Claude Lanzmann

Claude Lanzmann (right) in 2008

Shoah film poster

Claude Lanzmann (born 1925 in Paris) is a French filmmaker and professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland.^[1]

Biography

Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne.^[2] Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed the 1960 antiwar petition Manifesto of the 121.^[3]

Lanzmann's most renowned work is the nine-and-a-half hour documentary film Shoah (1985), which is an oral history of the Holocaust, and is broadly considered to be the foremost film on the subject. Of particular note is that Shoah is made without the use of any historical footage, and only utilizes first-person testimony from Jewish, Polish, and German individuals, and contemporary footage of several Holocaust-related sites.

Lanzmann persuaded Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski to be a witness in Shoah by calling forth—once again—his historical responsibility. Simultaneously, the complete text appeared in English translation, with introductions by Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir, providing multiple keys to the philosophical and linguistic preoccupations of the producers. It was also through Shoah that many viewers were first introduced to the work of American Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg.

Lanzmann has 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. ^[4]

Lanzmann is chief editor of the journal Les Temps Modernes, which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. In 2009, Lanzmann published his memoirs under the title "Le lièvre de Patagonie" (The Patagonian Hare). On July 14, 2011, he received the Legion of Honor.^[5]

Filmography

• Israel, Why (Pourquoi Israel) (1974)
• Shoah (1985)
• Tsahal (1994)
• A Visitor from the Living (1997)
• Sobibor, Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m (2001)
• The Karski Report (2010)

Bibliography

• “From the Holocaust to the Holocaust”. Telos 41 (Fall 1979). New York: Telos Press.
• Lanzmann, Claude (1985), Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust;The Complete Text of the Film, New York: Random House

References

1. ^ See: Claude Lanzmann Faculty profile at European Graduate School
2. ^ Lawrence D. Kritzman, Brian J. Reilly, Malcolm DeBevoise. The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought. Entry Claude Lanzmann.
3. ^ Israel's enemies take no prisoners. Tageszeitung. July 6, 2009.
4. ^ Rosenbaum, Ron (1999). "Claude Lanzmann and the War Against the Question Why". Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil. HarperCollins. ISBN 0-679-43151-9. 
5. ^ 'La promotion du 14 juillet de la Légion d'honneur', in Le Figaro, 14/07/2011 [1]

External links

• 'Claude Lanzmann on why Holocaust documentary Shoah still matters', Stuart Jeffries, The Guardian, 9 June 2011

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Name	Lanzmann, Claude
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Date of birth	1925
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