Search - KZ on DVD

Proximity to evil and suffering

matt | the reading room | 07/04/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"History is all about proximity; the distance over time, between spaces, or the mental distance that we all create within ourselves to interpret and relate to the past, ourselves and our futures. KZ is essentially a question of proximity, too, examining how living near the town of the last concentration camp to be liberated affects tour guides and residents. Does it matter that you live within sight of where thousands of humans were tortured to death? Is the field where tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews remain just another field, or does it retain a quality unique to their memory and pain? And what impact does it have upon visitors, who seem so jovial upon arrival and then so solemn upon exit. How long does that memory haunt them, until the next cheeseburger?

This is a very powerful film and I think it ranks among the top ten of holocaust documentaries, or films about the nature of suffering and proximity.
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