Members of the Zygielbojm family pose at the dinner table in Warsaw in 1936. Pictured standing behind, from left to right, are: Avraham and Faivel Zygielbojm. Seated, from left to right, are: Reuven; Henia, and Hava Zygielbojm. http://digitalassets.ushmm.org/photoarchives/detail.aspx?id=1096954&search=&index=7
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 From 1974 to 1984, Corinna Coulmas was the assistant director to Claude Lanzmann for his film"Shoah" She was born in Hamburg in 1948. She studied theology, philosophy, and sociology at the Sorbonne and Hebrew language and Jewish culture at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and INALCO in Paris. She now lives in France and publishes about the Five Senses. http://www.corinna-coulmas.eu/english/home-page.html
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.
Faivel Ziegelbaum
The story of Szmuel (Artur) Ziegelbaum through his brother, Faivel. Faivel reads his brother's letters and occasionally offers his own reflections. This interview took place in Tel Aviv. FILM ID 3882 -- Zygielbojm Camera Rolls 1-11 In Israel, in several takes, Faivel Zygielboim reads a letter which his brother, Szmuel (Artur) Zygielboim wrote, preceding his suicide. In the letters, Artur describes the powerlessness and guilt he feels at the conditions his family and thousands of others live in back home in Europe. After Artur wrote letters to Churchill and other leaders of Allied countries to no avail, he committed suicide. One of the last letters Artur received came from Jan Karski, begging for help from the rest of the world. Artur tried to convince those in positions of power to help, and even made a radio broadcast over the BBC, but his appeals fell on deaf ears. His last words were a plea to the collective human conscience. The last cable sent to Artur graphically describing the events of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, was likely never read by him as he committed suicide the night it was written on May 11-12, 1943. Faivel reads his brothers suicide letter. In his letter, he accuses the Allied countries for not making enough effort to help the Jews, and through passive observation labels them as accomplices. His suicide was in protest to the mass indifference of the world. At a family reunion in 1969, Faivel and his family found a photograph of Artur's daughter and wife after they had been murdered, possibly in Treblinka. FILM ID 3883 – Zygielbojm Coupes Silent shots of Faivel Zygielbojm in his apartment in Tel Aviv, Israel. CU on bookshelf; mostly books in Hebrew. Highlights Adam Czerniakow’s Warsaw Ghetto Diary. Pan of spines on bookshelf, across to picture frames of different drawings and family photographs. The camera stops on a black and white portrait of Szmul Zygielbojm. Zoom outwards to capture the entire wall, with Faivel seated on a couch in front of the wall, looking through a book. Surrounding him on the couch are his brother’s letters and other manuscripts. He looks up at the bookshelf and smokes a cigarette pensively. He looks over the book, open on the couch next to him. He smokes and flips through the book. Image cuts out at 3:26 and comes back at 3:35. CU on Faviel’s face as he reads. CU on his hands, flipping through letters from his brother. CU on face reading. Pan down to the letter in his hands. Faivel smokes and reads the letter to himself. CU on a handwritten letter from Szmul, dated April 6, 1941 from New York. Pan of the letter. CU on portrait of Szmul. Fuzzy image of a hand covering the camera lens. Image cuts out at 6:18.