The process of adapting The Tattooist of Auschwitz from book to screen began with award-winning executive producer Claire Mundell, who observed the popularity of the book in 2018.

Claire recalls reading the book written by first-time New Zealand born author Heather Morris and discovering that it was informed by a real-life story. She said: “As a producer, I’m drawn to stories based on real life. It was clearly a very moving, emotional and epic story. And the idea of a love story set in Auschwitz was incredible; how could two people fall in love in one of the most notorious concentration camps? Lali’s story spoke to me about our innate capacity for hope and survival. I hadn’t seen such a story portrayed on screen before, certainly not for a mainstream global audience.”

After speaking with Morris about adapting the story into a long-form scripted series, Claire thought carefully about the responsibility and challenge of telling a story set in Auschwitz. She said: “Until I started developing and producing The Tattooist of Auschwitz, I hadn’t fully appreciated the terrifying reality of the Holocaust denier and so became increasingly aware of the responsibility of adapting such a book. Although Lali and Gita’s story was utterly compelling, we had to consider what justified bringing it to the screen. Earlier in 2018 I had seen several articles citing a Holocaust Awareness survey which claimed to show that 41 per cent of Americans and 66 per cent of American millennials, at that time, did not know what Auschwitz was. I found it inconceivable that ignorance of the Holocaust could be so extensive and was therefore curious why ‘The Tattooist’ was selling millions of copies at a time when Holocaust awareness seemed to be in decline. But the book’s success soon became clear – Lali and Gita’s story of love and survival was truly inspiring. It offered hope in the bleakest of worlds, a sentiment all audiences can all identify with. Although the book is set predominantly between 1942 and 1945, the issues that it explores – antisemitism, intolerance and hatred – unfortunately remain relevant today.

“Our purpose in adapting the book became one of honouring Lali and Gita’s love story in the hope that we could leave viewers with a changed perspective on antisemitism and intolerance.

“I therefore set about attaining the rights to this emerging bestseller and once secured began the process of development.”

Claire sent a copy of The Tattooist of Auschwitz to Australian writer Jacquelin Perske, with whom she had collaborated on The Cry. Her initial response was similar to Mundell’s, how to honour a story set in a “very dark place in history”? She started by spending a week with Morris and story producer Ruth Underwood in Melbourne, discussing the process of writing the book with Ludwig ‘Lali’ Sokolov.

Claire said: “Heather, who had never written anything before, spent a long time talking to Lali. She went to see him several times a week and they became incredibly good friends with a very special bond.”

The team had extensive conversations with Heather Morris about her time with the late Lali, and carefully considered the best approach to convey the story in a long-form TV series. Although Morris details her meetings with 87-year-old Sokolov in a brief Postscript at the end of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, she isn’t a presence in the novel itself. However, Perske thought it would be interesting to include those meetings in the narrative structure of her script. Claire said: “I realised it would allow us to deal with history and memory as this is Lali’s deeply personal story of the Holocaust. So, the script switches between old Lali talking to Heather in his apartment in Melbourne and young Lali’s horrendous experiences in Auschwitz.”

Claire notes that the team set about creating a narrative storytelling style that enables the show to examine the nature of post-trauma and memory.

She added: “Through Lali’s developing relationship with Heather Morris, the series shows the purpose that telling his story truly served – the unburdening of years of repressed trauma; his recognition and, ultimately, banishment of the ghosts of his past; and the release from his very complex survivor’s guilt.”

Perske, who as lead writer worked alongside episode writers Gabbie Asher and Evan Placey, and Story Producer Ruth Underwood, also considered how to balance the darkness of the Holocaust with hope and humanity.

Claire added: “I think the response to darkness is to find the light. In circumstances that are incredibly bleak, as they were in Auschwitz, any glimmer of light or hope is magnified. Acts of kindness and love become hugely important. They enable people to survive.”

Determined to ensure the series contained as much historical and cultural authenticity as possible within the confines of the drama, Mundell, along with the cast and key crew members, consulted with and visited the Auschwitz Memorial and Museum, several times during development and production.

Mundell also enlisted Naomi Gryn as the Historical and Jewish Cultural Consultant.

Naomi was an ideal choice for the challenge of dramatizing Lali’s real-life story on screen. She was the conduit between production and Holocaust research, understanding the objectives of each given her experience both as a filmmaker for projects such as Chasing Shadows, the memoirs of her father Rabbi Hugo Gryn, a child survivor of Auschwitz, and as a researcher for works of Holocaust historians including Sir Martin Gilbert and Sir William Shawcross.

A central element of honouring both Lali and Gita’s story and the prisoners of Auschwitz was the recreation of the camp, which production undertook over seven to eight weeks in the middle of a bitter Slovakian winter. “We knew we could not ever recreate what happened in Auschwitz,” explains Mundell, “We could only give audiences a sense of the terrible events that took place. And so the show doesn’t shy away from violence. It’s quite confronting. Tonally – in terms of everything from lighting to music - we had to be clear that we are telling a love story in a place that is evil beyond your wildest imagination and that, I hope, encourages people to spread love instead of hate.”

