Pacific Views

Conspiracy

Caught the better part of the movie 'Conspiracy' on HBO this afternoon, starring Kenneth Brannagh as SS General Reinhard Heydrich, the man who planned the Holocaust. It recreates the Wannsee conference where the plan for the "solution to the Jewish problem" was laid out to the elite of the German government.

It's a movie about a meeting. Heydrich is the brusquely charming chair who, with his crisply efficient aide Colonel Adolf Eichmann, brings everyone in line with his vision. Initially it begins with a discussion of the problem of the crowded ghettos, scarce food, labor shortages, and then the plan is laid out. Then we watch the implications dawn on everyone. Some welcome it, some reluctantly are compelled, some betray discomfort only physically. But in the end, everyone agrees to support it.

There are horror movies that confront us with incomprehensible alien or supernatural menaces, and those that make us wonder if we could be monsters, too. We've all been in a group where we ended up agreeing to something we didn't really feel comfortable about. And I have to ask myself, what would I have done sitting in that room? What would I have said to Heydrich, a man proposing in the blandest of terms the extermination of several million people with the backing of the government, when he asked for my cooperation in something I was powerless to stop?

I'd like to say that I'd do the right thing. But what does that mean, and how do I know if my alleged virtue isn't simply the product of never having been faced with such a choice? What would I say after a life of notable accomplishement, eating fine food, calmed by cigarettes and alcohol, sitting comfortably in a well appointed room across from someone who could get away with having me killed and no questions asked?

I don't know. And I hope I never have to find out.

Posted by natasha at January 7, 2004 06:15 PM | TrackBack