Mick Clifford: The astounding depravity of Israel

People react to the destruction caused by an overnight Israeli bombardment in Deir Balah in the central Gaza Strip. Picture: Getty Images

The Zone of Interest is a movie that is not easily forgotten and will be talked about for a long time to come. It is loosely based on a Martin Amis novel, centred on the domestic life of the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, Rudolf Hoss. The movie opens with Hoss’s family enjoying a day out near a river, picnicking and swimming. They live in a large house, bordering the high walls of the camp.

Behind those walls, unspeakable horrors unfold by the hour. Trains arrive packed with human beings who are then systemically sent into a gas chamber to die. Their remains are burnt in crematoriums on the site. Others are kept alive while they can be of use, not least in disposing of the dead until the time comes that they will be destined to join the dead. An estimated 1.1 million people, the vast majority of them Jews, were murdered in the Polish camp.