Shoah (film)
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This page is about the film by the name of Shoah. For other uses, see Shoah (disambiguation)
Shoah is a 1985
French documentary film
directed by Claude Lanzmann
about the Holocaust
(also known as the Shoah). The film primarily consists of interviews and visits to key Holocaust sites.
s were first used to exterminate Jews; the death camps of Treblinka
and Auschwitz-Birkenau
; and the Warsaw Ghetto
, with testimonies from survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators.
The sections on Treblinka include testimony from Abraham Bomba, who survived as a barber, Richard Glazar
, an inmate, and a rare interview with Franz Suchomel, an SS officer who worked at the camp who reveals intricate details of the camp's gas chamber. Suchomel apparently agreed to provide Lanzmann with some anonymous background details; Lanzmann instead secretly filmed his interview, with the help of assistants and a hidden camera. There is also an account from Henryk Gawkowski, who drove one of the trains while intoxicated with vodka. Gawkowski is portrayed on the photograph used on the poster.
Testimonies on Auschwitz are provided by Rudolf Vrba
, who escaped from the camp before the end of the war and Filip Müller
, who worked in an incinerator burning the bodies from the gassings. There are also accounts from various local villagers, who saw the trains heading daily to the camp and leaving empty; they quickly guessed the fate of those on board.
The only two Jews to survive Chelmno are interviewed: Simon Srebnik
, who was forced to sing military songs to amuse the Nazis and Mordechaï Podchlebnik
. There is also a secretly filmed interview with Franz Schalling, who was a guard.
The Warsaw ghetto is discussed toward the end of the film, and the conditions there are described by Jan Karski
, who worked for the Polish government-in-exile and Franz Grassler, a Nazi administrator who liaised with Jewish leaders. Memories from Jewish participants in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
conclude the documentary.
Lanzmann also interviews Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg
, who discusses the historical significance of Nazi propaganda against the European Jews and the Nazi invention of the Final Solution.
The complete text of the film was published in 1985.
Survivors are those who directly experienced the persecution and horror of the Holocaust, and survived to tell their story. All of the survivors that Lanzmann interviews are Jewish. Lanzmann uses these survivors to present a historical record. Many survivors give long, detached descriptions of the events that they witnessed. For example, in Part 4, we hear Filip Müller and Rudolf Vrba
describe the liquidation of the family camp at Auschwitz. Their testimonies form an historical narrative.
Other survivors tell of their own personal experiences of the Holocaust. Müller does not just describe the gassing of the prisoners from the family camp; he also talks about what the prisoners said to him, and describes the experience of going into the gas chamber himself. This testimony is a personal narrative. Lanzmann's survivors react emotionally to what they witnessed. Müller breaks down as he recalls the prisoners breaking into song while being forced into the gas chamber. The camera pulls in close, to capture every detail of his distress. Lanzmann also encourages his witnesses to act out their testimony.
In Part 3 Lanzmann interviews Abraham Bomba, a barber at Treblinka, while he cuts hair in a barber's shop. He breaks down while describing how a barber friend of his came across his wife while cutting hair outside the gas chamber. As the camera captures his anguish, Bomba's personal narrative is unspoken as well as spoken.
Bystanders are those who were present during the events of the Holocaust without directly being part of it. Some were peripherally involved while others were witnesses. All of the bystanders that Lanzmann interviews are Polish. Lanzmann procures personal narratives from these bystanders. He interviews many of them in the same way that he interviews the survivors.
In Part 1 he takes Pan Falborski, a Polish bystander, on a train to Treblinka while we watch his reaction. Lanzmann also drives him along the streets of Wlodawa
in a car while he talks about the Jews who used to live in the passing houses. In Part 2 Falborski talks about the gas vans and the mass graves. Karski returns and gives a detailed, emotional description of the ghetto.
Lanzmann interviews many bystanders in public groups. He does not ask for their names or for detailed testimony. Of many bystanders he asks what they saw or heard, and whether they knew what was going on in the death camps. Their answers reveal the complicated psychology of those who saw, heard, smelled—obviously knew what was going on, but were legitimately able to justify inaction by the threat of death. It becomes numbingly obvious over many interviews that everyone knew huge numbers of people were being systematically exterminated. Yet, as one Polish peasant puts it when asked if the non-Jewish Poles were afraid for the Jews, "Let me put it this way. When you cut your finger, does it hurt me?" This same Pole, who still lives near Treblinka, tells of how they would warn Jews in passing trains that they were to be killed, by making a slitting motion across his throat. This interview is riveting, as Lanzmann tries to clarify how often he made this gesture. He answers, "To all the Jews, in principle." The manner in which he demonstrates this gesture, and the futility of it in causing anything but more pain, leaves unanswered the question of whether he did this for his own amusement, or was trying to help in any legitimate way.
