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HOLOCAUST AND THE MOVING IMAGERepresentations in Film and Television Since 1933

edited by Toby Haggith & foanna Newman

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WALLFLOWER PRESS

Note

Ì The presence ofthe shoe has relnained a mystery. At the time I queried it with the caretaker ofBirkenau,and he too was totally baffled. The fact that it was pitch-black inside this ablution block may have causedthe relic to escape detection since the camp,s liberation in 1945. 16 Some reflections on Claude Lanzmanrt's approach

to the examination of the Holocaust

Raye Farr

shoøh (1985) has been lauded as 'the film event of the century' (Paul Attanasío, wash-

inrgton Post),and'arnong the greatest films ever rnade' (Gene Siskel, chicago Tribune)'In

the roughly twenty years since claude Lanzmanns soul-shattering film appeared, much

that has been written ancl said about it has focused on the prescriptions and proscrip-

ilons implicltly embodied in its form and content. We are now able to move beyond the

boundaries of Shoah'snine-and-a-half edited hours to look at the wider canvas ofLanz-

manns work on the Holocaust and at the scope of what he captured in the estimated

threehundredhoursoffootageheshotfortheprojectbetween:r974and]1985'|Lanzmann has created twã further films, each based on an interview that he chose

not to use in shoah: (Jn viyant qui passe: Auschwitz 1943, Theresienstadt 1944 (A visitor'j** the Living,1997) and Sobibor, These fihns work

powerfully on1h.i. own' and also g rspective on what

Lanzmann pursued with his camer ng the places and-

the people ihat could still evoke memories different stages of

th. i.oå... of annihilatio n. Shoah,however, is the main subject of this chapter and our

point of departure here.

The pløce ønd the wotd

Shoah shaltered the calm edifrce of traditional documentary approaches to history' The

working title of the film was 'Le Lieu et Ia parole: The Place and the word'; Lanzmann's

.u-..uio.k and probing questions lead hìs viewers to places and words that few have

encountered before, unJthut perhaps no one has encountered in such mass and jux-

taposition. Layer upon luy., oi'traces of traces'2 carry us on rivers of time, forgetful-

ness and memory, on;o.r.rrey, that seem without end but end with ruthless flnalit¡journeys along train tiacks siretching out in diminishing perspective, carrying their

freight'to end f,oints that immeasu.ubly di-lttithed our humanity and the legacy of the

twentieth centurY.For those unfamiliar with shoah and his two subsequent, closely related films' it

may be helpful briefly to outline Lanzmann's method. Starkly beautiful landscapes and

h.r,,'"n revelations of cruel facts comprise Lanzmann's film transport for the journey'

On this journey he eschews the familiar tools and devices that have become staple in-

gredienís of non-fiction films about the HolocaustÑot only does he reject archive frlm

^-l ^t ^+nara-hc hc rlsn discards voiceover narration.lFor Lanzmann, any attempt to

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impose a linear narrative or.r the event imrnediately entails reduction and falsification- in short, misrepresentation. Insteacl, the structure of the film is circular; images andwords circle obsessively around the sites of clestruction, moving ever closer to an elu-sive centre. Extra-diegetic music is replaced by silence and, on occasion, by songs sungby the witnesses. For Lanzmann, there can be no shying away from the ultimate goal:annihilation. Shohh in Hebrew.

Is Shooh a documentary?

Shoah has also been called 'the greatest documentary about contemporary historyever made, bar none, and by far the greatest fllm I've ever seen made about the Holo-caust'.3 Yet Lanzmann himself does not consider Shoah to be a documéntary. Therewas considerable discussion during the symposium about the nature and definitionof documentary film. Lanzmann would doubtless have been reluctant, in terms of hisanticipated appearance at this event, to appear on a programme billed as dealing withdocumentaries in a slot immediately following the Woild at War panel. The first time Imet Lanzmann, in a small elevator in the Holocaust Museum in Washington, I referredto his film as a documentary. His reaction was memorable; I won't make that mistakea second time.

