Bestselling WWII novel to air as six-part mini-series on Sky

When Heather Morris’ Tattooist of Auschwitz was published, everyone was talking about it. As love stories go, this one wasn’t traditional as the two captured Jews in a concentration camp fell in love over a tattoo gun.

Lali Sokolov had been tattooing Jews under threat of death at Auschwitz for months, tattooing thousands of Jews who entered the camp, when one day he found himself tattooing the arm of Gita Fuhrmannova as she stood, emaciated before him, robbed of her dignity by the Nazis. It’s not the usual setting for a love story, but fall in love they did, and this true story was captured by Heather Morris in the bestselling book The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which sold more than a million copies in the UK alone, and is now adapted by Sky and released this week!

The book released to rave reviews, an unheard story from the best documented events in human history. Both Lali and Gita survived the Holocaust and went on to marry in October 1945. Lali kept his story to himself for decades before revealing all to Morris.

Despite its success, the book came in for some criticisms from historians who picked apart some of the back story for the novel, and proved eventually that even the tattoo number was incorrect. Much of this was put down to poetic license from Morris, and misremembrance from the now elderly Lali Sokolov.

The Sky six-part series will not be an exact adaptation of the book, but rather a retelling of the Lali’s story, right up to meeting Morris, putting the author within this mini-series too, focusing on the friendship that built up between Heather Morris and Lali Sokolov.

The six-part series stars both Jonah Hauer-King and Harvey Keitel as Lali, whilst Polish actress Anna Próchniak portrays Gita.