"The Midnight Gatekeeper": Love in the Concentration Camp

The practice of raping female prisoners by SS members in Auschwitz is actually not new, because many soldiers treated "enemy" women in this way, but the following fact can completely subvert our imagination: at least one An SS man fell in love with a Jewish woman working in a concentration camp. The story of Helena Stronova and Franz Wunsch is truly one of the most bizarre in the history of Auschwitz. Helena was from Slovakia and was sent to Auschwitz as early as March 1942. Her early years in the concentration camp were unremarkable, struggling with hunger and physical abuse. In the first few months, she was assigned to a unit that worked outdoors, demolishing buildings and moving rubble. Sleeping on a pile of straw full of fleas, she watched in horror as the female prisoners around her gradually lost hope and died one after another, and her best friend was the first to give up. She "looked at everything around her" and said, "I don't want to live for a minute." She began shouting hysterically until the SS took her away, ending her suffering.

[English] Lawrence Rees "Auschwitz: A History" (Utopia Translation Series) Guangxi Normal University Press.

This is Lawrence's Auschwitz narration The beginning of Sheen's love story, this story is true, the BBC made a documentary interviewing Helena. I have not watched this documentary, but Lawrence later said: When liberation was about to come, Wenshi rushed to the front line. Before leaving, Wenshi gave Helena a note asking her to seek refuge with her parents. Helena tore up the note, and Lawrence did not say how they ended up. It is worth noting that after leaving Auschwitz, Helena and her sister encountered the Soviet Red Army, and their atrocities were even more unscrupulous.

"The Midnight Gatekeeper" actually tells a love story in a concentration camp. Compared with the above story, this story has a tragic ending.

First of all, how to determine whether this is a love story? In fact, this question is very simple. When Max saw Lucia for the first time, Max kept tracking Lucia's face with a camera. The movie uses close-ups and close-ups to show Lucia's young and beautiful face that makes people emotional. The audience can be emotional. Why? It is doubtful that the Nazi officers would be sentimental. Later, Max repeatedly confessed that he loved this girl. Although he is a Nazi fascist and a "bad guy", who can say that good guys must win love, and bad guys will not? Besides, is it really that easy to tell good guys from bad guys? The fascists were bad guys and the anti-fascist allies were good guys, but when the Soviet Red Army liberated the country from east to west, they committed no less crimes than the Nazis. Bonnie and Clyde, are they good guys or bad guys?

Secondly, how to evaluate abnormal sexual relationships in love? We can think that Max has sadistic tendencies, but can Max's sadism be seen as the atrocities Lucia suffered in the concentration camp? At the beginning we mentioned a love story in a concentration camp told by Lawrence. Before this story, Lawrence wrote in the book: The policy of the Third Reich was to prohibit sexual relations between German soldiers and Jews, but Himmler did not seriously implement it. order, thereby condoning the rape of soldiers in the concentration camps (from the end of World War II, Himmler was a complete opportunist). What I want to express here is that Max’s sexual abuse of Lucia was not common in concentration camps, and this incident cannot represent the suffering that Lucia or others suffered in the concentration camps. The Nazis did build the concentration camps into a hell on earth, which is their unshirkable responsibility. However, the reason why this hell on earth is not because of the sexual abuse of the Jews by the Nazis, but because of the unbearable hunger of the people in the concentration camps created by the Nazis. , the fear of death at any time, meaningless labor and existence. Max's sexual preferences can only represent his own personal preferences, just like some people have same-sex preferences and some people have bisexual preferences. Max and Lucia's sadomasochistic relationship is their private personal preference, and at the same time, this sadomasochistic relationship constitutes a metaphor for the Nazi-Jewish relationship. But the movie is not intended to portray the Nazis as nymphomaniacs - in fact, as Hannah Arendt revealed in "Eichmann in Jerusalem": the Eichmanns were nothing short of normal, normal and mediocre.

What does the abnormal sexual relationship between Max and Lucia mean to Lucia? Lucia was very young when she entered the concentration camp. She probably didn't know much about sex, and Max turned her into a masochist. Twelve years later, Lucia has a conductor husband. She accidentally meets Max in a hotel, and Max reminds them of their past in the concentration camp. At first, she couldn't face Max, she always avoided Max. If the relationship between her and Max in the concentration camp is considered abnormal, and the life of more than ten years after liberation made her normal, then of course it would be difficult for a normal person to face the person who reminds him of abnormal past events. But soon, Lucia wants to relive those abusive days with Max.

