I recently read Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, and there’s a excerpt from the novel which is particularly relevant to The Zone of Interest:
I pick out a book on the trial of Adolf Eichmann. I have a vague notion of him as a Nazi war criminal, but no special interest in the guy. The book just happens to catch my eye, is all. I start to read and learn how this totally practical lieutenant colonel in the SS, with his metal-frame glasses and thinning hair, was, soon after the war started, assigned by Nazi headquarters to design a "final solution" for the Jews—extermination, that is—and how he investigated the best ways of actually carrying this out. Apparently it barely crossed his mind to question the morality of what he was doing. All he cared about was how best, in the shortest period of time and for the lowest possible cost, to dispose of the Jews. And we're talking about eleven million Jews he figured needed to be eliminated in Europe.
Eichmann studied how many Jews could be packed into each railroad car, what percentage would die of "natural" causes while being transported, the minimal number of people needed to keep this operation going. The cheapest method of disposing of the dead bodies—burning, or burying, or dissolving them. Seated at his desk Eichmann pored over all these numbers. Once he put it into operation, everything went pretty much according to plan. By the end of the war some six million Jews had been disposed of.
Strangely, the guy never felt any remorse. Sitting in court in Tel Aviv, behind bulletproof glass, Eichmann looked like he couldn't for the life of him figure out why he was being tried, or why the eyes of the world were upon him. He was just a technician, he insisted, who'd found the most efficient solution to the problem assigned him. Wasn't he doing just what any good bureaucrat would do? So why was he being singled out and accused?
Sitting in the quiet woods with birds chirping all around me, I read the story of this practical guy. In the back of the book there's a penciled note Oshima had written.
His handwriting's pretty easy to spot: It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It's just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there's no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just like we see with Eichmann.
I try to picture Oshima sitting in this chair, his usual nicely sharpened pencil in hand, looking back over this book and writing down his impressions. In dreams begin responsibilities. The words hit home.
In both Kafka on the Shore and The Zone of Interest, the evil of Nazis isn’t presented as the cartoonish making of an Indiana Jones antagonist. Like Eichmann, Rudolf Höss is calculated and methodological in his approach to his work. Höss’s actions are akin to an engineer fine-tuning a machine, meticulously adjusting each part to ensure its operation with cold precision and entirely detached from the moral horror of his actions. Where Kafka and Interest diverge is what exactly to make of all this. In Kafka, Oshima leaves readers with a simple adage, a beacon of light amidst the darkness: our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. Can the same really be said about Interest? Was the biggest problem with Rudolf and Hedwig Höss their lack of ability to imagine?
Rudolf Höss is more than a mere cog in a machine. He’s an active pragmatist. His measured opportunism may resemble our own when we vie for job promotions or complete extra credit assignments. Calling him a simple bureaucrat strips him of his agency and ambition. Hedwig’s drive is similar to Rudolf’s, but her aspirations (a good house, a good husband, a good family) lie outside of the workplace. Like Rudolf, she achieves these goals. As her mother remarks to her after a tour of the estate, “You really have landed on your feet.” Rudolf and Hedwig Höss can certainly imagine, although what they imagine is a better life for themselves without regard for the suffering beyond their walled garden.
February 5, 2024.