The term Zone of Interest (German : Interessengebiet) was used by the occupying Nazi forces to describe the area around the Auschwitz concentration camp complex reserved for the Schutzstaffel (SS), subject to the administration of the main camp. The zone was created on the land confiscated around the camp, as a 40-square-kilometer (4,000 ha; 15 sq mi; 9,900-acre) zone patrolled by the SS, Gestapo, and local police. [1] [2]
In 1941, camp authorities created the zone in order to:
In addition, the zone was to implement a plan to create at least two model training villages in these areas for German farmers. [3] [2]
The term was used by Martin Amis as the title for his novel The Zone of Interest (2014), centered around a fictionalized version of the camp commandant Rudolf Höss. It was used later by Jonathan Glazer for his 2023 film of the same name, loosely adapted from Amis' novel, and focusing on the banality of the Höss family's lives in the shadow of the epicenter of the Holocaust. [4]
Auschwitz concentration camp was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust. It consisted of Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim; Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers; Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labour camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben; and dozens of subcamps. The camps became a major site of the Nazis' Final Solution to the Jewish question.
Arbeit macht frei ( ) is a German phrase translated as "Work makes one free" or more idiomatically "Work sets you free" or "work liberates".
Nazi Germany used six extermination camps, also called death camps, or killing centers, in Central Europe, primarily Occupied Poland, during World War II to systematically murder over 2.7 million people – mostly Jews – in the Holocaust. The victims of death camps were primarily murdered by gassing, either in permanent installations constructed for this specific purpose, or by means of gas vans. The six extermination camps were Chełmno, Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau. Extermination through labour was also used at the Auschwitz and Majdanek death camps. Millions were also murdered in concentration camps, in the Aktion T4, or directly on site.
I. G. Farbenindustrie AG, commonly known as IG Farben, was a German chemical and pharmaceutical conglomerate. It was formed in 1925 by merging six chemical companies later known as BASF Aktiengesellschaft, Bayer AG, Hoechst Aktiengesellschaft, Agfa-Gevaert Group, and Cassella AG. The conglomerate was seized by the Allies after World War II and split into its constituent companies; parts in East Germany were nationalized.
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was a German SS officer and the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp. After the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of World War II, he was convicted in Poland and executed for war crimes committed on the prisoners of the Auschwitz concentration camp and for his role in the Holocaust.
Maria Mandl was an Austrian SS-Helferin and a war criminal known for her role in the Holocaust as a top-ranking official at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp, where she is believed to have been directly complicit in the deaths of over 500,000 prisoners. She was executed for war crimes.
Johanna Langefeld was a Nazi German guard and supervisor at three Nazi concentration camps: Lichtenburg, Ravensbrück, and Auschwitz. She was arrested and imprisoned for her role in the Holocaust, but she escaped prison and was never tried.
Arthur Liebehenschel was a German commandant at the Auschwitz and Majdanek concentration camps during the Holocaust. After the war, he was convicted of war crimes by the Polish government and executed in 1948.
Richard Glücks was a high-ranking German SS functionary during the Nazi era. From November 1939 until the end of World War II, he commanded the Concentration Camps Inspectorate, later integrated into the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office as "Amt D". As a direct subordinate of Heinrich Himmler, he was responsible for the forced labour of the camp inmates and was the supervisor for the medical practices in the camps, ranging from Nazi human experimentation to the implementation of the "Final Solution", in particular the mass murder of inmates with Zyklon B gas. After Germany capitulated, Glücks committed suicide by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule.
Franz Hößler, also Franz Hössler was a Nazi German SS-Obersturmführer and Schutzhaftlagerführer at the Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dora-Mittelbau and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps during World War II. Captured by the Allies at the end of the war, Hößler was charged with war crimes in the First Bergen-Belsen Trial, found guilty, and sentenced to death. He was executed by hanging at Hameln Prison in 1945.
Otto Hermann Wilhelm Moll was an SS non-commissioned officer who committed numerous atrocities at the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War. Moll held the rank of SS-Hauptscharführer "Head Section Leader", the equivalent to a US Military Master Sergeant and or British Military Warrant Officer. He was known as "Cyclops", due to having a glass eye, and as the "Butcher of Birkenau".
The organization of underground resistance movements in Auschwitz concentration camp began in the second half of 1940, shortly after the camp became operational in May that year. In September 1940 Witold Pilecki, a Polish army captain, arrived in the camp. Using the name Tomasz Serafiński, Pilecki had allowed himself to be captured by Germans in a street round up (łapanka) with the goal of having himself sent to Auschwitz to gather information and organize resistance inside. Under Pilecki's direction the Związek Organizacji Wojskowej, ZOW, was formed.
The Zone of Interest is the fourteenth novel by the English author Martin Amis, published in 2014. Set in Auschwitz, it tells the story of a Nazi officer who has become enamoured of the camp commandant's wife. The story is conveyed by three narrators: Angelus Thomsen, the officer; Paul Doll, the commandant; and Szmul Zacharias, a Jewish Sonderkommando.
During World War II, the German Luftwaffe staffed dozens of concentration camps, and posted its soldiers as guards at many others. Camps created for the exploitation of forced labor for armaments production were often run by the branch of the Wehrmacht that used the products. The Wehrmacht also posted about 10,000 soldiers to concentration camps because of a shortage of guards in mid-1944, including many from the Luftwaffe.
Bruno Brodniewicz born 22 July 1895 in Posen, was a German prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Brodniewicz was the first Lagerälteste, carrying prisoner tag number 1. He died in April 15–16, 1945 in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
In German-occupied Poland during World War II and the Holocaust, the Politische Abteilung Erkennungsdienst in the Auschwitz concentration camp was a kommando of SS officers and prisoners who photographed camp events, visiting dignitaries, and building works on behalf of the camp's commandant, Rudolf Höss.
The Zone of Interest is a 2023 historical drama film written and directed by Jonathan Glazer, co-produced among the United Kingdom, the United States, and Poland. Loosely based on the 2014 novel by Martin Amis, the film focuses on the life of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his wife Hedwig, who live with their family in a home in the "Zone of Interest" next to the concentration camp. Christian Friedel stars as Rudolf Höss alongside Sandra Hüller as Hedwig Höss.
Aleksandra Bystroń-Kołodziejczyk was a Polish World War II resistance worker and witness to the Holocaust.
Eleonore Hodys was a communist political prisoner in Auschwitz who became the sex slave of Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss, was impregnated twice by him, and eventually escaped. She would give testimony of her experience and her story has been persevered as a controversial tale from the Holocaust.