...in communicating the monstrosity of Nazi racism and mass murder, "Kz" (the German abbreviation for concentration camp) is a somewhat meandering little documentary that manages to hook itself into the viewer's conscience with deceptive ease. For those interested in the subject (and I realize that few really are), "Kz" is more than worth a watch.In brief, director Rex "Kids Behind Bars" Bloomstein gives us a quietly disturbing look at the picturesque Austrian village of Mauthausen (site of the last Nazi concentration camp to be liberated in the final days of the European Theater of WWII), along with a discomfiting peek into the minds of several tour guides at the location and a number of elderly Austrians who were complicit witnesses to the camp's horrors. What is most interesting (at least to this viewer/writer) is that Bloomstein accomplishes the job so effectively without using any archival footage or any manipulative soundtrack. Everything he records utilizes simple, natural sound, and his journalistic efforts are strictly rooted in the here-and-now. Strangely, it works, and works well.Moments I remember, after watching the film several days ago: the inexpressible pain in one tour guide's voice as he recounts the cruelties that took place in a now-empty pasture. A schoolgirl's sudden distress as she is awakened to the sheer brutality of what happened before she was even born. The look on an old woman's face as she is confronted with the realities of the gas chamber in which she stands. A young man, caught unaware as he fights back tears."Kz" is and is not a "Holocaust film." It is in the sense that Mauthausen was part and parcel of Hitler's "Final Solution;" Jews were being shuttled into the camp (and liquidated) right up to the last days before the German surrender. It isn't in the sense that it was only in those last horrendous weeks that Mauthausen saw many Jewish inmates at all; it was primarily a hard labor camp for captured Poles, Russians, and other non-Jewish prisoners. Still, the effect was the same regardless of who the prisoners were: they suffered, they died, and a very, very few survived. The people who lived in the town and the surrounding countryside did their very best to ignore (or discount) the hell that had been created in their midst. And, finally, the people who remain, and those who came later, unknowingly or otherwise, have been undeniably affected by the legacy of grief that Nazi savagery has left to them. To all of us, for that matter.Do not expect "entertainment" while watching "Kz." Do not expect expiation, nor forgiveness, nor even much in the way of "understanding." Expect only a cold, unsympathetic look at how the worst impulses of humanity affect us all, generation after generation after generation, and be glad that you are as far removed from such horrors as you are. Then you may go re-watch "Schindler's List" and be "entertained," if you must.

Most of the message in Kz comes between the lines; in the expressions on people's faces, in their postures while they are touring the concentration camp. That's as it should be.This documentary on the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria is excellent for it's view not only of what it was, but how people feel about it now. Everyone from those who would forget the past to those who feel a national or personal guilt is interviewed. Much of the footage is from tours of the complex, with a focus on the guides and the tourists rather than the buildings. That is a unique and interesting viewpoint which provides more information than a simple history lesson.Two of the guides, in particular, are excellent in their commitment. You can see they take the job seriously and really want to get the horror of the whole thing across to the tourists; they do that, and well.This is a documentary that does something new with the whole Holocaust subject; not just a horrified look into the past, but a look at how it's being seen now, and how it might be seen in the future. Watch it.

I was very grateful to have watched this film at my college, through the traveling humanities caravan. By reading the synopsis I knew that this was going to be a different type of documentary. Mostly due to the fact that there would be no survivor stories. So I went in very skeptical on how this film would be able to effect me.After all the film did indeed effect me. I loved how you got to see how the citizens of Mauthousen felt about where they lived and better yet, being able to hear about the way people perceived them. I believe it would have been much more emotional and effective to have added in real life stories of what happened to those who were forced into the concentration camps. But I do understand that that would be the typical holocaust documentary, and probably would not set "KZ" apart from all the others. The quiet of the town and the longstanding frames of the landscape brought the needed emotion to this film.I would recommend this film for those that are interested about the holocaust, yet I would not recommend this for those who are just beginning to learn about it. I would definitely watch a documentary that tells real life accounts of what happened and then proceed on to watch this film. Watching this mixture will make you have a better understanding towards this tragic event.

If you like documentaries that can knock you for a loop, then get your tickets ASAP for this one when it comes to your town on the Human Rights Watch Festival caravan. By forgoing archive footage and musical underscoring, this film offers instead a great mix of grim reality along with the completely absurd.The docu opens with a montage of scenes depicting the now picturesque village of Mauthausen, Austria. Then the camera crew joins up with a group of madly chattering high school students who are about to take a tour of the Memorial but have no idea what they are about to witness. The guides that are employed at the Mauthausen Museum are extremely dedicated and do a great job of intensifying people's limited understanding of what really went on inside the camps. The graphic descriptions nearly cause one of the students to faint.Luckily for viewers of this film, the incredibly, emotional tour is broken up into three segments. One can only imagine the magnitude of the experience for those that visit in person and are forced to try to decipher the madness that was Hitler's Final Solution. This particular camp started as a men-only forced labor camp featuring the usual suspects of any regime change: political prisoners, homosexuals, homeless people, and other "undesirables." In the final years of the war women and Jews were added to the camp as Hitler tried vainly to complete the Jewish genocide before the Allied invasion.Throughout the film there are also interviews with local Austrians who lived through and profited by the Nazi experiment, both then and now. It also showcases the absurdity of real life after the Holocaust. Several local women offer eyewitness accounts of atrocities that occurred while living among the SS officers (one woman admits marrying a handsome Nazi). Others freely admit to the prosperity that the German army brought to the very poor town (pre-WW2) and the continuing business growth (a tavern is located directly across from the main walls of the death camp) as a result of being situated near the infamous site for which their village will always be remembered.Excellent documentary, totally blew me away. The power of this film lies in the unexpected anti-semiticism that is revealed by what the tourists do and how they react to what is shown to them.