Why this vigorous rejection of such a label? This is how Lanzmann himself deflnesthe film, in the book A u sujet de Shoah:'Shoah is not strictly a documentary film in thatscenes in it are staged and rehearsed. The role of mise-en-scène inthe film is indeed cru-cialla When pressed for an alternative label, Lanzmann invariably refers to the film as 'afrction of the reall5 How do we make sense of this provocative formulation? Lanzmanncontends that it is ethical to fictionalise the reality of the Holocaust, rather than thereverse, for to attempt to authenticate a fiction, in the manner of Spielberg for example,is to breach the'circle of flames'which surrounds the event.6 InShoah, by contrast, the

_' ,production of fiction becomes the condition of possibility for authentic testimony. \^ Close attention to the images sheds light on this procedure. One of the most hauirt-ing sequences of the film occurs towards the end of the testimony of the survivor Abra-ham Bomba, a barber by training, whose job it was in the Treblinka Sonderkommando tocut the hair of the men, women and children about to enter the gas chamber. Lanzmanndecides to interview Bomba in a barber's shop in Tel Aviv, placing a pair of scissors inhis hands and a customer in front of him. The result, in the fllmmakert words, is 'a de-finitive cinematic scene . . . Perfect mise-en-scènel7 But Lanzmann's staging of this sceneundermines its own fiction; Bomba, urged by his questioner to re-enact the physicalactions he performed under duress in the camp, eventually finds himself unable to go

, on, and his hitherto coherent testimony breaks down under the pressure of re-surfacing'memories. For Lanzmann,(it is in this moment that the truth is embodiedis J

Despite Lanzmann's pròtestations to the contrar¡ there are of course good rea-sons why Shoah is often considered to be a documentary. To the film scholars whohave spent the last twenty years debunking the conceit that documentary is a truthfulendeavour, these elements of art, artiflce and fiction would not disqualify Shoah as adocumentary. After all, they are not unrelated to what an earlier generation of Grier-son-inspired British documentarists called 'the creative treatment of actuality'.e Evenwifhnrrf thc fraditional elcmcnfs of errhiwe film nhnfnorqnhc 'fclLino hcad'evncrfs

\j,linear narrative, the fllm is stil would frtry television category ofthe'fa aracteris-

tual'were once, for British and y makers'

cardinal rules that defined documentary production: no script, no sets, a willingness to

let your witnesses or'real people' dictate the content ancl flow, and flnally, real historical

subject matter.Definitions and categorisations aside, Lanzmanns singular approach to the atrocity

sheds fresh light on ong-oi.tg debates about whether there is or can be a 'pure' forrn ofapproach to thls subjeci. It-seerns evident that there are many different forms, rather

thån on. pure form, and that trouble ensues when we attempt to define what the purest

approach might be. Moreover, for all the ethical ancl aesthetic principles underpinning

i*r-.nrr', ãpp.ou.h, it is highly questionable whether a single normative formula

could be mair]tàined in the face of so complex and idiosyncratic a historical phenom-

enon as the Holocaust, not to mention its legacies: survivors and their memories, survi-

vors' chilclren ancl their own psychic scars, the guilt of survivorship, the immeasurable

void left by those who Perished.Some survivors and scholars of the Holocaust believe that the Holocaust is such an

irlmense, complex and profound subject that it is simply beyond representation. For

Elie Wiesel, even Lanrmãnn's epic cannot adequately convey the event in its totality:

There are really neither words nor means to caPtule the totality of the event ' ' ' In spite of

the testimonies, memoirs and superhuman efforts of survivors, we will never know how

Auschwitz and Treblinka were possible - for the killers as well as the victims'r0

In my view, this position is not at odds with the position articulated by Lanzmann inshoah.Indeed, this impossibility of representation is Lanzmanns point of departure,

and the reason for his áecision to make a film in the present, about the present'

Is the essence of the Holocaust 'unspeakable', as is so often claimed? If, as many

suggest, the Holocaust created a unique void and disjuncture within human history

that can never be truthfully conveyed, tht n the most that each honest attempt - in

whichever medium - can aspire to áo is to peel back another layer of the scar-tissue ofmemory, fact and documenlation that has accumulated around the event, in order to

bring us a little closer to its core.L"anzmann gives this'unspeakable' killing a name: Shoah. Isaiah 56: 5 ('I will give

thee an everlasting Name') open's the frlm and is the heading of each chapter on the re-

cent DVD version of shoah. Lanzmann gives us the places and the words. He accumu-

lates perspectives, both human and environmental' He circles the locations and gathers

d.tuii.. tÀ. -.rltipl. languages of witnesses and interlocutor, mediated on-screen by in-

terpreters, reverberate withLeunittgs that simultaneously bridge and break the human

links in this history, raising further questions about what can and cannot be told' The

layering of nationaiities aná countries of origin and the placement and displacement of.it.r.rr-., across the globe weave a tapestry in dimensions that cannot be dissected: 'Itis a film of geograph¡ of topography.'r I

trlore päcilety, th.", håw-does Lanzmann approach the Holocaust and create his

extraordinary film? The special characteristics that distinguish Shoah from other filmsn- +ha crrhiprt mcrif some elrlcidation.

