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
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.
Film ID 3196 was transferred with the preservation of Ruth Elias in 2007, although the contents are not related to the Elias interview."Retirage" can be translated as"things that were pulled ou" or"reprints" In Summer 2019, the original color negatives for these assembled prints were located in the cans marked"Tu Ne Commetras Pas Le Crim" 1991, which was the working title of Lanzmann's 1994 film"Tsaha". The videos that stream in the online catalog are derivatives of the original camera negative rolls scanned in summer 2019.
Assembled color negative rolls containing location filming of Poland and Israel for SHOAH. The original color negatives were received in cans labeled"Tu Ne Commetras Pas Le Crime" 1991. The prints were in cans marked"Retirages de Shoa" which roughly translates to"Miscellaneous Reprints of Shoa". FILM ID 3196 -- Bobine 3. Retirages de Shoah (43:16) [Tu ne commetras pas de crime Boite G. Łódź] 00:42 Slate reads 'Cracovie' (Krakow); shots of three war-era photographs: many people walking in the street, carrying their belongings in large sacs; a soldier in uniform stands on a set of trolley tracks in the middle of a street, with a military truck in the background; a wide shot of an empty street littered with people's belongings, while a large group of people stand near a military truck in the background. 01:18 Slate reads 'Zbaszyn'; shots of three photographs: two show a large crowd of people gathered in what looks like a train station; young women waving from the deck of a ship. 01:56 Slate reads 'Raciac'; shots of three photographs: several hundred men lined up around the perimeter of a courtyard, while several people mill about in the center of the yard; a close-up of several men in line in the same location; the bodies of 10 men hang over an open pit while uniformed soldiers look on. 02:30 Slate reads 'Grodno'; shots of five photographs of a massacre: flat ground covered in hundreds of neatly arranged human skulls; another shot of the same skulls; four full skeletons lie in the foreground, and a pile of bones lies in the background; close-up of the pile of bones; wide shot of the skulls and bones in a vast field. 03:42 Slate reads 'Ciechanow'; one photograph, which depicts a line of men walking as far as the eye can see. 03:58 Slate reads 'Plonsk'; four photographs: men being unloaded from the back of a covered truck, while a soldier looks on; two men in uniform stand in front of the body of a man who has been hanged in the street; men, women, and children walking up a hill, while a soldier looks on; flames leaping out of the upstairs window of a building. 04:53 Contemporary shots of Poland: people milling around a grassy open area with patches of snow and tall buildings in the background; a view of snowy fields from a moving car; a man drives a horse-drawn cart down a road away from the camera; the camera zooms out, showing the cart, road, a church, and vast fields beyond; more shots of a cart, the church, and fields. 08:13 Slate reads 'Pologne 2 hiver bobine #16' (Poland 2 Winter Reel #16), then another slate reads 'Ext. Chelmno'; close-up of a memorial plaque, which reads (in Polish) 'Here lie the ashes of 340,000 Polish Jews and 20,000 Jews from other European countries'; the camera zooms out from the plaque, showing that it is affixed to a stone at the foot of an enormous field; a shot of the memorial on the site of Chelmno: a huge concrete slab with the words of a poem written by a Chelmno prisoner. Snowy street scenes in a town. 13:24 Slate reads 'Łódź ghetto'; various street scenes, building facades, people walking about; shots of trolleys running the length of Zgierska Street, which bisected the ghetto but was off-limits to Jews, who had to cross the street using a steep and narrow bridge; a woman walks two dogs across a snowy park. 20:07 Slate reads 'LOD 12'; nighttime shots of 'Łódź Kaliska,' the Łódź train station; travelers read the train schedule board and walk around; panning shots of the station square and trains coming and going. 