In the concentration camps, the Jews were ushered in, made to undress under the pretense of needing bathing in order to delouse (being rid of lice and other small insects). Men, women and children, all naked, were forced into a larger chamber, locked in and gassed. Once they were dead, the bodies were them sent to the crematoria and burned. Although they did not flip the switch, the other acts were done by other prisoners. Other prisoners who were allowed to have vodka, oysters and caviar in exchange for being the watch guards and cleanup flunkies of the Germans against their own people.
One account of these atrocities in told in the movie, The Grey Zone, based on the writings of Dr. Mikolos Nyiszli in Auschwitz: A Doctor”s Eyewitness Account. The prisoners who were forced to help the German guards were called Sonderkommandos. While they allowed a certain amount of privileges when compared to the other prisoners, it was short lived as no Sonderkommando group lasted past four months. The story of The Grey Zone was about the twelfth commando group who planned an uprising against their captors. With assistance from the women working in the UNIO Munitions factory, who smuggled gun powder to the men among the bodies of their dead workers, Sonderkommando XII planned an insurrection and to take out Cremetoria IV. On the day of the planned insurrection, things did not happen as planned.
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A new trainload of Hungarians arrive and are immediately sent to the gas chamber. While many are hopeful and do as they are told, one man is skeptical and shouts at the Sonderkommando about what is really about to happen. One of the commandos, Hoffman becomes frustrated overcome with guilt on being confronted about their role in the camp, beats the man to death. His wife is shot by a German guard. Once the Hungarians are gassed and dead, a shaken Hoffman finds a young woman at the bottom of the pile still alive. He informs one of the leaders of the insurgency who takes her to a storage room, where Dr. Nyiszli revives her.
They decide to hide her in one of the children”s camps, but they are interrupted by Oberscharfuhrer Muhsfeldt who notices that one of the prisoners is from another camp and shoots him. The girl screams at the shot and she is discovered. Nyiszli takes Muhsfeldt outside and tells him about the revolt, even though he does not reveal the when and how. Muhsfeldt has promised to save Nyiszli”s wife and daughter in exchanged for information, and also agrees to protect the girl once of the revolt is suppressed. During this time the women are found out, two of them tortured for the location of the hidden gun powder. After being tortured and forced to watch other women shot for their refusal to tell, one electrocutes herself on the fence, the other rushes an armed guard shooting herself.
The revolt beings, Cremetoria IV destroyed and the captured Sonderkommandos are shot once the fire is extinguished. The young girl is forced to watch and then allowed to run, only to be shot by Muhsfeldt after a few dozen feet. While there were many of the commandos who still believed that they could escape and dreamed of a life after the concentration camps, there will still others who were convinced it was only a matter of time before they were disposed of and only wanted to destroy the crematoriums so that they could stop some of the death of their people.
The moral and ethical dilemmas are blaringly obvious as you watch prisoners try to live another day by helping dispose of other prisoners. In order to survive what a person be willing to do? What are they capable of when faced with their own death? Muhsfeldt made that statement that he didn”t dislike the Jews until he saw how easily they could be convinced to do what they did to their own people in such a short amount of time. The German lost respect for the Jews because they were merely trying to survive. Were Hoffman and the others wrong to lock the others in and dispose of the bodies? On many occasions they thought that they were not killers since they did not actually pull the trigger. Is that truly the case, or did they force themselves to believe they were not, in order to live with what they were doing? Were they wrong to try and survive, or just as guilty as the Germans? During times like this, in war and suffering, do standard, everyday, moral ideals even apply? This movie, these times and the suffering of the Jews and Hungarians, show a side of people that cannot be explained using the basis of standard life and times.