In Part 2 Lanzmann talks to a group of Polish women in Grabow; they reveal that they did not like the Jewish women who used to live in Grabow because they were rich and beautiful and did not have to work. Another bystander, a man, reveals that he is happy that the Jews are gone, but would rather they had gone to Israel voluntarily than be exterminated.
In an interview outside a Catholic church, with Simon Srebnik present, bystanders state the Holocaust in terms of justice for the biblical killing of Jesus by the Jews. Again, the image of this one survivor- one of only two to come out of Chelmno -surrounded by villagers who would now invoke the tired notion that antisemitism is a legitimate response to the killing of Jesus.... Mr. Srebnik maintains his composure admirably. It raises the question of how much has really changed.
Perpetrators are those who were directly involved in orchestrating the Holocaust. All of the perpetrators that Lanzmann interviews are German. From these perpetrators, Lanzmann establishes a historical narrative. They give detailed, detached accounts of the workings of the Holocaust.
In Part 2, Franz Schalling describes the workings of Chełmno where he served as a security guard. In Parts 1, 2 and 3, Franz Suchomel talks about the workings of Treblinka where he was an SS officer. In Part 3, Walter Stier, a former Nazi bureaucrat, describes the workings of the railways. Sometimes their testimony becomes more personal. Lanzmann is also concerned with establishing their knowledge of the Holocaust. Several of his perpetrators claim ignorance of the 'final solution': Suchomel states he did not know about extermination at Treblinka until he arrived there, Stier insists he was far too busy managing railroad traffic to notice his trains were transporting Jews to their deaths.
Some subjects fail to fit neatly into any of the these three categories, like the courier to the Polish Government in Exile, Jan Karski
. Karski, a Christian, sneaks into the Warsaw ghetto and then escapes to England to try to convince the Allied governments to intervene more strongly on behalf of the Jews, but fails in doing so.
Shoah is a 1985
1985 in film
-Events:* 3 December - Roger Moore steps down from the role of James Bond after twelve years and seven films. He is replaced by Timothy Dalton.* The Academy Award for Best Picture was won by Out Of Africa, while the highest grossing film was Back to the Future.* Bliss wins AFI Award for best Movie...
French documentary film
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...
directed by Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann
Claude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.-Biography:Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne...
about the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
(also known as the Shoah). The film primarily consists of interviews and visits to key Holocaust sites.
Synopsis
Although loosely structured, the film is concerned mainly with four topics: Chełmno, where gas vanGas van
The gas van or gas wagon was an extermination method devised by Nazi Germany to kill victims of the regime. It was also rumored that analog of such device was used by the Soviet Union on an experimental basis during the Great Purge-Nazi Germany:...
s were first used to exterminate Jews; the death camps of Treblinka
Treblinka extermination camp
Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II near the village of Treblinka in the modern-day Masovian Voivodeship of Poland. The camp, which was constructed as part of Operation Reinhard, operated between and ,. During this time, approximately 850,000 men, women...
and Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz concentration camp
Concentration camp Auschwitz was a network of Nazi concentration and extermination camps built and operated by the Third Reich in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany during World War II...
; and the Warsaw Ghetto
Warsaw Ghetto
The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of all Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe during World War II. It was established in the Polish capital between October and November 15, 1940, in the territory of General Government of the German-occupied Poland, with over 400,000 Jews from the vicinity...
, with testimonies from survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators.
The sections on Treblinka include testimony from Abraham Bomba, who survived as a barber, Richard Glazar
Richard Glazar
Richard Glazar was a Czech Jew who lived through World War II, one of only a few survivors of the Treblinka death camp. He portrayed the horror of Treblinka to the world in his book Trap with a Green Fence.-Family:Glazar was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia...
