The Holocaust is Not a Metaphor: The Grey Zone (2001)

Content warning Many of you may have clicked on this video knowing I have touched on this subject matter before in previous videos.   I know many of you particularly liked the Jojo  Rabbit video so I want to make it very clear   that in that video I had the distinct pleasure of  talking about Jews who lived. That is not going to be the case in this video for the most part. In this video I will be talking about Jews who died and I am going to discuss the intricacies and inner workings of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the mechanics of what was called 'the final solution.' I don't know how to warn for that but there is going to be a lot of unpleasant details Please take care of yourself and if you are not emotionally prepared to hear about those things then click away now. So! Those of you still watching. Those who clicked  on this thumbnail, I suspect some of you might be   like 'wow she’s talking about Holocaust movies  again, she talks about the Holocaust too much.' First off don’t say that to a Jew, that’s rude but   the reason I keep returning to  this subject matter is two-fold. Number 1 Jewish representation is, by and large,  somewhere between abysmal and just okay depending   on who you ask. For me personally, it's not great. I wish there were more shows like ‘Russian Doll,’   ‘Unorthodox,’ or ‘Undone,’ I really do. But the fact is I don’t like ‘Seinfeld,’   or ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ and I think the  ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a mess. Films like ‘Shiva Baby’ and ‘Disobedience' are excellent  and interesting but they didn't stick with me.  I mean there’s ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and ‘Prince  of Egypt.’ Both are unnassailable classics but   I don’t actually have much more to say about  them other than, these are good, go watch them.  What I want from Jewish representation  is difficult to nail down but it's more   than waving a Menorah around, or a joke at  the expense of religiously observant Jews,   or a punchline reveal of X character being Jewish [Jonathan Newman] “I meant I can’t see you anymore because you’re not Jewish” [Aggressive laugh track]  [Simon] “And you’re Jewish?” [Bram] “Yeah”  [Simon] “Which is cool.” [Bram] “Ha”  And with these particular preferences of mine  where I want to see interesting depictions of   Jewish characters that actively engage with our  culture, instead of just paying lip service to it,   that frequently leads me to Holocaust films. The second reason I’m talking about this subject   matter again is because people keep saying dumb  shit everywhere all of the time and so I find   myself in a position to try and educate, from  a Jewish perspective with the hope and prayer   that people might actually listen. Of course because I am once again   going to mostly focus on Jewish victims,  here’s some recommendations for films   and info on other affected populations. For Romani people I recommend ‘Korkoro,’   and if you can track it down there's also  the film ‘And the Violins Stopped Playing’  For queer people I recommend ‘Bent.’ And yes  I’m sayin queer because 1940s Germany didn’t   exactly have a great understanding of sex  and gender, there were absolutely trans women   and nonbinary people who were imprisoned and  killed. But I do not know the numbers on that.  Also David Bradley's excellent video on  Cabaret has more information on queer   victims if you want to learn more. And for Black folks I recommend this   excellent interview with a black  survivor of a German Labor camp  And these were not the only affected groups.  Disabled people were often targeted, and dwarves,   and giant folk. Anybody who didn’t fit with Nazi  Germany’s idea of a pure race was supposed to die.  But they didn’t. Not all of them at least. It  is thanks to the honesty of survivors that we   have stories like The Grey Zone. Now let's talk about it I want to begin with the  words of Zalmen Gradowski,   written in Auschwitz-Birkenau in the fall of 1944  “[Come] here to me, you fortunate citizens of the  world, who live in a land where happiness, joy   and pleasure still exist, and I will tell you how  vile modern-day criminals have turned a people's   happiness to misery, their joy to perpetual  grief, and forever destroyed their contentment. Come here to me, you free citizen of a world in  which your life is safeguarded by human morality   and your existence guaranteed by law, and I  will tell you how those modern-day criminals   and vile brigands have trampled on the morality  of life and annihilated the law of existence." "Come now, while the massacre is  still at its height [--] come now,   while the destruction still rages. [Come now]  while the Angel of Death still has dominion.   Come now, while the ovens  and pyres are still blazing. Come, arise, do not wait for the flood to abate,   the sky to clear and the sun to begin to  shine, for then you will stand amazed and   will not believe what your eyes are seeing.  And who knows whether, with the ebbing flood,   those who could be living witnesses and  tell you the truth will not also disappear.” Zalmen asked whoever read his words  to come with him to see the truth,   to look it in the eye as painful as that may be. Zalmen Gradowski was a member  of the Auschwitz Sonderkommando. In Tim Blake Nelson’s book ‘The Grey  Zone: Directors Notes and Screenplay’   he describes the Sonderkommando as such  “those unluckiest of death camp inmates   offered the most impossible bargain  humanity could propose to itself.   These Jewish males were told quite simply that  they would either help out in the extermination   of their fellows or be shot. They cleaned the gas  chambers, burned the corpses of those murdered,   and ushered fellow Jews to slaughter. They did  so in twelve to fifteen hour shifts for periods   of up to four months before being exterminated  themselves and replenished with a new group.” The Grey Zone is a 2001 film from Tim Blake  Nelson, who is probably best known for his   acting in films like ‘Holes,’ ‘O Brother Where  Art Thou,’ and ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.’   But he is also a writer and director. He’s written  and directed films like ‘Eye of God’ from 1997,   ‘Leaves of Grass’ from 2009,  and ‘Anesthesia’ from 2015   as well as The Grey Zone. He also directed  the modern Othello adaptation ‘O’ from 2001. The film, The Grey Zone is primarily based  on Dr. Miklos Nyiszli’s first hand account   which was published in 1946 under the title  ‘Auschwitz: A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account.’  Dr. Nyiszli was a Hungarian Jew who found himself  working under Doctor Mengele, participating in his   various medical atrocities, largely in the form  of autopsies and dissections of twin children.   It should be noted that he did not  knowingly volunteer for the work,   he thought he was volunteering for a hospital.  But he also didn’t stop doing the work   once he understood what was being asked  of him. Since the alternative was death. [Tim Blake Nelson] “I have to say I didn't  fully understand how to read Nyiszli   until I read ‘Drowned and  the Saved.’ Primo Levi really   contextualizes Nyiszli in such a  beautifully provocative and sensitive way.” One more major influence on The Grey Zone  was the writings of Jewish Italian chemist   and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. Primo Levi  was born in 1919 in Turin Italy. He joined the   Italian Resistance Movement to try and fight the  Nazis in 1943, but he was eventually caught and   arrested by them. He was sent to Auschwitz in  February 1944 where he would survive through   the liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945.  From 1946 until his death he wrote prolifically,   not only memoirs of his own experiences but also  essays and short stories. He died in April of 1987   a year after finishing his final book, the  Drowned and the Saved. While his death was   officially ruled as a suicide there are some  who believe his death was simply an accident.  And his writings were instrumental  to the central thesis of the film,   as well as providing the film's title. Primo Levi described the murky gulf   between victim and oppressor in The  Drowned and The Saved, as The Grey Zone. The plot of The Grey Zone follows Dr.  Nyiszli and a group of Sonderkommando   who were attempting an uprising within  the camp. The Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoner   revolt of October 7th 1944 in real life  destroyed two of the four crematoriums   in Birkenau with gunpowder that was smuggled  to them by women from the munitions factory. The opening text of the film states, “This film  addresses true events surrounding the twelfth,   largely Hungarian, Sonderkommando  at Auschwitz II-- Birkenau:”  And with that text it is made clear there are  liberties being taken for the sake of drama,   while still trying to convey truths. “The Grey Zone, and this book along with it, does not pretend to be a historical document. Rather, it's meant to strike   at the essence of the predicament faced  by the Sonderkommandos,” Nelson said  In fact, frequent comparisons have been made  between The Grey Zone and the 2015 film,   ‘Son of Saul,’ both are based to some degree on  Dr. Nyiszli’s account, following the October 7th   revolt and the brief survival of a child from the  gas chambers. But for me personally I found the   Grey Zone to be far more impactful, for several  reasons including the Grey Zones attempts to   cleave to the reality of events as we know them,  whereas ‘Son of Saul’ is far more concerned with   an impressionistic, more fictionalized  interpretation of the same events. It's   still a fine film, and one I recommend, but I do  find the Grey Zone to be a more compelling tale. Another note that needs to be made  is that Dr. Nyiszli’s account does   differ in some small ways from firsthand  accounts of the surviving Sonderkommando.  Not in like a massive defamatory way, but  he wasn't a part of the sonderkommando,   and some details seem a bit off because of that.  For instance The Gray Zone, and Dr. Nyiszli’s  account state quite concretely that the   Sonderkommando were killed every four months.  But this is a fact that seemed to vary. Shlomo   Venezia was told they were killed every  three months although he survived eight,   while Filip Muller survived three years. In Amidst a nightmare of crime, Kazimierz Smolen,   a polish political prisoner who survived  Auschwitz, said “In order to get rid of eye-witnesses of crimes committed by themselves the Nazis liquidated from time to time   part of the Sonderkommando and selected  prisoners anew from fresh transports to   take the place of the liquidated ones. When  liquidating members of Sonderkommando, experts,   so to speak, were left alive, that is capos  and stokers who tended the crematoria ovens.” Beyond that it seems to be largely  down to luck and the fickle nature   of the SS who survived and who  was killed and at what interval.   And when the Sonderkommando were liquidated  they were usually lied to about it.   They would be told they were getting  transported, reassigned, or sent on a reprieve. And most of the literature on the sonderkommandos  doesn’t lay it out the same way as Dr. Nyiszli   or the former Sonderkommando who wrote the  forward to Nyiszli’s book, Bruno Bettleheim.   They specify that it was the 12th Sonderkommando  unit of 13 who rose up. Most of the other   accounts don't describe them in numbered units. But I should also state here, I’m not a historian,   I just read a bunch of books for this video, they  are listed in my sources. When addressing the film I will stick to Nyiszli and the film’s terminology  with the 12th of 13 Sonderkommando units. Another minor discrepancy is the numbering  of crematoriums 1 through 4 in Birkenau.   Most accounts number them as crematoriums  two through five, since there was a smaller   crematorium that had been built in Auschwitz  before they built Birkenau as an extension   of Auschwitz. But Nyiszli, along with  former sonderkommando Daniel Bennahmias,   called them crematoriums one through four. The film follows that same numbering system, which   was a deliberate choice on Nelson’s part to stick  with what had been written in Nyiszli’s book. So with that, let's do the rundown. The Grey Zone actually first began  life as a play, also written by Tim   Blake Nelson, directed by Douglas Hughes [Tim Blake Nelson] “His concept, which was encouraged by me but very much his concept, was minimal set design and an implied reality" "achieved with light and sound” Then after Nelson worked on Terence Malick’s Thin Red Line he began to  consider how The Grey Zone might work on film.  [Tim Blake Nelson] “I suddenly realized,  well the way to do Grey Zone as a movie"   "is to take the opposite approach of what had  been done onstage, which was in a sense to show"   "everything. But never in a gratuitous way, rather  as a matter of fact way. That it was so present,"  "and the apparatus was so casually deployed…and  in every scene, almost, that it became banal.”  Now the film stars Allan Corduner as Dr. Miklos Nyiszli.  Corduner was kind enough to answer a few questions   via email about the film and he said when playing  complex historical figures like Dr. Nyiszli  “One of course is anxious to do their memory  justice but this is of necessity based on a" "combination of facts and emotional  instincts based on one’s knowledge" of that person. There must be no judgment.” He also added that Nyiszli was described by his own account as a bit of a chain smoker and so Corduner, a former smoker, who hadn't touched   a cigarette in 21 years, took up smoking again  for the part and it took him 5 years to quit!  