In those flashbacks, what we see in Lucia's expression is indifference and calmness. Only when Max told the middle-aged lady about their love, Lucia in the memory sang and danced, revealing her breasts and wearing a Nazi military hat. She played the role of the strong one in a masquerade, that is, the torturer. Just the way you should be.

Therefore, we can probably think that Max taught Lucia the S/M game in his relationship with Lucia. The meaning of the game is that everyone follows a gameplay, some people act as S, and some people act as M. In this dance in the memory, Lucia is acting as S, the torturer. So in this game, she is actually an actor, playing a role that is the opposite of her true identity. But most of the time, she always plays the role of M when Max plays S/M games with her.

A kind of performed masochism is a weakening of real masochism. This is probably the best explanation for Max’s sexual fetishes being accepted by Lucia. Life in the concentration camp was so painful that the opening story says that Helena's best friend would rather die than endure life in the concentration camp. As has just been discussed, the painful life in the concentration camp does not come from sexual abuse, but the real metaphor of the film is: the ontology is the universally painful life in the concentration camp, and the explicit metaphor of the film text is Lucia's abuse. The reason why metaphor can express the ontology is that the metaphor is not inferior to the ontology in terms of degree and weight. Lucia actually plays a dual role in ontology and metaphor: the image of the masochist in the S/M game is a metaphor for her image of life in the concentration camp. In the metaphorical game, there is a set of game rules. This set of rules is the potential contract under the love relationship between Lucia and Max. M is the role that Lucia actively plays under the voluntary contract. Real masochism is weakened by the presupposition of the love contract in the metaphor. In other words, the reason why Lucia could endure the life in the concentration camp and became one of the few people to walk out of the concentration camp was because she felt Max's love contract - -Although this contract was only metaphorical at the time, in the game.

Now, in Vienna in 1957, Lucia has revisited and firmly believed in the metaphorical and game-like contract. Because now it can be proved that the contract is not only metaphorical and game-like, but also the most real. The thread of Max's fate hangs in the hands of Lucia, who was a witness to Max's crimes during the Third Reich and is now the master of Max's true destiny, even though Max still plays the role of abuser in their relationship. This is a real game. If the game in the concentration camp in the past was to weaken the pain, the game in Vienna now is to increase happiness: although Max, the current Reservoir Dog, acts as a torturer, this is just an illusion under Lucia's power. He is both in reality and in the game. , all have to obey the orders of the abused Lucia. By dominating the abuser Max (both real and game), Lucia gained greater happiness than the abuser - in Lucia's subconscious, the abuser's The abuse is just an illusion, just obeying her orders.

The deaths of Max and Lucia prove that they are not tolerated in the world, but this is only the most intuitive symbolic judgment. They actually faced the strangulation of two forces: one from the remnants of the Nazis, and the other from the suppression of secular marriage ethics. As far as the remaining Nazis are concerned, they do not realize their guilt and are still living in the illusion of their fall. Max is deeply aware of his own guilt, and his friends do not understand his irony at all. Max's death can be seen as a responsibility to conscience. The marital ethics they faced were not the reason why Lucia had to die because she betrayed her husband. No matter what, they walked to the terminal point of death together because they could not be separated from each other. When Max has lost his dominant position during the Third Reich and acts as a torturer, he is playing a role that is extremely opposite to his true identity. Lucia tried to change their role relationship (the last time they had sex, Lucia's female position could represent the dominant position of the abuser) - after Lucia moved to Max's house, their relationship was undergoing such a change - making Lucia - Max's abuser The sadomasochistic relationship is consistent with their true identity and situation after the war. But none of them can dissolve their relationship in the real world to grasp reality (Max is unwilling to cooperate with the Nazis, and Lucia is unwilling to return to her husband). It is their mutual possession and non-separation that make them risk their own death. on the road. They isolate themselves from the world in order to grasp their love relationship. In isolation, "they" are subjects opposed to the object world, and isolation is the subject of "them" in order to grasp themselves. Max's repentance or reflection or responsibility for the past is reflected in: He is now unwilling to give up thinking and emotions, follow the trend, and act as an accomplice of the Nazis, as he did during the Third Reich. These are all losses of subjectivity, and people are reduced to Tools of the object world. Between the two paths of dehumanization and human death, they choose to die as humans.

If Franz Wunsch survived death at the front, and he came back to find Helena, and they were together, this true story would be perfect.

But will Helena still be willing to face Wen Shi later? In the movie, Lucia chooses Max, which is already very touching. Although the ending is tragic, who can understand the burden of the times and history they bear, and who can feel the intensity and romance of their love? !