The Zone of Interest

Originally published on social media on March 9th, 2024

This is a film that no one would ever be in the mood to watch, but that every person should watch at least once. Here’s why:

The story is entirely messed up, evil, and the worst part is that this is a true story. There really was a man named Rudolf Höss who was a Nazi commander who lived right outside of Auschwitz with his wife and children. While this film is a dramatization of their wives, all the elements are entirely realistic and have been shared in other Holocaust stories throughout time.

For instance, the wives and girlfriends of Nazi commanders really did keep the clothes and jewelry of Jewish prisoners once they were forced into camps, and people had no shame over that. Woman really did brag about their Nazi husbands and the atrocities they committed. Nazi Men really did spend time figuring out what furnaces would be the best for concentration camps to burn people alive. Nazi Men really did force female prisoners to perform sexual deeds on them.

These are some of the things that are important parts of the narrative, but what made the film particularly jarring was everything occurring in the background. There are sounds of people screaming, suffering, and dying along with yells of Nazi commanders. At night, the people living in the house and look out the windows, and see the smoke and flames furnaces actively burning people alive. The family’s pet dog can hear and sense this all too, and like a good boy tried to warn and protect the family often, and the family punish him for it. The dog was the only non desensitized member of the family.

This film is all about desensitization, the way people respond and try to deepened their desensitization, but how their will always be an underlying, perhaps physical, reaction people will get from actively being evil.

This film is important not only because it gives us another perspective of the Holocaust and how Nazis could be so evil, but because it reminds us that we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to anything going on in this world, even if it will never directly impact us.

This film gave me a lot to think about.