Claude L. Holocaust testimony

Videotape testimony of Claude L., who was born in Paris, France in 1926. Mr. L. recalls his family's varied eastern European origins; his paternal grandfather's service and injuries in World War I, for which he received high military distinctions; his father's service and subsequent gassing; his mother's difficult childhood; his parents' arranged marriage; their separation when he was nine; his lack of a traditional Jewish upbringing; and awareness of his Judaism resulting from World War II. He describes his father's intuition that the German occupation would result in tragedy; his father's preparing him and his two younger siblings to hide; attending boarding school in Clermont Ferrand; organizing an underground movement in school; later learning his father was in the Resistance; joining the Maquis; fighting until the end of 1944; resuming his studies; his sense of the inability of people to grasp the scope of the Holocaust at that time; philosophy studies in Germany; a lectureship at the University of Berlin; and a trip to Israel as a journalist resulting in his film "Pourquoi Israel?" Mr. L. discusses his film "Shoah" - his motivations, obsessions, and experiences in the eleven years of its creation and the importance of Israel's existence to the Jewish people and to himself.

2 videocassettes (3/4" u-matic)