Keira Knightley voices a Jewish artist murdered in Auschwitz

When Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus was removed from the curriculum at a Tennessee high school, the ensuing furore had Hollywood throwing offers at the writer-illustrator to adapt it for the screen. There had been other offers, but Spiegelman has always refused, believing that the story of his father’s experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor is better served by a book. As irresistible as the Tom-and-Jerry depiction of Jews as mice and Nazis as cats might be for Pixar, Spiegelman clearly has his doubts and the paucity of Shoah cartoons suggests he may be right. But with an ever-diminishing number of survivors to educate the young about the Holocaust, finding new ways to relate the horrific history without resorting to computer games is essential. Released this year, Ari Folman’s engaging Where is Anne Frank? was well-received by critics and audiences, who saw it as an invaluable and imaginative bridge from the diary to present day from a director who already had track in the genre with Waltz with Bashir.

Oscar winner Michel Hazanavicius, the French-Jewish director of The Artist (2011) has taken up the challenge and is currently in production on the animated Holocaust feature The Most Precious of Cargoes, which is about a French Jewish family’s deportation to Auschwitz. Not slated for release until 2024, the appeal and acceptance of this format will be tested again from Friday with the opening of Charlotte. Starring Keira Knightley, who lends her voice to tragic real-life protagonist Charlotte Saloman, the actress, like so many of us, had never heard of the German-Jewish artist who was 26 and pregnant when she was murdered on the day she arrived at Auschwitz in 1943.

“I didn’t know anything about her work or her life, so the script was the first thing I read,” says Keira. “I thought it was an extraordinary story and wanted to know more. So then I looked at her work and thought, this is such an amazing achievement, so it’s  extraordinary I’ve never heard of her.”

Regrettably the artist is known to few outside the cultural elite, who will also have read David Foenkinos’ best-selling novel, Charlotte. Yet her work Life? or Theatre? is the largest single collection of art created by a Jew during the Holocaust and the fact that it was donated to Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum is evidence of an even more complex  backstory, most of which is recreated by the soft-edged animated characters in Eric Warin and Tahir Rana’s film.

“I think what I was fascinated by was that you could have something that is in its essence an utterly tragic tale, yet because of this person, because of her talent, it feels like it is, in many ways, the story of a spirit that survived,” continues Keira, who is joined in her vocal-only role by Jim Broadbent, Sophie Okonedo, Brenda Blethyn and Mark Strong.

“Charlotte is living in this unbelievably difficult moment in history, such extreme oppression, and she is also dealing with certain members of her family who are really difficult. And, yet, she has this kind of clarity of vision about who she wants to be, and what she wants to do… an almost punk attitude at times.”

Salomon described her work as “something crazy special” and ironically some of her early gouaches (there are 1700 in total) are presented like a comic book storyboard. Only a few, however, show the Third Reich, as Charlotte ultimately created an autobiography of her traumatic life that was filled with sorrow, but ended too soon.

“It’s a very human story. And what’s lovely about it is that nobody’s perfect. Everybody has cracks, and everybody is struggling to be better,” adds Keira, who appreciated the value of animating the story for adults, but also for her children when they grow-up.

“I’ve got two young kids, so I’m spending my life at the moment watching kids’ films, and reading books with illustrations and loving them. So it was really nice that this film came through my door at a point when I’d been really interested in those two things.”

Relocated to Nice, in the days leading up to her arrest and transportation Charlotte wrapped her paintings and delivered them to the home of a doctor friend telling him: “Keep these safe. They are my whole life.”

For Keira Knightley, who at 37 is eleven years older than Charlotte was when she was killed in a concentration camp, the attempt to destroy the Jewish people is a fact to be retold in whichever format attracts the biggest audience and that might be as animation. “To destroy Jewish culture, their presence, their thoughts, their way of life…” muses Keira. “And although Charlotte lost her life, what she did was to preserve, and to represent in the most beautiful way, a piece of Jewish culture, to make sure that genocide was impossible. Because her work lived on.”

Charlotte opens in cinemas on Friday 9 December.