25:26 Slate reads 'LOD 17'; daytime street scenes in Łódź; trolleys passing; various shots of a dead-end street. 26:42 Slate reads 'LOD 18', then immediately 'LOD 19'; panning shots of a busy intersection of two wide boulevards. 28:04 Slate reads 'LOD 20'; the imposing red brick facade of the Poznanski factory complex on Ogrodowa Street, with small flags waving along the length of its fence: Izrael Poznanski was a Jewish industrialist who made a fortune in the textile industry at the turn of the 20th century, particularly in the spinning of cotton; he died in 1900 and passed the business to his son, and the factory buildings were taken over by Nazi occupiers from 1940 to 1945. 29:06 Slate reads 'LOD 21'; more shots of the Poznanski complex from across the street. 29:57 Slate reads 'LOD 21'; shots of the Poznanski family's home, known as the Poznanski Palace, located next-door to the factory on Ogrodowa Street. 30:35 Slate reads 'LOD 22'; slow zoom out on a street in central Łódź; a young boy in winter clothes walks slowly down a sidewalk; a woman stands in her upstairs window and studies the street below; the facade of a building reads 'Pionier' ('Pioneer'); the camera moves through a series of doorways and dark passageways; shots of a dilapidated building in a back courtyard. 36:26 Slate reads 'LOD 24'; camera zooms in and then out on the upstairs windows of a large brick building. 38:14 Slate reads 'LOD 25'; shots of the same brick building; camera pans 180 degrees to show facades of the Catholic Church of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mary, in Plac Koscielny, while children play on its steps; the church was located in the Jewish ghetto during the war, and the Nazi occupiers used it first to store the possessions of Jews who had been killed in Chelmno, and then as a warehouse for down feathers. 39:13 Slate reads 'LOD 26'; A Łódź train platform - the train station of the neighborhood of contemporary Łódź where the Jewish ghetto once stood; pan to the central station building; people walk around the station square; a large group is congregated near the ticket window; people walking off platforms 1, 2, and 3 and out of a station door. Slate reads 'LOD 28', end of reel. FILM ID 4604 -- Bobine 4. Retirages de Shoah (16:41) [Tu ne commetras pas de crime Boite D. Łódź] 00:06 Slate: 'Pologne 2 Bob. 7' Roadway with plowed snow at edges. 01:51 Slate: 'Pologne 2 Hiver Bobine 17' Another slate: 'Łódź Ghetto' Building, street scenes, cemetery, drive by snowy forest, villages in Poland. 06:02 Slate: 'Pologne 2 Bob 1' Another slate: 'VAR 1' Cemetery in Warsaw with snow; CU, Czerniakow's grave; sign: Jewish Cemetery Warsaw; drive by snowy fields. 13:00 [leader marked 'Neige de Siberie'] Drive by snowy field and forest [tail leader marked 'fin bob 4']. 14:38 [leader marked"Tu ne commettras pas le crim" de C. Lanzmann] Drive by snow covered fields with trees in background. FILM ID 4611 -- Boite C. Israel (47:20) [Tu ne commetras pas de crime Boite C. Israel] Pan over trees. 02:45 People and Israeli soldiers attend a memorial service among graves of Jewish people, most likely, the Kiryat Shaul Cemetery in Israel which erected memorials for Holocaust victims."Cimetiere " Women wipe their noses and tears with a tissue. Crew member boom mic. Soldiers surround the memorial. Baskets on the ground. A crowd of women approach, some holding flowers and emotional. They stop at a tomb and place the flowers. The cameraman tries to record people's reactions. 00:10:56 “Bob. 60” Cliffs in Israel. Factory in the distance. Vast desert landscape. Scenes from a moving vehicle driving on a road through the desert. 00:21:59 Different landscape while driving. Bob 61. Herd of sheep makes its way through the desert, camel in the BG. 00:26:20 Man walks with a briefcase. Car drives along cliff, possibly near Masada. Bob 59. Cemetery, graves, cars. Small plane. Soldiers on road. Kids play and joke. Donkeys pull wagons. Soldiers get into a truck. Bright green crops.
Assembled shots (Poland and Israel)