Block 10: new German film brings Auschwitz experiments on women to the screen

In early 1943 the SS in Auschwitz locked several hundred Jewish women and girls in a sealed building with no daylight: Block 10. For a long time hardly anyone knew what was being done to the women in this block. Now the crimes are coming to the cinema as a feature film. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT In Block 10 the gynaecologist Carl Clauberg, played by Axel Prahl, carried out tests on behalf of SS chief Heinrich Himmler to see how women could be rendered infertile on a mass scale. Many victims did not survive the agonising procedures. Alice Brauner wrote the screenplay and produced the film. As a historian she previously interviewed survivors for Steven Spielberg's Shoah Foundation. She only learnt about Block 10 much later, while reading Bogdan Musiał's book "Mengeles Koffer". A Jewish doctor in an extreme moral situation The film tells the story of the women in Block 10, but also of a Jewish doctor whom the SS forced to collaborate. They blackmailed him with his daughter's life. Maximilian Samuel, a gynaecologist from Cologne who is played in the film by Christian Berkel, was meant to bring new life into the world. Instead he had to help mutilate women so that they could never have children again. The real Maximilian Samuel was a German patriot and for a long time refused to believe that anything could happen to a respected doctor like him. In Auschwitz he then found himself in a moral conflict with no way out. In an interview with Euronews, Brauner speaks of a "grey zone that Primo Levi identified". She refuses to pass judgement on Samuel: "You cannot morally condemn anyone, no matter what they did, if they were a prisoner in Auschwitz." The film contrasts the doctor's inner conflict with the strength of the women. Even in their darkest hour they draw support from one another, recite poems and sing together. The film does not invent such moments, Brauner stresses. The poem comes from the diaries of a doctor in Auschwitz, and the song spread through many camps. One character who embodies resistance is the doctor Adélaïde Hautval, played by Bibiana Beglau. The Frenchwoman was deported to Auschwitz in January 1943 as a so-called "friend of the Jews". As a prisoner doctor she refused to help with the forced sterilisations of women. She was later honoured by the Yad Vashem memorial as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations". Alice Brauner's screenplay is based on witness testimonies and trial records. "Every prisoner number is accurate, every person really existed," says Brauner. Only in one abortion scene did she choose a different victim in order not to overcomplicate the plot. Block 10 recreated in the studio Filming began in September 2025 at the CCC film studios in Berlin. There a faithful reconstruction of Block 10 was created, with dormitory and operating rooms. The production designer worked from 3D graphics of the original building. The Auschwitz memorial site gave the team access, for the first time for a feature film, to the camp's new virtual reality 360 degree material, from which the exterior shots are taken. The arrival of the prisoners was filmed at the railway museum in Bochum with hundreds of extras. The decision to forgo music is deliberate. "I do not need additional aesthetic means to heighten emotions," says Brauner. It is only in the end credits that a Jewish prayer for the victims of the Shoah is heard. As close to uncomfortable reality as possible "We did not want to work with make-up effects," says Brauner. Instead the actresses shaved their heads, some in front of a running camera. Director Marcus O. Rosenmüller spent months beforehand speaking to them again and again about whether they could bear the psychological burden. Where possible, the roles were cast with actresses from the victims' countries of origin. One of them learnt Ladino for the part, the language spoken by many Sephardic Jews. On the first day of shooting the team sat down together. "We all held hands and talked about it once again. Everyone cried," Brauner recalls. "Everyone thought they were really in Auschwitz." An intimacy coordinator looked after the nude scenes and supported the women, "in effect also a psychologist on set". The work seems to have been hardest for the actors playing the perpetrators. Actor Johannes Zirner, for example, plays the SS doctor Horst Schumann, who also carried out experiments on prisoners in Auschwitz. In one scene he was supposed to beat a Jewish girl in the camp with a truncheon. At first he could not bring himself to do it. "We had to shoot the scene so many times," says Brauner. The dignity of the victims in focus rather than big effects The film shows violence in a sober, unvarnished way. Naked bodies are seen only in fragments from the doctors' point of view, never in full. "Perhaps we really did push the boundaries of what people can bear, but we always tried to preserve the victims' dignity." At the première in Munich only a few members of the audience left the cinema, and a pastoral counsellor was present. Afterwards there was prolonged applause, and later the audience award at the Festival des deutschen Films in Ludwigshafen. Brauner also sees the film as an examination of wartime violence against women and girls. Some of the victims were between 15 and 17 years old and were, as she puts it, "dehumanised, stripped of their rights, robbed of their dignity". Anger after 7 October For Brauner, the fact that the film is so stark is linked to 7 October 2023. That day was a profound turning point for her, she says. As a Jew she experienced being held responsible for Israeli policy. "Now all the barriers have really come down, and everyone is letting out what they have long been thinking," she says. "I felt it like a tsunami crashing down on us." How serious the situation is can be seen from the reporting centres of the Federal Association of Research and Information Centres on Antisemitism (RIAS): in 2025 they recorded around 8,700 antisemitic incidents in Germany, almost 24 a day. Between 2020 and 2022 the average was around 2,500 per year. RIAS also points out that many incidents are never reported. Brauner's parents, Artur and Maria, survived the Shoah and came to Germany after the war. Here, she says, they wanted to hold up a mirror to the Germans, not wagging a finger, but through films. To that end Artur Brauner founded the Berlin production company CCC 80 years ago. He died in 2019, his wife in 2017. Brauner says they would not have survived what has happened since 7 October 2023. She believes the culture of remembrance they championed has failed. That is precisely why she wants to carry on. In cinemas from 5 November "Block 10" will be released on 5 November in selected German cinemas, with English subtitles. Brauner and the writer Heike Gronemeier have published a book to accompany the film, in which they explore the historical background. Brauner recommends not watching the film alone, but with others in the cinema and then talking about it afterwards. She particularly hopes to reach young people as an audience. They should engage with the subject and work to ensure that something like this never happens again. That is why she is taking the film into schools and cinemas and seeking dialogue.