“I'm nobody's wife”: Sandra Holser in conversation

She was nominated for an Academy Award and celebrated for her roles in “Anatomy of a Case” and “Area of ​​Interest.” Actress Sandra Holser talks about what it was like to play the wife of the commandant of Auschwitz Hoss without getting too close to her.

I“Area of ​​interest” – this is how the SS described an area of ​​​​40 square kilometers near the Auschwitz concentration camp. Their interest lay in maximum destruction of life. British writer Martin Amis set his 2014 novel “Zone of Interest” in this area. He modeled one main character on Rudolf Höss, commandant of Auschwitz between 1940 and 1943, and another on his wife Hedwig Höss. “The Zone of Interest” is now the name of a film by British director Jonathan Glazer. It is loosely based on Amis's novel, but unlike Amis, she keeps herself and the audience away from any horror of Nazi proximity and slipping into the shoes of endless, powerful atrocities. He looks at them closely, at the perpetrators and the authority, without allowing himself to be seduced by them. Glazer brilliantly depicts the banality and bureaucracy of evil. And the hustle and bustle of the modern villa where the Höss family lives with their five children and staff. It's right next to the concentration camp, with only a wall in between. Christian Friedel plays Rudolf Höss as what Hannah Arendt called the “administrative mass murderer.” During the day he decides on the “charges” and “ongoing process,” and in the evening he gently reads to his children to help them sleep. But few people can sleep in the villa, here you often lie awake at night. All that can be seen in a deep sleep is Hedwig Höß, the mistress of the house and the normal daily life of the family. She is played by Sandra Holser.

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