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2016

Ted Cruz: Not just another face in the crowd By Lloyd Marcus

When Trump’s unorthodox style of campaigning for president first took the political world by storm, I thought his ability to connect with the public is a real-life version of the movie A Face in the Crowd.

In the 1957 film, Andy Griffith played “Lonesome” Rhodes, a drifter discovered by a producer of a small-market radio program. Rhodes’s confident down-to-earth, everyman style of speaking ultimately won him great fame and influence on national television, beloved by millions.

I’ll be honest with you, folks. When Trump broke the mold with his bold, straight-talk, politically incorrect campaigning, I loved it. The arrogance of the mainstream media has frosted me for years. So Trump getting into the MSM’s face had me cheering him on. I was also hopeful that, as president, Trump would fulfill all the broken promises of the deceitful, traitorous GOP establishment.

As we move into the final months of the GOP nominating process, art is imitating real life. Trump’s behavior is similar to “Lonesome” Rhodes in the movie. Rhodes was not the person his millions of loyal fans thought him to be. At the end of a broadcast, the same producer who discovered Rhodes turned Rhodes’s microphone back on, unknown to him. Rhodes made shocking, hurtful comments about his audience, heard by and devastating millions.

Recent liberal positions on issues have exposed that Trump is not who he has presented himself to be. It has been reported that in a private meeting with GOP establishment leaders, Trump’s “chief lieutenants” said Trump has been “projecting an image.” They said that “the part that he’s been playing is evolving” to make him more palatable to general election voters.

Trump talking about raising taxes on the rich and saying it is okay for men to use girls’ restrooms confirm the leftward “evolving” his campaign spoke of.

Speaking of taxes, Trump’s tax returns reveal that he donated funds to homosexual activists, including a group whose motto is “championing LGBT issues in K-12 education.”

And the World Was Made Right : Edward Cline

It would be interesting to chronicle the state of the world on the off chance that everything in it would be made right per the demands and expectations of today’s activists, social justice warriors, and champions of Social Progress. This was done in a speech by Louis Farrakhan, head of the Nation of Islam, in a commencement address delivered at the University of Chicago, at which he was presented with an Honorary Doctorate in Racial Harmony.

All climate change deniers and skeptics were executed, as advocated for years the Secret Society of the Global Warming Collect, by professional hangmen and executioners hired from ISIS. The first executions were presided over by Al Gore, former vice-president of the old U.S. European culprits were transported to Raqqah, the capital of the Islamic State Caliphate, and dispatched there with graphic footage broadcast to Europe. The experienced executioners there made short work of the liars and falsifiers and acolytes of false science. North American culprits were transported to Death Valley, California, and ISIS executioners were flown in to perform their service. The guilty had been hunted down and rounded up by the combined forces of the European-Islamic Police, of the Special Multi-Gender Law Enforcement Force, and of the American Federal Bureau of Intolerance (FBI) in coordinated raids and dragnets. Once the deniers were gone, all was made right in the world, and the world breathed easier.
To the resounding cheers and excellently choreographed Maypole dances of environmentalists of every age and color everywhere, the Environmental Protection Agency seized all private property and land in America and imposed rigorous controls on the former owners (now reduced to the status of tenant farmers) governing the use of the new federal possessions. The rules were so all-encompassing and strict that the tenants were unable to produce or grow much of anything, but were blamed for dragging their feet. Trained, armed, and experienced former Bureau of Land Management personnel were empowered to police the land and to punish violators. Thousands of tenant farmers were incarcerated in special FEMA camps, called Spotted Owl Campuses, in Nevada and Illinois and put on short rations. These new felons were also subjected to reeducation courses and new dietary regimes. And all was made right with the world, and a New Earth Day was proclaimed.
President Bernie Sanders presided over the free distribution of just about everything, including college education, food, personal grooming products, and gas rations. His taxing of major and middle income corporations and small businesses at 99% was intended to pay for the program, but when IRS personnel appeared at these venues, in many instances they found nothing but closed doors or vacant premises. The Bureau of Printing and Engraving announced a “temporary” halt in printing all the new money because of shortages of the proper paper and of the necessary chemicals and inks, while the Treasury Department also announced a halt in the mailing of “Freedom Checks” to everyone because of a shortage of paper on which to print the checks. Suppliers of the currency and check paper to the BPE and the Treasury Department were sued. But President Sanders said the setbacks were just a “blip.” He was also quoted as saying, “You can’t make an omelet without breaking heads.” One person was arrested and sentenced by a kangaroo court to twenty years of hard labor for having been overheard to say to a friend in private that President Sanders “not only needed a walker to get to the john but also for his brain.” Still, all was made right in the world and bad-mouthers were taken out of circulation, resulting in a significant drop in aural pollution.
The inauguration of the new federal Multi-Gender Police (the MGP) was feted by former U.S. President Barack Obama during a special ceremony in Seattle. The new law enforcement tool was expected to work closely with the re-tailored FBI. The MGP’s ranks were filled with heterosexuals, homosexuals, lesbians, trans-genders, and people of unclassified orientation. True to Barack Obama’s anti-gun philosophy, the troops were armed with only tasers, electronic batons, modified cattle prods, and katanas. Cleverly designed uniforms, modeled after samurai fighting armor, disguised the gender identity of each policeperson. However, during its first assignment, the MGP retreated from a food riot in Philadelphia, resulting in half the city being burnt down, its spokesperson saying that sending the MGP into combat violated the “safe spaces” of many of its members who weren’t quite ready to impose law and order. It also claimed that many thousands of lives were saved by the MGP’s non-intervention in the looting, destruction, and occasional killing. Still, all was made right in the world, as there was no more police brutality.
English was demoted from being the official lingua franca of the U.S. Callers to various federal agencies, bureaus, and “crony” corporations were asked to “Press 1 for Arabic, Press 2 for Spanish, Press 3 for English.” Advertising and billboards (where they were permitted) had to communicate in Arabic and Spanish first, with tiny English subtitles. And all was made right in the world, and illiteracy was no longer a social stigma.

