Auschwitz in feature films: what historical reconstruction can achieve

A historic site can be measured, photographed and digitally recreated. But when a feature film reconstructs Auschwitz, accuracy is not simply a matter of walls, windows and shadows. The choice of characters, the allocation of viewpoints and the way violence is made visible also write history – or reduce it.

Marcus O. Rosenmüller’s ‘Block 10’ opened in cinemas across Germany on 5 November. The film takes us into a part of the Auschwitz main camp that is less prominent in public memory than the ramp, the gas chambers or the camp gate: the block in which Jewish women became victims of medical crimes. Its subject thus also poses a question for cinema: how can a documented crime be depicted without once again turning those affected into material for a narrative?

What the site bears witness to

Block 10 was in the Auschwitz I main camp. From April 1943, it housed the experimental unit of the gynaecologist Carl Clauberg. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum records that between 150 and 400 Jewish women were held in the building. Clauberg carried out sterilisation experiments on them; some women died during the experiments, while others were killed for autopsy. X-ray procedures were also used for forced sterilisation at Auschwitz.

This crime was not a departure from an otherwise neutral practice of medicine. National Socialist ‘racial hygiene’ linked medical research to a policy of persecuting people, stripping them of their rights and exterminating them. Doctors and other specialists helped implement this policy. Clauberg was a trained gynaecologist; his medical knowledge was put at the service of a project intended to impose violent control over women’s bodies and enable mass sterilisation. Speaking of ‘experiments’ must therefore not create the impression of voluntary research or a normal clinical relationship: the women were prisoners, deprived of their freedom to choose and of protection.

The historical record consists of more than documents produced by the perpetrators. Survivors’ testimonies and the museum’s research reveal who was held in Block 10 and how different their paths there had been. Such sources can ground cinematic narratives. But they cannot fill every gap – nor do they turn invented dialogue into words preserved in the historical record.

A setting built from data

‘Block 10’ was the first film to use the digital filming-location reconstruction ‘Picture from Auschwitz’. The Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum describes the project as a to-scale digital replica of Auschwitz I, created using 3D scans. The virtual environment is intended to provide films with a historically verifiable setting; filming feature films on the memorial site itself is not permitted. To use the digital materials, filmmakers must submit their screenplay to the museum for historical review and take its comments into account.

This scrutiny can correct details that can quickly seem incidental on screen: the position of a building, the course of a path or the texture of a façade. Precisely because feature films make things tangible, such details carry weight. A recreated place looks convincing – and can therefore project authority even when the dramatic structure, characterisation or dialogue do not have the same evidential basis.

Here lies an important distinction: digital reconstruction can improve spatial accuracy, but it does not make a narrative ‘true’ in its entirety. Even a meticulously built set does not determine whose experience takes centre stage. In ‘Block 10’, the women subjected to the experiments form the historical core; at the same time, the museum describes a Jewish prisoner doctor as a character forced to assist under threat of his daughter’s murder. Such a situation can bring a moral dilemma into view. But it also demands attention to whether the plot keeps the women visible as people with agency – or makes their suffering primarily the occasion for someone else’s decision.

Accuracy is not the final word

There is no simple formula for depicting Auschwitz that guarantees a responsible dramatisation. Historical advice, testimonies and carefully researched production design are important prerequisites; they replace neither decisions about perspective nor the question of what a film asks its audience to endure and what it explains to them. Graphic images are not illuminating simply because the crime shown is historically documented. Conversely, restraint can downplay violence if it pushes its physical and social consequences out of the frame.

The responsibility of reconstruction therefore begins with a distinction: what can be substantiated by documents and testimonies, what is a necessary act of dramatisation, and where does knowledge end? This also applies to names, numbers and individual biographies. A precise figure can convey the scale, but it cannot replace individual life stories. A character can be based on historical experiences without representing their diversity.

‘Block 10’ brings these questions into view through the very way it was made: for the first time, a memorial site is providing a digital reconstruction for a feature film, making access conditional on historical scrutiny. This creates a framework that can be checked, not a seal of approval for every cinematic decision. Ultimately, the decisive test remains one of perspective: not merely whether the place looks right, but whether the film makes those persecuted recognisable as people with histories and dignity of their own.