us-005578-irn1004508
type: RecordSet
biographical history: 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 Some women central to the production of"Shoa" (1985) include Hebrew interpreter, Francine Kaufmann; Polish interpreter, Barbra Janicka; Yiddish interpreter, Mrs. Apflebaum; assistant directors, Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt; editors, Ziva Postec and Anna Ruiz; and assistant editor, Yael Perlov.
date: November 1978
has beginning date: 1985-01-01
has end date: 1985-12-31
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had identifier: 2
has or had identifier: 1
has or had some members with language: eng
has record set type: Item
identifier: irn1004508
note: Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years locating survivors, perpetrators, and eyewitnesses for his nine and a half hour film Shoah released in 1985. Without archival footage, Shoah weaves together extraordinary testimonies to render the step-by-step machinery of the destruction of European Jewry. Critics have called it"a masterpiec" and a"monument against forgetting" The Claude Lanzmann SHOAH Collection consists of roughly 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming.
note: Film ID 3666 contains an interview with veteran frontline soldier Friedrich Baer on NY68 (camera roll) and NY175 (audio roll).
scope and content: Lanzmann films at a New York conference for survivors of the Riga ghetto in 1978. Includes an interview with several former Jewish policemen from Riga, Latvia who describe the division of the ghetto into sections for Latvian Jews and German Jews, dealing with the Nazi discovery of a secret weapons cache, and responsibilities as Jewish police. Lanzmann raises the question of collaboration and acknowledges the survivors’ openness as they talk. He also interviews veteran frontline soldier, Friedrich Baer. The reels also generally show the conference proceedings inside the New York hotel. FILM ID 3400 -- Camera Roll #65 -- 01:00:00 to 01:11:33 NY65 Lanzmann interviews three survivors of the Riga ghetto. The first man on right describes how the ghetto was partitioned into two sections: one for the German Jews, one for the Latvian Jews. The three interviewees resided in the German section. Each side had a police force comprised of its own residents. The man recounts that one day he was called to a meeting by the German authorities. This was already well into their time of captivity in the ghetto: they had arrived in January of 1941, and the meeting took place at some point during 1942. He, along with other young, strong German Jewish men, had been designated to police the Latvian section of the ghetto. As it turns out, several Latvian Jews had escaped; their police were blamed and executed for the incident. The three men go on to relate their experiences as policemen. They had little real authority, carried no weapons, and, it seems, mainly served to assist the SS in"keeping orde" and cleaning up after executions, which they were forced to attend. The audio continues for a few seconds after the video ends. FILM ID 3401 -- Camera Roll #66 -- 01:11:34 to 01:22:49 NY66 The same three men continue to describe their experiences as Jewish policemen in the ghetto. One recounts how he was sent to investigate a hidden weapons cache which had been smuggled, piece by piece, into the…
title: Society of the Survivors of the Riga Ghetto Conference (New York)