Climate Deal Forecast: Frost for the U.S. Economy, Slush Funds for the Planet by Claudia Rosett

One of the best catalogues of human folly is the 19th century book by Charles MacKay, “Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.” MacKay chronicles a host of scams, superstitions and mass frenzies, including the South Sea Bubble, Tulipomania, Alchemy and Witch Mania. To this roster, some future historian may someday add the full tale of the early 21st century Climate Mania, in which a throng of politicians, United Nations bureaucrats, film stars and what not promised that if they were just given enough power over our use of lightbulbs, cars, planes, ships, oil, gas, electricity and energy in general, they would — for the greater good of mankind, mind you — arrange to control to within a few decimal points the temperature of the planet.

For the moment, however, this is not history we are talking about. We are stuck in the acute phase of Climate Mania. This Friday, “Earth Day,” brought the signing ceremony at the UN’s New York headquarters of the Paris Agreement on “Climate Change.” More than 170 nations signed on, including such curators of human progress and enlightenment as North Korea, Sudan, Cuba and Iran. Actor Leonardo Di Caprio spoke from the podium of the General Assembly chamber. Secretary of State John Kerry brought his infant granddaughter, and held her on his lap while he signed the accord. UN leaders planted a tree in the UN “Food Garden.”

International Justice: We Are The NWOrld : Julia Gorin

“My permanent fight to preserve the peace, prevent the war and decrease the sufferings of everyone regardless of religion were an exemplary effort deserving respect rather than persecution.”

–Radovan Karadzic to Balkan Insight, ahead of his March 24, 2016 Guilty verdict

“Through relentless propaganda efforts, “Srebrenica” has become a synonym for “genocide,” as Serbs stand accused of killing some 7,000 Muslim men – military personnel who refused to surrender – who fled the town. The fact that they gave safe passage, food, and water to the women and children left behind – hardly a hallmark of “genocide” – is ignored.”

–Nebojsa Malic, 2005

If one thinks that the 40-year sentence handed down last month to former Bosnian-Serb president Radovan Karadzic has nothing to do with oneself or with our collective future, then one hasn’t been paying attention. Not that anyone thinks about it one way or the other. Certainly not Americans in the throes of a presidential election year, and so who would bother paying attention to the fate of some former president, from some other, unthought-about country, for something that happened 20 years ago? Never mind that the American co-president from that era may be our president again next year.

