Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Direction
Lanzmann's confrontational interview technique extracts devastating truth.
Editing
Absence of archival footage forces witness testimony to carry everything.
Director
Claude Lanzmann
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Lanzmann secretly filmed SS officer Franz Suchomel using a hidden camera; the footage is visible in the frame. Suchomel was paid 500 Deutsche Marks and never knew he was being recorded.
The Hebrew title 'Shoah' deliberately rejects 'Holocaust'—a biblical term for burnt sacrifice—refusing to frame genocide as religious martyrdom. Lanzmann insisted on this linguistic rupture.
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