You might recognize Allan Corduner  from other films like ‘Defiance’ or   ‘Topsy Turvy’ but his quiet understated  horror while playing Nyiszli is masterful.  Opposite him as one of the other named historical  figures is Harvey Keitel playing Oberscharführer   Erich Muhsfeldt. He’s a figure that is mentioned  in a few sources, from Dr. Nyiszli’s account   to the deposition of Stanislaw Jankowski  contained in ‘Amidst a Nightmare of Crime.’  And notably, he’s a Jewish actor portraying a nazi [Tim Blake Nelson ] “And Harvey Keitel didn't want to play a jew and so people have said ‘why did he play the German?’ And I don't regret that either." "There was nobody more zealous in pursuit of  making something extraordinary over there," among the acting corps, than Harvey.” Allan Corduner spoke of his commitment to the part, saying "Harvey Keitel had decided as a ‘method’ actor not to talk or interact   between takes with anybody playing a Jew…. This  included me, and though I respected his choice,   it made it hard that all discussion about the  33 pages of scenes between our 2 characters   (one third of the entire movie) could  only be discussed through a third party,   Tim Blake Nelson, the writer/director. This  added yet another layer of concentration."  And based on his performance in the film I would  guess Keitel wanted to portray the complexity of   an oppressor, not as some larger than life figure  but as a pathetic, mundane man who happened to   have power over the lives of millions. That is  the character we see in the film and seemingly a   very apt portrayal based on Nyiszli’s account. After him there are the Sonderkommandos who,   while not based on specific historical  figures, are something of an amalgamation   based on various writings. First there’s Hoffman,   played by David Arquette. Hoffman is a character  who is at once, the most gentle and seemingly   vulnerable. He’s also close to breaking  under the weight of what he is experiencing.  David Arquette plays him beautifully and is  probably best known for his work in the Scream   films playing Dewey Riley. I remember him best  for the character Randy Mann in Pushing Daisies.  Then there is, frankly, my favorite character  in the film, Rosenthal played by David Chandler.   David Chandler is an actor with an incredibly  sparse IMDB page. He does a lot of audiobook   narrations these days, and the fact that he didn’t  have a bigger career is a travesty. He is heart   wrenching in this film as the fiery Rosenthal. His character is so full of anger at everything   with no place to put it, but it's  always there in every scene. I just think he’s mesmerizing to watch. Then there’s Abramovics played by Steve   Buscemi. Steve Buscemi you probably know for  films like Reservoir Dogs or the Big Lebowski   or shows like Boardwalk Empire. He’s  an excellent, prolific actor and he   shines in this small role as the go-between for  two sects of Kommandos planning the uprising.  There’s Schlermer played by Daniel Benzali.  Schlermer is a bit of a leader amongst the   Kommandos, someone who is generally listened  to amongst the other men. Benzali is another   character actor who infuses the role with a  stony stoicism that is really interesting to see.  Also you might spot a young Michael  Stulhbarg in the minor role of Cohen,   this was one of his first film roles.  He played Hoffman in the original play.  Then there are the women of the Unio Factory.  Rosa played by Natasha Lyonne is an homage to the   real Roza Robota, one of close to thirty women  who smuggled gunpowder to the sonderkommando.   She was discovered by the SS and  executed along with three other women   Then there’s Dina played by Mira Sorvino, and  Anja played by Lisa Benevidas. None of them are   in the film for long but they still leave quite  an impact. Lyonne’s Rosa is harsh and determined,   Dina is resigned and stubborn, and Anja seems  to be the most naive and afraid amongst them.  Lastly there is The Girl played by Kamelia  Grigorova. The young girl doesn’t get a name   and doesn’t speak. Kamelia actually showed  up with her mother as potential extras for   the film but Nelson had been struggling to  find the right young actress for the part  [Tim Blake Nelson] “And I was walking by and I  saw this face" "and I said ‘My god…that’s…she is it!’ And so I had this wonderful translator, who was also my assistant, and I put the girl," "Kamelia, through a series of Mike Leigh acting  exercises to find out if she could effectively be" "herself in front of a camera. And she was lovely,  everybody loved her…got along so well with her," "her mother was wonderful. It was great.” Grigorova has not gone on to act in other films   but for this one part she was perfect. So now let's talk about  [Muhsfeldt] “So I’m a liar?” [Rosenthal] “You are what you are” With this film writer/director Tim Blake  Nelson set out to tell a human story that   would constantly upend expectations,  while remaining completely understated.  In his directors notes he said “In  its storytelling and acting styles,   this film will never try to be liked. If it  seems to be doing so, given the clear aesthetic   presented by the script, we've failed.” This film employs several stylistic   touches that are so specific and distinct  from any other holocaust film I’ve seen.  [Tim Blake Nelson] “The idea was don’t do the  accents because that's what you always see" "and it allows people to say that was then  and those people. I want the audience to" "feel like they're in the middle of it. And I’m  an American filmmaker using American actors," "so I'm gonna let these American  actors speak the way they speak”  A big stylistic choice that many will notice  while watching the film is the accents.  Most of the characters in the  film speak in American accents,   the only exception being the Nazi characters  who speak english with a German accent  Muhsfeldt “They think we’re going to kill them.” [Nyiszli] “Don’t you always?”  This is the kind of theatrical  device one might find on stage   but rarely on film, and I kinda like it. [Tim Blake Nelson] “And I thought, well I" "have a license not to make these people sound like  my European Jewish relatives. Which is what most" "characters in Holocaust films sound like. And  that's meant to connote a kind of Jewishness," "but also to imply that they're speaking in  another language. And so I thought well when" "we're speaking in our own language we don't  speak in an accent and so that's sort of silly”  He said he hoped to achieve a sort  of universality with this approach,   an immediacy that would allow an American audience  to identify with these European Jewish characters.  [Tim Blake Nelson] “And ultimately I  was making the film for people like me," "an American audience. I didn't think so  much about the film's appeal worldwide," "and it's been interesting to see what countries  have responded to it and what countries haven't.”  He even purposefully chose more  generic Jewish names like Hoffman   and Rosenthal rather than choosing more  Hungarian names like Nyiszli or Radnóti.  [Tim Blake Nelson] “I hoped that  by my universalizing the names," "to make them basic jewish names that, that would  allow the audience to identify more with the" "characters. I guess they’re names from the pale.” And along with the accents is the dialogue   itself which is I think one of  my favorite elements of the film.  [Dina] “We found a stupid link.” [Rosa] “So what’s the trouble?”  [Dina] “You don’t walk out of there every day.” [Rosa] “I do plenty.”  [Dina] “This isn’t a contest.” [Rosa] “Then don’t make it one.” It's so quick and rhythmic even if the content of  it is very dark there is a lightness in the speed   of its delivery that I find very engaging. [Dialogue overlapping] [Rosenthal] “They never--They never!” [Abramovics] “It was to some noncoms in front of--” [Rosenthal] “They never--Noncoms! Oh do you hear this? You don’t even speak German” [Abramovics] “German? What the fuck does that matter? I speak enough. And I speak Yiddush. I heard from--”  [Rosenthal] “--Oh you speak Yiddush!” With a subject matter as difficult as   this you need some lightness and I think  that comes from the style of the dialogue   which was inspired by playwright Caryl Churchill [Tim Blake Nelson] “And you have characters" "interrupting one another at specific times. You  can also make a kind of rhythmic poetry out of the" "language. And it's incredibly dry and it's always  ahead of the audience, so that you're having to" "catch up. You don't understand what characters  are talking about, but because of the confidence" "in the way that the performances are delivered, and the precision of the words, you're sent" "signals by the piece itself, that eventually  you will understand. And that you have to have" "confidence in the people that are telling the  story. And so that's basically the the way the" "dialogue is supposed to work in the movie,  and I really owe that to Caryl Churchill”  And of course as that statement might imply,  this film has a total lack of exposition   beyond the opening text at the beginning,  which explains who the sonderkommando   and Dr. Nyiszli were and where they were. From then on the movie just goes and expects us to follow along. [Tim Blake Nelson] “I worked very hard in The Grey Zone never to have exposition. So characters always speak with an"   "understood reality. And then the movie also leans  on the audience's understanding of the holocaust,"   "so that it can go go deeper into the apparatus of  killing. Because it understands that the audience"   "already knows the basics of the Holocaust." This forces us as an audience to lean in to  try and keep up with what's being said and what's  actually being communicated in any given scene.   It forces us to infer and connect this with  what knowledge we are bringing to the film.   I imagine every audience member might have  a slightly different experience watching   the film because of that but I think it's a  fascinating approach to a historical piece.  I just love the writing of the film, and I love  the moments when the dialogue hits you with a   breathtaking moment of layered meanings [Muhsfeldt] “Did I say kill?”  [Rosenthal] “We both know what we’re saying.” [Muhsfeldt] “So I’m a liar?”  [Rosenthal] “You are what you are” There’s even moments of…pitch black humor in the film, that do make me laugh [Abramovics] “I’d like a bottle of that wine.” [Rosenthal] “Give us the necklace.” [Abramovics] “Come on.” [Rosenthal] “It’s good wine you fucking yid.” [Rosenthal] “So you’re alive. We’re all alive. We’re all shitting gold. Make your point.” And between the dialogue scenes we are treated   to matter of fact shots of the burning chimneys or  a truckful of ashes that we know are human ashes.   It's not designed to shock an audience, but rather  present us with an unadorned reality, and through   that blunt unemotional style, I think it delivers  a far greater impact than many films I’ve seen.  So let's talk about the story. After that brief bit of expository text  The Grey Zone drops us into the lives   of the sonderkommando, in Number  1 Crematorium, in October 1944.  The film opens on a shot of Hoffman just  standing there, we don’t know what he’s   just seen or where he’s just been but there’s an  unspeakable horror writing across his features.  And then to further throw us off kilter, an  SS officer asks if he has anything to drink  [Tim Blake Nelson] “The unlikeliness of it  is meant to instruct the audience that this" "is a world turned completely upside  down from what you think is true about" "what went on in the camps. And therefore the  first moment is laced with implied complicity." From there Hoffman walks through the halls  of this bunker until he reaches a room.   In that room we meet Rosenthal and  Schlermer calmly making a decision that   we do not have the full context for yet. [Rosenthal] “Cover his head anyway.”  [Schlermer] “Do as he says.” There’s an old man lying in this bed,   he’s not quite dead, but they’re acting like  he is. Hoffman shows up with a Doctor to revive   the man but the other two say he’s already dead. [Rosenthal] “I said he's dead. I said he’s dead!”  [Hoffman] “He’s alive!” [Nyiszli] “If he’s alive I’m treating him.”  The Doctor injects the man with something  to revive him, and then Rosenthal   smothers the old man with a pillow [Nyiszli] “No! Please no! Please!”  [Rosenthal] “Easy old friend. Easy…” We watch a murder happen in the   most matter of fact way possible. When it's done the Doctor is upset  [Nyiszli] “Don’t come for me  again. Don’t knock on my door.”  But the other two are completely calm [Rosenthal] “That's easy.”  And after all that, Hoffman carries  the body downstairs to be burned.  That is the beginning of the film. From there we get scenes where   the sonderkommando speak in hushed  tones about plans for the uprising,   and the potential for their own survival. [Rosenthal] “Every day counts. They’ve been on just as long as we have. Longer even! I don’t understand him!  [Abramovics] “You’re dead already. Either  way. It's just a matter of deciding how.”  And between those scenes we get unsettling  sequences, like a truck filled with human ash   driving past an incongruously well manicured  lawn. Or a line of new arrivals being walked   into the gas chamber while the Auschwitz band  plays the chipper sounding Roses From The South   by Johann Strauss. A truly ironic choice given  Germany chose to ignore Strauss’ Jewish heritage   and claim him as one of the great German  Composers. In one scene Oberscharführer Muhsfeldt tells Rosenthal and Hoffman that they are going to be moved soon.  [Rosenthal] “Why do you want to do that?” [Muhsfeldt] “They’re thinking of a reprieve”  Rosenthal says they would like to remain here.  That they would be ‘happy’ to remain here.  [Muhsfeldt] “Happy?” [Rosenthal] “This is   where we would like to remain. Why kill us  now we’re the best kommando you’ve had?”  [Muhsfeldt] “Did I say kill?” [Rosenthal] “We both know what we’re saying”  In the end Muhsfeldt claims it's not his decision,  that he has no control over the situation, and   yells at the men to stay in  their areas and get back to work.  Then we jump to a scene between Dr. Nyiszli, the  doctor from the first scene and Joseph Mengele.  Now the film never once states that  this man is the Angel of Death himself,   as a historical figure he’s often been  made larger than life, and Nelson wanted   to avoid playing into such grandiose depictions [Tim Blake Nelson] “I didn't want to name him"   "onscreen and I specifically didn’t want to  make a big deal out of it because at this"   "point he’s such a trope in these movies. And I  felt like not saying his name was the way to go”  For the first half of his only scene in the  film, you barely even see his face, as he   praises Nyiszli’s medical knowledge. And there’s  this moment where Mengele tells him they are going   to be increasing the volume of their research, a  euphemistic way of saying, he will be expected to   perform autopsies on more children’s bodies. And you can see the muted horror and   then resignation play out across  Nyiszli’s eyes as he finally responds  [Nyiszli] “I'm going to need more staff” [Mengele] “Then you shall have more staff.”  And then Nyiszli asks for the pass they  spoke about, and Mengele gives it to him.  In reality this pass allowed him to see  his wife and daughter in the women's camp   and smuggle them supplies. And Mengele  did give him this pass in real life.  Then we see the women in the Union  Munitions factory in Brzezinka,   often called the unio factory. The unio was still  part of the Auschwitz complex and like many of the   satellite locations of Auschwitz employed  Jewish prisoners as a form of slave labor.   In other satellite locations prisoners mined coal,  made cement, repaired railroads, and various other   sorts of construction or agricultural labor In the film we see Dina notably wearing a pink   triangle. While it seems there is some debate  about how and when Nazis persecuted lesbians.   That was less common than the arresting  and murders of gay men and trans women.  Cisgender women and trans men were actually  labeled with the black triangle, for antisocial   behaviors, AKA not getting married and having  aryan babies. Confusingly, the black triangle was   also the designation for Romani prisoners. BUT nonetheless Dina is intended to be a Jewish lesbian [Me] “It looks like she has on her uniform...I can't tell if its a pink or a red triangle?" [Tim Blake Nelson either says yeah or no here I can't tell] [Me] "...on her uniform..." [Me] "Was she meant to be a lesbian? Or was she--" [Tim Blake Nelson] "Yes" [Me] "Ah ok." [Tim Blake Nelson] "Yeah it's just a choice we made. It felt right to us and..yeah." And honestly for a film made in 2001 I’m delighted  and astounded by the inclusion of a queer   character. The film doesn’t make a fuss about  it, but she’s here and I think she’s amazing.  When we first meet Dina we see she’s being  smuggled something by a woman she doesn’t   recognize. She asks where Tsipporah  is and the woman doesn’t answer.  Later we see her talking to Anja and Rosa  and they move the powder onto a sheet of   paper that they can wrap up and hide. They talk about Tsiporah getting   taken and Rosa insists that they move on [Rosa] “It's a link, you find another chain.”  Anja points out that their entire barracks  will be punished if they’re found out  [Rosa] “Of course the whole barracks will be punished. They'll be punished before they're killed." "What's the fucking difference when your dead anyway?” Then Rosa asks how many bodies are going into   the morning cart, Dina tells her eight [Rosa] “Good. You see, that's good. The more bodies the better get it?” What we later see is that they’re smuggling a powder on the corpses of dead women. From there we get a scene of an SS officer in a gas mask emptying a canister into a chimney and closing it,   distantly we can hear the sound of screams. Then we get an unnervingly long shot of Schlermer   standing at the end of a long hallway, Half  shrouded in darkness. He drinks, and drinks,   and drinks. He’s wearing rubber gloves and a  thick apron like a butcher. Distantly we can hear   ventilation fans begin to run, and pressurized  air moving, a generator powers up and the sound   of the factory is getting louder as we get closer. Finally Rosenthal steps around the corner in a gas   mask, he hands a gas mask to Schlermer who puts  it on and steps inside the room to get to work.  All we can see inside the room is clothing  hung up on the walls on numbered hooks. After this we get a scene between Muhsfeldt  and Dr. Nyiszli. In it Muhsfeldt says he   feels sorry for the opposition if Germany  loses the war. Because if Germany wins   they will all be one people. Nyiszli, casually observes  [Nyiszli] “There have been wars between your  tribe. Roehm? The night of the long knives?”  Muhsfeldt in a moment of almost comical  denial states that was not a war  [Muhsfeldt] “That of course was  a putsch. A putsch is not a war.”  [Nyiszli] “it’s a kind of war.” [Muhsfeldt] “It’s a putsch.”  Then Muhsfeldt sits down and tells Nyiszli there  are rumors of an uprising in crematorium three, an   uprising that would involve all four crematoriums. [Nyiszli] “What would I know?”  [Muhsfeldt] “They think we’re going to kill them.” [Nyiszli] “Don’t you always?”  Nyiszli says they won’t tell him about  it, because they don’t trust him.  [Muhsfeldt] “You're their doctor.” [Nyiszli] “I’m their doctor   but they know what I do.” he tells Muhsfeldt what he   does is different from what they do. Which  is, work under gunpoint. He says he won't   tell them anything he doesn’t believe. [Muhsfeldt] “That we’ll let them live?””  [Nyiszli] “That you’ll let any of us live” Muhsfeldt says what happens to them has nothing   to do with him. And he asks Nyiszli to pass on any  information he might hear from the Sonderkommando.  Nyiszli doesn’t respond but instead observes  that the headaches Muhsfeldt has complained of   might be do to the stress of the  mass murders he is commiting daily.  This makes Muhsfeldt very angry. [Muhsfeldt] “It's not your job to suggest.”  [Nyiszli] “Alright.” [Muhsfeldt] “If I get upset, if my headaches it's because I drink too much.”  And fun fact this conversation comes  directly from Nyiszli’s account “I checked his blood pressure, took his pulse,  listened to his heart with a stethoscope." "His pulse rate was slightly high. I gave him my  opinion: his condition was no doubt the result"   "of the little job he had just performed in the  furnace room [shooting eighty men]. I had wanted"   "to reassure him, but the result was just the  opposite. He became indignant, got up and said:" "Your diagnosis is incorrect. It doesn't  bother me any more to kill 100 men than it"   "does to kill 5. If I'm upset, it's  merely because I drink too much." "And so saying he turned and  walked away, greatly displeased.” Not long after this we get our first real glimpse  inside the crematorium. A channel of bloody   water runs along the ground, with bodies piled  haphazardly around before they are shoved into the   crematory ovens. Everything moves quickly with a  cold efficiency born of painful repetition. An SS   Officer shoves a man out into a hallway and shoots  him, nobody even reacts. Work continues apace. When discussing this film one has to discuss  the history of The Sonderkommando. The word   sonderkommando means special unit or special squad  or special forces depending on the translation. As   previously stated these were task forces the Nazis  put together to do the dirty work of the camps.  Many people talk about the morality of the  work done by these men. By the nature of it   they were abetting the slaughter of their  own people. There are stories of kommandos,   fresh off the train, being made to burn the bodies  of their own families as part of their first day   ‘on the job’ as it were. That was the job.  They burned bodies, they guided largely   Jewish prisoners into the gas chamber, they  were sometimes tasked with dragging prisoners   in front of SS officers so they could be shot  and the bodies thrown in ditches to be burned.  They even cleaned and whitewashed the  gas chambers between each gassing,   removing all traces of blood and excrement,  covering up the scratches and gouges in the walls.  And the only choice any sonderkommando had, was  to do this work or die. And some did refuse.  “At least 400 Greeks from the Corfu and Athens  transport were ordered in the Sonderkommando."   "Now, something truly unusual happened. These  400 demonstrated that in spite of the barbed"   "wire and the lash, they were not slaves but  human beings. With rare dignity, the Greeks"   "refused to kill the Hungarians! They declared  that they preferred to die themselves first."  "Sadly enough, they did. The Germans saw to  that. But what a demonstration of courage"   "and character these Greek peasants had given. A  pity the world does not know more about them!”  Although it should be noted all of my  research was pretty exclusively focused   on the Auschwitz Sonderkommando. And the SS  had Sonderkommando units in other camps such as   Bełżec,Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór and Treblinka.  The October 7th uprising isn’t even the first   Sonderkommando revolt. The first was in Treblinka  on August 2nd, 1943. They set buildings and a fuel   tanker on fire and attacked the guards, while  attempting an escape. Of the 700 sonderkommando   who participated in the revolt, about 100  successfully escaped and about 70 survived the war  But most of my information is exclusively about  the Auschwitz Sonderkommando and so it may not   uniformly apply to experiences in the other camps. But for the Auschwitz sonderkommando it should  be noted, The October 7th wasn't the first   attempt at a revolt or an escape. Many individuals  attempted escape and were hunted down and killed  And In mid-December 1942 About 80 Sonderkommando  were gassed and cremated. According to Filip   Muller “On removing their bodies from  the gas chamber we found on some of them"   "scraps of scribbled paper with notes scribbled  on them to the effect that their plan to escape"   "had been betrayed by certain barrack orderlies.” Olga Lengyel said of the underground resistance  “Whoever fell was forgotten. We were not heroes, and never claimed to be. We did not merit any"  "Congressional Medals, Croix de Guerre, or Victoria  Crosses. True, we undertook dangerous missions."   But death and the so-called danger of death  had a different meaning for us who lived in   Auschwitz-Birkenau. Death was always with us, for  we were always eligible for the daily selections.   One nod might mean the end for any of us. To  be late for roll call might mean only a slap   in the face, or it might mean, if the S.S. became  enraged, that he took out his Luger and shot you.   As a matter of fact, the idea of death seeped  into our blood. We would die, anyway, whatever   happened. We would be gassed, we would be burned,  we would be hanged, or we would be shot. The   members of the underground at least knew that if  they died, they would die fighting for something.” Many of the kommandos attempted suicide as  well. Since the options were to do this work   or die, many chose to try and  take control of their own deaths.  Dr. Nyiszli recounted one  instance of aborting a suicide,   much like the one depicted in  the opening scene of the film,   the friends of the sonderkommando told him  not to save the man, to ‘let him go his way’  “Seeing that their arguments had had no effect,  and that I was preparing to inject the antidote,   some of the men lost their tempers  and spared no words as they told me   what they thought of my action. Nevertheless I  finished the injections and left the room.[….]   Now that I was no longer beside his bed, now that  his face no longer called forth the doctor in me,   the purely human side of my nature was forced to  admit that the Captain's friends had been right.   I should have "let him go his way," not in front  of the cold steel barrel of a machine gun,” Much of the literature about the sonderkommando  discusses the work they did in exchange for better   living conditions. For decent food and clothes,  most of which was taken from incoming prisoners.   But none of the kommandos as far as I can tell  willingly signed up to burn the corpses of their   people and participate in what was called  sonderaktion 1005 or special action 1005.  This special action was part of the  Nazis secret plan to hide all evidence   of the genocide they were committing. As reports  of the extermination began to reach western powers   Aktion 1005 made use of prisoner  labor from the concentration camps,   mostly Jews, making them dispose  of corpses after mass executions.  The unfortunate effectiveness of Aktion  1005 is part of the reason many believe   the Holocaust has been falsified since so much  of the evidence was purposefully destroyed.  This was a major concern  amongst the Sonderkommando.   Once they were unwittingly brought into these  units it was very clear what they were doing.  Bodies were burned, Bones ground into dust, ashes  and dust were often poured into the vistula river   or sometimes used as fertilizer. Other contingents  of the kommandos were employed in other equally   grisly tasks. Some former dentists were employed  to pull gold teeth from the corpses. Those teeth   were dropped into an acid which burned  away the bone and left only the gold,   which was then taken to smelters and melted down  into ingots which could be used as currency.  