Naomi Klein writes powerfully about Jonathan Glazer’s “time-stopping speech” on being awarded an Oscar for the best international film, The Zone of Interest. She elucidates the concept of “ambient genocide” where we live lives in the shadow of man’s capacity for and perpetration of genocidal acts (The Zone of Interest is about the danger of ignoring atrocities – including in Gaza, 14 March).
My family roots go back to the town of Oshpitzin (Yiddish), Oświęcim (Polish) and Auschwitz (German), where the film is set. Having dedicated his latter years to Polish/Jewish relations, my father ended his last talk asking: “How will human beings face up to the evil they are capable of perpetrating? How will they renew their faith in morality while living in a world of which, in Adorno’s words, ‘we cannot be too much afraid’, and which contains instruments of destruction that put even the gas chambers in the shade?”
