Born in Paris in 1925 to Jewish immigrant parents from Eastern Europe, Lanzmann lived in hiding with his family during WWII, before joining the French resistance at the young age of 17. After reading Jean Paul Sartre's Anti-Semite and Jew (On the Jewish Question), Lanzmann began to explore his Jewish identity. On the release of his first film Pourquoi Israël (Israel, Why), which documents the first twenty-five years of the State of Israel, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached Lanzmann, encouraging him to create a film about the Holocaust from the Jewish point of view. The result was the iconic Shoah, a nine-hour epic endeavor which has been translated into more than 20 languages.
Following Lanzmann's death in July 2018 at the age of 92, Liat Benhabib, Director of Yad Vashem's Visual Center, reflected upon his monumental achievements in the field of Holocaust cinema:
Claude Lanzmann is best known for his non-fiction work Shoah. What can you tell us about Shoah and the way it changed Holocaust remembrance?
Shoah marks a tectonic shift in Holocaust cinema, and has become one of the foremost Holocaust-relate films since its release in 1985. Rejecting archival footage, docu-drama, and all other genres, Lanzmann insisted on focusing on testimonies of Holocaust survivors who had been closest to the mass murder of their people. It is a work about the present, representing the way those who were there live with trauma and the memory of it. Holocaust films of all genres changed after Shoah, which also served to shine a spotlight on survivor testimony in an unprecedented scope and manner.
Why did Lanzmann prefer not to use archival footage?
Most archival images from the Holocaust period were produced by the Nazis for propaganda purposes, which Lanzmann refused to use. Other images were taken by the Allied forces – the Russians, the British, the Americans – at the liberation of the camps, which constitute post-Shoah documentation. Even if these images were a close representation of what had happened in the camps, they were taken after the event, similar to a re-enactment of a crime scene. This, too, was unacceptable to Lanzmann. In addition, they are very difficult images to look at, and Lanzmann did not want to allow the viewer to look away, even for a second, from the screen.
What problems did Lanzmann encounter while relying on testimonies to tell the story of the Holocaust?
Lanzmann recorded more than 200 interviews over a time span of 10 years – Jewish survivors, but also Righteous Among the Nations as well as Nazis. Lanzmann opened Shoah with the testimony of Simon Srebnik, who was a 13-year-old Jewish boy in the Sonderkommando [slave laborers who worked at the crematoria] in Chelmno. For several minutes we accompany Srebnik through his painful testimony, and then he explains that it is impossible to understand what happened: "No one can comprehend it, even I who was there, I cannot comprehend what really happened." Lanzmann then seemingly makes a deal with the viewers. "You will not understand," he is trying to tell us, "but we will tell you this story again and again, in depth, from several points of view, from several interlocutors, from several places, in order to even try to grasp some comprehension of how this was possible." This was an extraordinarily courageous cinematographic decision.
Is it even possible to build a reliable documentary film solely on testimonials?
The value of the testimony raises historical as well as psychological questions. How does memory work? Are memories objective? How can one reconstruct a story from personal experiences? How do you bring an individual to recount memories that are decades old without reviving a trauma? All these questions are reflected in Shoah. For example, in a scene with Abraham Bomba, the hairdresser from Holon, who had to shave women on their arrival at Auschwitz, Bomba struggles to testify, and begs Lanzmann to leave him in peace. The viewer sees his suffering: Lanzmann films all their exchanges. He reassures Bomba, and convinces him to speak. The viewer witnesses the entire psychological process the witness endures. These are very important data for the duty of memory.
Thirty years after its release, how does Shoah continue to influence Holocaust-related film?
Before Lanzmann, there were the archival films. With Lanzmann, there were the testimonial films. Today, we combine both. Young filmmakers are returning to archival footage that, thanks to the digital age, is increasingly available, but they also continue to use or refer to Lanzmann's Shoah, which remains a prime example in Holocaust testimonial documentation.
During September and October 2018, the Yad Vashem Visual Center, together with the Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Herzliya Cinematheques, ran a program of screenings of "Shoah" in full length in memory of Claude Lanzmann.
Yad Vashem's Visual Center is open from 9am to 5pm from Sunday to Thursday. It contains more than 11,000 films, referenced in the online catalog (in English).
This article originally appeared in the "Yad Vashem Jerusalem Magazine", volume 87.
![Claude Lanzmann signing the Yad Vashem "Declaration of Remembrance" at the ceremony marking 50 years since the establishment of Yad Vashem in 2003](https://www.yadvashem.org/sites/default/files/87-vis-lanzmann.jpg "Claude Lanzmann signing the Yad Vashem "Declaration of Remembrance" at the ceremony marking 50 years since the establishment of Yad Vashem in 2003")
