre framework: historical fiction? historical/biographical novel/ based on fact/inspired by true history? (One would rather speak of a specific variety of mis lit, "misery literature," or trauma kitsch memoir, a kitsch-traumatic memoir). In the series, too, the question of historical credibility is attempted to be circumvented by means of assertive declarations. The boundaries between fact and fiction are relativized and treated as movable.
The aforementioned Kenneally rightly points out that in the world of unfettered imagination Morris Lale rises to the status of a "laggard Robin Hood." In the series, too, he is by all means brooding and unflinching at the same time. And, by the way, let's add, devoid of any character traits (this blandness is reflected, by the way, by the expressionless acting of Hauer-King and Keitel). The spectral presence of Baretzky in the contemporary storyline of the series is supposed to remind the protagonist of his entanglement, but it is not entirely clear in what specifically it would manifest itself. Their relationship is outlined in complete detachment from the camp's realities; as a result, Baretzki plays the role of the protagonist's personal bodyguard, matchmaker, unruly protégé and, at times, even stalker.
Moreover, although the series features Sokolov's giving written testimony in the post-war trial of the criminal, Lale's character ultimately describes him as a brutal, capricious murderer. Meanwhile, in an interview with the USC Shoah Foundation, the Lale survivor significantly complicates this vision, stating: "For me, he was like a brother. I trusted him, and he trusted me."
Instead of taking up the challenge and trying to convey the nature of Sokolov's "implications", a lot of energy is wasted on developing a cloying, one-dimensional romance plot. As we read in the book's afterword, what is supposed to be more important than the "lesson of history" is the "lesson of humanity." Only that it is the man's position in the camp hierarchy (good commando, food and living conditions, illegal access to many goods) that seems to be the determining factor in his survival, and at the same time the source of post-war guilt (also known as "survivor syndrome"). The point is not to judge anyone by today's criteria. It would have been enough to show the complexity of the situation and its broader context, instead of settling for a cloying love story with crematoria in the background.
But it's the simplifications that work best in dealing with "ojejism" (oh dearism), or - as, in the footsteps of the term's creator, Adam Curtis, translates Agnieszka Haska - the sense of "helplessness and lack of control" that accompanies us in our confrontation with the tragedies unfolding around us. Instead of the frustration that comes from a lack of influence over what is happening today, post-Pholocaust narratives offer solace: we are communing with horrors that are not only properly tuned out, but also belong to the past, and therefore demand no intervention.
Lives of the Saints
Keitel states in an interview that he decided to participate in the project without hesitation, because in the era of the passing away of direct witnesses and witnesses of World War II, it is cinema and television that are taking over their role (one should rather say: capturing their narratives). The grandfather of the series' director, Shalom-Ezer lost his first wife, daughter, parents and eleven siblings in Auschwitz, and the argument from genetics is apparently meant to legitimize her work. The creator openly declares, moreover, her admiration for Morris and "how she devoted her life to telling the story of Lali," whom she "told so fascinatingly," and whom she "loved so much." Gary Sokolov seems equally enthusiastic - about Morris herself, the book and the adaptation. He stresses how important it is to him that his parents' remarkable, uplifting story and its positive message go out into the world. He can't imagine that all this could be put into words by someone else.
The snag is that the story has already been told by someone else. That someone was Sokolov himself. Recall: he gave two interviews to institutions specializing in collecting them. He openly told, for example, how - before he was sent to the camp - he took advantage of his acquaintance with a member of the Slovak People's Party to survive (he asked for a job in which he had to wear the Hitlerjugend uniform and armband and salute). How, while already in Auschwitz, he smuggled food and vodka, participating in the illegal trade of goods between prominent prisoners and SS members. Finally: how, having been sent to Mauthausen, he led the murder of a prisoner who had previously exposed him as a Jew.
In the book and TV series versions of Lali's story, these themes are either omitted altogether, or transformed so that the survivor figure is stripped of any causality - and therefore entanglement - and portrayed in a hagiographic aura. Morris has been basking in the glow of this halo for several years: officially appointed as the sole depository of Lali's story, anointed to pass it on and modify it virtually without restriction.
Gary Sokolov's emotion and undisguised enthusiasm thus seem as problematic as they are understandable - if the retouched, simplified story of his father (and mother) once again touches the hearts of millions of people around the world, what more could one want? Why complicate it? And does it matter how much truth or fiction is in it?
The Golden Harvest
The way The Tattooist of Auschwitz deals with historical realities defies any standards, but remains consistent with a marketing strategy that is as disgusting as it is profitable, whereby the survivor (or survivor) becomes an extremely profitable commodity. The intratractability of this cynical enterprise is irrefutably demonstrated by its international scale: war stories are instrumentalized, fabricated and monetized every now and then, real people are de-mystified, blatant distortions are ignored, and ethically questionable gestures are replicated on a tape, without any qualms.
