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Fateless (Sorstalanság), directed by Lajos Koltai (Hungary 2005) <film>

• See Imre Kertész (M / Hungary, 1929-2016), Holocaust survivor

In 1944, 14-year-old Hungarian Jew Gyorgy Koves (Marcell Nagy) quits school to look after his family when his father (János Bán) is deported by the Nazis to a labor camp. Shortly afterward, Gyorgy is seized during a police raid and sent to Auschwitz. Lying about his age to prevent himself from being gassed with the other children, Gyorgy learns from veteran prisoner Bandi Citrom (Áron Dimény) how to survive as he is sent from one concentration camp to another.

"The film begins with our protagonist witnessing his father being called up to a "labor camp." Later, on his way to work, he himself is grabbed by the SS and transported via rail to Auschwitz, the most evil of all the extermination camps. On his way, the protagonist encounters evil in many forms. The SS that beat and degrade him and the rest of the Jews without regard for their humanity. Later, in the concentration camps we notice the main characters demise and lost of interest in life. Many of his fellow inmates struggle to get him to care about life and to have hope, but he is just merely too exhausted and disgusted with life to care at this point. At his most vulnerable point and on the verge of death, liberation comes and the protagonist is saved from a certain death. He then return to Hungary to witness that many people have continued life as if nothing happened. To make matters worse, many of his fellow-countrymen and even his fellow Jews are indifferent to his suffering at best and disgusted by him at worst. We notice that the protagonist is changed. He has no hope. He talks about his experiences and describes them as normal. Not normal in the real world, but normal is his mind."--