Outline:
Following the 40th anniversary of the debut ofClaude Lanzmann’s landmark documentary, Shoah, the Jerusalem Cinemathequeis showcasing a celebration of the filmmaker and his creations from January 14-29.
Shoahwill be shown in two segments on separate nights. I watched it again last year at theBerlin International Film Festival, and its influence remains as strong as ever since it came out. If anything, it has become more powerful over time, with the focus on the words of those who experienced the Holocaust making their accounts more vivid than any historical footage could.
When we look at heaps of deceased individuals and emaciated survivors, we often see these people as numbers. However, each interviewee inShoah starts to reveal themselves in their own distinct manner in response to Lanzmann’s inquiries and his camera, their humanity fills the screen, intensifying the impact of their experiences.
What stands out most vividly from the movie are the individuals, including Simon Srebnik, one of only two people who survived the Chelmno extermination camp, where 400,000 Jews were killed, and where gas vans were initially employed. Srebnik was compelled to perform popular songs to amuse the Germans; Abraham Bomba, a barber who was captured on camera trimming a man’s hair in a Tel Aviv barbershop, shared his experience of cutting women’s hair in the gas chambers of the Treblinka death camp.
Equally unforgettable are the voices of local Poles, who were fully aware of the events taking place, and in certain instances, operated the trains that transported Jews to their demise, along with the Nazis who recall every detail of running the extermination apparatus.
Lanzmann’s “Shoah” to be shown in Jerusalem
Lanzmann’s brilliance lay in recognizing that the details constituted the narrative, that in the most profound way, it was impossible to honor the Holocaust without comprehending precisely what transpired. As the film unfolds, the magnitude of the devastation becomes increasingly clear and more terrifying.
Nothingness Was All I Had, by Guillame Ribot, is a fresh documentary that serves as a crucial complement toShoah, and highlights Lanzmann’s struggle to produce the film. Shot in a style that mirrors the original documentary, Ribot incorporates Lanzmann’s own words, drawn from his audio recordings and journals (which are narrated by Ribot), to detail the 12-year process of bringing Shoah to the screen, along with deleted scenes from the movie.
It’s a type of road film that tracks Lanzmann across various trips: in Germany, Poland, Israel, and the United States. “MakingShoahit was a long and challenging struggle,” Lanzmann states. “I wanted to capture it on film, but all I had was emptiness. The focus of Shoah is death itself… On certain nights, it felt like pointless agony, and I was prepared to quit. However, throughout those 12 years of effort, I constantly pushed myself to look unflinchingly at the dark sun of the Holocaust.
Understanding that the focus of the movie would be “death itself rather than survival,” he explored the recollections of those he interviewed. However, his attention to the specifics of the atrocities apparently did not appeal to the Israeli officials who initially funded the film, nor to American Jewish groups.
“Not a single American dollar supported the Shoah,” he remembered, adding that if the film’s message had been, “Never again, or to love each other,” he might have found it easier to secure funding. “I was a poor fundraiser,” he remarked.
At the conclusion of this powerful movie, Lanzmann states: “I have always been tormented by all those individuals who passed away in solitude, forsaken by everyone. I aimed to create this film to bring them back to life, and to kill them once more, so that we could die alongside them, and they wouldn’t face death alone.”
Lanzmann certainly succeeded in this, taking us as close as humanly possible to the victims during their final moments in Shoah. Ribot’s film demonstrates how he accomplished this achievement.
Two additional Lanzmann films focusing on the Holocaust are part of the tribute.A Guest from the Aliveis an interview from 1979 featuring Maurice Rossel, a Red Cross official in Nazi-occupied Berlin, who is now in his Swiss residence and refutes his involvement in the fabricated deception orchestrated by the Nazis, andThe Karski Report, an interview from 1978 featuring Jan Karski, a Polish messenger who alerted the Western world to the Nazis’ plans for extermination.
Two movies concerning Israel are also included in the tribute. The most intriguing among them is Lanzmann’s Israel,Why?, a 1973 movie that showcases a broad view of Israelis and their lifestyle between the 1967 Six Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War.Tsahal, a 1994 examination of the Israeli military, is an unusual failure for Lanzmann. It exceeds five hours and could have benefited from more careful editing. The interviews are meandering, and each idea is repeated excessively.