Fact is, the American election pales in relevance to what just happened, yet again, at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

The Karadzic verdict in March was preceded in February by the death from “unknown causes” of yet another Serb in Hague custody. (Belgrade’s requests that the ailing Zdravko Tolimir — whose trial saw two judges go off the reservation with dissenting opinions that devastate the evidence of “genocide” in Srebrenica — be allowed treatment leave were ignored.) Three months earlier, in October, a defense witness for Ratko Mladic died suddenly at a Hague hotel. That’s without mentioning the other six, starting with Croatian-Serb mayor Slavko Dokmanovic in 1998 and the back-to-back deaths of Milan Babic and Slobodan Milosevic in 2006. If these events all seem somehow marginal, then one has somehow missed that we are all Serbs now. No less for finding ourselves at the mercy of the “migrants” in our midst, whom our governments are intent on risking our hides to make welcome.

For the Serbs were the designated white man, and the designated Christian, to be sacrificed for the greater Muslim good. And, we thought, for the greater Western good, given the appreciation that would surely come our way from the Muslim world for punishing the infidels who dared fight back. Symbiotically, while Yugoslavia was being targeted by jihad, it was also targeted by the New World Order, as a test case, with the Serbian nation marked for extinction as an identity. The death of the “nation-state” as such would follow, as we are now seeing.

There is a reason that America exempts itself from the jurisdiction of an international court (at least until Hillary Clinton becomes president again). The U.S. is concerned about the potential for political prosecutions. That is, show trials. Of American leaders, generals, servicemen, and so on. That’s understandable. But it is more than a little vile to exempt oneself from such an Orwellian institution — while exploiting those very characteristics of it against others, something that not one American politician speaks out against.

But back to Karadzic. A few headlines, for background:

Radovan Karadzic found guilty of genocide, sentenced to 40 years

Radovan Karadzic, nicknamed the “Butcher of Bosnia,” was sentenced to 40 years….over his responsibility for the Srebrenica massacre, in which more than 7,000 [sic] Bosnian Muslim men and boys were executed [sic] by Bosnian Serb forces under his command…Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in a statement that the verdict and sentence “will stand against continuing attempts at denying the suffering of thousands and the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.”

TOM GROSS: PASSOVER GREETINGS BY PUTIN AND OBAMA COMPARED

Jews in Israel and around the world have been celebrating Passover these past two days.

Below I attach Passover greetings from Russian President Vladimir Putin and from U.S. President Barack Obama.

It is, of course, remarkable given the course of anti-Semitism, “the longest hatred” as it is often called, that the presidents of the U.S. and Russia both now give official public Passover greetings.

However, what is being noted by Jews in Israel and elsewhere is that Putin’s message is specifically Jewish, whereas Obama chooses to use Passover to give a more universal message.

There is a perception (whether fair or not) that Putin (whatever else his flaws) has in some ways been more friendly and understanding of Jewish concerns than Obama has.

As was noted in this dispatch last year, Putin has gone out of his way to make sure Russia enjoys good relations with Israel:

“Putin has determinedly kept the channels to Israel open, making a point to personally visit Israel and in June 2012, Israel was the first country he visited after his election. He frequently speaks warmly about the Jewish state, expressing pride that it contains the largest diaspora of former Russian citizens. At the Western Wall, accompanied by Russian Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, he donned a kippah, which would undoubtedly have made his Bolshevik predecessors turn in their graves. He also seemed quite indifferent to the rage this created among his Arab allies.”

Only last Thursday (April 21), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was again in Moscow holding consultations with Putin (mainly concerning Syria, Iran and Hizbullah), Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was also in Moscow only a few weeks ago, and Israeli leaders seem to be invited to Moscow more than to Washington these days. (Putin again invited Netanyahu to visit Moscow in June to mark 25 years since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations.)

While Obama has kept his distance from Israel, (he has made only one brief visit there during his two terms in office, he has been, for example, to Saudi Arabia four times and visited countries such as Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, and Myanmar more than once), Israel has been forging ever closer relations with countries in Asia (including some Arab ones), Africa and elsewhere. Just this month, leaders from China and Singapore, among others, have visited Jerusalem. (U.S. Senators and other U.S. officials continue to visit Jerusalem regularly, just not the president.)

