SAN FRANCISCO
Lee Heidhues 1.15.2024
The Zone of Interest is a sobering tale of the horror of Nazi Germany. Depressingly portrayed in mundane fashion. The family of the Auschwitz commandant lives life seemingly oblivious to the genocide going on just yards away from their palatial home.
The viewer witnesses everyday scenes of family life. A family which is served by Auschwitz inmates acting as The Help. Interrupted only by smoke billowing from the Auschwitz incinerator chimneys, the occasional gunshots and screams of the doomed Jews behind the walls.
The final Auschwitz product
Yet, despite this seeming ability to ignore the human disaster being perpetrated in their name, there is a pervasive unease which permeates their cloistered existence.
The Zone of Interest is a surreal viewing experience. It starkly illustrates how people can mentally bury the genocide around them and go about their daily lives. For example:
- Auschwitz commandant meeting with his associates dispassionately planning the murder or 12,000 Jews each day.
- Wife of the Auschwitz commandant trying on a mink coat confiscated from a doomed Jewish woman.
- Wife of the commandant distributing clothing taken from gassed Jews.
- The children of the commandant examining teeth extracted from gassed Jews.
- The Commandant and his wife casually talking about their next vacation to Italy.
- Family members enjoying a picnic by the river which flows behind the Auschwitz crematorium.
- The Auschwitz commandant, criminally responsible for the murder of tens of thousands of Jews, petting his favorite horse. Telling the horse, “I love you.”
We sit transfixed through the 105 minute film on slain American civil rights leader Martin Luther King’s annual birthday commemoration.
The Zone of Interest is grim story which has not one scene of Jewish people being murdered in the Auschwitz killing factory. It’s all in the mind’s eye. Made all the more remarkable because the primary location of the story is the Auschwitz commandant’s palatial family home right on the other side of the killing compound.
The Zone of Interest has won numerous awards.
Inexplicably, some critics have criticized the film as trivializing The Holocaust. One reviewer even going so far to call it “Holocaust kitsch.” The critics who are disparaging the film tend to be American. Which is depressing. Yet no surprise.
America historically has never come to terms with its own history of slavery, racist and criminal war actions. Against Native Americans and people of color. Waging war around the globe all in the name of protecting American hegemony.
Lee's Perspective 