Shoah (1985)

IMDb Ratings: 8.2/10 from 5,051 users

Claude Lanzmann memandu 9 1/2 jam dokumenter Holocaust ini tanpa menggunakan satu arsip frame rekaman. Dia mewawancarai korban, saksi, dan mantan Nazi (yang ia harus syuting diam-diam karena mereka hanya setuju untuk diwawancarai oleh audio). Gayanya mewawancarai dengan meminta rincian detil yang efektif untuk memberikan potret mengerikan dari peristiwa genosida Nazi. Dia juga menunjukkan, atau lebih tepatnya apibla memungkinkan beberapa yang diwawancarai sendiri yang menunjukkan, bahwa anti-Semitisme yang menyebabkan 6 juta orang Yahudi mati dalam Holocaust baik yang masih hidup dan masih tinggal di Jerman, Polandia, dan di tempat lain.

Synopsis

The film is concerned chiefly with four topics: Chelmno, where mobile gas vans were first used by Germans to exterminate Jews; the death camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau; and the Warsaw Ghetto, with testimonies from survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators.

The sections on Treblinka include testimony from Abraham Bomba, who survived as a barber;[2] Richard Glazar, an inmate; and Franz Suchomel, an SS officer who worked at the camp, who reveals intricate details of the camp's gas chamber. Bomba breaks down while describing how a barber friend of his came across his wife and sister while cutting hair outside (before) the gas chamber. Suchomel states he did not know about extermination at Treblinka until he arrived there. This section includes Henryk Gawkowski, who said he drove one of the transport trains while intoxicated with vodka. Gawkowski's photograph appears on the poster used for the film's marketing campaign.

Testimonies on Auschwitz are provided by Rudolf Vrba, who escaped from the camp before the end of the war; and Filip Müller, who worked in an incinerator burning the bodies from the gassings. Müller recounts what prisoners said to him, and describes the experience of personally going into the gas chamber: bodies were piled up by the doors 'like stones'. He breaks down as he recalls the prisoners starting to sing while being forced into the gas chamber. Accounts include some from local villagers, who witnessed trains heading daily to the camp and returning empty; they quickly guessed the fate of those on board.

Lanzmann also interviews bystanders. He asks whether they knew what was going on in the death camps. Their answers reveal that they did but they justified their inaction by the fear of death. Two survivors of Chelmno are interviewed: Simon Srebnik, who was forced to sing military songs to entertain the Nazis; and Mordechaï Podchlebnik. Lanzmann also has a secretly filmed interview with Franz Schalling, a German security guard, who describes the workings of Chelmno. Walter Stier, a former Nazi bureaucrat, describes the workings of the railways. Stier insists he was too busy managing railroad traffic to notice his trains were transporting Jews to their deaths.

The Warsaw ghetto is described by Jan Karski, who worked for the Polish government-in-exile and Franz Grassler, a Nazi administrator who liaised with Jewish leaders. A Christian, Karski, snuck into the Warsaw ghetto and escaped to England to try to convince the Allied governments to intervene more strongly on behalf of the Jews, but failed to do so. Memories from Jewish survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising conclude the documentary.

Lanzmann also interviews Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, who discusses the historical significance of Nazi propaganda against the European Jews, and the Nazi development of the Final Solution. The complete text of the film was published in 1985.