Year: 2025
Director: Stephen Bennett
Executive Producer: Claire Mundell
Production Company: Synchronicity Films
Main Cast: Gary Sokolov
Broadcaster: Sky History
Screen Scotland support: The film accessed £99,990 through Screen Scotland’s Broadcast Content Fund.
Synopsis
Filmed in Melbourne, Slovakia, and Poland, this poignant and intimate one-off documentary will follow Gary Sokolov, the only son of Gita and Lali Sokolov (one of the real-life tattooists of Auschwitz). Their incredible love story began when they met and fell in love as Slovakian Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz Concentration Camp, where the Nazi regime systematically murdered over a million Jews. The film will chart Gary’s first visit to this most notorious German death camp.
This is a trip that Lali had always wanted to make before his death in October 2006 and one that Gary dearly wishes he had made with his father while he was still alive. Only now, after seeing the success of the drama series and the book that brought his parents’ story to a global audience, does Gary feel ready to undertake this journey.
As the world prepares to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Gary has embarked on what he describes as the trip “of his lifetime”.
The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz will see Gary enter the camp through the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei gatehouse, from where he will begin to explore the horrors confronted by his parents.
Among others in the documentary, Gary will meet with Heather Morris, author of the international best-selling novel The Tattooist of Auschwitz; actors Jonah Hauer-King and Anna Próchniak, who portrayed his parents in the Sky Original drama; as well as Holocaust trauma psychiatrist George Halasz and 100-year-old Holocaust and Auschwitz survivor, Abram Goldberg, in his effort to understand the impact of Intergenerational Holocaust Trauma.
More information
Streaming: The Tattooist’s Son: Journey to Auschwitz will air on Sky History on 27 January 2025.
Image credits: Still courtesy of Synchronicity Films