Millions of Sudanese lives hang in the balance in what is by far the world's largest humanitarian catastrophe. So much is happening in the world, however, that most people are either unaware of this crisis or avert their eyes.
This phenomenon of turning away led me to watch the Oscar-winning The Zone of Interest. Strikingly different from other Holocaust films is how normal the life of the main character appears, despite his being the commander of the Auschwitz concentration camp, where over a million people were exterminated.
The film humanizes the Hoss family. Instead of seeing Rudolf Hoss overseeing the genocidal killings of Jewish and other prisoners, we see him as the father of a family living their lives, with little thought of the horrors unfolding literally on the other side of their housing compound wall. Instead of a monster, we see a guy who could be our next-door neighbor.
Seemingly 'normal' perpetrators of mass atrocities should remind us of our own complicity.
This isn't merely an interesting idiosyncrasy of Nazi genocide architects. In my work over four decades as a diplomat, conflict researcher, anti-corruption activist, and human rights monitor, I know that diplomats must spend an inordinate amount of time with the orchestrators of human rights crimes in pursuit of ceasefires and peace agreements.
I've spent time with modern-day mass murderers in Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Rwanda and Burundi, trying to understand their motives and vulnerabilities, in order to more effectively counter their efforts. Many, if not most, like Rudolf Hoss, are seemingly normal, voicing rational descriptions of strategies they claim will minimize civilian casualties and bring an end to the slaughters that they themselves started and are prolonging.
During massive wars marked by extreme atrocities, they live in beautiful homes, where servants ply their guests with plentiful food and drink, accompanied by an endless soundtrack of laughter and chattering children. Among my interlocutors at the height of one of Sudan's human purges was nicknamed "Mr. Smile," though it was more of a smirk, knowing that no one cared enough to stop what he was doing.
The world accepts these people as leaders. Diplomats have their phone numbers handy. For the most part, the perpetrators escape consequence or accountability.
We are looking away from this century's first genocide.
When Sudan's Darfur area exploded in 2003 into this century's first genocide, I had a series of meetings in the capital Khartoum before I was declared persona non grata and kicked out of the country. The city seemed completely normal, business as usual, while Darfur literally burned.
During my unsanctioned trips into rebel-held areas of Darfur in subsequent months, the air was never clear of thick smoke. Village after village was being burned to the ground by the army and its associated Janjaweed ('Devils on Horseback') militias.
I was reminded of this watching The Zone of Interest. Over the compound wall of the Hoss family home, the camera would occasionally linger on smoke billowing from gas chambers, described by the late Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel as "wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky".
Ultimately, the portrayal of a family oblivious or indifferent to the suffering on the other side of the family compound wall is more universal than we might comfortably admit. We all are guilty at times of turning away, even from genocide, as reports trickle through to us from a bewildering variety of sources.
We are numb, overwhelmed, or indifferent, even to horrors for which our own governments are responsible. So they keep happening, as the perpetrators count on people around the world remaining bystanders.
That is – unless a critical mass of people decides to be upstanders, willing to demand that action be taken to confront war criminals.
The film Hotel Rwanda about the courageous actions to save Rwandan lives was released in 2024, into the teeth of the Darfur genocide. Through a social action campaign, with active participation of lead actor Don Cheadle and the man he represented in the movie, Paul Rusesabagina, the film helped inspire an unprecedented global anti-genocide movement that demanded from governments around the world a robust response to what was happening in Darfur.
The extraordinary activism didn't end the war, but the spotlight forced the Sudan government to allow humanitarian aid into Darfur, despite the government's track record of using mass starvation as a weapon of war. Hundreds of thousands of lives were saved.
Outrage and sustained attention for Sudan's humanitarian catastrophe could save millions of lives.
At the end of The Zone of Interest we are taken to the present-day museum at the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp. The camera lingers for a moment on an enormous pile of shoes taken from camp residents before they were murdered.
This reminded me of a trip into rebel-held Darfur with Samantha Power [author of Pulitzer Prize-winning book A Problem from Hell and now Administrator of USAID]. We found ourselves in an abandoned village called Hangala that had been completely burned to the ground. One of the huts was still partially standing. We went inside and found a backpack full of school notebooks, those of a child named Jacob, whose future had been full of promise.
It took us two years of searching, but we finally got a lead on Jacob's location. I traveled to a refugee camp on the border of Chad and Sudan with Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes, and, incredibly, we found Jacob. He was stunned that we had found his notebooks. He said that one of the notebooks belonged to his then four-year-old younger brother.
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"He was scared by the bombing. And, when the Janjaweed attacked, he ran, but he was killed." Jacob hoped that his notebooks could go back with us and be put in museums so the whole world could see them. Indeed, they ended up at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, where they were seen by countless people.
We have a choice not to stand by and watch while genocide happens.
Jacob had a choice about what to do with his notebooks. The shoes from Auschwitz in the scene at the end of The Zone of Promise belonged to people who had no choices, and who perished in devastating ways, as so many are now, again, in Darfur and throughout Sudan.
A critical mass of us must resist the default position of bystanding, press for a civilian protection force, and demand accountability through crippling sanctions and international prosecutions for the modern-day Rudolf Hosses and their enabling networks. Millions of lives like Jacob's depend on it.
John Prendergast is Co-Founder of The Sentry, an investigative and policy organization focused on kleptocracy and violent conflict.
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