If
there was a Nobel Prize for conducting interviews, the late Claude Lanzmann
would have surely been a laureate. Through recorded oral histories, he
documented the Holocaust in directly personal terms. The ten-hour Shoah felt distinctly radical in 1985
and it remains the single most important cinematic exploration of the National
Socialist genocide. Lanzmann continued to revisit the Holocaust in subsequent
films, employing the same sensitive but persistent interview style. Essentially,
this is a collection of outtakes from Shoah,
but they are decidedly weighty and compelling outtakes. Four women tell how
they witnessed and survived the horrific in Lanzmann’s Shoah: Four Sisters (trailer here), which opens today in New York.
The
“sisters” are both alike and different in significant ways. Ruth Elias was from
a well-established, long-assimilated Czechoslovakian family, but she had the
dubious misfortunate of finding herself pregnant at the worst possible time.
Her condition would eventually bring her face-to-face with Josef Mengele.
Needless to say, the title of her segment, “The Hippocratic Oath” is meant to
be darkly ironic.
Ada
Lichtman hailed from the Polish hamlet of Wieliczka, where all the men were
executed en masse, very much like the Katyn Forest Massacre, except it really
was perpetrated by the Germans, rather than the Soviets. She lived with the
constant expectation of death, yet she survived, because she was one of only
three women selected for a work detail in Sobibor. However, her job including
the soul crushing duty of washing and repairing dolls confiscated from Jewish
children.
Paula
Biren explains the realities of life in the Lodz Ghetto, where issues of
complicity start to arise. Her well-to-do family were fully aware of the
brewing danger of National Socialism, but they remained in Poland, because they
didn’t have any other place to go. For a while, she worked for the ghetto’s
Jewish Women’s Police, but she was wracked with guilt over the grim fate of the
black marketeers she arrested. Biren resolved to quit the Women’s Police,
despite the dire consequences she would face, but her decision was superseded by
greater historical forces, which was a mixed blessing for her.
Hanna
Marton’s segment will be the most controversial, because she survived as one of
the fortunate passengers on the so-called Kasztner transit. She is fully aware
of the controversies surrounding Kasztner, but maybe not as forthright and
contrite as slightly frustrated-sounding Lanzmann would prefer. Although he is
as soft-spoken as ever, he still grills her on the moral implications of
Kasztner’s rescue mission. However, attitudes have maybe softened towards the leader
of the Hungarian rescue committee. He was definitely practicing lifeboat
ethics, but that is rather understandable, given the nature of the times.
All
four women have a lot to say, but their stories need sometime to properly
unfold, which is presumably why Lanzmann had not used most of this footage
previously. However, it is hard to get around the rather static nature of
Lanzmann’s straight-forward, long-take interview format. At least the
background scenery changes during Biren’s segment, because she insists on
taking Lanzmann out for a walk on the beach.
As
it happens, the Quad is screening Biren and Marton’s segments together and pairing
up Elias and Lichtman for the other Four
Sister program. Arguably, the first block has the most dramatic subject
matter, whereas the second is the more emotionally draining. Regardless, it is
good for the future of civil society to have this material more widely
available. Highly recommended as either a warm-up or a chaser to Lanzmann’s indispensable
Shoah (1985), Shoah: Four Sisters opens today (11/14) in New York, at the
Quad Cinema.
