De Franse cineast is gisterochtend op 92-jarige leeftijd in Parijs overleden. De regisseur, schrijver, journalist en filosoof Jean-Claude Lanzmann was de maker van de onvergetelijke en monumentale documentaire “Shoah”.
Lanzmann werkte gedurende elf jaar aan de documentaire film over de Holocaust, die uitgebracht werd in 1985 en de hele internationale wereld beroerde.
“Claude Lanzmann, documentary maker of ‘SHOAH’, dies at 92” – JPost
Claude Lanzmann, one of the world’s foremost makers of documentary films about the Holocaust, has died.
Lanzmann, a French Jew who directed the canonical 1985 film “Shoah,” died at the age of 92 in Paris on Thursday, Le Monde reported.
Although he is best known for the 9-hour-long documentary bearing the Hebrew-language name of the Holocaust, his many projects “have changed the history of film making forever,” a Le Monde author wrote in an obituary for Lanzmann.
His works about the Holocaust were extensive and innovative in how they were among the first to tackle, for a wide audience, aspects of the genocide that had been scarcely discussed for their sensitivity, including the role and level of knowledge of locals in Eastern Europe about the mass murder of Jews in their countries. He also dealt with the sensitive and divisive subject of Jews working in the service of the Nazis in the framework of the annihilation.
Lanzmann, who in 2011 received the French Legion of Honor, the country’s highest distinction of merit, had two children, one of whom, Felix, died last year of cancer at the age of 23. Lanzmann was deeply affected by Felix’s death, Le Monde wrote.
Parallel to his film making career, Lanzmann was also an author and frequent contributor of essays to mainstream publications in France and around the world. In 2012, he published a biography titled “The Patagonian Hare,” which covers a range of subjects in which Lanzmann had been involved, including human rights violations in North Korea and the fate of Holocaust survivors who had been maimed in medical experiments.
One of Lanzmann’s most recent and profound cinematic works was released in 2013. A documentary titled “The Last of the Unjust,” it is based on interviews that Lanzmann conducted in 1975 with Benjamin Murmelstein, the only surviving president of the Jewish Council in the Theresienstadt concentration camp.
Shunned after the war as a collaborator, Murmelstein was imprisoned and then acquitted by the Czech authorities. Yet the perception of guilt over what was then largely a taboo remained, and analyzed openly in Lanzmann’s intimate interviews, conducted over the course of a week during which the two develop what looks like a friendship.
“Claude Lanzmann was single-handedly responsible for keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive in the hearts and minds of so many around the world,” outgoing Chairman of the Executive of The Jewish Agency for Israel, Natan Sharansky, said in response to his passing. “His personal dedication to commemorating the Shoah was unparalleled, and he traveled around the world, even in his later years, to ensure the memory of the victims was never forgotten. For that, we owe him a great debt of gratitude. May his memory be a blessing.”
En 1985, Claude Lanzmann présentait son film « Shoah » aux Français – Le Monde/YouTube
Auteur du documentaire « Shoah », consacré à l’extermination des juifs pendant la seconde guerre mondiale, Claude Lanzmann est mort à Paris, jeudi 5 juillet, à l’âge de 92 ans.
En avril 1985, au moment de la sortie du plus célèbre film sur la « solution finale », Claude Lanzmann le présentait sur Antenne 2. Un monument de plus de neuf heures, dans lequel, explique-t-il, les événements sont « revécus, essentiellement revécus ». « Ce n’est pas une histoire dans laquelle des gens cravatés, derrière leur bureau, racontent des souvenirs. Les souvenirs sont faibles. (…) Pour revivre [ces moments], les protagonistes devaient payer le prix le plus haut, c’est-à-dire souffrir en me racontant cette histoire. »
Video YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB8EZsz2198
Een groot man is heengegaan, zonder hem zou de herinnering en de overdracht van de Shoah niet hetzelfde zijn.
Baruch Dayan Ha’Emet.