, an inmate, and a rare interview with Franz Suchomel, an SS officer who worked at the camp who reveals intricate details of the camp's gas chamber. Suchomel apparently agreed to provide Lanzmann with some anonymous background details; Lanzmann instead secretly filmed his interview, with the help of assistants and a hidden camera. There is also an account from Henryk Gawkowski, who drove one of the trains while intoxicated with vodka. Gawkowski is portrayed on the photograph used on the poster.
Testimonies on Auschwitz are provided by Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba, born Walter Rosenberg was a Slovak-Canadian professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, who came to public attention during the Second World War when, in April 1944, he escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland with the first...
, who escaped from the camp before the end of the war and Filip Müller
Filip Müller
Filip Müller was one of very few Sonderkommandos to have survived Auschwitz, the largest Nazi German extermination camp....
, who worked in an incinerator burning the bodies from the gassings. There are also accounts from various local villagers, who saw the trains heading daily to the camp and leaving empty; they quickly guessed the fate of those on board.
The only two Jews to survive Chelmno are interviewed: Simon Srebnik
Simon Srebnik
Simon Srebnik was a Polish Jew who was one of only two or three survivors of the Nazi death camp known as Chełmno extermination camp.-Camp life:...
, who was forced to sing military songs to amuse the Nazis and Mordechaï Podchlebnik
Mordechaï Podchlebnik
Mordechaï Podchlebnik was a survivor of the Chełmno extermination camp. He was interviewed for the documentary film Shoah. He managed to survive the war, and in 1961 gave testimony at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. He is sometimes known by the translation of his name, Michal.-References:...
. There is also a secretly filmed interview with Franz Schalling, who was a guard.
The Warsaw ghetto is discussed toward the end of the film, and the conditions there are described by Jan Karski
Jan Karski
Jan Karski was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later scholar at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and...
, who worked for the Polish government-in-exile and Franz Grassler, a Nazi administrator who liaised with Jewish leaders. Memories from Jewish participants in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
conclude the documentary.
Lanzmann also interviews Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg
Raul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
, who discusses the historical significance of Nazi propaganda against the European Jews and the Nazi invention of the Final Solution.
The complete text of the film was published in 1985.
Production
Shoah took eleven years to make, beginning in 1974. The first six years of production were devoted to the recording of interviews with the individuals that appear in the film, which were conducted in 14 different countries. After the shooting had been completed, editing for the film continued for five years where it was cut from 350 hours of raw footage down to the 9 hours of the final version.Archetypes in Shoah
Shoah consists of many hours of interviews with witnesses of the Holocaust. Lanzmann's style of interviewing, and his selection of interview footage divides his witnesses into three distinct archetypes: survivor, bystander and perpetrator. Lanzmann makes an effort to represent each archetype quite differently.Survivors are those who directly experienced the persecution and horror of the Holocaust, and survived to tell their story. All of the survivors that Lanzmann interviews are Jewish. Lanzmann uses these survivors to present a historical record. Many survivors give long, detached descriptions of the events that they witnessed. For example, in Part 4, we hear Filip Müller and Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf Vrba
Rudolf "Rudi" Vrba, born Walter Rosenberg was a Slovak-Canadian professor of pharmacology at the University of British Columbia, who came to public attention during the Second World War when, in April 1944, he escaped from the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland with the first...
describe the liquidation of the family camp at Auschwitz. Their testimonies form an historical narrative.
Other survivors tell of their own personal experiences of the Holocaust. Müller does not just describe the gassing of the prisoners from the family camp; he also talks about what the prisoners said to him, and describes the experience of going into the gas chamber himself. This testimony is a personal narrative. Lanzmann's survivors react emotionally to what they witnessed. Müller breaks down as he recalls the prisoners breaking into song while being forced into the gas chamber. The camera pulls in close, to capture every detail of his distress. Lanzmann also encourages his witnesses to act out their testimony.
In Part 3 Lanzmann interviews Abraham Bomba, a barber at Treblinka, while he cuts hair in a barber's shop. He breaks down while describing how a barber friend of his came across his wife while cutting hair outside the gas chamber. As the camera captures his anguish, Bomba's personal narrative is unspoken as well as spoken.
Bystanders are those who were present during the events of the Holocaust without directly being part of it. Some were peripherally involved while others were witnesses. All of the bystanders that Lanzmann interviews are Polish. Lanzmann procures personal narratives from these bystanders. He interviews many of them in the same way that he interviews the survivors.
