Benjamin Murmelstein - Theresienstadt Judenaelteste

Benjamin Murmelstein - Theresienstadt Judenaelteste 

Claude Lanzmann was born in Paris to a Jewish family that immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. He attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. His family went into hiding during World War II. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in the Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed a 1960 antiwar petition. From 1952 to 1959 he lived with Simone de Beauvoir. In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre. Later, he married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer, and then Dominique Petithory in 1995. He is the father of Angélique Lanzmann, born in 1950, and Félix Lanzmann (1993-2017). Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah, is widely regarded as the seminal film on the subject of the Holocaust. He began interviewing survivors, historians, witnesses, and perpetrators in 1973 and finished editing the film in 1985. In 2009, Lanzmann published his memoirs under the title"Le lièvre de Patagoni" (The Patagonian Hare). He was chief editor of the journal"Les Temps Modernes" which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, until his death on July 5, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/claude-lanzmann-changed-the-history-of-filmmaking-with-shoah Dr. Benjamin Murmelstein (June 9, 1905-1989) had worked as community rabbi and teacher in Vienna, Austria since 1931. After the reopening of the Jewish Community in May 1938, he became manager of the emigration department and deputy of Director Dr. Josef Löwenherz, who had been appointed by the Nazi authorities. He played a key role in emigration and deportation organization. In early 1943, he was himself deported to Theresienstadt. He was the only surviving"Judenältest" [Jewish Elder] of all Nazi ghettos. Angelika Schrobsdorff was a German writer and actress. She grew up in Berlin and in 1938 fled, with her mother and sister, to Sofia, Bulgaria, where she remained until the end of the war. Her grandmother was murdered in Theresienstadt. In 1947, Schrobsdorff returned to Germany. In 1971, she married the French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, with whom she subsequently lived in Paris. Later she lived in Munich for a few years before emigrating to Israel. During the shooting of"Shoa", Ms. Schrobsdorff was the German-French translator for the interview with Benjamin Murmelstein. 

Benjamin Murmelstein - Theresienstadt Judenaelteste