Then there were the barbers who  cut all the hair from the corpses.   As a textile resource it was not only used as  insulation in clothing as I had previously read,   it was used in delayed action bombs and it  was used to stuff mattresses and cushions.   According to Olga Lengyel’s book ‘Five Chimneys’ “families of the third Reich slept   on the hair of it's victims” Part of why the Auchwitz Sonderkommando   wanted to destroy the crematoriums was simply  to destroy the mechanism the Nazis were using   to hide their crimes. It wouldn't necessarily have  stopped the killing, but they didn’t have the same   level of access to the gas chambers themselves. But destroying the crematoriums would still put   a wrench in the workings. It might make  it harder for them to continue to destroy   every piece of evidence. it might allow word to  get out about what was happening in the camps. At the end of Zalmen Gradowski’s From the  Heart of Hell is a letter where he writes  "Dear finder, search everywhere, in every  piece of ground. Buried in them are dozens   of documents--mine and those of others--which  shed light on all that has happened here.   A great many teeth are buried here. We  Sonderkommando workers deliberately scattered   as many of them as we could over the whole area,  so that the world would find actual traces of   the millions murdered here. We ourselves have  already lost hope of living until the liberation.”  Gradowski’s writings were part of what has  been named ‘the scrolls of Auschwitz’ texts   written by members of the sonderkommando that  were buried in the hopes that someday, someone   would find them and learn what happened there. Among those whose writings were found there was   Gradowski, along with Salmen Lewental, Chaim  Hermann, and a letter from an unknown author.   These texts are rare in that they are some of  the only writings we have that were written by   the sonderkommando contemporaneously during their  imprisonment. Most memoirs and first hand accounts   come after the event, with time and distance  allowing some perspective and ordering of one's   thoughts. But these texts are often scattered,  repeating ideas and thoughts, jumping from one   subject to another. It's heartbreaking to read and  much of these writings were compiled in the book   Amidst a Nightmare of Crime. Nelson cites the book  as an influence on the sonderkommando characters,   particularly Rosenthal and Hoffman. [Tim Blake Nelson] “and it's just so it's so   self-lacerating, and the character of Hoffman is  really inspired by one of them, and then also the   character Rosenthal who's so fucking impatient.  Those two guys are just completely out of that”  Even more heartbreaking is that  time was not kind to the scrolls,   some of them, once they were  found, were so damaged they were   nearly impossible to read or translate. [Tim Blake Nelson] “Because just pieces   of the page are missing and so you have missing  words. And in the text you have ellipses wherever   words are missing. And it makes it even more  heartbreaking. It's like somebody receding from   you in the deepest sort of confession, and you're  trying to hang on to their every word, and they're   trying to hang on to you through the confession  and yet they're just receding and that's Hoffman.”  “But the truth is that one wants to live at  any cost, one wants to live because one lives,   because the whole world lives. And all that one  wishes, all with what one is, if only slightly,   bound [...] is bound with life first of all,  without life [...] such is the real truth. And so,   briefly and clearly [...] [if] anyone asks why  [...] I shall answer [...] that is [...] and later   for [...] let them state: I am too weak,  I was formerly [...] under the pressure   of the will to live, so that I should  be able to estimate rightly [...] the   will to live, but not [...] is at stake” And I mentioned earlier that as far as I can   tell none of the sonderkommando willingly signed  up for this position in exchange for better food   and living conditions. Let me stress that the  SS regularly lied to prisoners about the work,   or simply grabbed healthy looking men from  incoming prisoners. Filip Muller was grabbed   after he was caught trying to drink some tea  from a vat that had been left lying around.  But he recounted that one of his compatriots  had volunteered when an SS officer said they   were looking for 'strong men for pleasant work'. Another friend was told that strong and healthy   men were wanted for well-paid work in the  Bata shoe factory 200 kilometers away.  “Eagerly and suspecting nothing he volunteered  for this work. When a little later he was taken   to the crematorium he realized that he had  been tricked: but by then it was too late.”  Shlomo Venezia had been asked if he had  any skills in a trade or profession and he   said he was a hairdresser based on some  experience in his father’s barbershop  The closest I have found to a sonderkommando  with prior knowledge before signing up is Daniel   Bennahmias. In his account he states that he was  sick and starving at the time of the selection.   So he was desperate for better circumstances. “Rumor had it that the selection would be for   some kind of steady job working with the dead, and  that those chosen would be housed in a "fantastic   place to stay." Some said that they would hear the  cries of women and children when they got there,   and that they would be filled with horror.  This, too, was part of the "rumor mill."   It shocked the men, who were being "prepared" for  what was to come, but Danny prayed to be chosen.”  Now with that said, when he did actually  witness and understand what the work was,   he was horrified. On his first shift clearing  corpses out of the gas chamber he fainted 4 times.  On the subject of selecting members  for the Sonderkommando Primo Levi said  “At first, the SS chose them from among the  prisoners already registered in the Lager, and   it has been testified that the choice was not made  only on the basis of physical strength but also by   a deep study of the physiognomies. In a few rare  cases, the enrollment took place as a punishment.   Later on, it was considered preferable to pick  out the candidates directly at the railroad   platform, on the arrival of each convoy: the SS  'psychologists' noticed that the recruitment was   easier if one drew them from among those  desperate, disoriented people, exhausted from   the journey: bereft of resistance, at the crucial  moment of stepping off the train, when every newly   arrived person truly felt on the threshold of  the darkness and terror of an unearthly space.”  And the paradigm so often described of doing  this horrid work in exchange for decent food   and clothes…It should be noted that due to Aktion  1005 destroying the evidence of the crimes was of   paramount importance to the Nazis. It behooved  them to have strong, well fed, healthy men who   could manage this intense labor. And the alcohol  they had steady access too, was an opiate, it   made them more pliable and willing to do the job.  Every aspect of their seeming better circumstances   was only for the benefit of the nazis. As Primo Levi said “The Special Squads were   largely made up of Jews. In a certain sense, this  is not surprising since the Lagers main purpose   was to destroy Jews, and beginning in 1943,  the population of Auschwitz was composed of   ninety to ninety-five percent Jews. From another  point of view, one is stunned by this peroxisome   of perfidiousness and hatred: It must be  the Jews who put the Jews into the oven's,   it must be shown that the Jews, the subrace,  the sub-men, bow to any and all humiliation,   even to destroying themselves. On the other  hand, it is proved that not all the SS gladly   accepted massacre as a daily task; delegating part  of the work to the victims themselves and indeed   the most filthy part was meant to alleviate (and  probably did) a few consciences here and there.” So   the production of the Grey Zone was a time. The  film was shot over 5 weeks in Sofia Bulgaria   in June of 2000. Despite the film taking place  in October, Bulgaria was experiencing a record   breaking heatwave with temperatures over  100 degrees, according to Allan Corduner,  Which, in his words “added a physical  discomfort to the emotional weight.”  There was a pretty involved pre  production period where Actors rehearsed   scenes, and were given extensive  research and reading materials. [David Arquette] “Tim had this--uh--great   list of research material, books…” [Tim Blake Nelson] “Some were required reading.”  [Charlie Rose] “Is that right? [Tim Blake Nelson] “Yes.”  [Mira Sorvino] “Yeah…” [Charlie Rose] “Required reading?”  [Mira Sorvino] “Oh yeah.” The Auschwitz-Birkenau set, the bunker, the   offices, the crematoriums were all built according  to the architectural designs, production designer   Maria Djurkovic found in the London war library. [Tim Blake Nelson] “And she pushed me further and   I really have to credit her. It was less important  to me that all the buildings and the brickwork   and the crematoria look exactly as they were.  And she insisted that we build to the designs   of the actual crematoria which she found in  the war library in London. She pushed me to   go even further with it and furnished  the movie with a level of detail which   I think really ultimately benefits it.” They built replicas of the number one   and number two crematorium at  Birkenau at 80 percent to scale.  They built a 100 percent to scale replica of the   number one crematorium furnace room with  five furnaces that were fully functional.   Much of the grounds, interiors, undressing  rooms, offices and barracks were all built   using those original architectural plans. [Tim Blake Nelson] “And she scoured…not just   Bulgaria, but all of the Balkans and into Germany  to get reconstituted brick to match exactly what   that brick was. And the fencing, and the roads,  and the sprinklers, and the grass, and then all   the vehicles we got. You know, these people who  worked on this movie…they put skin in the game,   and took it every bit as seriously as I did.” Cinematographer Russel Lee Fine worked with Nelson   to create this dark muddy look for the film. Fine  spent time in pre production experimenting with   stripping the coating off of lenses to create a  milky flare when passing light sources. There was   also an extensive use of handheld cameras  because, as per Nelson’s director’s notes,  “We must feel, dizzyingly, that we’re  entirely inside the experience of these men.   The camera is alive, present, and perspectives  are rarely convenient or carefully framed.”  The scenes where the camera is locked down are  rare and notable in their stillness. There are   several scenes where the camera pans across a  whole area, telling multiple stories with what   passes through the frame. Nelson also spent a   lot of time casting his extras, [Tim Blake Nelson] “I asked that I be able to meet   every single extra who was in the movie. Because  I felt those faces and those looks were incredibly   important. We would have meetings every morning  in the parking lot of the production office   and usually about one to two hundred people  would show up over the course of two weeks. And   I would meet every one of them, very briefly,  and say, ‘Okay this person should be a guard,   this person should be a sonderkommando, and this  person--these people should be on the train.’”  and that time paid off in a film  of distinctive, memorable faces.   In the commentary for the deleted scenes, he  praised the 250 women extras in particular,   saying they were hugely committed, many of  them having to shave their heads for the part.  During production they had to use a lot of  practical effects since computer generated special   effects were still in their infancy at the time.  There are no digital special effects in the film,   so in a scene where a woman in shot in the face, [Tim Blake Nelson] “but she had to scream and   scream and scream and scream and scream  knowing that somebody was going to--”  [Makes a blowing sound] “A blot that was shot from   a straw off camera right into her cheek that  could have gone into her eye. That's how we   achieved that effect. That's--our special  effects supervisor was great. He did it.”  Unfortunately despite all the effort on display  in this film, timing seems to be what killed this   movie. The Grey Zone was set to premiere at  the Toronto film festival on September 11th   2001. Due to the events of that day, the premiere  was moved to the following day. And the film did   garner some positive reviews, but Lionsgate, the  film's distributor decided to move the film's   wider release to October, 2002, in the hopes  that audiences would be more receptive to the   dark subject matter. But any positive buzz from  the film festival was forgotten by this point.   It got a pretty negative review in the New York  Times which criticized it for being too violent   and the film just largely went unseen. And the film was very purposeful about   how and when violence was shown, we only see  about .5 seconds of inside the gas chambers,   while people are being gassed, beyond  that we almost exclusively see the before,   and the after. The most violent scene in the  film is one man punching another to death and   the lack of violence elsewhere in the film allows  what we are shown to have so much more impact.  [Tim Blake Nelson] “So I just wanted  those moments to be the right ones,   and for those ones to stand out and make their  points…we couldn't be excessive in other areas.”  