Name Sayantan Das Gupta (-01816910)

Film Review 1 The Devils Arithmetic

International Human Rights
10/12/12

The Devils Arithmetic is a 1999 film based on the acclaimed historical fiction of the same
name written by Jane Yolen . The protagonist Hannah Stern, played by Kirsten Dunst, is a welloff young Jewish girl living in the New York suburbs. A typical teenager, Hannah is more
concerned about getting tattoos and hanging out with friends and reluctantly agrees to attend the
Passover Seder. She is apathetic to her familys religious traditions, nave of Jewish history and
barely has patience for her elderly relatives who eagerly talk about their tryst with the Nazis,
especially for her Aunt Eva, who also survived the Holocaust. But through a twist of fate during
the event, Hannah is transported to a remote Jewish village of Poland in 1942 during the height of
the Final Solution. There, people believe her to be a girl called Chaya who is recovering from
cholera, the disease that has taken her parents lives and her memory. Sheltered by her Aunt Gitl,
Hannah befriends another Jewish girl, Rivka. This leads to Hannah slowly learning and
appreciating Jewish customs, highlighted in a traditional wedding ceremony.
But as fate would have it, soon the Nazis arrive and forcibly deport the entire population to a
concentration camp in the East. Unfortunately, only Hannah knows whats really in store for
them. From there on it is a quintessential Holocaust drama, depicting the unimaginable
hardships suffered by the Jews. From the indignities of stripping, haircuts, prisoner tattoos,
experimentations, to the biggest crimes of extinction through forced labor, starvation, mass
executions of adults and children alike, diseases like typhus and of course the gas chambers, the
brutality of the Holocaust is portrayed in its entirety. But through this dehumanizing process,
Hannah finally comes to terms with her Jewish identity with the help of Rivka in an almost
coming of age story. In the climax, Hannah realizes that Rivka was really her Aunt Eva who

changed her name after the war when she immigrated to the US. When Rivka falls sick and is
unable to work any longer, Hannah in an act of impulsive self-sacrifice takes Rivkas place in the
gas chambers. As the blue pellets of Zyklon B drops on the victims, Hannah is transported back to
the present world, to the safety of her familys Passover Seder. Now a completely changed
person, Hannah forges a unique bond with Aunt Eva, knowing she was (named after) the girl who
saved Eva or Rivkas life in the death camp.

The Nazi genocide is of course inseparable from the founding of the United Nations and the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The unprecedented brutality of the Holocaust set in
motion the basic tenants of Human Rights doctrines of the 20 th century including the Fourth
Geneva Convention and rules of modern warfare, defining Genocide, decolonization, the modern
nation-states, civil rights, indigenous rights etc.
To me, a particular issue will be the discussion of collective responsibility of an entire civilized
country that suddenly turned genocidal. In the film, SS generals can be seen talking front of desks
about adding and subtracting Jews in occupied Europe, as if they were talking about euthanizing
dogs and cats in a shelter. It is much easier to believe only the likes of Himmler and Reynard
Heydrich perpetrating the Final Solution in a castle in Wannsee, but in reality it was the zeal and
dedication of the SS men (from the general in charge of the mobile killing units to the young
soldier shooting thousands of Jews in the back of the head in the trenches) that made the
Holocaust possible. The Eichmann trial gave birth to the phrase of desk-murderers. That these
men werent all crazed lunatics and psychopaths, but the average and efficient career-bureaucrats
working as a spoke-in-the-wheel of an industrial killing machine is frightening. The Nuremberg
Trials resoundingly rejected the following orders principle in case of high-level Nazis, but the
area of individual conscience is much more shady. When is it okay to leave our moralities at
home if ever, isnt their atrocities committed in just wars as well (and some people will argue, its
the case in every war, no matter how just it is)? More importantly, an international human rights

charter cannot counter the principles of indoctrination that the Nazi state (or North Korea as a
current example) practiced so precisely. Thats why genocides still happen. That righteousness
has to come from within the individual and that is only possible when the individual is free to
question the established norms and standards of society without fear of retribution.

Finally to me, The Devils Arithmetic signifies the importance of remembrance.

Only through knowledge can we have a better understanding of the past, and only then can we
free ourselves from, or at least fight indoctrination. The government loudspeakers urging Hutus to
crush Tutsis like cockroaches are an excellent demonstration of this phenomenon. If we forget
history, we are bound to make the same mistakes. And in a world with the killing-fields of
Cambodia, Darfur, Rwanda, Kosovo etc. apathy and ignorance can become very costly. History is
after all a vicious cycle from the exodus from Egypt, through the Middle Age pogroms, to the
concentration camps in Nazi occupied Europe, only a better understanding of the past will
empower us with better judgment and ability. This film brings young people like Hannah much,
much closer to that distant past. I think the opening scene where Hannah is fussing with the
tattoo artist juxtaposed with the Nazi guard forcibly tattooing her prison number defines the
conscience of this movie.
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