Yad Vashem
Creator(s)
- Claude Lanzmann (Director)
- Francine Kaufmann (Interpreter)
- Claude Lanzmann
- Bernard Aubouy (Sound Engineer)
- Corinna Coulmas (Interpreter)
- William Lubtchansky (Cinematographer)
Biographical History
Claude Lanzmann was born in Paris to a Jewish family that immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. He attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. His family went into hiding during World War II. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in the Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed a 1960 antiwar petition. From 1952 to 1959 he lived with Simone de Beauvoir. In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre. Later, he married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer, and then Dominique Petithory in 1995. He is the father of Angélique Lanzmann, born in 1950, and Félix Lanzmann (1993-2017). Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah, is widely regarded as the seminal film on the subject of the Holocaust. He began interviewing survivors, historians, witnesses, and perpetrators in 1973 and finished editing the film in 1985. In 2009, Lanzmann published his memoirs under the title "Le lièvre de Patagonie" (The Patagonian Hare). He was chief editor of the journal "Les Temps Modernes," which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, until his death on July 5, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/claude-lanzmann-changed-the-history-of-filmmaking-with-shoah
Francine Kaufmann was the French-Hebrew-French interpreter during the shooting of "Shoah" in Israel from September-October 1979.
From 1974 to 1984, Corinna Coulmas was the assistant director to Claude Lanzmann for his film "Shoah." She was born in Hamburg in 1948. She studied theology, philosophy, and sociology at the Sorbonne and Hebrew language and Jewish culture at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and INALCO in Paris. She now lives in France and publishes about the Five Senses. http://www.corinna-coulmas.eu/english/home-page.html
Scope and Content
University course-debate at Yad Vashem. Shalmi Barmore, the Director of Education, stands in front of an assembly of military students after showing a film. Barmore and several students debate the resistance actions of the Jews during the Holocaust. They show concern that the Holocaust could happen again, in any country, including Israel. A student asks why the world appeared to be uninterested in helping the Jews during the Holocaust. Another student responds that the world was aware of what was occurring, but due to the violent situation they could not do more than accept refugees. A student doesn't think remembering the Holocaust is of utmost importance, since they have personally experienced Jewish resistance during all the wars Israel has fought since World War II. Barmore asks the students if they find kinship towards Holocaust survivors, and if they consider themselves survivors as well. Most of the students respond that they personally do not consider themselves survivors of the Holocaust, but that their people are. Another students believes that the Zionist effort to create the State of Israel was independent of the Holocaust. At a request by Lanzmann, Barmore asks how many students are direct descendants of survivors. Lanzmann is surprised to see so many raised hands. Barmore asks whether they believe it is more likely for Jews to die a violent death in Israel, rather than in the Diaspora. The students respond that such a death in Israel would not be connected to their Jewishness, but a result of their poor relations with a neighboring county. FILM ID 3884 -- Yad Vashem 1-3 FILM ID 3885 -- Yad Vashem 4-5 FILM ID 3886 -- Yad Vashem 6A,6B,6D,6E,6C
Note(s)
Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years locating survivors, perpetrators, and eyewitnesses for his nine and a half hour film Shoah released in 1985. Without archival footage, Shoah weaves together extraordinary testimonies to render the step-by-step machinery of the destruction of European Jewry. Critics have called it "a masterpiece" and a "monument against forgetting." The Claude Lanzmann SHOAH Collection consists of roughly 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming.
Subjects
- ZIONISTS/ZIONISM
- REFUGEES
- RESISTERS/RESISTANCE
- SURVIVORS (JEWISH)
- SHOAH (FILM)
- UNIVERSITIES
- FILMS
- JEWS
- ISRAEL
Places
- Jerusalem, Israel
Genre
- Film
- Outtakes.