Translated material
Dead zone
Last Sunday, the 9th Moscow Jewish Film Festival opened at the Oktyabr cinema center in Moscow.
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In Russian, the word “zone” means a camp (not a pioneer camp). Although there are other options: there are zones in the brain, there are climatic zones (tropics, tundra). There is a dead zone (more often called “blind”); the driver doesn't see her. It is there, it is very close, but it is not visible.
Last Sunday, the 9th Moscow Jewish Film Festival opened in Moscow at the Oktyabr cinema center. Opening film - “Zone of Interest”; The name, as you can see, is nothing, calm, gray.
On the screen there is a real idyll: a serene rural landscape - grass, meadow, bank, river. There is a family on the grass - dad, mom and kids. But since you know in advance that this is a film about the Holocaust, about Auschwitz, you understand: now this pastoral will end, and we will see hell: exhausted, dying prisoners, bullying, abuse, gas chambers, corpses...
But there is none of this. Not in the next minute, not in 10 minutes, not in an hour. In all 105 minutes, no concentration camp horror will appear on the screen.
But how can I say it?
At first you don’t even understand what’s happening. Computer glitch? On the screen there are children with their mother and dog on the lawn in the garden, and at the bottom of the screen there are credits - as if from another movie, by mistake. Very legible - bright, rather large letters: “March! Schneller! Run! Get up! Have mercy! Drown him! - but a mother can’t talk to her children like that.
Finally, you hear some barely audible screams. It’s clear: the brain did not perceive the bright captions as a translation into Russian of those almost inaudible, unintelligible sounds of invisible people. Finally, it dawned on me: these are the angry screams of the guards, the screams of those being tortured, a shot... We won’t get there, that is, we won’t see.
Everything happens in a beautiful, very clean, bright, peaceful house, in a beautiful garden - everything is in bloom, there are kohlrabi, tomatoes in the garden, and a small pool nearby.
But behind the wall of the garden... Suddenly you realize that this garden is fenced not with a simple fence, but with a concrete wall, and on top of it several rows of barbed wire. And from there, from behind the wall, there are continuous, albeit quietly (because from afar) screams of horror, rage, and pleas.
And behind the wall there is a strange sky, constantly yellow clouds. No, it's yellow smoke. If you look back (if the camera turns the other way) - blue sky, sun.
There is constant smoke behind the fence. Probably the specific smell of this smoke is creeping through the wall. But both adults and children sniffed it and didn’t notice.
A person can sniff the smell of a morgue, a toilet, or the political atmosphere - to sniff it means to stop noticing.
Dear dad goes to work, comes home from service, plays with the children, has dinner with the children, reads a bedtime story, everyone respects him, he gets a promotion (even though he didn’t want this at all), he has to sharply increase the rate of recycling in order to implement the final solution.
From my dad’s telephone conversations, it’s clear that trains are now pouring in from Hungary—damn these youths, they’ve multiplied, we urgently need to modernize the stoves.
There are five children: one, three, five, seven, nine. The baby sometimes cries, and the four eldest are surprisingly well-behaved and impeccably brought up. Mommy, daddy, dog, maids, fruits, juices, pies.
...They will remember their happy childhood all their lives - cleanliness, affection, contentment, tasty, satisfying, fun, swings, river, fishing. They are taught to say: “Thank you to the Fuhrer for our happy childhood!” - yes, yes.
Gold crowns, stacks of dollars, francs, marks, forints - daddy in his office puts the bills into piles and sorts them. The gold crowns were useful, but the shoes were not. Therefore, it “survived” - it was useful for the museum (at the end of the film they will show this “exhibition”: an endless dump of shoes, including children’s ones, if you are in Auschwitz - come and have a look).
And the crowns were melted into earrings, rings, and pendants.
Oh, if only all the tears, blood and sweat shed for everything that is stored here...
*Dead lamb. Dead houses.
Between the ruins are our soldiers.
The camp is empty. The ovens have cooled down.
No need to think. You can't cry.*
*Black ovens and soap factories.
The Prussian guys worked hard here.
Where are these guys? No need to think.
We won. You can't cry.*
*In the death camp the ovens have cooled down.
The song is spinning. We won.
Mom, wrap your daughter in a sheet.
Sing, balalaika, you can't cry.*
The poem is called “War Song”, author Semyon (Zelman Izrailevich) Lipkin (Order of the Patriotic War, II degree).
* * *
Oh, if a goldfish swam and asked me: “What do you want, old man?”
“You know what, Goldfish, make sure that all over the Earth at midnight, on New Year’s Eve, all these brooches and bracelets, rings and earrings glow and melt right in the ears, on the fingers, on the chests of those who are wearing them now.”
Of course, it would be necessary to warn firefighters in Berlin, Munich, Warsaw, Kyiv, Budapest, Buenos Aires and other cities in Argentina, but this is impossible. After all, surprise is necessary.
...But then you come to your senses and say: “No, Goldfish, I changed my mind.” After all, those who now wear gold jewelry made from Jewish teeth are not to blame. Not only did they not rip out the gold crowns from the dead themselves, they even have no idea what history they carry on themselves. And they don’t even smell what it smells like.
Dead zone.
