An Archive of the Catastrophe

Jennifer Cazenave

Description

Honorable Mention, 2020 Best First Book Award presented by the Society for Cinema and Media Studies

Claude Lanzmann's 1985 magnum opus, Shoah, is a canonical documentary on the Holocaust—and in film history. Over the course of twelve years, Lanzmann gathered 230 hours of location filming and interviews with survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators, which he condensed into a 9½-hour film. The unused footage was scattered and inaccessible for years before it was restored and digitized by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. In An Archive of the Catastrophe, Jennifer Cazenave presents the first comprehensive study of this collection. She argues that the outtakes pose a major challenge to the representational and theoretical paradigms produced by the documentary, while offering new meanings of Shoah and of Holocaust testimony writ large. They lend fresh insight into issues raised by the film, including questions of resistance, rescue, refugees, and, above all, gender—Lanzmann's twenty hours of interviews with women make up a mere ten minutes of the finished documentary. As a rare instance of outtakes preserved during the predigital era of cinema, this unused footage challenges us to establish a new critical framework for understanding how documentaries are constructed and reshapes the way we view this key Holocaust film.

To view the book trailer on YouTube, please go to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBjUWyAn55g
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chronology

Introduction: The Making of the Shoah Archive

1. The Formation of a Paradigm

2. Recasting 1961: Shoah and the Eichmann Trial

3. Off- Frame: Trauma and the Feminine

4. The Question of Rescue and Refugees

Conclusion: The Deep Time of Testimony

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Film
• History of film
• Visual culture
• The Holocaust
• Película fotográfica

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 31 mai 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438474786
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

A N A RCHIVE OF THE C ATASTROPHE
SUNY SERIES IN C ONTEMPORARY J EWISH L ITERATURE AND C ULTURE EZRA CAPPELL, EDITOR

Dan Shiffman, College Bound: The Pursuit of Education in Jewish American Literature, 1896–1944
Eric J. Sundquist, editor, Writing in Witness: A Holocaust Reader
Noam Pines, The Infrahuman: Animality in Modern Jewish Literature
Oded Nir, Signatures of Struggle: The Figuration of Collectivity in Israeli Fiction
Zohar Weiman-Kelman, Queer Expectations: A Genealogy of Jewish Women’s Poetry
Richard J. Fein, translator, The Full Pomegranate: Poems of Avrom Sutzkever
Victoria Aarons and Holli Levitsky, editors, New Directions in Jewish American and Holocaust Literatures: Reading and Teaching
Ruthie Abeliovich, Possessed Voices: Aural Remains from Modernist Hebrew Theater
Jennifer Cazenave, An Archive of the Catastrophe: The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah
A N A RCHIVE OF THE C ATASTROPHE
The Unused Footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah

JENNIFER CAZENAVE
Cover: Francine Kaufmann, Yitzhak “Antek” Zuckerman, and Claude Lanzmann during the making of Shoah . (Created by Claude Lanzmann during the filming of Shoah . Used by permission of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Martyrs and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority, Jerusalem.)
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2019 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cazenave, Jennifer, author.
Title: An archive of the catastrophe : the unused footage of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah / Jennifer Cazenave.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2019] | Series: SUNY series in contemporary Jewish literature and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018033291 | ISBN 9781438474779 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438474762 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438474786 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Shoah (Motion picture) | Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945), in motion pictures.
Classification: LCC PN1997.S4755 C39 2019 | DDC 791.43/72–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033291
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my grandfathers— Roland Cazenave and Albert Suissa
CONTENTS

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Chronology
Introduction: The Making of the Shoah Archive
1 The Formation of a Paradigm
2 Recasting 1961: Shoah and the Eichmann Trial
3 Off-Frame: Trauma and the Feminine
4 The Question of Rescue and Refugees
Conclusion: The Deep Time of Testimony
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ILLUSTRATIONS

