Following the release of the miniseries The Tattooist of Auschwitz (2024), Sky HISTORY has announced a documentary centered around the protagonists’ son, Gary Sokolov. The one-off television special will see Sokolov tour Auschwitz, to gain a sense of what his parents, Lali and Gita Sokolov, endured while imprisoned at the concentration camp during the Second World War.
Titled The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz, the 90-minute documentary, which is slated to premiere in January 2025, will follow Sokolov as he makes a journey his father had always wished to, but couldn’t before his passing in October ’06. It marks the first time he’s visited the concentration camp.
Along with his journey to Auschwitz, the release will also feature appearances by Heather Morris, who wrote The Tattooist of Auschwitz; actors Anna Próchniak and Jonah Hauer-King, who portrayed Lali and Gita in the miniseries; Holocaust survivor Abram Goldberg; and Holocaust trauma psychologist George Halasz.
All of this will be paired with archival footage, interviews, clips from the miniseries and footage of Lali himself.
Released in 2018, Morris’ book details the story of Lali Sokolov, a Jewish man who’s sent to Auschwitz in 1942 and subsequently becomes an apprentice to the camp’s tattooist (tätowierer). While held there, he meets Gita, a fellow prisoner assigned to one of the warehouses, and what follows is a love story that defies the odds.
While a work of fiction, The Tattooist of Auschwitz is based on Sokolov’s time at the concentration camp during World War II. When the conflict came to an end, he and Gita moved to Australia, where the two started a family. Sokolov didn’t speak about what happened to him during the conflict until after his wife’s death is 2003, at which point he connected with Morris.
The television adaptation of the novel was released via Sky and Peacock in 2024.
The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz was ordered by Dan Korn of Hearst Networks EMEA and Sky’s Hayley Reynolds. It was directed by Stephen Bennett and produced by Synchronicity Films’ Claire Mundell.
Speaking in a media release, Korn said, “As the last survivors of the most terrible event in human history depart this life, it is down to the next generation and those like Gary to take this difficult journey and bear witness so that such incomprehensible violence and bloodshed can never happen again.”
Mundell added in the release, “Having brought Lali and Gita’s incredible love story to the screen in The Tattooist of Auschwitz, it is a privilege for us to walk with Gary on this emotional and personal pilgrimage for his parents. By sharing his story, we hope to give audiences an insight into the burden of intergenerational trauma and encourage empathy for the children of survivors coping with their parents’ painful legacies in order that neither they nor we ever forget.”
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The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz was filmed in Melbourne, Australia; Slovakia; and Poland. Its release will mark the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation by the Red Army in 1945.