The Zone of Interest Parent Guide

Her mother (Imogen Kogge) is visiting from Germany and Hedwig (Sandra Hüller) proudly shows off her Polish home. They tour the sprawling gardens, lush with colorful flowers and ripening vegetables. As the women sit on the patio, chatting contentedly about Hedwig’s comfortable life, Hedwig leans over and confides, “Rudi calls me the Queen of Auschwitz”. She smiles impishly and mother and daughter share a laugh.

Shocking as this moment is, it’s only one of the many grotesque scenes in The Zone of Interest, a story based on the lives of Rudolf (Christian Friedel) and Hedwig Höss. Rudolf Höss (also written “Hoess”) is notorious for his stint as commandant of Auschwitz, in which role he introduced gas chambers and increased the efficiency of the Nazi killing machine. As Rudolf devotes his time to the service of the Third Reich, Hedwig builds her dream life on the other side of the camp wall.

Mother of five children and an avid gardener, Hedwig exists in a picture-perfect world of domesticity. She weeds her garden, directs servants, plans picnics at the lake, and spends afternoons with her children around their backyard pool. She also sorts through the packages that are delivered from the camp, trying on a fur coat one day, and asking her husband to look for chocolate or other goodies in the evening.

As with all Holocaust movies, The Zone of Interest is deeply disturbing. What makes this film remarkable is that the usual horrors are all off-screen. Blood and brutality are not seen; only heard. Throughout the film, gunshots, blows, and screams punctuate the action, but they don’t disrupt the domestic idyll on the other side of the wall. As the crematoria chimneys pump smoke into the air, and the camp discharges effluent that scatters human remains in the river, the lives of the Höss family barely miss a beat.

If you are thinking of watching this movie with teenagers, you can be assured that there is little onscreen violence or profanity. An adulterous relationship is implied but no activity is seen and even smoking and alcohol consumption are relatively light by the standards of the era. Production values are good but not lavish, with spare cinematography that lends the movie a documentary vibe. It’s certainly safe viewing for older teens – whether they’ll tolerate the film’s slow pace is another question. As for adults, this is a masterful film; a timely reminder of what happens when we dehumanize others and prioritize our own power, wealth, and comfort.

Unlike most films about the Nazi genocide, this story doesn’t focus on the suffering of the victims but on the motivations of the perpetrators. How can Rudolf Höss read bedtime stories to his children and also attend meetings about how to efficiently murder 800,000 Hungarians? How can any mother be so in love with her lifestyle that she refuses to leave Auschwitz when her husband is transferred? Auschwitz. What kind of dark, twisted soul considers life in the shadow of the crematoria to be “paradise”?

Director Jonathan Glazer doesn’t give offer clear answers to these questions, but he tries to burrow into the psyche of his characters. Rudolf is difficult to read: he comes across as a task-focused, callous technocrat. Hedwig, on the other hand, is so coldly selfish, so intensely narcissistic that she won’t let anything get in the way of the comfortable life she wants for herself. The toxic environment gradually bleeds its way into the family – Rudolf sickens, a son plays with the gold-filled teeth of the dead and smilingly bullies his brother, a daughter has disturbing dreams – and Hedwig’s smile stiffens, but she refuses to see anything she does not want to acknowledge. In John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, Satan says, “It is better to reign in hell than to serve in Heaven”. And as she studiously ignores the screams of the damned and the fires that burn over the barbed-wire topped fence, Hedwig, “Queen of Auschwitz” seems to agree.