Another notable stylistic choice is the almost  total lack of music. The title and credits have   some understated score from composer Jeff  Danna, but the rest of the movie is almost   totally unscored with two exceptions. One, I already described, the march into the   gas chambers set to the music of Jewish composer  Johann Strauss. The other is a moment of diegetic   music when Dr. Nyiszli listens to a piece of  German opera. But beyond that the rest of the   film is set to the everpresent hum of the death  factory. In his director’s notes, Nelson writes  “Since most scenes take place either inside  or on the grounds of the crematoria, there'll   rarely be silence, and usually the sound of fans,  machinery, or furnaces. In fact, such noise is   nearly constant, so that the audience seeing the  film experiences a varying but perpetual rumble,   It must never be possible to forget that the  Sonderkommando, whether sleeping, eating,   working, or fighting, is inside the very organs  of the most massively lethal killing apparatus   ever assembled, and that that apparatus was  at times deafeningly loud and never quiet.”  There are so many details like this that were  handled with such care. So many elements that   they worked to depict in the film in order to  illustrate the oddity of the sonderkommando’s   predicament. The contrast of a verdant green  lawn and a truckful of human ash. The possibly   exaggerated opulence of a sonderkommando  meal, after a scene of bodies being burned.  In the film, during this dinner scene,  Rosenthal and Schlermer talk about the   continued delays of their plans. Rosenthal  is angry because it’s their people at stake.   And by their people he means Hungarians. [Schlermer] “That’s because Hungary is the   only country with any Jews left of  course their Hungarian. If we were   burning Polish Jews you wouldn’t care?” [Rosenthal] “If we were burning Polish   Jews we wouldn't be waiting and that's my point.”  Then Abramovics comes in to update them on  the situation. He talks about sonderkommando   being locked in and the SS planning to  liquidate another section, maybe the Czechs.  They talk about the food they’ve gotten  from incoming prisoners and a nice necklace   Abramovics considered keeping, Rosenthal  tells him to smelt it and then questions him [Rosenthal] “We hear you got more machine guns.” [Abramovics] “...Who told you?”  [Rosenthal] “Hoffman found out.” The two argue about whether Abramovics   was going to tell them and so on. Rosenthal  again demands to know why they’re waiting and   Abramavics says they’re coordinating,  because some are planning to escape.  This infuriates Rosenthal [Rosenthal] “Is that what you’re after?”  [Abramovics] “If I get the chance fuck yes!” Abramovics insist that they could live   to tell what they’ve seen and  Rosenthal says they won’t live.  Schlermer says others from the camp might  have made it out but they won’t let a   sonderkommando escape and live. [Shlermer] “What we could tell   would turn Poland upside down.” He stresses that if they want to   accomplish anything they need a shared  goal. And the priority is the machinery  [Shlermer] “After that you can run to high  heaven, but after we do the buildings.”  There’s some more bickering about  trading that nice necklace for   some wine and then Abramavics leaves. Rosenthal says Abramovics is a liar,   and they’re just a diversion. And Schlermer  reminds him he’s talking about Jews.  [Rosenthal] “You keep saying that  but do you trust jews anymore.”  He goes on to ask how any of them could  go back to a normal life after this.   How they could look their loved ones in the eye  after what they’ve done for a little more life.  [Rosenthal] “For vodka and bed linens.” After that we get another take that tells   several stories. First a sonderkommando  covered in soot steps out of the crematory,   smoking a cigarette, as he walks out of  frame, a line of emaciated prisoners is   marched up to a wall and shot, one by one. One man tries to run and is shot down. In the   distance we see the pits where bodies are being  burned. Up close we see Rosenthal, Cohen, and   many others heaving bodies into the burning pit. Cut to Rosa being marched away by SS Officers,   then one of the women’s bunks being woken up  in the dead of night by SS screaming at them.   The women all begin panicking and beneath  the den of screaming men, frightened women,   and barking dogs, we hear Dina telling Anja [Dina] “You’re gonna die anyway. You’re   dead. They’ll find the powder. Don't say  anything no matter what they do…I love you.”  Then we jump to the undressing rooms where  Cohen and Hoffman are telling new prisoners   to get undressed for a shower, to hang their  clothes on the numbered hooks, and move quickly   in order to be reunited with their families. [Cohen] “This process of cleaning and   disinfecting is of vital importance to  your health. One louse can kill you.”  A man interrupts Hoffman, calling him a liar.  Hoffman continues with his script and the man   raises his voice to be heard, saying Hoffman is  a liar, and he can’t believe Jews are doing this.  The man’s wife tries to get her husband to  be quiet, and Hoffman tells the man to listen   to his wife and not cause trouble. [Man] “Look me in the eye and tell   me I’m not going to be killed.” [Hoffman] “Hang your clothes on   the numbered hooks and keep them  separate from your neighbors.”  The man follows Hoffman, telling him that  he’s dead already. Hoffman tells him to   be quiet because he won’t change anything and  the man says at least he’ll die with dignity.  That’s when Hoffman notices he’s got a nice watch.  He asks how the man got there with that watch.   Between the ghettos and the train ride, Jews were  constantly being stripped of their belongings.   The train ride to Auschwitz could take days and  when the train would stop to refuel, SS Officers   would often demand a tax of various valuables in  exchange for a meager amount of water or food.   Sometimes they just threatened to shoot the train  occupants if they didn’t hand their items over.  [Man] “What?” [Hoffman] “The watch is what.   They’d have killed your whole car.” [Man] “What does it matter? See what   you’ve done for yourself now.” Hoffman demands the watch,   probably in order to smelt it and  get more supplies for the rebellion.  But he simply demands the watch and  the situation escalates until Hoffman   breaks and starts beating the man, violently  punching him over and over again while his wife   screams in horror. Eventually the man has  been beaten to death and the wife shot.  Then an SS officer silently removes the watch from  the dead man’s wrist and hands it to Hoffman with   a smile. Hoffman, after a long moment of unspoken  horror and self loathing, takes the watch.  Then activity resumes and we get a  shot from the point of view of a child,   following their mother into the gas chamber. The door shuts behind them and we stare at   Hoffman as the sounds of screams rise up, and  people pound on that door, trying to get out.  Then we get a scene where a drunken Muhsfeldt,  once again questions Nyiszli for information.   He knows that Nyiszli went to C-camp to  see his wife and daughter. He knows that   Nyiszli brought blankets and medicine. He tells  Nyiszli that C-Camp is going to be liquidated   because there isn’t enough food. [Nyiszli] “We dispose of food.”  [Muhsfeldt] “The order is the order.”he tells  Nyiszli he can save his wife and daughter if he   passes on any information about the uprising. [Muhsfeldt] “Someone will speak!   I want to know you will help me.” [Nyiszli] “If I’m spoken to.” he goes   on to tell him that his wife and daughter should  volunteer for a work convoy, and they’ll be safe,   but they should only save themselves. From there we see Anja, sitting in the   corner of a cell, sobbing, across  from her lies Rosa’s dead body.  We see Dina in another cell being  tortured. Her captors are asking   her about the powder they’ve been smuggling [Interrogator] “How did you get the powder from   the plant? Where was the powder headed?” They try to manipulate her saying what   happens to the women on her block will be her  fault, which is a lie of course. She responds  [Dina] “Why don't you just gas them?” Back in the crematorium we see the   sonderkommando at work, sorting through the  belongings of the dead, and hosing down the   bodies before taking them to be shorn and burned. Hoffman is at work, untangling the bodies,   when he finds a young girl, unconscious  but still breathing. She survived the gas. A lot of the discussion around the  sonderkommando always comes back to shame,   guilt, and blame. What they did in order to  survive was abet and aid in the slaughter of   their own people. Sometimes even their  own friends and family. What they did,   willingly or not, was aid the Nazis. This  leads to a lot of anger, and a lot of shame. But it also causes many, I think, to disengage. A lot of Holocaust education is focused  on survivors, which is understandable,   since they are the ones who can pass on their  stories. The rest is focused on the dead, who   are often raised to an almost sainthood because of  their systematic murder at the hands of the nazis. Nowhere is this more apparent than  in the discussions of Anne Frank.  Anne Frank spent 2 years hiding with  her family, and several others in an   attic. During that time she wrote a diary. In  August 1944 they were discovered. Anne died in   early 1945 at Bergen Belsen at age 15. The only survivor of the Frank Family,   her father Otto, published her diary after the  war. The first version was published in 1947   and sold over 3000 copies. It has since become  one of the most widely read Holocaust accounts,   and Anne Frank, elevated to saint,  commodity, and popculture figure. A lot of fuss has been made over  the edits made to her diary,   many of which have been removed in later  publications but it should be known Anne   actually edited her own diary. She heard on the  radio that the Dutch Government was planning to   publish eyewitness accounts of suffering under  German Occupation after the war and Anne wanted   to be a writer. [Researchers Uncover Two Hidden  Pages in Anne Frank’s Diary] She rewrote many   sections of the diary herself removing sexually  explicit content, being nicer about her mom, and   removing some of the details of her romance with  Peter Van Pels [The two versions of Anne’s diary] In an article discussing Elie  Weisel’s legacy in Tablet magazine,   writer Ron Rosenbaum brought  up Anne Frank and said “Because of course shortly after the  upbeat inspiring paragraph was written   (or allegedly written) by the young girl, her  “secret annex” hiding place was ratted out by   Jew-hating neighbors eager to please  the mass murderers working for Hitler.   All of whom were “truly good of heart” of  course. She was shipped off to Bergen-Belsen   where she died of typhus or execution  by the good-hearted death camp guards.” In the article, The Holocaust  Survivor who Hated Anne Frank,   the author Philip Graubart describes his  friendship with a Holocaust survivor named   Trudy who knew Anne Frank when they were  children and didn’t like her very much. “Arrogant girl,” she snapped.  “Snobby. Self-absorbed.   Typical German Jew. I didn’t like her.” Later in the article Trudy goes on to say “But to me, what became insufferable was her  optimism. ‘I know in my heart that people are   good.’ That was from her diary, yes? People  are good? Do you think she believed that in   Bergen-Belsen?” [...]  “She was just pissed off at Anne  Frank because, in her opinion,   Anne got it wrong: People aren’t basically good.  For Trudy, the Shoah was never a rhetorical weapon   or a political tool – it wasn’t up  for grabs to the loudest shouter.   It was her personal story. To me, it felt  like Trudy longed for Anne to have survived,   just so that Trudy could have told her off,  survivor to survivor, person to person.”  You see the real Anne was just a normal girl,  one with schoolyard grievances and dreams of   being a writer. Not a saint or a prop, or a  commodity to be printed on handbags and t-shirts.   But a 15 year old child who died, not because  she was different, but because she was Jewish. When people learn about the Holocaust nowadays   its so often treated as a metaphor for all  genocides, for all bigotries, for all fascism. When it turns out, oversimplifying people’s  mass murder is a terrible way to educate   anybody on any topic. It creates a generation  that engages with this topic as a list of tropes   more than as a traumatic historical event.  It makes people comfortable with using the   Holocaust to win whatever rhetorical debate  they're deciding to have on any given day.  It leads to people uncritically  debating whether Jews in Germany   owned a lot of banks before the Holocaust,  while playing into anti-semitic stereotypes. Which by the way while we're on the subject, People talk a lot about the money grubbing jews.   The old antisemitic stereotype of Jews who  are rich, and cunningly clinging to every last   penny, using their wealth to secretly  control governments and everything.  But nobody ever talks about the  penny pinching Nazis who were so   cheap they were measuring the amount of bodies  they could kill per serving of zyklon b,   how many bodies they could burn per pound of coal.   Nobody ever talks about the greedy money grubbing  nazi do they? Maybe they should, instead of   fumbling ass over kettle into reaffirming one  of the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book. Approaching history with an over simplistic lens  is harmful to all parties involved. It leads to   people being unwilling or unable to engage with  the complexity of Holocaust victims and survivors. And surviving the concentration camps was  not generally speaking, beautiful or heroic.   Sometimes it was just sad and traumatizing. Primo Levi wrote “The 'saved' of the Lager were  not the best, those predestined to do good;   the bearers of a message. What I had seen  and lived through proved the exact contrary.   