The banality of evil

[qatsi]

Yesterday we went to Reading Biscuit Factory to see The Zone of Interest. Obviously a film about the commandant of Auschwitz isn't going to be fun. The dissonant opening soundtrack and blank screen made for a disturbing start. I'm not at all into horror, but I guess one component of that genre is what goes unseen or unsaid, and is therefore left to your imagination, and so it was here. The Höss family are building their ideal life in the Greater German Reich; their particular Lebensraum is a nice house and garden, bordering the camp. The interior of the camp is never seen, but there's a constant industrial-military background noise, continuous smoke from the chimneys, and occasional sounds that could be screams and gunfire. But it's all mundane National Socialist niceties for the family on the outside of the camp with the ultimate in cognitive dissonance, at least until Höss receives news that he's to be transferred to Oranienburg, as a camp inspector. Frau Höss is not happy about this at all, and there is an arrangement for the rest of the family to remain in situ. Höss learns that an operation to deport Hungarian Jews has been named after him, and he will return to Auschwitz as part of that operation. His mother-in-law visits and makes casual comments about Jewish former neighbours; she's clearly unaware of the nature of the camp. (But surely there must be such a stench in the air? Or did the whole world stink during the war to such an extent that a visitor wouldn't notice? We never get to see the contents of the note left when she leaves unexpectedly, but there's an implication that what she has seen has gone beyond a line.) Almost at the end of the film, Höss looks down a corridor - and the narrative switches to the present day, with cleaners caring for the museum now hosted on the camp site. Is this a premonition? Has he any awareness of what he has been doing, or how these events will go down in history? It's ambiguous; perhaps a reference to his Nuremberg trial. Höss, who was hanged in 1947 for war crimes, doesn't come over as being an evil mastermind or having the great enthusiasm for extermination espoused by the leadership; it's his banality as a willing functionary and technician following career advancement that is so disturbing.