It is unusual for a single director to work across a series, especially one as challenging as The Tattooist of Auschwitz, but it was important to have both a consistent vision and a fixed point of reference for the cast and crew.

Executive producer Claire Mundell had watched the work of Tali Shalom-Ezer, best known for her films Princess and My Days of Mercy, and thought she would be the right fit as director for the project. Claire notes: “Tali approached the story with rigor and passion. To have one director across six episodes is a massive achievement, and the way she works with actors is incredible.”

When approached to direct the series and also act as co-executive producer, Shalom-Ezer said she felt an immediate connection to the story, but was trepidatious.

She said: “Like many involved in the production, I have family and friends with direct experience of the holocaust. At the same time, I had this fear of how to tell a story about something I have never personally experienced and will never understand fully.” Her approach then was to respect the story. She added: “We all know that Auschwitz was hell on earth, and yet Lali fell in love there. That was incredible to me. Lali’s memories of his time in Auschwitz were my guiding light; I tried to get as close as possible to his emotions and to express them on screen.”

Making a series like The Tattooist of Auschwitz was of course going to be filled with challenges. Tali reflects: “Every single aspect of this production was challenging. Every scene that we shot included the key cast alongside hundreds of supporting artists and hundreds of crew members, so perhaps one of the biggest challenges for me was telling an intimate love story on such a huge scale.”

Likewise, finding the right tone for the story required input from a number of sources. Tali added: “It was a very collaborative job, with so many voices and thoughts. Some people found certain scenes almost unbearable to watch. We had to constantly ask ourselves if a scene was too light or if we were being respectful enough.”

To ensure historical accuracy, research on the subject of Auschwitz was taken extremely seriously.

Tali confirmed: “We read books, watched documentaries, visited Auschwitz several times, and read testimonies by Holocaust survivors. In one of them, a woman said that she was sure Auschwitz was an asylum when she arrived because the prisoners were behaving like psychiatric patients. They were dehumanised. Their souls were broken.”

In addition to the research undertaken, the series utilised Naomi Gryn as the Historical and Jewish Consultant.

Tali said: “Claire [Mundell, executive producer] set up a system so that everyone was able to direct questions to Naomi, who would then come back with a detailed response having consulted with multiple sources.”

In terms of casting, Shalom-Ezer explains that she was looking for actors able to express how dehumanising Auschwitz was. She said: “The people imprisoned there were broken. Completely broken. And it’s a challenge for an actor to express this. We also tried to create an ensemble of actors from all over Europe, so that German roles were played by German actors, Hungarian roles by Hungarian actors and so on. It was unique, I think, to have such an incredible mix of nationalities.”

And of course, Shalom-Ezer was blessed with an incredible line up of key cast members. She said: “Harvey Keitel is a true artist. He was so passionate and eager. He was searching for something new in each scene, which was inspirational. We were very lucky to get someone as talented as Melanie Lynskey to play Heather; she had to do so many scenes in which she is just listening to Lali’s story and she delivers such a powerful performance in doing so. Jonah Hauer-King might be one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Playing Lali wasn’t easy; he was doing [a regulated] fast a lot of the time, but he was always relaxed, calm and professional. Anna Próchniak is a dancer, a ballerina and so there’s something very expressive about the way she moves. She wasn’t afraid of going into scenes in the deepest way possible, even if it made her feel uncomfortable. It was a joy to work with her.

“Jonas Nay is a brilliant performer. I’ve never seen such a contrast between an actor and the character he’s playing. He’s a sensitive person and I’m grateful that he agreed to go on this journey with us.”

Overall, her aim in directing the series was to give viewers a feeling of hope. She said: “To be able to see light – and love – in the darkest time in history. We are experiencing very dark times again now, so I hope the show will inspire the audience to believe in love.”

In making The Tattooist of Auschwitz, executive producers Claire Mundell and director Tali Shalom-Ezer relied on the expertise of Naomi Gryn as Historical and Jewish Cultural Consultant, who has a personal connection to Auschwitz.

She said: “My late father, who was a rabbi, was in Auschwitz as a 13-year-old boy and I've done several projects following his story. I worked with Historian Martin Gilbert on a series of Holocaust books and I've dipped in and out of Holocaust projects over the years. “

Naomi’s journey on the series began during the global pandemic. She revealed: “Claire [Mundell], Story Producer Ruth Underwood and Lead Writer Jacquelin Perske and I would have calls across the globe from our lockdown bedrooms in Glasgow, London and Melbourne, often late at night or early in the morning. I did research as questions arose. If it was a historical question, I started trying to narrow in on online sources to see what kind of information was out there. I’ve been in and out of the Wiener Library in London, which has a terrific collection of Holocaust literature. The most central source was of course the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum – so much is known about what happened in that one camp.“

It was down to Naomi to scrutinise every source for historical accuracy. She said: “I tried to stress test every single thing that looked like a fact, whether it be a place name or a mode of transport or food. For example, I did deep research into a scene in a brothel for the scene with Baretzki in episode two; I contacted Robert Sommer, who wrote a book about brothels in Nazi camps who was terrifically helpful. I trawled through survivor testimonies; the USC Shoah Foundation in America has more than 50,000 testimonies that can be accessed online.”

Verifying a story told via one man’s memory was of course filled with challenges. She said: “Lali shared his story with Heather when he was an old man, and those potentially flawed memories sometimes aren’t backed up with historical evidence. There are several points in the drama when Lali is talking to Heather and we simultaneously see it as a dramatised event through his point of view. Then once Lali is alone, we repeat the same scene with a dramatised re-telling of what Lali knows actually happened to him but is unable or unwilling to share with Heather. For example, Lali remembers getting penicillin for Gita when she had an infected arm, penicillin was first used in quantity when supplies of the drug were sent with troops making the D-day landings in June 1944, but it would not have been available in the infirmary in Auschwitz. We instead used medication that was more historically accurate.

“I felt like it was my job to be the mosquito that buzzes around everyone’s ears whenever there was a conflict over the needs of the drama versus historical accuracy. Historical accuracy is very important to me because I often come across chilling websites created by Holocaust deniers and they often use discrepancies to argue that the Holocaust never happened.”

This awareness of the holocaust is something Gryn hopes the series will help foster. She said: “Holocaust survivors are dying out so first-hand witnesses will no longer be around to tell people what happened. We will have to turn to different modes of storytelling to keep this history in our consciousness. Drama is a natural way to begin to process this dark chapter in human history; to help make the indescribable a little more intelligible for the rising generation.”