Preferably the worst survived, the  selfish, the violent, the insensitive,   the collaborators of the 'grey zones', the spies.  It was not a certain rule (there were none,   nor are there certain rules in human matters),  but it was, nevertheless, a rule. I felt innocent,   yes, but enrolled among the saved and therefore in  permanent search of a justification in my own eyes   and those of others. The worst survived  that is, the fittest; the best all died.” The sanctifying of Holocaust victims and  survivors troubled Primo Levi deeply. He   stressed over and over again that there  was no meaning in who survived and who   didn’t. The only common factors seemed to be  luck and initial good health, nothing more. Shlomo Venezia, a sonderkommando,  discussed solidarity within the   camps as a luxury that kommandos could  afford more than the average prisoner.  “In the Crematorium, you could indulge in  solidarity, since we each had enough to survive.   I'm not talking about helping a friend and taking  over from him to give him a chance to recuperate.   I'm talking about having enough to eat. For  those who didn't have enough to eat, solidarity   was no longer an option. So even when you had to  take something from someone in order to survive,   many people did so. We had enough to eat and  were in a position to try to get food to others,   even if this involved taking a few risks. For  example, during the week, the men who went to   fetch the soup for the Sonderkommando often  left it on the way back for the prisoners   working on extending the rail tracks. We left  our pot, which was full, and took theirs,   which was already empty. We didn't go short, since  everyone in the Sonderkommando had enough bread   and canned food. Even if the deportees arrived in  the Crematorium without their suitcases and not   much in their pockets, there were so many of them  that we still could find something to put aside.   Elsewhere, this wasn't possible. Showing  solidarity was a luxury that few could afford;   a mouthful of food given to someone  else was a mouthful less for you....” And that I think brings us to yet another of  the many absurd contradictions surrounding   the sonderkommando. Given their  slightly better circumstances,   many could and did try to help others  in the camp. And that circumstance   was abetting slaughter. Every  day. For shifts of 12 to 14 hours.  To be a member of the sonderkommando  was to be riddled with contradictions. Daniel Bennahmias recalls a Sonderkommando by the  name of Kaminsky who terrified him. “Kaminsky,   the Oberkapo at Crematorium II, who was known to  have stomped a Sonderkommando prisoner to death   and would not hesitate to kick anyone who stood  in his way, but whom Danny nevertheless sees in   the changing room-comforting a little girl  in his lap before she is taken to be gassed.   Despite the harshness and, yes, brutality of  his conduct, there is something to Kaminsky,   and-when given the chance-he will join  in the revolt to blow up the crematoria.”  When Kaminsky was eventually killed in the  days leading up to the October 7th Revolt,   Filip Muller said the underground  lost one of its best men that day. Shlomo Venezia recounted that on one occasion  he recognized his fathers cousin, Leon Venezia,   in the undressing rooms, about to  be gassed. The man was little more   than skin and bones and so Shlomo asked  if he was hungry and when he said yes,   Shlomo ran to get him some  bread and canned sardines. “I rushed back over so as not to run the risk that  he'd already have been [gassed before I could get   back with the food].... I gave him everything.  He didn't even take the time to chew it,   he swallowed it all as if it were water,  he was so famished. Then his turn came to   enter the gas chamber. He was among the last  to go in and the German started yelling. I   took him by the arm as he continued asking me  all those questions that I found so upsetting:   "How long does it take to die? Does it  really hurt?" I didn't know what to tell him,   so I lied and said it didn't take long, it  didn't hurt. In reality, ten to twelve minutes   gasping for air is a long time, but I told him  lies to set his mind at rest, to reassure him.   The German started shouting again, so we  gave each other a hug and he went in.” One could have considered feeding this man a  waste of resources since he was about to die,   but it was the kindness that mattered for. On another occasion after a particularly difficult  session of leading jews into the gas chamber,   Filip Muller attempted to end his own life. He  followed the soon to be victims into the gas   chamber and was stopped by a few young girls,  one of whom spoke to him, 'We understand that   you have chosen to die with us of your own free  will, and we have come to tell you that we think   your decision pointless: for it helps no one.'  She went on: 'We must die, but you still have   a chance to save your life. You have to return to  the camp and tell everybody about our last hours,'   she commanded. You have to explain to them that  they must free themselves from any illusions.   They ought to fight, that's better than dying  here helplessly. It'll be easier for them,   since they have no children. As for you, perhaps  you'll survive this terrible tragedy and then   you must tell everybody what happened to you. As a last favor, the girl, Yana, handed him a   necklace, asking him to pass it along to her  boyfriend Sasha who worked in the bakery.   Once he left the gas chamber Filip Muller was  found by Kaminsky, the Oberkapo at Crematorium   II who told him “You would not want to please  our tormentors,' he said, 'by dying without   putting up a fight, particularly not now when  we need you more than ever. You are still young:   it is vital that you should see everything,  experience everything, go through everything and   consciously record everything in your mind. Maybe  you are one of those who will one day be free.” That was all any of them could  do, in the best case scenario,   was survive to tell people what had happened. All the contradictions of the sonderkommando one  must always remember it was the nazis who created   this entire scenario. They created the conditions  that fostered all of this. They created the camps,   starved the inhabitants and alternatively  worked them to death or murdered them outright. As Primo Levi wrote: “Here, as with other  phenomena, we are dealing with a paradoxical   analogy between victim and oppressor, and we are  anxious to be clear: both are in the same trap,   but it is the oppressor, and he alone,  who has prepared it and activated it,   and if he suffers from this, it is right that  he should suffer; and it is iniquitous that the   victim should suffer from it, as indeed he does  suffer from it, even at a distance of decades.”  He also wrote of the creation of  the sonderkommando as follows:   “Conceiving and organizing the squads was  National Socialism's most demonic crime. Behind   the pragmatic aspect (to economize on able men,  to impose on others the most atrocious tasks),   other more subtle aspects can be perceived. This  institution represented an attempt to shift on   to others -- specifically the victims -- the  burden of guilt, so that they were deprived of   even the solace of innocence. [...] In fact  the existence of the squads had a meaning,   contained a message: 'We, the master race, are  your destroyers, but you are no better than we   are; if we so wish and we do so wish we can  destroy not only your bodies but also your souls,   just as we have destroyed ours.'” And the work the sonderkommando did,   left a mark on every survivor of it. Shlomo Venezia said “Since then I've   never had a normal life. [...] Everything takes me  back to the camp. Whatever I do, whatever I see,   my mind keeps harking back to the same place.  It's as if the "work" I was forced to do there   had never really left my head.... Nobody ever really gets out of the Crematorium.” While it was rare, people did  survive the gas chambers sometimes.   Shlomo Venezia recounted an incident where a baby  survived the gas for a time before being shot  And former Sonderkommando Dov Paisikovic,  when he spoke at the Frankfurt Auschwitz   Trial on October 8th 1964, said it happened  many times that people survived the gas.   When such cases arose the SS would shoot them. But Dr. Nyiszli was shocked, and describes the   sonderkommando around him as being in an equal  state of shock as the survival of a young girl.  “I grabbed my instrument case, which was always  ready, and dashed to the gas chamber. Against   the wall, near the entrance of the immense room,  half covered with other bodies, I saw a girl in   the throes of a death rattle, her body seized with  convulsions. The gas kommando men around me were   in a state of panic. Nothing like this had ever  happened in the course of their horrible career. It's possible that these sonderkommando may not   have been at Birkenau long enough  to have seen this happen before.   It's possible that even Muhsfeldt, who had been  transferred to Auschwitz Birkenau June 1944,   and had only been there a few months hadn't  witnessed a child surviving the gas before. In the film, when Hoffman finds the girl, he  panics, he puts her body on the lift that goes   to the crematorium and then races upstairs  to grab her. Along the way he bumps into   Rosenthal and is forced to breathlessly explain [Hoffman] “There’s a young girl on that cart   who survived the gas, she’s still  breathing…she’ll be burned alive.”  With that the pair of them set  about getting her out of there.   They have to convince Schlermer who says it's  an unnecessary risk that could ruin everything.  [Schlermer] “Forgetting what they’ll do to us.  She’s not even conscious…You end it now and she   goes the way she would have gone.” [Rosenthal] “Meet us at the storeroom.”  They get the doctor who preps medicine for  the girl while having a very interesting   conversation with Rosenthal-- [Nyiszli] “I was summoned”  [Rosenthal] “Not by me.” [Nyiszli] “To be summoned after midnight for what   amounted to a murder, something I hardly need to   be woken for in this place.” [Rosenthal] “I'm sorry.”  Then the girl is brought in and  Nysizli works to revive her.  It happens slowly, painfully. But the girl  eventually wakes up coughing and spitting.  [The girl coughing] [Nyiszli] “It’s alright, it’s alright…shhh.”  Nyiszli tries to get her to speak to him [Nyiszli] “Hello? What's your name?”  [The girl’s breathing is wheezy and labored] But the girl never speaks,   it’s not even certain if she can anymore. They talk about where they can hide her and   they end up moving her to a changing room, Then Schlermer and Nyiszli talk about their   responsibility to the girl now that she’s been  revived and where they could possibly keep her.   Schlermer says there’s no time to hide her. [Nyiszli] “What?”  [Schlermer] “There’s going to be an uprising” He tells Nyiszli that they plan   to destroy the crematoriums [Nyiszli] “You’ll all be killed.”  [Schlermer] “The things that  come out of your mouth.”  He tells Nyiszli that it's been  four months, they’re time is up.  And Nyiszli asks why he and  the other doctors weren't told  [Schlermer] “You know the work  you do and you continue to do it.”  [Nyiszli] “I don't kill.” [Schlermer] “And we do?”  [Nyiszli] “I didn’t say that.” Schlermer says what Nyiszli does   gives their killing purpose and Nyiszli says  they’re all just trying to make it to the   next day. But Schlermer says he doesn’t  want to be alive when all this is over.  [Nyiszli] “I don't believe that.” [Schlermer] “I know you don’t.”  Nyiszli says he can help and Schlermer tells him [Schlermer] “You want to help?   Get rid of the fucking girl.” It's around here that Abramovics   shows up to tell them about the women from the  Unio factory but they’ve already been told.   In the changing room Rosenthall  immediately demands to know why   they haven’t already mustered for the uprising. [Rosenthal] “Why are we still burning day after   day? Because we’ve waited. Because  suddenly this became about escape.”  He’s still so angry at the delays, he thinks  Crematorium 3 is using them as a diversion   so they can escape. Abramovics says they  don’t have to stay and die just because   Rosenthal can’t live with what he’s done [Abramovics] “It’s my fucking life. I hope   I live till Im 90.” And he tells them,   the others are ready to go today, between the  shifts. Crematorium 3 will start the fire.  [Rosenthal] “What about the girl?” [Abramovics] “What about her?”  They talk about trying to leave her outside the  fence, shaving her head so she looks like a boy   and can get absorbed into one of the camps [Abramovics] “she’s not even numbered dont   fuck this up for one life. You’ll be  shot on the spot and so will she.”  Abramovics says she’s not worth  bothering with, that the gas   got to her and Rosenthal should let this go [Abramovics] “Why are you even considering--”  [Rosenthal] “We don't kill people.” [Abramovics] “We don’t? We walk them in,   look them in the face, and say  it's safe, what the hell is that?”  Rosenthal says it's not the same and  Abramovics asks who put her in the   gas chamber in the first place. [Abramovics] “And now she made   it through---god knows you're gonna be a hero?”  [Rosenthal] “Not a hero.” [Abramovics] “Not a hero,   not a killer. What are you Max?” Then he says he’ll make it easy   and Max fights back [Rosenthal] “I’ll fucking kill you!”  And Schlermer, the most pragmatic of them all says [Schlermer] “We’re not going to kill her   alright? I'm not saying we shouldn't  have, but we’re not gonna do it now”  And it's about this moment when Hoffman  runs in to tell them Muhsfeldt is coming.   