I also attach below remarks made by Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on his visit to Israel last Tuesday April 19 (which also include Passover greetings). Singapore has long enjoyed close relations to Israel, especially in the fields of business, water management, biotechnology, and cyber security. Trade between the two nations reached $1.35 billion in 2015, which was greater than trade between Israel and most European countries. (Several senior Singapore government security officials have for many years subscribed to this Middle East email list.)

GOOD NEW FROM AMAZING ISRAEL: FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

An app to prevent diabetes. Israel’s Sweetch has developed a clinical-outcome prediction platform, a behavioral analytics engine and risk meter, to stop diabetes before it starts. Sweetch’s proprietary machine-learning algorithms detect pre-diabetes seven times more accurately than existing clinical evaluation.
http://www.israel21c.org/stopping-diabetes-before-it-even-starts/ http://sweetch.com/

US approves treatment for severe asthma. The U.S. FDA has approved Cinqair – the asthma treatment from Israel’s Teva – for adults who have a history of severe attacks despite taking medication. More than 22 million Americans had asthma as of 2013, and there are more than 400,000 asthma-related hospitalizations each year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/teva-pharm-ind-fda-idUSL3N16V45V

Good results in Leukemia treatment trials. Israel’s BioSight is pleased with its Phase I/IIa study to evaluate the safety and efficacy of its Astarabine treatment for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and relapsed/refractory Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL). Full results later this year. (See also 1st Nov newsletter).
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/biosight-completed-treatment-of-patients-in-astarabine-phase-iiia-clinical-trial-300253764.html

Training 100 medics in the desert. In Israel’s Negev desert it sometimes takes United Hatzalah’s emergency medical services half an hour to reach remote communities. So it is running a training course to increase the numbers of its EMS volunteers from 150 to 250. Its goal is at least one volunteer in every village and kibbutz.
http://jpupdates.com/2016/04/17/israels-united-hatzalah-ems-organization-expands-to-the-negev/

Born in ambulance – just like his Dad. Chen Sabag was born 32 years ago in a Magen David Adom (MDA) ambulance in the southern Israeli town of Netivot. On March 29, Chen’s son was born to his wife Hadas, in an MDA ambulance near the northern Israeli city of Afula.
http://www.israel21c.org/second-generation-baby-born-in-ambulance/

Red Cross praise Israeli disaster aid. (TY Hazel) International Committee of the Red Cross’s chief surgeon, Dr. Harald Veen, attended Israel’s “Surgical Management in Austere Environments” conference. He said Israel is a role model for disaster medicine as “Israelis have the knowledge and experience” to excel in emergencies.
http://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-a-role-model-for-disaster-medicine-says-red-cross-chief-surgeon/

UNESCO chief praises Israeli initiative. At UNESCO’s Paris headquarters, UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova inaugurated the second leg of a photo exhibition showcasing the Israeli Education Without Borders initiative – a project aimed at providing education to hospitalized children. (See previous newsletters)
http://www.worldjewishcongress.org/en/news/unesco-chief-irina-bokova-praises-israeli-educational-initiative-in-favor-of-hospitalized-children-4-4-2016

Saudi Arabia: The Golden Chain and The Missing 28 Pages By Rachel Ehrenfeld and J. Millard Burr