The øbsence of archival images

Lanzmann's refusal to illustrate or validate the testimonies in Shoah by means of ar-chive film and photographs is one of the most striking aspects of his approach, thoughit is not unique in films about the Holocaust. As contributions to this volume by PeterMorley and Orly Yadin show, a number of filmmakers have decided to reject the use ofarchive images, preferring - like Lanzmann - to place testimony at the heart of theirwork. Most had qualms about the way audiences might react to the unremitting vio-Ience and horror portrayed by so many archival images. But Lanzmann objects to suchimages on very different grounds. He points out that, strictly speaking, there is virtuallynothing to show of the procedure at the core of the annihilation: mass murder in thegas chambers. Most of the images that have entered into collective memory are, in animportant sense, peripheral to the event itself such as those recorded by Allied cam-eramen at the liberation or by Nazi filmmakers in the Warsaw ghetto for propagandapurposes. Such images, in Lanzmann's account, have little to tell us about death in thegas chambers, hence his decision to abandon the archive and create images of his own.'The point of departure for the film was', he explains, 'the disappearance of traces: noth-ing remains but a void, and it was necessary to make a film out of this void'.t2

Cømetawork, sound ønd spøce

Motion, silences and timeless images create a stream for our increased consciousnessof the fragments that remain, of human beings who entered the Holocaust, looked intothe black hole, stepped into the gas chambers, longed for death but were driven by theinstinct to survive and the burden of bearing witness. In place of archival film, photo-graphs or documents, the landscape of the Holocaust provides the visual and often thecognitive substance of Shoah. The camera takes the viewer on a journey back to thesites of the mass murders, allowing us time to stand, to look, to absorb and to try andfail to comprehend.

The camera technique is almost commonplace in its simplicity. The camera looks inour place, it points, walks, pans and tracks; the camera is the arm of the guide sweepingacross the land. There is no trickery; it simply leads us and shows us the locations. It isthe viewer who is invited to scour the landscapes for meaning, to contemplate the sitesof the crimes in the serenity of the present while attempting to decipher its relationshipto the traumatic past. Speaking about his film, Lanzmann refers to these mnemonic sitesas'non-lieux de mémoire' ('non-places of memory').13 Like the images themselveô, thisformulation articulates the double negation of presence and of memorywhich was the ul-timate aim of the Nazi project. What is arguably most striking in this film about genocideis the absence of any images of dead bodies. Instead, Lanzmann offers us images of ab-sence: of unpeopled spaces, bodiless cemeteries, empty tombs, of traces under erasure.

Accompanying us on this journey to and through the 'non-lieux de mémoire' arethe timeless sounds of local birds, of trains - always the trains - and of the slow rh¡h-mic clopping of horses' hooves. Insistently linking past and present, the sounds of thetrains and the horses produce a hypnotic and soothing sense of continuing forwardmotion that invites us to join others on their journe¡ to venture with them towards theunknown. the unspoken. the unimaeinable - that which so manv have tried to forget.

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Testimony ond Lanzmønn's encounters with witnesses

Lanzmann's camerawork, the film's length, and the editor's art also invite us to search thefaces of those he asks to bear witness, encouraging us to weigh their words and watchtheir eyes. The eyes that have seen what we think we want to know are not so clear aboutthe matter of re-living the past. Lanzmann has described how he sought to re-animate,to reincarnate the processes of extermination through testimony. But the witnesses' re-lationships to Lanzmann's endeavour are continually shifting, as is rçflected in theirfacial expressions, their words and their silences. Can one uncover what lies beneath thestones of Treblinka? Should we? Must we? Such are the implicit questions that inflect thevarious forms of resistance the witnesses mount against Lanzmannt enquiries.

