Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: Key Essays »

Stuart Liebman is Professor of the History of Cinema at The City University of New York Graduate Center.

Claude Lanzmann's monumental Shoah is the most celebrated film about the Holocaust ever made. Vivid accounts of the destruction of European Jewry by those who witnessed the slaughter at first hand make Lanzmann's film a compelling meditation on a defining catastrophe of the twentieth century. This collection offers the best writing on this remarkable cinematic achievement and brings together a range of appreciations, analyses and critiques by leading American, French and Polish critics and commentators. Their essays examine Shoah from its inception through its reception in France, Europe and the United States. New in English are translations of some of Lanzmann's key texts and interviews.

Introduction   Stuart Liebman     3
Inception through Production and Distribution
From the Holocaust to "Holocaust"   Claude Lanzmann     27
Site and Speech: An Interview with Claude Lanzmann about Shoah   Marc Chevrie   Herve Le Roux     37
Hier ist kein Warum   Claude Lanzmann     51
Distributing Shoah   Daniel Talbot     53
Appreciations, Close Readings, and Celebrations
Shoah   Simone De Beauvoir     63
A Survivor Remembers Other Survivors of Shoah   Elie Wiesel     67
Out of Darkness   David Denby     73
Closely Watched Trains   Marcel Ophuls     77
Shoah   Leon Wieseltier     89
Ei Warum, Ei Darum: O Why   Anne-Lise Stern     95
Shoah's Absence   Fred Camper     103
The Site, Despite Everything   Georges Didi-Huberman     113
The Aesthetic Transformation of the Image of the Unimaginable: Notes on Claude Lanzmann's Shoah   Gertrud Koch     125
Controversies and Critiques
The Life of Death: Shoah-A Film by Claude Lanzmann   Timothy Garton Ash     135
Shoah: From the Jewish Question to the Polish Question   Jean-Charles Szurek     149
Shoah   Jan Karski     171
Gendered Translations: Claude Lanzmann's Shoah   Marianne Hirsch Leo Spitzer     175
Lanzmann's Shoah: "Here There Is No Why"   Dominick LaCapra     191
Suggestions for Further Reading: A Select Bibliography     231
Notes on Contributors     235
Film Credits     239
Claude Lanzmann: Filmography     241
Index     243