The American media, which continues to concentrate on a bill making its way through Congress that would allow American citizens to sue the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for losses suffered as a result of the 9/11 attacks, paid no attention to the Golden Chain.
The victims claim that the release of the 28 pages missing from the 9/11 Commission Report is of crucial importance to their case. Those pages, they say, would show the interrelationship that ties the hijackers to the Saudi regime itself and therefore would offer a damning indictment of the Kingdom. But President Obama, like President Bush before him, refuses to make it public. And the Saudi Royal Family that vehemently denies funding al Qaeda, threatened that if the 28 pages are released, they would sell more than $750 billion of Saudi investments in the U.S.
Of equal if not of greater importance than the missing 28 pages, is the forgotten investigation of the Bosnia-BIF office. Crucially, among the boxes and files was found a note ostensibly written by Osama Bin Laden that lists a “Golden Chain” of twenty Arab plutocrats who were and remain suspected of financing international terrorism, including the funding of al Qaeda.
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The Golden Chain was established about the time of al Qaeda’s founding in 1988. Bin Laden’s notes on efforts to recruit wealthy Saudi Arabian families who could fund his group were also found at Sarajevo. Much of the information derived from the Sarajevo came to light during the 2003 trial of an al Qaeda financier, Enaam Arnaout, in Chicago.
In March 2002, a search of the Benevolence International Foundation (the Bosanska Idealna Futura, or BIF) in Sarajevo, Bosnia, would provide the West with the most significant trove of information ever to be found on the Genesis and growth of the al Qaeda organization.
In fact, Bosnian investigators unearthed an intelligence mother lode: Not only did they seize weapons, false passports, plans for making bombs, jihadist videos and literature, their search also yielded material of great historic value. On a computer file titled “Tareekh Osama” (Osama’s History), there were found documents, letters, and photos relating to the birth and early days of al Qaeda, some of it in bin Laden’s handwriting. Included in the haul was an organizational chart, and notes on al Qaeda activity reportedly prepared by bin Laden, and his mentor Sheikh Abdallah Azzam. The file had been kept by Bin Ladin confidant Enaam Arnaout, who clearly obviously thought the BIF office in Bosnia was safe from intrusion. Ironically, before 9/11 Arnaout and the BIF were under investigation in the United States for operating the charity as a racketeering enterprise. One that provided material support to al Qaeda. Following 9/11, it seemed only a matter of time before Arnaout would be indicted.

MY SAY :WHEREFORE IS THIS CANDIDATE DIFFERENT FROM ALL OTHERS? BRYAN MAST FOR CONGRESS R-DISTRICT 18 FLORIDA

“I will serve you in Congress like I served you on the battlefield…without regard for personal gain and without regard for personal sacrifice.”After graduating from South Christian High School in 1999, Mast followed in his father’s footsteps and enlisted in the military, where for over 12 years, Brian Mast served our country as a soldier in the U.S. Army. Brian’s service also included the honor of serving under the elite Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) as a bomb disposal expert. Working under JSOC meant that Brian fought at the tip of the spear for the U.S. military in the ongoing war against radical Islamic terrorism. Being a bomb technician in this high level of special operations came with the responsibility of protecting his fellow soldiers from the wars most deadly enemy, the improvised explosive device (IED). For Mast this meant putting himself directly in the line of fire without the use of bomb suits or robots.

While on his last deployment in Afghanistan, Mast was tasked with protecting his brothers from IED’s on a nightly basis. While he was able to detect and destroy most of these IED’s, the very last IED Mast found resulted in him sustaining catastrophic injuries, which included the loss of both his legs.As a result of his service and sacrifice to our country, Mast was awarded medals for Valor, Merit, and Sacrifice, to include The Bronze Star Medal, The Army Commendation Medal for Valor, The Purple Heart Medal, and The Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

While recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington D.C., Mast’s focus was singular: get better and get back to serving America, which is exactly what he did. Each day for him consisted of 8 hours of grueling physical therapy, after which he would also provide his requested expertise to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco & Firearms (ATF), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), all on top of his ongoing military duties.

Mast recently donned an army uniform again in a show of support for the nation of Israel and the freedom it represents in the Middle East and around the world, as he volunteered along side the Israeli Defensive Forces (IDF).

The Self-Contradictory Liberals by Denis MacEoin

Many liberals — not least the large numbers of students involved in campus demonizations of Israel, Jews, white people and other supposed public enemies — are morally and politically confused, not to say profoundly selective and bigoted, often in direct contradiction to their own expressed principles of peace, tolerance, diversity, and multiculturalism.

These liberals repeatedly contradict their own ideals, not least when it comes to free speech, Israel, the Middle East, Islam, and the rights of Muslim women. Many self-declared liberals behave much as did the Nazis of the early years of the Third Reich.

It would appear that, whatever Israelis and their government do may be dismissed as mere “whitewashing” to cover Israel’s original “sin” of being Jewish.

Using an abusive form of political correctness and insisting on an absolutist version of multiculturalism, many devotees of liberalism often betray the ideals for which earlier human rights activists, feminists, anti-racists, and freedom fighters fought and even gave their lives.

Amnesty International, a left-wing non-governmental organization (NGO) put its pro-Muslim politics above women’s rights — a remarkable step for the world’s best-known human rights agency.