It is worth recalling in this context the figure of Binjamin Wilkomirski (or rather: Bruno Dössekker), the infamous author of perhaps the most famous Holocaust confabulation. His fabricated memoirs have been neither reissued nor translated for decades (only the German- and English-language versions, both from the 1990s, remain available). But "making a fortune on fantasies" with the Holocaust in the background is not limited to or ends with "fake" survivors. Times have changed, circumstances and social actors too. The golden harvest - in a modified form - continues at its best.
The victims of this calculated cynicism are, first of all, the survivors and their relatives, but also a whole lot of people reading and watching - "whether they have already read hundreds of stories about the Holocaust, or whether they are encountering the subject for the first time" is of no small importance, despite hype declarations about the universality of the message. The focus, however, is shifted elsewhere: announcing the release of the series, Morris unabashedly encourages people to snack on popcorn during the screening. As befits a bestselling author, she reposts also photos sent in by her avid readers - one of which shows a bathtub full of foam, candles, scented sticks and a book with a distinctive "striped" design.
Immortalized in this way, Cilka's Journey - the second book in Morris's oeuvre - is, incidentally, another supposedly fact-based confabulation, while working on which the author remained true to her credo and wasted no time familiarizing herself with available historical sources. What's the point of reliable research when you can let your imagination run wild and describe with graphomaniacal panache the fate of a prisoner who was young, beautiful and regularly raped by the Lagerführer? (For comparison: the plot of Lali's post-war recruitment of women for the Russians is described far less effusively).
Lawyers for George Kovach, the stepson of Cecilia "Cilka" Klein, tried to protest against a number of lies and misrepresentations appearing in the book - but ended with a brazen statement that the name of the heroine's husband was not disclosed "to protect the privacy of her relatives." In light of the available documents and accounts, Klein's true story appears to be far more complicated than the one presented by Morris. But it is the trivialized, distorted narrative, dripping with kitsch and pornography, that breaks through to the mainstream.
Witnessing Fantasies
Excluding the disbelief or amusement caused by the accumulation of various nonsense, the series did not actually arouse any strong emotions in me (for reading the literary original was a real baptism of fire). They appeared, in fact, only in the finale, perfectly illustrating the phenomenon of manipulating testimonies, instrumentalizing them to achieve specific goals and produce desired effects.
The final sequence can be divided into two parts: the first contains panels with information on the history of the camp and the number of victims - the source of which, as a footnote at the bottom of the screen indicates, is the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum. Thus, we are dealing with a peculiar construction: each of the eight episodes begins with a declaration of the discrepancies between the content presented in the series and the facts, and the whole is crowned with... an appeal to the unquestionable authority in this matter of an internationally recognized institution (the same one whose source resources and substantive criticism were previously ignored).
Far more perfidious, however, is the second piece of the puzzle, namely excerpts from a video of the real Sokolov. (A longer version had already existed in the public space - Margin Publishing had covered it with Beethoven's Moon Sonata and used it to promote the Polish edition of the book.) The clip is edited as follows: introduction of the survivor, mention of the Git, statement in a breaking voice that "he was taken from his family home and transported like an animal to an unknown place," close-up on the camp number, self-description as "a tattooist in Auschwitz-Birkenau," close-up on his face, and finally - an effective darkening of the screen. Tadam, closing credits.
This kind of manipulation of viewers' emotions is presumably meant to neutralize - or perhaps even erase - any accusations or even doubts about what was shown earlier and how it was shown. Hard historical data from a trusted source? They are. A judgy, shaken survivor? There is. The caring, devoted, humble confidant of his story? Present. This brings us back to the essential question: what more could one want?
The answer can be sought in a 1947 text by Tadeusz Borowski entitled Alice in Wonderland. The famous polemic against Zofia Kossak-Szczucka's distorted vision of the camp is concluded by the author with a challenge to all survivors of the gulags:
"[...] tell at last how you bought places in the hospital, on the good commons, how you pushed the Muslims down the chimney, how you bought women and men, what you did in the unterkunfts, the Canadas, the krankenbaums, the gypsy camp, [...] tell about the daily day of the camp, about the organization, about the hierarchy of fear, about the loneliness of each person. But write that this is what you did. That a particle of Auschwitz's grim fame is due to you too! Maybe not, eh?"
As was the case then, today, nearly eighty years later, the stakes of a story of survival should not be to harden readers' hearts with a vision of a world divided into good and evil, men and beasts, love and hate, honor and dishonor. If there is anything to be remembered in the face of the trivialization of war traumas and the enduring popularity of graphomaniacal "witness fantasies", let it be the inadequacy of all dualisms and simplifications. Let it be the margins of mainstream stories and the infamous "gray areas." Their digestibility and profitability, however, cannot be guaranteed.
