In the SPIEGEL building in Hamburg, the last move took the history department to office “033-045”.

Well.

Because of the dark sides of German history, we often deal with the National Socialist era.

This room number is a strange coincidence.

It wasn't a coincidence, but a date that took us to the cinema on Wednesday evening to see "The Zone of Interest" together.

The film by British director Jonathan Glazer is

nominated for five Oscars

and shows in a highly unusual way a seemingly perfect family world in the shadow of the hell of Auschwitz: concentration camp commander Rudolf Höß lives with his wife Hedwig and five children in a noble villa, one of the largest of all Nazi extermination camps separated only by a high wall with boards and barbed wire.

In the “Paradise Garden,” Hedwig Höß grows vegetables and lets her baby sniff the flowers, the children splash around in the pool, and the family also enjoys picnics by the nearby river.

Unless the ashes of the murdered people are floating and the children are being taken out of the water in a panic.

Sandra Hülser plays the commander's wife reservedly, with austere gestures and facial expressions.

“Rudi calls me the queen of Auschwitz

,” Hedwig Höß once proudly tells her mother.

A woman who tries out the fur coats of murdered Jewish women, entertains friends over coffee with concentration camp anecdotes and lords it over a housemaid: "If I wanted, my husband would immediately scatter your ashes over the fields." She clings to the family idyll even more than her husband does Oranienburg is transferred.

The sound of destruction

Rudolf Höß, portrayed by Christian Friedel, remains almost emotionless in the film: when he attends a garden party in a snow-white suit;

when he walks the few meters in uniform to his terrible day's work.

When he orders the “ring cremation oven” from Topf & Söhne, whose representative was able to convince him of the benefits of continuous use around the clock.

Or when, as the chief gasifier, he gives instructions to other concentration camp commanders in a businesslike tone.

But he is “as happy as a snow king” about the announced deportation of 700,000 Hungarian Jews: Now he can return to his family in Auschwitz.

“The Zone of Interest” shows the Holocaust without showing it.

Nothing about the millions dying penetrates directly into Höß's family life; only in the background can you see the flames of the crematorium blazing and thick smoke rising.

Because the director and the actors do not allow a shred of sympathy for the couple, and because the camera remains very distant, the film would hardly get under your skin despite all the oppressive scenes - if it weren't for the third main actor: the sound.

In the background there is constant humming and hissing, these are the

operating noises of mass murder

.

You can hear SS men shouting orders and firing rifle volleys, camp inmates pleading in pain, guard dogs yapping.

A drastic soundtrack of horror.

Does all of this correspond to historical reality?

The historian Anna-Raphaela Schmitz is convinced of this.

She wrote her dissertation about Rudolf Höß in Auschwitz and discovered "a deeper truth about how the crimes of the National Socialists were possible."

Many dialogues and scenes are fictional, but the film strictly adheres to traditional sources such as Rudolf Höß's notes, statements from former prisoners, and photos from family surroundings.

“The Zone of Interest” replaces

“at least an hour of history lessons

,” says Schmitz – perhaps many hours.

The mass murderer's slave

History editor Katja Iken writes about another aspect and met Gerhard Sander, Sophie Stippel's grandson.

The Jehovah's Witness was deported to Auschwitz in 1942. Commander Höß recognized her on the ramp - because the two had lived on the same street in Mannheim as children.

From then on Stippel had to

work as a cook for the Höß family

.

When she died in 1985, she left behind a shoebox full of documents.

Together with researchers from Mannheim, Sander, 64, intensively studied the biography of his favorite grandmother, including Rudolf Höß's order shortly before the end of the war that Stippel should poison the five Höß children.

Things turned out differently, the family and the cook initially fled to Ravensbrück;

Sophie Stipple also survived this camp.

Meanwhile, Rudolf Höß fled to Schleswig-Holstein and holed up on a farm under the code name “Franz Lang”.

He was tracked down by British investigators led by Hanns Alexander, a young Jew who had fled from Berlin to London.

After they threatened Hedwig Höß with the deportation of her son Klaus to Siberia, she revealed where her husband was.

Alexander's command arrested the feared concentration camp leader in 1946.

His extensive confession in the Nuremberg trial against the main war criminals did not save Höß from extradition to Poland and from the death sentence.

In April 1947 he was executed - on a gallows on the Auschwitz camp grounds.

Hedwig Höß never spoke publicly about her life there after the end of the war.

She died in 1989 while visiting her daughter Ingebrigitt in the US state of Virginia.

Buenos dias, Messiah

A completely different topic: Have you ever noticed how often people start a new office with savior prose but with an air of apparent modesty?

"I'm not a savior

," is how men all introduce themselves, most recently Max Eberl as the new sports director of FC Bayern Munich.

To stay with football, Toni Kroos also said about his return to the national team.

And before him, for example, the omnipresent avuncular neurologist Gerald Hüther, Federal President Joachim Gauck and the Archbishop of Cologne Rainer Maria Woelki.

He is “about as far away from a savior for the Catholic Church as the fox in the coop is for the chickens,” writes our colleague Franz Thadeusz.

He looks at the ranks of anti-messiahs with clear traces of mockery (in case you are wondering: yes, you can form the plural like that).

The SPD also “urgently needs a savior,” he notes.

"But she only has Hubertus Heil." Frank's very enjoyable contribution can be found here.

And please make a note: The next issue of SPIEGEL HISTORY will be published in two weeks, this time on the topic

“People of the Stone Age – our amazing ancestors”

.

The magazine “What is German?”

(digital here) is also available in stores

.

You can always reach us by email at spiegelgeschichte@spiegel.de.

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