The Grey Zone

""We can't know what we're capable of, any of us. How can you know what you'd do to stay alive, until you're really asked? I know this now. For most of us, the answer... is anything.""

The Grey Zone is a 2001 Holocaust movie set in 1944. It is based on personal memoirs of Dr. Miklos Nyiszli, a Jewish doctor from Hungary and personal assistant to Dr. Joseph Mengele at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. The movie focuses on the rebellion by the Sonderkommando, Jewish prisoners who worked in the gas chambers and crematoria.

Stars David Arquette, Harvey Keitel, Steve Buscemi and Mira Sorvino.

See it now.


 * Affably Evil Dr. Mengele, Oberscharführer Mussfeld.
 * Bittersweet Ending:
 * Cold-Blooded Torture
 * Crowning Moment of Awesome: The scene during the insurrection when some Jews working in a crematorium gang up on the Nazi commander who's whipping them and shouting at them and throw him into one of the furnaces. Frankly, this troper found it very hard to not punch the air and say "Yeah, take that, bastard!" during this scene.
 * Death Seeker: Most of the Sonderkommando can't live with what they've been forced to do.
 * Driven to Suicide
 * Gas Chamber
 * Harmful to Minors
 * Heroic BSOD
 * High Octane Nightmare Fuel
 * Infant Immortality: Averted horribly.
 * Kill'Em All
 * La Résistance
 * Les Collaborateurs: Subverted by the Sonderkommando.
 * Murder by Cremation
 * No-Holds-Barred Beatdown
 * No One Should Survive That:
 * Posthumous Narration:


 * Scream Discretion Shot: The collective screaming from the gas chamber after the door is locked.
 * Shoot the Shaggy Dog
 * Tear Jerker
 * Translation Convention
 * Truth in Television: See here.