I’m still waiting to see the movie entitled “Son of Saul”

Photo from Son of Saul, a movie about the Holocaust

The movie entitled “Son of Saul” is supposed to play in my city in February 2016.  I keep checking the movie schedule for the theater, in which it is allegedly scheduled to be shown, but there is nothing listed for this film.  I have been waiting so long that I am beginning to lose interest in the film.

This quote is from a review that you can read in full at https://newrepublic.com/article/130019/son-saul-not-just-another-holocaust-movie

Begin quote:

While the premise is relatively simple, Nemes presents it in a radical manner as the film focuses primarily on Saul, presented the majority of the time in medium close-up (from the waist up) with much of the background blurred. Thus, when he is on his hands and knees, scrubbing the bloody stains from the floor of the gas chamber, we see vague images of bodies dragged out behind him.

[…]

What I found more troubling was the narrative leap we’re required to make where Saul’s movements are concerned. He seems to have free range where roaming around the camp is concerned, and while that might be vital to telling the story, it stretches the plausibility of the entire affair. Unnecessary subplots bog down the story as well, as screenwriters Clara Royer and Nemes set the action during the events of Oct 7 and 8, 1944, in which an inmate revolt took place and four astonishing pictures — the only ones known to be taken in any of the camps depicting Nazis disposing of Holocaust victims — were taken. Saul finds himself at the center of both of these events, which distracts him from his primary focus.

End quote

The ruins of Krema IV are a reconstruction

The subject of “the Sonderkommando revolt” is quite controversial. The revolt took place in Krema IV, which was located just north of the clothing warehouses, which were in a section at Auschwitz-Birkenau that the prisoners had named “Canada” because of all the riches to be found there.

Across the road from Canada was the Central Sauna which had a shower room and disinfection chambers where the prisoners’ clothing was deloused. Krema IV had a fake shower room which was actually a gas chamber, according to Holocaust True Believers.

According to Michael J. Neufeld and Michael Berenbaum, in their book entitled The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It? the Krema IV and Krema V buildings were 220 feet long by 42 feet wide.

The Krema IV building was completely demolished, blown up with dynamite which several women prisoners had stolen from the factory where they were working. All the bricks from the building were removed by Polish civilians after the war, and the ruins that visitors see today are a reconstruction, according to the Auschwitz Museum.

The prisoners who worked in the crematory buildings, removing the bodies of the victims who had been gassed, were members of a special group called the Sonderkommando. According to Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, who was allegedly a prisoner at Auschwitz-Birkenau who did autopsies, each Sonderkommando group was killed after a few months and replaced by a new crew.

Knowing that they were soon going to be killed, the members of the next-to-last Sonderkommando revolted and blew up the Krema IV building. A sign at Krema IV says that there were 450 prisoners who were killed by the SS during the revolt or afterwards in retaliation.

For some unknown reason, the men in the last Sonderkommando group were not exterminated. Around 100 of them were marched out of the camp when it was abandoned by the Nazis on January 18, 1945. Several members of this Sonderkommando group survived and three of them gave eye-witness testimony at the 1947 trial of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Hoess, about how the prisoners were gassed at Birkenau.