ONE of the more thought-provoking movies to emerge in the past couple of years, from a western film industry that thrives on pointless fantasies, redundant remakes and superfluous sequels, was Jonathan Glazer’s remarkable recreation of a milieu that is both distant and ever-present.
The Zone of Interest focuses on the family life of Auschwitz-Birkenau’s SS commandant, Rudolf Höss. They occupied an idyllic villa on the periphery of the death camp in Poland, and wallowed in luxury, turning a deaf ear to the barked commands, howls of despair and grinding machinery of mass extermination echoing from across the boundary wall, and a blind eye to the smoke from chimneys located within sniffing distance.
Amid the contrasting clamour of vibrant life and unavoidable death, Höss and his Nazi confederates gather to discuss how the elimination process could efficiently be sped up. That’s among the more chilling scenes in a film that only hints at atrocities it does not actually depict. The protagonists’ insouciance has echoed across human history for eight decades. And the director, Jonathan Glazer, was clear from the outset that his product was as much about the present as about the past.
A couple of weeks ago, the Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy, in an article titled ‘The IDF’s own sickening “zone of interest” in the heart of Gaza’, citing a resort set up in the ‘cleansed’ north of the destroyed enclave where Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) troops could recuperate over a steak and a beer and a massage before returning to the killing fields. Once upon a time, there were many such facilities in Vietnam and neighbouring countries for the American troops tasked with eliminating communists in Southeast Asia. Somehow, as in Gaza — and in so many other war zones in recent decades — that included babies.
Echoes of a bitter past might resonate in the year ahead.
Auschwitz was liberated 80 years ago this month, on Jan 27, 1945, by the Red Army. The camp’s website describes as a paradox the idea of “soldiers formally representing Stalinist totalitarianism brought freedom to the prisoners of Nazi totalitarianism”. It acknowledges nonetheless that the Soviet forces rapidly set up field hospitals to salvage the weakened survivors, and recorded footage of what they had witnessed, which helped to bolster the concept of ‘never again’. That was a universal idea, never intended to be restricted to Jews.
It has been violated time and again, but perhaps never so comprehensively as in the past 15 months. In a column published a few days before the aforementioned screed, Levy notes that the prime minister of the state built on the ashes of Auschwitz will not be able to travel to the commemorative ceremony because of his status as a wanted criminal. Nor, presumably, will Vladimir Putin attend the commemoration. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz might attend, on his way out of the chancellery, despite heading a government that has stood by the Gaza genocide while slandering and persecuting its critics, including German Jews.
The term ‘zone of interest’ was used by the Nazis to refer to areas adjacent to death camps, possibly among other parts of conquered lands. The Israelis have Areas A, B and C in the West Bank, and intend to capture them all in due course. They should rest assured, however, that the resistance will never cease, perhaps taking into consideration that Hitler’s defeat across almost every jurisdiction was facilitated by anti-fascist activists who refused to give up.
The 1971 events ought not to be overlooked in the context. Where did West Pakistanis stand when their military was perpetrating killings in East Pakistan in 1971? Quite a few of those who may inwardly have disapproved nonetheless looked on in silence. And the naked truths of the events of ’71 remain covered up in Pakistan.
In a broader sense, meanwhile, there will be plenty of zones of interest across the globe in the year ahead, from Sudan and the Congo to freshly ‘liberated’ Syria, to Australia, Canada, Germany and France. American oligarchs are not the only ones kissing the ring of the jolly good felon waiting to be sworn in later this month in Washington. Giorgia Meloni was among the guests at Mar-a-Lago in recent days, and the excitement extends from the likes of Viktor Orbán to Narendra Modi, the fans of Imran Khan and, not least, Javier Milei of Argentina. They may well be joined by others of their ilk, but even before that any number of purported centrists are making overtures to the criminal who is about to enter the White House.
The Nazi regime did not last after a cross-ideological alliance took it to task on the battlefields of Europe. History isn’t about to repeat itself, but keep an ear out for the echoes.
Published in Dawn, January 8th, 2025
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