Röhrig Géza in 'Son of Saul'

In the last several weeks I have had to confront the Holocaust—in film—three times.

The first, “Censored Voices” (reviewed here), is an Israeli documentary created by the great Israeli writer Amos Oz and Mor Loushy. It presents footage from the 1967 Six-Day War, in which the recorded voices of Israeli army veterans express their disillusionment and alienation after the learned the battles described to them as “just war” were more like war crimes. They witnessed the mass expulsion and killings of Palestinians, which reminded them of what the Nazis had done to the Jews in World War II.

The second was “Karski &The Lords of Humanity,” a documentary in which the Polish Underground diplomat Jan Karski, a Catholic, tells how he witnessed the horrors of the Warsaw Ghetto and a Nazi concentration camp and struggled to convince the leaders of Western Europe and the United States that they must act to save the Jews. The original footage of the Warsaw ghetto and the camp—naked corpses strewn on sidewalks and piled high like garbage—horrify today’s audience.

The corpses return in “Son of Saul,” (opening in New York on Dec. 18), a Hungarian film written and directed by Laszlo Nemes and starring Geza Rohrig (the first major film for both) and winner of the 2015 Cannes Film Festival Grand Priz. It is remarkable in its technique, the brevity of the time frame, the chaos and deliberate confusion of the action, the soundtrack—engines boom, voices scream, motors grind, voices cancel one another out, dogs bark, iron doors slam, German officers shout commands over the din, trunk motors roar—as the camera focuses constantly on Saul Auslander’s desperate silent face determined to commit an act of hope in the context of despair.

Saul is a Sonderkommando, the designation given to a group of prisoners chosen by the S.S. to do the adjunct dirty work that keeps the Auschwitz murder machine moving efficiently in 1944 as the trains deliver more and more fodder for the furnaces. The men picked for this job have privileges—a little more food and freedom of movement—but are themselves eliminated within a few months. The condemned are shuffled into the locker room, stripped naked and shoved into the gas chamber, which they are told is a shower. Their corpses are dragged out, their discarded clothes searched, the bodies are burned in ovens; the ashes are shoveled into trucks and dumped in the river. Meanwhile the Sonderkommandos mop up the blood, scrub the floors, make ready for the next wave.

In the middle of the chaos Saul sees the not yet dead body of a boy, stares at him silently, determined to save him. When the doctors kill the boy Saul identifies him as his son, determines to bury him with dignity and feverishly searches for a rabbi to recite the Jewish rites.

Throughout, the camera follows Saul’s face as he negotiates the madness of the camp. Secretly members of the Sonderkomamdos are planning a rebellion scheduled to explode at any minute. Saul is drafted as a courier to deliver cash to another wing of the rebels and totes the dead boy wrapped in a blanket over his shoulders. In the background blurred images fight among themselves, drag naked corpses across the floor and pile them into trucks. Saul grabs fellow prisoners and asks if they are rabbis; they stare in confusion. The face of death terrifies all, even God’s ministers, into trembling subjugation.

Saul’s climactic desperate run into the woods for a touch of freedom coincides with the camp’s rebellion. As the German’s have driven new truckloads of victims into the woods to massacre them in front of an enormous ready-dug grave, Saul, as on a battlefield, scrambles to dig a resting place for the dead boy with his hands. The “rabbi” whom Saul has dragged along knows no prayers.

Perhaps because the director Nemes leaves so much unsaid, like a great novel or poem, he challenges the conscience of the viewer to answer not just whether the dead boy is Saul’s son—several characters in the film tell him he has no son and he replies that he had this out of marriage—but both why Saul is doing this and how we ourselves have responded to the evil that engulfs us today.

Son of Raymond A. Schroth, of Trenton, N. J., a World War I hero and editorial writer and reporter for the Trenton Times, Brooklyn Eagle and New York Herald Tribune for over 40 years, and of Mildred (Murphy) Schroth, of Bordentown, N. J., a teacher in the Trenton public and Catholic school systems, Raymond A. Schroth, S.J., has spent his life as a Jesuit, journalist, and teacher.

After graduating from Fordham College in 1955--where he majored in American civilization, studied in Paris, and was editorial editor of the Fordham Ram--he served as an antiaircraft artillery officer in Germany for two years and joined the Society of Jesus in 1957. Ordained a priest in 1967, he obtained his PhD in American Thought and Culture at the George Washington University and taught journalism at Fordham until 1979. During that time he was also associate and book editor of Commonweal magazine.

After two years as academic dean of Rockhurst College in Kansas City, he became academic dean of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. In 1985-86 he held the Will and Ariel Durant Chair in the Humanities at Saint Peter's College in Jersey City. From 1986 to 1996 he taught journalism at Loyola University in New Orleans and was adviser to the Maroon, its award-winning newspaper. In 1995 the Southeast Journalism Conference named him Journalism Educator of the year. In 1996 he returned to Fordham as assistant dean of Fordham College Rose Hill and director of the Matteo Ricci Society, which prepares students to compete for prestigious fellowships. Meanwhile, from 1967 he served as a resident faculty member in the student residence halls.

He has published eight books, including: The Eagle and Brooklyn: A Community Newspaper (Greenwood); Books for Believers: 35 Books Every Catholic Should Read (Paulist); with Jeff Theilman, Volunteer: with the Poor in Peru (Paulist); and The American Journey of Eric Sevareid (Steerforth), a biography of the CBS commentator.

In 1999 he moved to Saint Peter's College, where he wrote two books: From Dante to Dead Man Walking: One Person's Journey through Great Religious Literature and Fordham: A History and Memoir, (Loyola Press in 2001-2002). In 2000 Saint Peter's College named him the Jesuit Community Professor in the Humanities. In Spring 2003 he was made editor of the national Jesuit university review, Conversations and will continue to serve in this position until 2013. His The American Jesuits: A History, (New York University Press, 2007), was followed by Bob Drinan: The Controversial Life of the First Catholic Priest Elected to Congress, (Fordham University Press, 2010). He taught a graduate journalism course at NYU in 2004 and journalism history at Brooklyn College in 2006.

In recent summers he has traveled to Gabon, South Africa, Peru, Iraq, Jordan, Syria, France, Thailand, Vietnam, Cuba, Indonesia, the Czech Republic, and China to educate himself, write articles, and take pictures. In 2003 his National Catholic Reporter media essays won the Catholic Press Association's best cultural columnist award. His over 300 articles on politics, religion, the media, and literature have appeared in many publications, including the Columbia Journalism Review, Commonweal, America, the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, New York Newsday, Kansas City Star, Boston Globe and the Newark Star Ledger, where he was a weekly online columnist for several years. From time to time he lectures and appears on radio and TV. He is listed in Who's Who and Contemporary Authors. In his free time he swims, bikes, walks, reads, goes to movies and restaurants, and prays.