I.1 The cardboard boxes containing the Shoah outtakes in Joinville-le-Pont
I.2 Tin canisters and reels of the interview with the Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg
1.1 Yael Perlov editing Shoah at the LTC film laboratory in Saint-Cloud
1.2 Claude Lanzmann, Richard Glazar, and a largely off-screen Corinna Coulmas holding the clapboard
1.3–4 Claude Lanzmann, Leib Garfunkel, and Irena Steinfeldt; a close-up of the survivor
1.5 An annotated page from the Leib Garfunkel transcript
1.6 Claude Lanzmann evidencing his “bookish […] knowledge” during the interview with Benjamin Murmelstein
1.7 Claude Lanzmann and Benjamin Murmelstein on the last day of the interview
1.8 The clapboard of the Franz Suchomel interview showing the “artist-technician couple” Lanzmann and Lubtchansky
1.9 Corinna Coulmas, with the handbag containing the Paluche, and Claude Lanzmann outside of Eduard Kryshak’s residence
1.10–11 Abraham Bomba (close-up) by the boardwalk in Tel Aviv
2.1 Henryk Ross and Stefania Ross, from the film Memories of the Eichmann Trial, directed by David Perlov
2.2 Rivka Yoselewska, from the film Memories of the Eichmann Trial, directed by David Perlov
2.3 Ada Lichtman at the witness stand during the Eichmann trial
2.4–5 Ada Lichtman mending dolls during her filmed interview with Claude Lanzmann
2.6–7 Ada and Itzhak (close-up) Lichtman
2.8–9 Claude Lanzmann holding Abraham Bomba’s hand the day before the reenactment in the barbershop
2.10 Mordechai Podchlebnik with Claude Lanzmann, whose left hand is clenched to a fist
2.11–12 Gideon Hausner during the testimony of Mordechai Podchlebnik, here sitting at the witness stand
2.13–14 Close-ups of Yehuda Lerner and Claude Lanzmann in 1979
2.15 Abba Kovner at Kibbutz Ein HaHoresh in the opening moments of the interview
2.16 The children of survivors raise their hands during a film course at Yad Vashem
2.17 The military students in front of the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes at Yad Vashem
2.18 Francine Kaufmann, Itzhak “Antek” Zuckerman, and Claude Lanzmann at the Ghetto Fighters’ Museum
2.19 The resistance hero Hersh Smolar displaying his medals
2.20 Tadeusz Pankiewicz with Claude Lanzmann
2.21 The reenactment in the pharmacy
3.1 Jacob and Malka Goldberg, as Malka points at the number tattooed on her left arm
3.2 Claude Lanzmann enters the frame, insisting that Malka Goldberg and the two men perform “Undzer shtetl brent!” again
3.3–4 Seeing the making of Shoah : the filmmaker, the survivor, and the crew; the cinematographer William “Bob” Lubtchansky
3.5–6 Claude Lanzmann listening to the testimonies of Benjamin Murmelstein in the spring of 1976 and of Paula Biren in the winter of 1978–1979
3.7 Claude Lanzmann interviewing Paula Biren in a hotel room
3.8 The two-page list of themes included in the transcript of Paula Biren’s interview
3.9 Claude Lanzmann (right) speaking with three Jewish policemen of the Riga ghetto
3.10–11 Lore Oppenheimer and Hermann Ziering (close-up) with his back to the camera
3.12–13 Gertrude Schneider (center), Charlotte Hirschhorn (right), and Rita Wasserman (close-up) singing “Azoy muss sein” in the outtakes; in the finished film, Wasserman remains off-frame
3.14 A page from the French summary of the Gertrude Schneider interview with “Les chansons [the songs]” highlighted and an arrow pointing to “MALE BIALE [ sic ] DOMEK” at the bottom
3.15 A tracking shot of Theresienstadt in 1979
3.16 Claude Lanzmann telling Andre Steiner about the making of Shoah and his investigation of the transport of children from Białystok to Theresienstadt
3.17 Ruth Elias during the silent opening moments of her testimony
3.18 Ruth Elias’s notes adjacent to Claude Lanzmann’s on the table
3.19 The filmmaker takes notes while the survivor narrates her account of the years of persecution
3.20 A transcribed page from the Inge Deutschkron interview, whose annotations are accompanied by the letter C and the number 7
3.21–22 Martha Michelsohn, Claude Lanzmann, and the photograph of Erhard Michelsohn (close-up) at her home in Lage
3.23 Inge Deutschkron narrating the years of persecution at Café Kranzler with West Berlin visible behind her
3.24–25 The facade of Café Kranzler, and a close-up of Claude Lanzmann and Inge Deutschkron sitting by the window
3.26 Inge Deutschkron, “the last Jew of Berlin,” on a train departing from the Grunewald railway station
3.27 Claude Lanzmann, Dr. Ernst Marton (photograph), and Hanna Marton at her home in Jerusalem
3.28 Hansi Brand during her filmed interview
4.1–2 The cans containing the Nahum Goldmann negatives; interview color-coded film cans, including the footage with the historian Raul Hilberg (in blue), the survivor Inge Deutschkron (in green), and the SS officer Franz Suchomel (in red and also labeled “La Solution”)
4.3 An anonymous technician holding the clapboard appears briefly on-screen during the interview with Nahum Goldmann
4.4 A close-up of the “prophet of gloom” Nahum Goldmann
4.5 A second camera films Claude Lanzmann and Jan Karski sitting across from each other during the interview
4.6–7 A close-up of Szmul Zygielbojm’s portrait in the outtakes captured at the home of his brother Faivel
4.8 The 1968 Hebrew edition of the diary kept by Adam Czerniaków in the Warsaw ghetto
4.9 Jan Karski incarnating Szmul Zygielbojm reacting to the request for a hunger strike
4.10 Claude Lanzmann driving to the Bay Point resort community
4.11 Ambassador Reams and his wife Dotty “living the good life on a golf course in Panama City”
4.12–13 The filmmaker fishing and golfing in Panama City with Ambassador Reams
4.14–15 Claude Lanzmann and Richard Rubenstein in the Floridian wetlands and the evocative image of an alligator
4.16–17 A walk in the woods: the former WRB director John Pehle raking leaves and picking up branches
4.18 The extreme close-up as homage in the