Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust : the Complete Text of the Film

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Pantheon Books, 1985 - History - 200 pages
The complete text of Claude Lanzmann's film "Shoah". This nine-and-a-half-hour film was the result of years of research and the result is an oral history of the Holocaust that brings together a full range of witnesses: the SS officers who served in the death camps; the Polish villagers who tilled their fields within yards of the crematoriums; the Germans who resettled occupied Poland, moving into the houses whose Jewish owners had been sent to their death; the state employees who sold Jews half-fare excursion tickets to the camps- one way; and others. Then there are the survivors themselves: a Polish barber who cut the hair of women he knew were to die in the next few minutes; a thirteen-year-old boy who was to work in the death camp's "special squad"; the Pole who was taken into the Warsaw ghetto so that he could report to the outside world what he had seen; a woman who lived in hiding in Berlin for most of the war, in anguish at the fate of her people and her own escape from it. The film shows no archival footage, it is through the words themselves that the imagination recreated the world described in these words- a way of getting at the truth that is far more shocking than the depiction of actual images. Shoah is unforgettable, and it is destined to become a landmark of film and history. -- Publisher description.

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Contents

Section 1
9
Section 2
16
Section 3
37
Copyright

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About the author (1985)

Claude Lanzmann was born in Paris, France on November 27, 1925. At the age of 18, he joined the communist resistance during the occupation of France and smuggled small arms under the eyes of the Gestapo in Clermont-Ferrand. After the war, he studied philosophy at the University of Tübingen. He taught briefly at the Free University of Berlin. As a journalist, he covered East Germany for Le Monde and contributed to the journal Les Temps Modernes, eventually becoming the editor in chief for many years. He was a film director. His films included Why Israel, Shoah, Tsahal, Le Rapport Karski, Le Dernier des Injustes, Napalm, and Shoah: Les Quatre Soeurs. His autobiography, The Patagonian Hare, was published in 2009. He was made a Commandeur of the Légion d'Honneur in 2006 and promoted to Grand Officier in 2011. He died on July 5, 2018 at the age of 92.

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