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In the spring of 1985, Claude Lanzmann (1925–2018) premiered a preview of his monumental film “Shoah” in Paris, a project he had dedicated twelve years to completing. Today, this film, which runs over nine hours, remains a seminal work in the portrayal of the genocide committed by Nazi Germany against six million Jews.
The exhibition, “Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: Unpublished Recordings,” provides the public with access to previously unreleased archival audio recordings related to the film for the first time.
In the process of creating Shoah, Lanzmann conducted interviews with survivors, perpetrators, and witnesses. He also visited extermination sites with his camera in search of traces of history, deliberately choosing not to include archival footage in his film.
The exhibition focuses on the extensive preparation that preceded filming. During this time, Claude Lanzmann, along with his assistants Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt-Levy, conducted research in various countries and held numerous preliminary interviews, all of which were recorded. These previously unknown recordings reveal Lanzmann's deep interest in multiple aspects of the Holocaust before making extermination the central theme of his work. They also provide insight into the recollections of these events three decades after the war ended.
The exhibition is based on the Lanzmann Collection, located at the Jewish Museum in Berlin, thanks to a donation from the Claude and Félix Lanzmann Association. This collection includes approximately 220 hours of audio recordings in eight languages. In 2023, this collection, along with the film “Shoah”, was included in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.
For the first time, the exhibition presents excerpts from these recordings simultaneously in Paris and Berlin. Organised into six sections, the exhibition invites visitors to engage in an immersive audio experience—starting from Lanzmann's initial reflections, through conversations with witnesses about specific aspects of the Holocaust, and culminating in the making of the film Shoah.
The exhibition features accounts from witnesses not included in Claude Lanzmann's film, as well as those he was unable to film. These witnesses comprise survivors from various ghettos and camps, such as the poet Avraham Sutzkever, Erich Kulka (Auschwitz), and Ilana Safran (Sobibór). The exhibition also includes individuals who rescued Jews, like Friedrich Graebe, along with former decision-makers and executors of the “final solution.”
These recordings hold particular significance today, as the era of direct testimony is coming to an end with the passing of the survivors. The witnesses in the film speak as if they are “returning” from the dead.
To provide better context for the recordings, the exhibition includes original documents from Claude Lanzmann's private archive. These items—letters, lists, notes, and cards from the research period give insight into the practical aspects of the director's work and that of his collaborators.
Claude Lanzmann was a French director and journalist born on 27 November 1925 in Bois-Colombes, France. As a teenager during the German occupation, he joined the resistance movement. After studying philosophy, he lectured at the Free University of Berlin from 1948 to 1949. During this time, he began his career in journalism. In the early 1950s, he started a long-lasting collaboration with Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. He joined the editorial team of the magazine “Les Temps Modernes”, eventually becoming its publisher. In 1973, Lanzmann released his first film, “Pourquoi Israël”, and twelve years later, he premiered “Shoah”. In the following decades, he went on to create many other movies. He garnered numerous awards for his work as a director, writer, and journalist, including the Berlinale Honorary Golden Bear for lifetime achievement.
Claude Lanzmann passed away on 5 July 2018 in Paris, just one day after the premiere of his final film, “Les quatre sœurs” (“The Four Sisters”).