Credit: Wikipedia, Public Domain
A German movie, The Zone of Interest, which was nominated for five Academy Awards, is about a German family and their father Rudolf Höss.
Höss was the actual commander of the Auschwitz Concentration camp, where over one million Jews were slaughtered by Nazi Germany during World War II. The movie is based on first-hand accounts from Höss’ servants.
The film focuses on the family life of Höss, his wife Hedwig, and their five children who lived beside the concentration camp.
Though you never see scenes from the concentration camp, you hear the sounds of trains rolling by the Höss home delivering Jews to the death camp. You hear yells from the camp, machinery, cracks of whips, and other sounds associated with what is happening inside Auschwitz.
Mark Legg who watched the film noted in his article for the Denison Forum, “Watching the Höss family ignore the sounds of daily thousands upon thousands of murders next door horrifies the audience—until you realize halfway through that you’ve likewise begun to ignore the sounds too.”
“The Nazis were not cartoon villains or mythologized bad guys,” Legg continues. “They had families, dreams, ambitions, emotions, and often a suburban lifestyle. You can’t help but see yourself in the Höss’ shoes.”
As you watch the Höss family live their daily life, Legg writes that you slowly began to realize how easily it would have been for you to have been a Nazi.
Höss was executed on April 16, 1947, for crimes against humanity for his role at Auschwitz.
We all like to believe that we would have never done this, but the reality is, if we had lived in Germany at that time, we would have probably been Nazis.
This is exactly the point that Jesus was trying to make when the Lord said, “For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:2).
Jesus simply stated that we can’t judge others because all of us are quite capable of doing the same thing if we had lived the circumstances of the people we are judging.
“How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?’” Jesus continues.
“You hypocrite,” Jesus concludes, “First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
I did a podcast on this subject based on an interesting study involving a fake torture experiment:
