Claude Lanzmann

Template:Infobox person Claude Lanzmann (Template:IPA; 27 November 1925 – 5 July 2018) was a French filmmaker, best known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985), which consists of nine and a half hours of oral testimony from Holocaust survivors, without historical footage. He is also known for his 2017 documentary film Napalm, about a love affair he had with a North Korean nurse whilst visiting North Korea in 1958, several years after the Korean War.

In addition to filmmaking, Lanzmann had also been the chief editor of Les Temps Modernes, a French literary magazine.

Early life

Lanzmann was born on 27 November 1925 in Bois-Colombes, Hauts-de-Seine département in France, the son of Paulette (Template:Nee) and Armand Lanzmann.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His family was Jewish, and had immigrated to France from the Russian Empire.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He was the brother of writer Jacques Lanzmann. Lanzmann attended the Template:Interlanguage link in Clermont-Ferrand.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref> While his family disguised their identity and went into hiding during World War II,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> he joined the French resistance at the age of 17, along with his father and brother, and fought in Auvergne.<ref name=":0" /> Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed the 1960 antiwar petition Manifesto of the 121.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Career

File:President Nasser-Sagan-Sartre.jpg

Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser meeting Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Lanzmann (first from left) in Cairo, 1967

Lanzmann was the chief editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes, founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and lecturer at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 2009 he published his memoirs under the title Le lièvre de Patagonie ("The Patagonian Hare").<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Shoah

Template:Main Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah (1985), is a nine-and-a-half-hour oral history of the Holocaust. Shoah is made without the use of any historical footage, and uses only first-person testimony from perpetrators and victims, and contemporary footage of Holocaust-related sites. Interviewees include the Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski and the American Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg. When the film was released, the director also published the complete text, including in English translation, with introductions by Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir.

Lanzmann disagreed, sometimes angrily, with attempts to understand the why of Hitler, stating that the evil of Hitler cannot or should not be explained and that to do so is immoral and an obscenity.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Lanzmann also oftentimes pushed his subjects to extreme emotional limits to bring out the most authentic reactions for his audience. The interview with barber Abraham Bomba is an epitome of a Claude Lanzmann interview.<ref name=":5">Template:Cite web</ref>

A compilation, Shoah: Unseen Interviews, was released in 2012, which included interviews filmed at the time of the original production but that never made it into the film.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On 4 July 2018, his last work, Les Quatre Soeurs (Shoah: Four Sisters) was released, featuring testimonials from four Holocaust survivors not included in his Shoah. Lanzmann died the following day.<ref name=":2">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":3">Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life

Lanzmann was part of a leftist delegation which visited North Korea in 1958. Toward the end of the visit, he fell in love with a local nurse and had an illicit love affair, which was discovered by the authorities. Never forgetting the romance, he made a 2017 documentary entitled Napalm, as the nurse bore scars from American bombings during the Korean War.

From 1952 to 1959, he lived with Simone de Beauvoir.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre.<ref name=":1">Template:Cite journal</ref> He later married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer.<ref name=":1" /> He divorced a second time, and was the father of Angélique Lanzmann and Félix Lanzmann.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Claude Lanzmann died on 5 July 2018 at his Paris home, after having been ill for several days. He was 92.<ref name=":2" /><ref name=":3" />

Honours

• Resistance Medal with rosette
• Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit
• 2010 Welt-Literaturpreis<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2011 Honorary Doctorate from the University of Lucerne<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2011 Grand Officer of the Legion of Honor<ref name="loh">Template:Cite web</ref>
• At the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013, Lanzmann was awarded with the Honorary Golden Bear.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Selected works

Filmography

• Pourquoi Israël (1973)
• Shoah (1985)
• Tsahal (1994)
• Template:Interlanguage link (1997)
• Sobibor, 14 October 1943, 4 p.m. (2001)
• Lights and Shadows (2008)
• The Karski Report (2010)
• The Last of the Unjust (2013) about Benjamin Murmelstein, Elder of Theresienstadt
• Napalm (2017)
• Shoah: Four Sisters (2017)

As subject

• Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah (2015) a documentary about Lanzmann, directed by Adam Benzine

Books

• Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust : The Complete Text of the Film. Pantheon Books, New York 1985, Template:ISBN
• The Patagonian Hare: A Memoir (translated by Frank Wynne). London: Atlantic Books, 2012, Template:ISBN; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York 2012, Template:ISBN
• La Tombe du divin plongeur. Gallimard, Paris 2012 Template:ISBN

Further reading

• Template:IMDb name
• Jeffries, Stuart. 'Claude Lanzmann on why Holocaust documentary Shoah still matters', The Guardian, 9 June 2011.
• Lanzmann, Claude. "From the Holocaust to the Holocaust", Telos, 42, 21 December 1979, 137–143 Template:Doi
• 'Witness to History: Claude Lanzmann's Journey to Shoah, Weekly Standard, 8 October 2012.
• "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection", Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (video excerpts and transcripts of all interviews for Shoah, including outtakes).
• Galster, Ingrid (2011). "'Eine große Qualität meines Buches ist seine Ehrlichkeit.' Postscriptum zu der Debatte um die Autobiographie Claude Lanzmanns", in Das Argument, 290, 72–83.
• Stefan Gandler: Claude Lanzmanns «Shoah» und meine Generation in Alemania. In: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. Vienna Wiesenthal Institute of Holocaust Studies, Wien, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2019, Template:ISSN, pp. 101–114, doi:10.23777/SN.0119/ESS SGAN01 (PDF; 351 kB).