In a seminal essay entitled'In the Era of Testimony', Shoshana Felman offers an elo-quent re-readingof Shoøh as a reflection on the meanings and functions of testimony.Felman argues that Lanzmann's frlm explores and redefrnes the conflicted relationshipsbetween testimon¡ history and art. Cruciall¡ she asserts that bearing witness to theHolocaust is at once necessary and impossible, a paradox which is central to Shoah:

equally a frlm about silence, about the loss of voice, about that to which we can neverbear adequate witness.

Vo i il, ømne si ø, silenc e

I would like to focus on a sequence from (Jn vivant qui passe, a film about the Interna-tional Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) inspection of the camp at Theresienstadt, orTerezín, in |une 1944. With the help of his accomplished editor, the late Sabine Mamou,Lanzmann created Un viyant qui passe from footage of an interview in 1979 with thehead of the ICRC delegation, Dr Maurice Rossel. A Swiss citizen whose main task wasto check on the conditions in the POW camps, Rossel visited Auschwitz in 1943 wherehe had a polite conversation with the camp commandant, whom he thought was quitea gentleman. Rossel then headed the ICRC delegation to Theresienstadt which, as is de-scribed elsewhere in this volume, had been tidied and elaborately'beautified' in prepa-ration for their long-scheduled visit.

lhe film's title is a reference to Rossel's perception of the inmates' view of him as

he walked through the camp: 'a visitor from the livingi Indeed, the film is structuredaround a series of gazes; we, the viewers, watch Lanzmann watching Rossel in his arm-chair describing the prisoners watching him at the time of his visit: 'Only their eyes

were still alive.' Lanzmannt suspicious, critical gaze is thus the lens through which weview Rossel as he exhales cigar smoke and attempts to justify his failure to take actionat the time. To paraphrase: I would have done nothing differently. What could I reportother than what I saw? Of course it was a sham. But why did none of the prisoners dareto say so in my presence? Or to slip me a note?

Many other remarkable and revealing interviews recorded Ot t""1ï::_i, i:: il:(

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unique collection that I think many willThere will eventually be an opportunityas well as the unused r"ï'"ïlT:,ï.ruding

6, among which are FilipI was not touched for th

Benjamin Murmelstein, who was part of the /ude74 camera rolls, ten minutes each. There are alsoand 17 short interviews. So there is an extraordin

ill gradually be accputting the pieces

magnetic tracks, sometim.. r.#' ;:; ï:Ï;"new film copies that are theity the remarkab,. *-"*.:.ï:i;::".:,:ï:iï1î;ï;.i:::#ïiîî:::L::ï."ï..i::ïï:process ofthe attempted annihilation ofEurope,s Jews.C..Lanzmann (1990) Au sujet de Shoah, Ie flm de ClaudtBelin, 2g5.

,v. 6c ot,uut,, ,e I,m ae chude Lanzmawr. paris: ouvrage collectif, éditionsM. Ophuls (1985) .Closely

Watched Trainsl American Film, IlNovember t985, 18.Lanzmann 1990: lIbid.,30l.

*.iiïïii:' 'Holocauste' la représentation impossiblel Le Monde(supplémenr Arts-Spectacres), 3

'Parler pour les mofis,, Le Monde des débats,May 2000, 15.Lanzmann 1990:29g.A definition ofdocumentary firm attributed to fohn Grierson hv Fn.o,*r, u^_r-_ i_- r .the I 946 edited votu-" or''ítirrg, by Grierson, Griersonor

ton of Forsyth Hardy in his introáuction toCollins, I L

,q'õo u/ s¡rs¡ron, \rrrerson on Documentary, Forsyth Hardy (ed.), London:

I The United States Holor

;:mlx* i*iifuiÏ:.,',".,m ïx.:: :: ",',1iîili;:ïä:ï::

:j îk:many years of edíting produced ,n. ";;._;;i;;..,i:;1iï.ï:.ïïr*:::îî,ïiî.î.Jri¡66 HoLoc.lrrsr

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i: :;#::jï? A survivor Remembers orher survivors of the Shoaht New york?rrn¿s, 3 November

12 Ibid.,295.13 lbid.,280_92.t4 S. Felman (1990) A läge du témoignage,, in Lanzman n 1990:77_9.ts N' Ascherson (rgg0)'La controverse autour de shoah,inlanzmann rgg0:235.

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