In Part 1 he takes Pan Falborski, a Polish bystander, on a train to Treblinka while we watch his reaction. Lanzmann also drives him along the streets of Wlodawa
Wlodawa
Włodawa is a town in eastern Poland on the Bug River, close to the borders with Belarus and Ukraine. It has 14,800 inhabitants . Situated in the Lublin Voivodeship...
in a car while he talks about the Jews who used to live in the passing houses. In Part 2 Falborski talks about the gas vans and the mass graves. Karski returns and gives a detailed, emotional description of the ghetto.
Lanzmann interviews many bystanders in public groups. He does not ask for their names or for detailed testimony. Of many bystanders he asks what they saw or heard, and whether they knew what was going on in the death camps. Their answers reveal the complicated psychology of those who saw, heard, smelled—obviously knew what was going on, but were legitimately able to justify inaction by the threat of death. It becomes numbingly obvious over many interviews that everyone knew huge numbers of people were being systematically exterminated. Yet, as one Polish peasant puts it when asked if the non-Jewish Poles were afraid for the Jews, "Let me put it this way. When you cut your finger, does it hurt me?" This same Pole, who still lives near Treblinka, tells of how they would warn Jews in passing trains that they were to be killed, by making a slitting motion across his throat. This interview is riveting, as Lanzmann tries to clarify how often he made this gesture. He answers, "To all the Jews, in principle." The manner in which he demonstrates this gesture, and the futility of it in causing anything but more pain, leaves unanswered the question of whether he did this for his own amusement, or was trying to help in any legitimate way.
In Part 2 Lanzmann talks to a group of Polish women in Grabow; they reveal that they did not like the Jewish women who used to live in Grabow because they were rich and beautiful and did not have to work. Another bystander, a man, reveals that he is happy that the Jews are gone, but would rather they had gone to Israel voluntarily than be exterminated.
In an interview outside a Catholic church, with Simon Srebnik present, bystanders state the Holocaust in terms of justice for the biblical killing of Jesus by the Jews. Again, the image of this one survivor- one of only two to come out of Chelmno -surrounded by villagers who would now invoke the tired notion that antisemitism is a legitimate response to the killing of Jesus.... Mr. Srebnik maintains his composure admirably. It raises the question of how much has really changed.
Perpetrators are those who were directly involved in orchestrating the Holocaust. All of the perpetrators that Lanzmann interviews are German. From these perpetrators, Lanzmann establishes a historical narrative. They give detailed, detached accounts of the workings of the Holocaust.
In Part 2, Franz Schalling describes the workings of Chełmno where he served as a security guard. In Parts 1, 2 and 3, Franz Suchomel talks about the workings of Treblinka where he was an SS officer. In Part 3, Walter Stier, a former Nazi bureaucrat, describes the workings of the railways. Sometimes their testimony becomes more personal. Lanzmann is also concerned with establishing their knowledge of the Holocaust. Several of his perpetrators claim ignorance of the 'final solution': Suchomel states he did not know about extermination at Treblinka until he arrived there, Stier insists he was far too busy managing railroad traffic to notice his trains were transporting Jews to their deaths.
Some subjects fail to fit neatly into any of the these three categories, like the courier to the Polish Government in Exile, Jan Karski
Jan Karski
Jan Karski was a Polish World War II resistance movement fighter and later scholar at Georgetown University. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish government in exile and the Western Allies on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, and...
. Karski, a Christian, sneaks into the Warsaw ghetto and then escapes to England to try to convince the Allied governments to intervene more strongly on behalf of the Jews, but fails in doing so.
See also
- Felix FrankfurterFelix FrankfurterFelix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born into a Jewish family on November 15, 1882, in Vienna, Austria, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Europe. He was the third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter...
- List of Holocaust films
- List of longest films by running time
External links
- Shoah at MetacriticMetacriticMetacritic.com is a website that collates reviews of music albums, games, movies, TV shows and DVDs. For each product, a numerical score from each review is obtained and the total is averaged. An excerpt of each review is provided along with a hyperlink to the source. Three colour codes of Green,...
- SHOAH - Claude Lanzmann's revised 2007 edition
- Ziva Postec - Lanzmann's Editor of Shoah
- http://resources.ushmm.org/film/search/simple_search.php?Query=lanzmann Extracts from Shoah footage