It is no secret that politicians on both the “right” and “left” lie, dissemble, equivocate, misrepresent, misinform, falsify, whitewash and cover up. Not even the noble and honest Cicero was immune to fudging and shifting sides. It is the nature of politics. For much of the time we put up with it until it grows so far-fetched, we can no longer shut our eyes and let ourselves be lulled into further acquiescence. We all put up with this, do our best to spot the lies, or rely on investigative journalists to dig beneath the surface of what governments claim or their opponents hide.

Son of Saul: The Holocaust Seen Anew László Nemes’s first film brings a new perspective on to the Holocaust. By Thomas S. Hibbs

Son of Saul, the first film (to be released next week on DVD) of László Nemes — he both directed and co-wrote it, and it won both the grand prize at Cannes and the Oscar for Best Foreign Film — is the latest in a seemingly endless string of Holocaust films. However, both in its peculiar plot — which focuses exclusively on the story of one man, Saul, brilliantly performed by Géza Röhrig — and in its cinematography — a hand-held, mobile camera that remains persistently and tightly focused on Saul — it marks out its own territory. The film is simultaneously an immersive, physically taxing experience of life in a camp and a self-conscious reflection on the conditions of, and motives for, Holocaust movies.

Saul is distinctive in a number of ways. Consider, for example, its focus on one man. As Nemes observes in a brief scene analysis of the film’s opening segment, this is the “story of one man,” Saul, who has “become almost like a robot.” Saul is a Sonderkommando, whom Nemes describes thus:

The Sonderkommandos were a group of prisoners who were actually separated from the rest of the other prisoners — male prisoners who were forced to assist the Nazis in the extermination process. These were the prisoners who had to accompany the deported people to the gas chamber and then take out their corpses and burn the corpses in the ovens at the crematorium and then scatter the ashes. So these were the people who were at the heart of the extermination machine. They were, in exchange, better fed and better clothed, but they knew that they would be liquidated in a few months [NPR interview, “Fresh Air”].​

In preparation for the film, Nemes worked his way through volumes of testimonies, known as the Scrolls of Auschwitz, from members of this group.

Because the Sonderkommandos had intermediate status between the Nazis and their fellow Jews, and because their jobs afforded them greater liberty of movement than the other prisoners, the film’s concentration on Saul offers a compressed and highly particularized access to the entire camp. Early in the film, Saul observes a Nazi doctor standing over the body of a young boy who has inexplicably survived the gas chamber. As the doctor calmly smothers the boy to death, he orders an autopsy. It is a mark of the morally topsy-turvy world of the camp that an autopsy is necessary to determine, not the cause of death, but the cause of survival. His attention riveted on the boy’s body, Saul asks another worker in the camp to hide the body so that he can find a rabbi to say Kaddish and provide a proper burial. Saul’s motives are mysterious. He repeatedly claims the boy is his son, even as others counter: “You don’t have a son.” Saul is as mechanical in his burial quest as he is in his assigned duties in the camp, and that raises a basic question about his mission — whether it marks a kind of transcendence of, or at least an ennobling rebellion against, the dehumanization of the camp, or whether it is merely a mechanized obsession rendered absurd and even futile by the very existence of the camps. Revolt pervades the conversations of the Sonderkommandos, who hatch plots to try to undermine the Nazis. (There was in fact a Sonderkommando rebellion at Auschwitz in 1944.)

Because it never leaves him, the camera forces viewers to come to terms with Saul’s pursuit. The film’s director of photography, Mátyás Erdély, employs two techniques: Besides the hand-held camera, he uses shallow focus, which leaves everything beyond the center of the frame blurry. The jittery, mobile camera is unsettling. That the camera remains fixed on Saul creates a nervous uncertainty in the viewer, who longs not just for the camera to be still but also for it to show us what Saul sees, or at least to provide a wider context for Saul’s movements and facial expressions. Nemes himself notes that the film deliberately excludes location images. There are no long train tracks leading into the concentration camp or signs indicating arrival at Auschwitz.

The result is that the film is continuously disorienting and physically exhausting, almost sickening. We hear screams, moans, and screeches; we see indistinctly the piles of mutilated bodies; and we feel the encroachment, on one side, of the lurking guards and, on the other, of the mounting piles of ashes. What we see and hear most is the non-stop work of the Sonderkommandos: the scrubbing of the crematoria, the shoveling of ashes, and the transporting of carts full of what the Nazis call “pieces.”