They try to hide the girl and Abramovics  says he’s dead if Muhsfeldt sees him in   the wrong crematorium [Schlermer] “He’s  not gonna know you just keep still!”  Muhsfeldt wanders in asking why they were in there  with the door shut, they say they were organizing   for the morning muster. Looking for a replacement  for the man that the SS shot the other day.  [Muhsfeldt] “Fine! Who is replacing him?” [Schlermer] “He is”  Nyiszli keeps trying to redirect him, and get  him out of the room so he doesn’t see the girl   but Muhsfeldt refuses to leave. He asks Abramovics why he’s there  [Muhsfeldt] “How did you get over” [Abramovics] “I was moved.”  [Muhsfeldt] “That's not true is it?” [Abramovics] “Of course it's true.”  And then Muhsfeldt unceremoniously shoots  the man who wanted to live until he was 90.  [Muhsfeldt] “That's how it will go for all of you.  First you then us. The last thing to do is smile.”  Then he tells them to move away  from the bench, pulling back the   clothes that hid the girl from view. [Muhsfeldt] “Where did she come from?”  And Nyiszli, who knows Muhsfeldt better than the  others, who has even the possibility of leverage   tells the others to leave the  room and let him handle this.  [Nyiszli] “Everyone out.” [Muhsfeldt] “You give orders?.”  [Nyiszli] “It won't help if there's a  row…how will the work get finished?”  He tells Rosenthal and Hoffman  they want the same thing.  [Rosenthal] “Save her.” [Schlermer] “Max”  [Rosenthal] “You’ve gotta fucking save her.” [Muhsfeldt] “Shut him up.”  As they leave they take Abramovics  body to be burned with the others.  As Muhsfeldt watches them go he muses  on what he’s seen the sonderkommando do.   Hurt people, lie, steal. [Muhsfeldt] “I never despised the Jews   until I saw how easily they could be persuaded  to do the work here…and to do it so well.”  Then he prods at the girl, asking who  she is, if she’s related to somebody.   Nyiszli tells him that she survived the gas,  and he has the information Muhsfeldt requested.  They step out into the hall.  Leaving Hoffman to watch the girl.  The pair of them sit quietly, watching each other.  Finally, Hoffman walks over to sit across from her   and begins to tell her everything. [Hoffman] “We can’t know what   we’re really capable of….any of us…How  can you know what you’d do to stay alive   until you’re really asked.” He tells her about an old man   in his unit, who on his first day of work  had to burn his own family in the ovens.  [Hoffman] “Two weeks later he took  pills and was revived. We smothered   him with his own pillow and now I know why.” He tells her that he wants her to be saved,   more than anything [Hoffman] “You can hear me can't you?”  “I thought so.” Out in the hall Muhsfeldt is demanding   to know why Nyiszli is bothering to save one girl [Muhsfeldt] “Your work has   quintupled--has Quintaupled the murder  of children in this camp! That is fact!”  He says if she is going to live  than somebody must die in her place  [Muhsfeldt] “To spare her is a meaningless lie.” [Nyiszli] “It's your lie Herr Obersharfuhrer,   we want the girl to live.”  Muhsfeldt says he’ll spare the girl in exchange  for information and I love this scene because   Nyiszli is very careful with what he’s saying. [Nyiszli] “There’s going to be an uprising.”  [Muhsfeldt] “When? I don’t know. They  don;t want me to be a part of it.”  [Muhsfeldt] “Who told you?” [Nyiszli] “The one you killed.”  When Muhsfeldt says this isn’t enough Nyiszli  threatens to tell Mengele about Muhsfeldt’s   drinking and his headaches. He says they’ll want to see   the girl shaved, numbered, and alive [Nyiszli] “And to live isn't to kill Herr   Obersharfuhrer…because we  aren't doing the killing/”  And it's here where we catch up with Dina and  Anja. We’ve seen a few flashes of them being kept   in the cells or being tortured. Now they are out  in the yard, with their entire barrack lined up.   The women are being shot one by one and  the SS interrogator tells them that it's   all Anja and Dina’s fault because they won't  tell them where the powder was being taken.  [Interrogator] “I could say I didn't want  to be doing this but that wouldn't be true.”  He says all this can stop if somebody  tells him what they want to know.   Dina screams that none of them know and the  SS interrogator says they’re deaths are on   her. They keep shooting the women, and  eventually they get to a younger inmate,   she looks maybe 15 years old. Dina and Anja  beg the soldiers to stop and when they don't,   Dina runs into the electrified fence,  killing herself. And Anja runs at one of   the soldiers causing them to shoot her dead. The SS interrogator stands there looking   distinctly unsettled. Then he tells  his subordinates to get a proper count   and stomps away. We are left  staring at the bodies of the dead.  From there we cut to October  7th, 1944, around 3 pm  In crematorium 1 Hoffman tells Rosenthal  and Schlermer that the girl is safe.   Schlermer says the best thing they can do is go  about their day quietly and wait for the signal.  They tell Hoffman to head over to the  3rd to tell them about Abramovics.   And in a moment that ruins me forever,  Rosenthal cups his cheek and tells him gently  [Rosenthal] “Don't try to come  back, we’re not waiting for you.”  He's saying goodbye to him with this, and  it's such a mix of his usual harshness and   something caring it makes me cry. But Hoffman wants to tell him that   the girl responded to him. That  he talked and she nodded her head  [Rosenthal] “What did you say?” [Hoffman] “Everything.”  [Rosenthal] “Everything??” Hoffman said it was   important because she’ll know who they were. [Rosenthal] “And why does she need to know that?.”  [Hoffman] “I don't know.” [Rosenthal] “That's right you don’t know.”  [Hoffman] “Do you?” But this is cut off when Cohen sounds the alarm  [Cohen] “Fire! there's fire!" The uprising has started. Now the revolt of October 7th had been  in the planning for a while. It had been   planned and delayed several times. And to be clear, there are some mild discrepancies   in the accounts because nobody directly involved  survived the revolt, and also due to the need for   secrecy it seems many surviving sonderkommando  only knew bits and pieces of the intended   plan or what actually took place. Also in this  section I’m going to be using the historically   accurate numbering of the crematoriums. So it  was 4 that was set on fire, 3 in the film, etc.   Rosenthal, Hoffman and Schlermer would have been  in Number 2, not number 1. I’ll be changing the   numbers in quotes from Dr. Nyiszli and Daniel  Bennahmias just to make it less confusing. There had initially been plans for the  revolt to happen in May or June of 1944   but it fell apart at the last minute  causing numerous deaths amongst the men  Many cite the Polish Resistance outside the camp  as being the primary ones to forestall any plans,   initially those within the camp were hoping  for outside help, but the outside resistance   continued to delay, causing those planning  on the inside to decide to move without them,   for fear that they were running out of time According to Shlomo Venezia “The main part of   the revolt was to take place in Crematorium  II Every day, at around six in the evening,   SS guards passed by the main entrance to  Crematorium II to take up their positions in the   closed watch towers where they spent the night.  They marched in a relaxed fashion, unhurriedly,   with their sub-machine guns shouldered, and  we sometimes heard them laughing and joking   with each other. The plan was that just as they  were passing, some men would open the big gate   and jump out at the Germans to kill them and grab  their weapons. This moment would be the signal   for the revolt in all the other crematoria.” And Daniel Bennahmias stated that the signal   for the start of the uprising  was a fire in Crematorium 4 But finally a day had been decided,  about 2 weeks before October 7th,   and those in on the plan were told the date  and planned to go forward with it. Dr. Nyiszli,   who did in reality know there were plans for some  sort of uprising, was informed the day before but on the day in question… “Within two hours of the appointed time, however,   an event occurred that brought everything to an  abrupt halt. An unexpectedly tremendous number of   German guards had arrived with a huge transport of  Hungarian Jews and were to remain until morning.   Even out of desperation, it would  have been too perilous to go ahead,   and under the circumstances,  everyone was notified accordingly.” It seems not everybody knew about the plans  for October 7th. But all parties agree   it was not intended to happen when it did. Shlomo  Venezia And Dr. Nyiszli both state it was meant   to start at 6pm that evening, and instead  it started at two or three in the afternoon  But in essence, at Crematorium 4 (or  crematorium 3 in the film), the SS were   selecting sonderkommando members for “transfer.” Shlomo Venezia found out later “The men who were   getting ready to stage the revolt thought the  Germans were starting to be suspicious and wanted   to eliminate them before the revolt broke out” A fire started in crematorium 4 when a mattress   or possible several were set on fire. Daniel Bennahmias says   “a "crazy Hungarian," totally unaware of the  plot, had consciously set his pallet afire.”  Shlomo Venezia’s brother had heard that “the men  of Crematorium IV had set fire to the mattresses   and thereby triggered the revolt before the  scheduled time, convinced as they were that   someone had betrayed them.” And Filip Muller  just saw the flames from the yard outfront as men   refusing to go along with the SS selections for  transfer and probable death, began pelting the SS   with stones and the SS began shooting them down Barrels of gasoline were use to blow up   Crematorium 4 following the fire started inside A story that comes up in pretty much every account   I’ve read is an SS guard being shoved into one of  the ovens, while still alive, during the revolt,   although details vary. Nyiszli and Bennahmias  attribute it to a sonderkommando in crematorium 2  Muller attributed this action  to Russian prisoners of war.  And those who were able, grabbed what  ammunition they had gathered over many   months to try and fight back against the SS,  who gunned them down with machine guns. Those   who managed to escape were rounded up and killed. Around 451 sonderkommando were murdered, while 3   SS men were killed and twelve were wounded Crematorium 4 burned to the ground and   crematorium 5 was too damaged to be used.  Neither were ever rebuilt or repaired.  On November 26, 1944 Heinrich Himmler ordered  the crematoria at Auschwitz to be destroyed.   The sonderkommando were tasked with  dismantling them brick by brick In real life the girl did not survive  to see the uprising in Birkenau, after   Nyiszli managed to revive her. When Muhsfeldt  found Nyiszli and the kommandos with the girl,   Nyiszli dismissed the others from the  room, much like he does in the film,   and he tried to reason with the man, explaining  the horrors this girl had just experienced. He   asked Muhsfeldt to send the girl to the women's  camp. But she had seen the inside of the gas   chambers of the crematorium. Muhsfeldt said she  was too young to understand the need for secrecy. "There's no way of getting round it,"  he said, "the child will have to die." Half an hour later the young girl was led, or  rather carried, into the furnace room hallway,   and there Muhsfeldt sent another in his place  to do the job. A bullet in the back of the neck. In the film, the uprising is exciting to  watch, but it's also messy and frantic.   When they blow up the crematorium,  Schlermer yells above the din,   that everybody who wants to live needs to  get out. He stays, Rosenthal and Hoffman go. From there the fight is quickly  suppressed, and those who are still   alive are pushed out into the yard,  and held at gunpoint as they wait. Another notable sequence shows,  as the fight rages outside,   Dr. Nyiszli hides in his lab, cowering under  a table. A record player plays Johann Brahms’   Alto Rhapsody Opus. 53. Go google the lyrics  if you like, it is an apt choice. But notably,   in real life Nyiszli didn’t spend the uprising  hiding under a table. He was in the middle of an   autopsy for Mengele when SS officers broke  into the room and rounded Nyiszli and his   assistants up. They were beaten and shoved with  the survivors of the uprising out in the yard  Only the timely appearance of Mengele himself  saved Nyiszli and his assistants. Mengele pulled   him out of there and sent him back to work. The scene of Nyiszli cowering is   dramatically effective but I saw it as  one of the bigger historical departures.   Allan Corduner said of the change “So, hiding  under the table during the Sonderkommando   revolt was something which Tim obviously felt  would be pretty much the one time when we saw   pure fear in Nyiszli. I think it allowed the  audience to experience him in a different way.”  And Nelson said that in his mind, he didn’t see  a difference between performing a dissection   for Mengele or hiding under the table --i  didn't consider it any worse or any better   i considered it trading one action for another-- But once the fight is over, Muhsfeldt approaches   Nyiszli, who asks if he’ll be killed. [Muhsfeldt] “Do you want to be killed?”  He says he’s told Mengele that  Nyiszli did nothing, and that   they can help each other. He tells Nyiszli [Muhsfeldt] “You will continue with your work.”  This causes Nyiszli to vomit, Muhsfeldt watches  him and smiles saying they’ve saved each other,   they needn’t save anybody else. Outside, Rosenthal and Hoffman   are being marched at gunpoint [Hoffman] “Why don't they kill us?”  [Rosenthal] “Did you ever see her?” [Hoffman] “No, did you?”  [Rosenthal] “Why am I asking?” [Hoffman] “Why aren't they killing us?” Then in one of the most  heartbreaking scenes in the film   we see all the sonderkommando that survived the  uprising have been laid out. All of them are lying   on the ground as the SS calmly make their  way down the line, shooting them one by one.  Rosenthal and Hoffman are lying next to each  other, and have decided to use their last moments   to just talk about before. [Gunshots]  [Hoffman] “Where did they live?” [Rosenthal] “Near the markets.”  [Hoffman] “We would be neighbors.” [They chuckle softly]  They wonder what will happen to the girl. [Rosenthal] “They’re gonna show her this   and let her live?” And then Rosenthal   touches Hoffman’s arm and tells him [Rosenthal] “We did something.”  [Hoffman] “Yeah.” Then he says goodbye and is shot.  Rosenthal is the last one and  he stares at Hoffman’s body   and simply repeats [Rosenthal] “Neighbors.”  After they’ve all been killed we see Nyiszli and  the girl surveying the carnage. Nyiszli quietly   smokes, and the little girl who saw all this  happen just starts to edge forward. Out of fear,   or a need to escape, she just starts  walking and at first nobody stops her.   The SS just watch her as she takes  off running. Muhsfeldt takes out his   gun and we return to her point of view  at the moment she is shot and killed. The final scene of this movie is the  bodies being taken to the crematorium and   burned as we hear one of the most  astounding monologues I’ve ever heard. I’m going to read most of  it, so just bear with me. “After the revolt, half the ovens remain,” “and we are carried to them together.”  “I catch fire quickly.” “Then there are the bones, which settle in ash,”  “and these are swept up to  be carried to the river,”  “and last…bits of our dust,” “that simply float there in air   around the working of the new group.” “These bits of dust are grey.”  “We settle on their shoes and on  their faces, and in their lungs,”  “and they become so used to us  that soon they don’t cough,”  “and they don’t brush us away.” “At this point they’re just moving.   Breathing and moving,” “like anyone else still alive in that place.”  “And this is how the work…continues…” And this speech is fascinating for several  reasons. One is that it is pulled directly   from the original play, and was in part inspired  by André Schwarz-Bart’s novel ‘The Last of the   Just.’ The novel is based around the Jewish legend  of the Lamed-vav. It's based in this bit of Jewish   mysticism that says 36 righteous people exist in  the world at all times who are responsible for the   fate of humanity. The novel follows one sort of  family line of ‘lamed vavniks’ the last of whom   dies in a concentration camp. Apparently when  he was writing the play, Nelson was struggling   with the ending, and then he read the last  of the just and it all came together for him. For context, here is the final  passage of ‘The Last of the Just.’  “With dying arms he embraced Golda's body in an  already unconscious gesture of loving protection,   and they were found that way half an hour later  by the team of Sonderkommando responsible for   burning the Jews in the crematory ovens. And so  it was for millions, who turned from Luftmenschen   into Luft. I shall not translate. So this  story will not finish with some tomb to be   visited in memoriam. For the smoke that rises from  crematoriums obeys physical laws like any other   the particles come together and disperse  according to the wind that propels them.   The only pilgrimage, estimable reader, would be  to look with sadness at a stormy sky now and then. And praised. Auschwitz. Be. Maidanek. The  Lord. Treblinka. And praised. Buchenwald.   Be. Mauthausen. The Lord. Belzec. And praised.  Sobibor. Be. Chelmno. The Lord. Ponary.   And praised. Theresienstadt. Be. Warsaw.  The Lord. Vilna. And praised. Skarzysko. Be.   Bergen Belsen. The Lord. Janow. And praised. Dora.  Be. Neuengamme. The Lord. Pustkow. And praised…” Another element that I find haunting about that  final speech is the final line, and the work   continues. There is a line in Nyiszli’s book which  contains the phrase but it's very in passing. “Thus the riot began in  number three. In number one,   work continued as usual till number three  exploded. The sound of the explosion   brought the tension, already at a high  pitch from the wait, to a paroxysm.” The line would show up again  in Shlomo Venezia’s account   which was published in 2007. Chapter 4 is  titled Sonderkommando: The work continues. When he was asked about what inspired that  line, Nelson could recall nothing in particular.   But I think this idea of work echoes throughout  writings about the sonderkommando. Because in the   language of the Lager, of Auschwitz-Birkenau,  the sonderkommando were doing a job, what they   were doing was work. And part of the Nazi lie  was Arbeit Macht Frei, work makes you free. “Work was not paid; that is, it was slave  work,” Primo Levi wrote “[...]'work ennobles',   and therefore the ignoble adversaries of  the regime are not worthy of working in   the commonly accepted meaning of the word.  Their work must be afflictive, must leave   no room for professionalism, must be  the work of beasts of burden - pull,   push, carry weights, bend the back over  the soil. This too is useless violence:   useful only to break down current resistance and  punish past resistance. The women of Ravensbrück   tell about interminable days during the quarantine  period (and before their incorporation in the   factory work squads) which they spent shovelling  sand dunes. In a circle, under the July sun,   each deportee had to move the sand of her pile  on to that of her neighbour on the right in a   pointless and endless merry-go-round, because  the sand ended up back where it came from.” I just find it haunting that the  final note of the film is about the   work, which continued after the  death of those sonderkommando. After that monologue the final text tells us  that Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, along with his wife   and daughter survived internment. And Nyiszli  lived until 1951 where he died of natural causes.   Obersharfuhrer Eric Muhsfeldt was tried  in Cracow for his crimes in 1947 and   sentenced to death. The sentence  was carried out in january 1948.  And the two ovens that the sonderkommando  destroyed in the uprising were never rebuilt. It is difficult to discern how  much of an impact this action had.   Filip Muller said it didn’t make much difference “Even if every gas chamber and every oven had been   blown up it would have achieved hardly anything;  for the extermination technique started by Moll   had proved that crematoria were not of decisive  importance: pits would do the job just as well.” But they still tried to do something,   to accomplish something amidst the living  nightmare they inhabited and that feat cannot   be understated. I think the Grey Zone depicts  their struggles in the most phenomenal way,   showing us deeply flawed, complicated Jewish  characters. A rarity, in Holocaust media,   and to a degree, media at large. I can’t stop  thinking about the sharp edged Rosenthal who   can be moved to such kindness, and the broken  Hoffman who can be pushed to such brutality. I think this movie is astonishing, I think it  teaches so much for any audience member willing   to listen and be open. In an age where  people love to use the Holocaust to win   arguments on twitter I think a movie like this  is important in reinforcing that this happened,   to real people. There are so  many people who were lost,   so many individual moments and  stories that deserve to be remembered. I think part of the reason the  Holocaust gets talked about so much,   often inappropriately, by people ill equipped  to have the conversations they try to have...   I think it isn't because the Holocaust  was the biggest atrocity in history   but it might have been the quickest. The number  of lives lost in the matter of a few years   is certainly what I think brings the subject up  so much with every person who decides to compare   abortions or vaccinations or something equally  banal to the Holocaust. But it's not a metaphor.  You know whats like the  Holocaust? The fucking Holocaust.  The word Holocaust is derived  from the Greek holókauston,   a translation of the Hebrew word ʿolah’  meaning a burnt sacrifice offered whole to God.  The word shoah is Hebrew for catastrophe. And the number 6 million is actually a low   estimate of the Jewish dead, The number might  be quite higher. But we say 6 million because   everybody understands what that means.  It has become a shorthand for talking   about a Jewish catastrophe, an unwilling  sacrifice sent up through chimneys to God.  There are some historical experts who debate  whether or not Holocaust victims include more than   just Jews, that's not speculation I personally  care to do. I figure anybody killed by the   Nazis or at risk of getting killed by them is a  victim of the Holocaust in my opinion. Historical   experts can debate that in the comments but  the reason I talk about the Holocaust so much,   and I suspect many other Jewish people as well  is because in Judaism we are taught to remember   and respect our history, during the holiday of  pesach we tell the story of our escape from Egypt,   as though we ourselves escaped. We retell the  story of surviving haman, the miracle of the   candles that stayed lit for eight days. Every year  we tell stories to remember and honor our past.   And the 6 million who died tragically and  systematically deserve that same respect.  The Nazis may have disrespected their lives and  their bodies but we can respect their souls and   their memories. It's the least we can do. Any time I invoke the Holocaust I do so with   the spirits of 6 million hanging over me and I  invite you to do the same because the least we   can do is honor the memories and not sling 6  million souls around to win petty arguments.  While current events are not the holocaust the  rhymes of history are what scare me more than   open repetitions. There are groups today who  are at risk, Jews among them but others too.   There are groups who are being  targeted because of who they are.   Because of the color of their skin, or because  of their gender. Because of who they love,   or what god they believe in. I’m not talking  about groups who believe in some ideology.   That belief is a choice. I’m talking about people  being targeted for the marrow in their bones and   the fire in their souls. People being targeted  by actual neo-Nazis because of who they are.  Trans people, non-binary people, intersex people,  black people, Indigenous people, disabled, Jewish,   and muslim people. So many people are at risk  and as the world gets increasingly divided   the rhetoric that this guy is a nazi and that one  is hitler does nothing to help because it means   so much is lost in the gulf between  the reality and the rhetoric. At the beginning of Dr. Niszli’s account Austrian  Psychologist and former Sonderkommando Bruno   Bettleheim muses on what made the 12th of 13  Sonnderkommandos do what the other 12 didn’t.   By attempting a revolt, by destroying  2 of the 4 crematoriums in Birkenau,   and killing several SS officers, they died  ‘like men’ according to the psychologist.  I put that in quotes because when approaching  the Holocaust and trying to understand I think   one absolutely must embrace multiple truths.  It is true that the 12th Sonnderkommando,   to follow their parlance, did something brave and  most of them died. Its also true that the other   sonnderkommando units were all murdered  without a major uprising actually occurring,   but that is still a tragedy and doesn’t need to  be viewed as cowardice. All the kommandos led   Jews and others to their deaths and then disposed  of their bodies all the while living in slightly   better conditions than most of the camp. And many  of the sonnderkommando attempted suicide because   this was too much to handle and they wanted  to at least have control over their own death,   rather than participate in the atrocity, and under  the circumstances I think that is understandable.  Dr Miklos Nyiszli was a Jewish doctor who  assisted Joseph Mengele by performing autopsies   and dissections, largely of Jewish victims. This  was to help Mengele’s utterly flawed research into   finding biological evidence of Jewish inferiority. Dr. Nyiszli also used his position of relative   power to mitigate harm wherever possible, bringing  supplies to prisoners in Auschwitz and once,   while attempting to save his wife and  daughter, he told them to get any other   women who would listen to sign up for the same  work order which helped them avoid execution.  Every victim of the holocaust did what they could  and no more. And I think to judge any of them,   especially when gifted with historical hindsight  none of them had. To judge the actions of the dead   or the survivors, to see only the horror  and not the humanity, is deeply callous.  Instead embrace the multiple truths. The horrors  committed at gunpoint and the small or big acts of   bravery and compassion in between. That's all any  of us can hope to do under similar circumstances.  In the words of Rosenthal and Hoffman [Rosenthal] “We did something.”  [Hoffman] “Yeah.”  The world is frightening and full of  people motivated by hatred and greed.   People who callously serve their own  interests and strip away the rights of others.   A world that feels perilously close to ruin. And  if that scares you…then do something about it.

Channel: Ladyknightthebrave

Views: 239,239

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Id: q86QWx7uACI

Length: 114min 1sec (6841 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 17 2022