Just Another Day at the Movies
Dear Leading Ladies,
Last week, I watched the Oscar-nominated movie, Zone of Interest. It’s a Holocaust movie unlike any other Holocaust movie I’ve seen. And, trust me, I’ve watched more than my share of Holocaust movies. They are fodder for Jewish angst. What partially distinguishes this movie is that there are no images of concentration camp internees, no glimpses inside the gas chambers, no heart-wrenching cries of children torn from their mothers’ arms as they debark the trains upon arrival at Auschwitz.
Instead, the camera follows the Höss family in their everyday lives, residing next door to the death camp. Herr Rudolf Höss, modeled after a true person, is the commandant of the camp so he, his wife, and their five children get to live in the house next door, where his wife has planted beautiful gardens with the help of servants borrowed from the camp. The family entertains; the children frolic on the lawn, in the pool, and in the nearby stream; the wife delights in the jewelry, fur coat and other luxuries she gets to choose from the belongings wrenched from the Jews imprisoned and then gassed next door.
Adolf Eichmann
Rarely are the Jews even mentioned except when the wife’s mother comes to visit and wonders if the woman who used to clean her house might be in Auschwitz now, and when Frau Höss threatens one of the house servants with gassing if she doesn’t work more efficiently. To the commandant, the Jews are his means to advancement. If he can find better, faster, and more efficient ways to kill them, he will advance in his career in The Third Reich. His position is different from those who claimed after the war that they just did what they were told rather than be killed themselves. Höss sought new and enhanced ways to do what was asked of him so that he could rise and be rewarded. He was all in. After the war, when he was tried and before he was executed, he said to the court, “I was permitted to work for many years of my life under the greatest son whom my people has [sic] brought forth in its thousand-year history. Even if I could, I would not want to erase this period of time from my existence. I am happy to know that I have done my duty as a German, as a National Socialist, as a loyal follower of my Führer. I do not regret anything.”
Rudolf Höss
Virtually every reviewer of Zone of Interest mentions German American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt’s phrase, “banality of evil.” She coined the term in reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi leader who organized the transport of millions of Jews and others to the concentration camps. He existed in that same time when horrors became commonplace and then acceptable. Arendt described Eichmann as “neither perverted nor sadistic,” but “terrifyingly normal,” consumed by a “thoughtlessness” and ambition to advance his career. According to author Thomas White, Arendt described Eichmann as not inherently evil, but merely shallow and clueless, a ‘joiner’, in the words of one contemporary interpreter of Arendt’s thesis: “he was a man who drifted into the Nazi Party, in search of purpose and direction, not out of deep ideological belief.” It is clear why critics have used the phrase “banality of evil” to describe Höss and his actions.
Why do I write about Zone of Interest this week? Because this movie so remarkably reveals how a charismatic leader can become a pied piper when offering better times, including nice houses, fancy clothes, brass buttons, respect and self-respect, to those who might otherwise feel left behind. When those with little attachment to isms of belief or values are offered a readymade ideology with all kinds of bells and whistles for followers and their families, it can be pretty irresistible. Add that membership comes with the assurance that followers are better than those left out. The appeal is surprisingly easy to comprehend.
Sound familiar? It should. Frighteningly so.
Tune in most any day and you can hear one of our presidential candidates vow to “demolish the deep state,” to “cast out the communists, Marxists and fascists” and to “throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” Join his team and you can be a winner. Or so they say.
Let’s hope there is a better solution.
Therese (she/her/hers)
Judy (she/her/hers)
Didi (she/her/hers)
Leading Ladies Executive Team