Sue Vice: Claude Lanzmann's Einsatzgruppen Interviews
School of Modern Languages Research Seminar 2010/11
Location: Old Library Building, Research Beehive, room 2.20
Time/Date: 14th October 2010, 16:00 - 17:00
Sue Vice (Sheffield, German Studies): Images of Death. Claude Lanzmann's Einsatzgruppen Interviews
Among the various omissions from Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah (1985), one of the most surprising is the absence of interviews with members of the wartime Einsatzgruppen – the mobile killing squads that followed the Wehrmacht into the Soviet Union in 1941, often seen as the beginning of the Nazis’ campaign of genocide. Examination of the rushes of Shoah shows that Lanzmann did undertake two such interviews, conducted clandestinely with former Einsatzgruppen members Karl Kretschmer and Heinz Schubert, yet he decided not to include any of this footage.
In this paper, I will explore the aesthetic and ideological reasons why Lanzmann edited out these interviews, and the light their style and content sheds on the construction and meaning of Shoah.
Published: 24th September 2010