While viewers of The Zone of Interest can agree upon many themes they heavily debate what the meaning of the film is and more specifically what the end of the film means. I had the valuable experience of seeing this film for the first time with my history class and what me and other students seemed to think the message was is to make us look at ourselves and current world and ask ourselves in what ways might we be like the Höss family. After watching this film for the second time and thinking about it in comparison to other historical films I feel like my take on the meaning has expanded. On of the most typical things for a history teacher to say when asked why we are studying something is “so history doesn’t repeat itself”. An important idea but one you don’t often see reflected in historical films, you may feel emotionally impacted and want to help survivors or their families depending on the film but they never seem to consider how to stop something from happening again, except for this film which seems to make it it’s whole point. When looking at the Höss family we are horrified by their actions like wearing the clothes of dead Jews, killing people and having blood on their boots, and not only ignoring the atrocities happening next to them but being happy and loving the life they have created next to this camp. However, we can’t help but see how much they are like us. They are incredibly domestic, the kids play and fight, they have birthday surprises, the wife doesn’t want the husband to be away for work. Their similarity to us forces us to look at them and ask ourselves are we actually them. In our current world how much are we like the Höss family who doesn’t believe they are doing anything wrong. This is especially emphasized in the last scene where Rudolf looks into the hallway and sees the future museum of Aushwitz because in that moment he is literally us. He knows what we know and has seen what we have seen and with that knowledge he must make the decision of whether or not to go forward and let history, in a way, repeat itself. We have to ask ourselves what decision are we making right now. This film is especially impactful when considering the current political climate and the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. While this movie was in the works before the October 7th attack it was released during some of the most tense and broadcasted times during the conflict. In response to this and the relevance this film has to the conflict the creators wore pins in support of Palestine and voiced their support in their speech at the Academy Awards.