‘Block 10’ review: Harrowing Holocaust drama sheds light on Nazi sterilisation experiments

Dir: Marcus O. Rosenmuller. Germany. 2026. 104mins

For evil to flourish, it only requires good men to do nothing. The quote, once attributed to Anglo-Irish writer and politician Edmund Burke, is a haunting refrain during the harrowing yet engrossing Block 10, Marcus O. Rosenmuller’s unflinching drama which confronts the Nazi mass sterilisation experiments undertaken at Auschwitz concentration camp. Gilmmers of humanity eventually filter through a gruelling account of misery and suffering.

Rosenmuller approaches the material with a grave solemnity

Jonathan Glazer’s Zone Of Interest (2023) and Laszlo Nemes Son Of Saul (2015) have confirmed there is an arthouse audience for Holocaust dramas, but Block 10 – which premires in Munich’s Spotlight strand – is still an experience that some may find daunting. It is due to release in Germany in November, but may find it a challenge to move beyond the home market.

Based on the testimonies of survivors and court records, Block 10 finds its focus in the story of Jewish gynaecologist Dr. Maximilian Samuel (Christian Berkel) and his family. On their arrival at Auschwitz in September 1942, Samuel is separated from his wife and daughter and sent to the eponymous block, where he finds he must assist Dr. Carl Clauberg (Axel Prahl) and his experiments into non surgical mass sterilisation. 

The Jewish and Romani women in the camp are his lab rats, and experiments range from oophorectomies to abortions and massive doses of radiation. Those who survive the procedures often die of sepsis or internal hemorrhaging. Everyone is disposable. The hope of saving his daughter becomes a guiding principle for the compliant Samuel as he participates in the horrors that unfold.

Screenwriter and producer Alice Brauner was once a consultant at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and, working with Rosenmuller, she effectively conveys the dehumanisation of the Auschwitz inmates. Everyone is reduced to a number and are routinely stripped naked, viciously beaten, humiliated and treated as worthless. When Samual is appointed as head inmate doctor, he comforts himself with the belief that he may be a force for good as he treats the patients with compassion and concern. There is even the possibility that the work at Auschwitz may achieve breakthroughs in the treatment of ovarian cancer. A suitably anguished Berkel captures a sense of a man worn down by the moral dilemma of trying to justify his actions as he continues to carry out the bidding of Clauberg and his superior Dr. Eduard Wirths (Moritz Fuhrmann).

Best known for Wunderkinder (2011) and Munter & Kandinsky (2024), Rosenmuller approaches the material with a grave solemnity. Cinematographer Peter J Krause’s camera prowls the gloomy lengths of dim, anonymous corridors in Block 10; Nazis officers confidently march through their kingdom,  boots gleaming, authority absolute. In contrast, the prisoners experience the same space as a journey into the unknown, heavy with foreboding.

Initially, this seems to be a very black and white world. The Nazis are uniformly depicted as apoplectic, pop-eyed brutes who delight in the control they exert over the lives of others. Axel Prahl’s Clauberg is a sweaty, porcine figure, leering at the women around him; others are ruthlessly efficient and devoid of compassion. Gradually, however, a more complex picture emerges of those who live in abject fear for their lives, and others who realises there is always a choice to be made as to whether orders are followed.

Snapshots of humanity provide rare moments of hope as the prisoners express their solidarity in quiet singing together, and one doctor refuses to play any further part in the experiments. The arrival of Polish medic Alina Brewda (Marta Sroka) proves a turning point, as she brings the voice of decency to the nightmares around her.