The first half of this film is superb and classic - for a low budget feature, the sense of tension, horror, confinement is achieved with great skill. The use of sound and cinematography is excellent. That it is based on a true story makes it all the more moving - wait to the end to see what happened to the 2 Slovak escapees.
Just a note: Auschwitz (the Germanised name of the nearby Polish town of Osweicim) was 3 camps - this one, the original small concentration camp where from 1939 political prisoners and others were held and often shot. That is where the sign stating ARBEIT MACHT FREI is above the entrance. This film is set here - there are sections for each nationality at this camp and no train tracks. (Auschwitz II-Birkenau is the huge camp with the famous train tracks and crematoria, as featured in Schindler's list; Auschwitz 3 was a chemical plant - not open to the public now).
The issue comes in act 3, the final third of the film where the decision seems to have been made to assign blame for the camps not to those who created them and killed millions, but to the Allies (esp British) who did not bomb Auschwitz. This is 1944 of course and the Brits and other allies were rather busy liberating slaves in Europe after D Day and needed all their planes and bombs for that brave crucial policy, and the Soviets were rather busy on the Eastern Front.
And the producers made a great error in putting speeches by modern politicians over trhe end credits. Being against irresponsible mass immigration to your country does not make you a Nazi - in fact, it is obvious that if governments do this, tensions rise and extremism is more likely, Moreover, most anti-Semitism in Britain in recent years has come from the hard left, not the right.
But anyway, I was going to say this was the best film I have ever seen about Auschwitz or concentration camps until that final third of the film. SO Schindler;s List is still the best though very high budget. The producers of this film do brilliantly in making such an effective film - part financed and supported by Michael Douglas, I notice.
4 stars. Best film of this year so far.