- Catharsis Factor: After an hour of horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis, seeing the crematoriums get blown up and Nazi soldiers gunned down in the uprising is quite cathartic. Especially the crematorium guard who is stuffed into one of the ovens.
- Complete Monster: The SS sergeant and the physician are sociopathic Nazis assigned to Auschwitz:
- SS-Oberscharführer Erich Mußfeldt is a high-ranking officer at Auschwitz in charge of the cell blocks and the labor divisions. Having countless prisoners shot, tortured, gassed, and burnt, Muhsfeldt initially seems to be disturbed by his works before revealing the monstrous sadist he truly is. Mußfeldt refuses to spare a girl who survives the gas chambers, and has prisoners tortured for information on the insurrection, including having innocents shot to demand a rebel break and talk. After the rebellion, Mußfeldt sends back Dr. Nyiszil to work with Josef Mengele's horrible experiments to torment him further, and personally shoots the young girl after giving her a window of hope.
- Dr. Josef Mengele is a Nazi physician at Auschwitz who performs inhumane experiments with his unwilling assistant Dr. Miklos Nyszli. Introduced feigning pleasantries with Nyszli, Mengele expresses his scientific interest in performing additional "research" at Auschwitz. When female prisoners are caught smuggling gunpowder, Mengele tortures one of them while other Nazis interrogate her.
- Nightmare Fuel: The entire movie is extremely difficult to watch, being a portrayal of Auschwitz. Groups of people are killed in massacres even outside the gas chambers, prisoners are constantly tortured to death, characters are promptly shot without warning, Mengele's experiments are shown to some extent, victims' corpses are disposed of in furnaces after some of their body parts are recycled first, and the movie ends with the little girl being shot to death. It's the closest thing to Hell on Earth that has ever existed.
- Tear Jerker:
- Hoffman's speech to the little girl. The sheer agony in his voice is palpable.
Hoffman: I used to think so much of myself... What I'd make of my life.- Hoffman and Rosenthal's tearful words to each other as they're about to die.
Hoffman: (smiling through tears) We would have been neighbors.
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