Due to the traumatic subject matter of the series, Mundell decided from the outset to engage Solas Mind, which offers mental health and wellbeing support in the creative industries. One-on-one counselling appointments were available around the clock and in a variety of languages to accommodate the international cast and crew. Claire explained: “Because of our responsibility to portray what happened to Lali, and all those imprisoned and murdered there, we had to do our best to depict Auschwitz. So, in addition to the usual pressures of a high-end shoot, I was conscious that our team would be recreating extremely distressing scenes and events. It was therefore imperative that we supported everyone’s mental health on and off set.”

In preparation for The Tattooist of Auschwitz, hair and make-up designer Frances Hounsom delved into first-hand accounts of Auschwitz survivors. She then created a series of watercolour paintings as visual references for the production.

She said: “The colours that came to mind were a lot of blues, dark greens and browns. Very earthy tones that also suggest sadness. I worked closely with Stevie Herbert, the production designer, about her colour palette to ensure consistency in the visual style of the series.” It might not necessarily be captured on camera, but the mud is never just mud: it’s grass, it’s dust, it’s blood.”

While her relationship with director Tali Shalom-Ezer was crucial – “she listens to what everyone has to say, which is incredible” – Hounsom also focused on building trust with the actors. She watched them during rehearsals to understand how they moved, which she says is more important to hair and make up than people might think. She said: “For example, Anna [Próchniak] is like a dancer when she moves. She has this beautiful glow that I put on her cheeks to suggest a kind of inner peace, despite everything that is going on around her.”

During a scene where Lali is brutally beaten up, Hounsom applied a bleeding prosthetic eye on top of Jonah Hauer-King’s actual eye. Jonas Nay underwent a complete character transformation simply because the actor, is “an utter ball of sunshine, fun, colour and life”, unlike his character, the Nazi SS officer Stefan Baretzki. She said: “Baretzki uses amphetamine, so his eyes are constantly red, he’s always a bit sweaty, a bit on edge. Most of the SS officers are immaculately groomed, but we did a lot of research and his hair was fluffy at times, his uniform unbuttoned.”

Prisoners of Auschwitz were defined by tattoos indicating their camp numbers and roughly shaved heads. Hounsom says it was important to draw the tattoos, which were transfers applied with water by hand.

She said: “I drew over 1,200 tattoos. They were originally done by a needle dotting ink onto the skin; I worked with Naomi [Gryn, the Historical and Jewish Cultural Consultant] to create all the different numbers. We wanted to protect the identity of former or deceased prisoners, and any surviving relatives, so we opted to use fictional tattoo numbers and only used the real numbers for Lali and Gita who, whose numbers we knew were historically accurate. I made the fresh tattoos look bloody and sore and the older ones a bit more worn, a bit softer.”

Hounsom also consulted with the cast members who played prisoners about shaving their heads. She said: “We could have offered bald caps, but aesthetically these don’t look as authentic. The prisoners at Auschwitz had their heads roughly shaved upon arrival, which was intentionally dehumanising, so I used a pair of clippers to recreate the patchy shave. We donated long hair to the Little Princess Trust, to make wigs for children with leukaemia who have sadly lost their hair.”

The production involved more than 5,000 supporting artists, including the Roma community of Zlaté Klasy who represented the Gypsy camp where Lali stays. To present the story on this scale was a massive undertaking, and the grim reality of so many people shaved and tattooed made scenes difficult to watch.

Discussing one scene depicting a death march, Tali said: “It was freezing cold. I was able to wear my big coat and stand close to a heater, while the supporting artists had to perform in the cold. They had to look as though they had been in a concentration camp: naked, cold, crying. Humiliated by the guards. I was grateful for their commitment to the show and honouring the integrity of storytelling.”

To transform Melanie Lynskey into Heather Morris, Hounsom designed a blonde wig that suited the actor’s skin tone. She worked with an American prosthetics designer on ears, teeth and a hairpiece for Harvey Keitel, who plays the older Lali.

Costume designer Ján Kocman, who a decade ago worked on The Prisoners of Auschwitz, worked closely with Hounsom, Shalom-Ezer and Gryn. He ordered original fabric made of wool mixed with cotton and dyed it to create the prisoners’ uniforms and around 140 pairs of shoes were made and then aged. Actors wore thermals beneath the uniforms, which had to look not only “dirty and destroyed” but also had to look loose as the prisoners become malnourished. The prison guards, meanwhile, had cotton uniforms in summer and wool in winter. Kocman said: “Keeping the actors warm was key; they were often half naked and barefoot in the snow.”

The costume designer also had to consider the fact that the timeline jumps from the 40s to the 60s to the 00s.

He said: “The colour palette in the 60s is obviously very different to the one in the concentration camp. Detail is important: older Lali has a yellow kitchen in his Melbourne apartment and his mother wore a yellow apron at the start of the story. Lali sold fabric as part of his job, so he would look elegant before and after his time in Auschwitz.”