A new WWII-centered espionage TV series “The German,” cocreated by “Fauda” and “Tehran” writer Moshe Zonder, had its worldwide premier this week at the Series Mania Festival in Lille, France.
Zonder cocreated the project with Ronit Weiss Berkowitz, veteran Israeli screenwriter and cocreator of Netflix’s “The Girl from Oslo.” Weiss Berkowitz was inspired to cocreate the project having grown up with Holocaust survivor parents.
Zonder said the series, which was 10 years in the making, is meant to show the Holocaust from a different perspective.
“During that decade we’ve mentioned to each other, more than a few times, that it’s good that we are doing it; to remind people about [the Holocaust]. But we hope they can relate to it all over the globe. Sometimes you cannot escape the things you’ve done,” Zonder told Variety.
The plot
The show, produced by Lionsgate and Yes Studios, tells the story of Israeli intelligence’s hunt for Josef Mengele, the sadistic SS doctor at the Auschwitz extermination camp. Real-life Mengele was never caught and died of a heart attack in 1979 in Argentina.
The plot revolves around Uri, played by German actor Oliver Masucci, a Holocaust survivor recruited by Israel’s Mossad spy organization to locate Mengele.
Masucci is known for his roles in Netflix’s “Dark,” “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore,” “Herrhausen – The Banker and the Bomb,” and many others.
The filming of the show took place in Israel shortly after the October 7, 2023 attacks and the subsequent war. Masucci said that filming during the peak of the war, with air-raid sirens going non-stop across Israel, was “traumatizing,” echoing the trauma of war carried by his character.
Masucci told Deadline the biggest challenge while preparing for the role was learning to speak Hebrew. “It was a tough game. The Hebrew symbols were transliterated into English and in my head I had to then transform it into the German syllables so it was a double transformation for me. And I had to learn how to pronounce the words,” he said.
Weiss Berkowitz added that Masucci “speaks [Hebrew] fluently in the show! He really learned this language and I think he did a tremendous job.”