Shoah: The Complete Text Of The Acclaimed Holocaust Film (Paperback)

by Claude Lanzmann (Author), Simone de Beauvoir (Introduction) "The story begins in the present at Chelmo, on the Narew River, in Poland..." (more)
Key Phrases: undressing room, family transport, gas vans, Simon Srebnik, Freddy Hirsch, Blue Squad (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

A nine-and-a-half-hour documentary on the Nazi extermination camps, Shoah (the Hebrew word for "Holocaust") was internationally hailed as a masterpiece upon its release in 1985. Shunning any re-creation, archival footage, or visual documentation of the events, filmmaker Claude Lanzmann relied on the words of witnesses—Jewish, Polish, and German—to describe in ruthless detail the bureaucratic machinery of the Final Solution, so that the remote experiences of the Holocaust became fresh and immediate. This book presents in an accessible and vivid format the testimony of survivors, participants, witnesses, and scholars. This tenth anniversary edition, published on the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the camps, is newly revised and corrected in order to more accurately present the actual testimony of those interviewed. Shoah is an unparalleled oral history of the Holocaust, an intensely readable journey through the twentieth century's greatest horror.

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

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Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: Da Capo Press; 10th edition (August 21, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0306806657
• ISBN-13: 978-0306806650
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #221,786 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very useful reference, March 30, 2000

By	Rabbi Yonassan Gershom (Minnesota, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This book is exactly what the title says -- the complete text of the Holocaust documentary, SHOAH, transcribed into a convenient printed form. A very valuable aid for anyone viewing the film or for teachers using it in a class. The book enables a discussion leader to re-read sections of the testimony for discussion, etc. without having to constantly re-wind the video. It's also a good book in itself, for those who prefer to read the words of the Holocaust survivors and witnesses from a book, rather than view them on the screen. Highly recommended!

16 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of the best books I have read on the Holocaust, June 16, 2001

By	J. Jones (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I have taken a Holocaust class before and read many of the so-called classics in the genre, (for example, "Night" by Elie Wiesel), and prior to reading this book, I had thought, "This way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen" by Borowski as the best piece of writing to explain something as unexplainable as the Holocaust. "Shoah" changed all that. This book, in a nutshell, explains the matter completely and throughly without pretense or melodrama. It captures the horror matter of factly, as Borowski had done in "This way for the Gas. . ." Still, if someone were to ask me if I could recommend one book about what happened or what I would make requred reading for all human beings, it would be "Shoah." I understand that "Night" is required reading for many high school students. Its power is unforgettable, and no one can deny its narrative power, but for me, "Shoah" was even more powerful because all the different voices gave me an idea of the enormous implication of the numbers. Not abstract, but real voices, person to person, all witnessing, all remembering. If I could make everyone on earth read just one book, this would be the one. Then people might understand where their views might lead them to. I can only hope, although "Shoah" does not really allow that hope. It allows me to bear witness. I have. I recommend others bear witness as well in this powerful document. One of the best books I have ever read. I recommend it without hesitation.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Broad-Based but Rather Superficial: Corrections Provided, June 7, 2009

By	Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This book includes interviews with Jewish sonderkommando survivors of Auschwitz, Polish peasants, Jan Karski (the legendary Polish Underground courier who tried in vain to warn the world about the Holocaust), Holocaust historian Raul Hillberg, a German official at Treblinka, and others.

Lanzmann should have examined fewer topics, and done so more thoroughly and objectively. He used only 9.5 hours out of 350 hours of taping, making one wonder what he left out. His work comes across as anti-Polish. Students of the Holocaust deserve better, and I now provide some context, a few of the necessary corrections, and links for further study from solely Jewish sources. From there, read my reviews.

The Polish peasants interviewed by Lanzmann exhibit a "Jews owned everything" mindset. (pp. 89-90). In fact, there were many wealthy Jews and, even with the formal and informal discriminatory policies enacted to reverse Jewish economic dominance, the average Jew remained wealthier than the average Pole. See Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919-1939 (Studies in the social sciences). In Poland, most peasants lived in poverty, and were stuck in it because the next-higher economic niche (the shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers, etc.) was largely pre-occupied by Jews. This, rather than simple prejudice against or jealousy of Jewish successes, explains frequent Polish peasant resentments against Jews. Also, the employer-employee, buyer-seller, and lender-borrower relations are partly adversarial ones. When there are different ethno-religious groups on each side of the divide, this will naturally generate frictions between groups.

One interviewed German tries to relativize German conduct. (pp. 182-183). In fact, despite the fact that anti-Semitism existed in countless nations since time immemorial, it was only in Germany (Haman excepted) that it ever developed into a never-before-seen effort to exterminate the Jews. Also, the sources and course of anti-Jewish policies in pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany, and those in prewar Poland, were entirely different. See The Jewish war front.

Poles are portrayed as generally laughing at Jewish deaths (p. 31) and mocking Jews with the you-will-die gesture. (p. 34). Against both misrepresentations, see Am I A Murderer?: Testament of a Jewish Ghetto Policeman.

As for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the conduct of the Polish Blue Police is incorrectly conflated with that of the collaborationist Ukrainian police. For the truth, see Martyrs and Fighters. Also, mention is made of some Poles turning-in Jews who had fled after the Uprising (p. 198), but not the circumstances behind it. Besides imposing the automatic death penalty for the slightest assistance to individual Jews, the Germans had created draconian collective terror against the Polish population of Warsaw for any semblance of assistance to, or connection with, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Some Poles made life-or-death decisions to turn Jews in rather than risk large groups of Poles shot by the Germans in reprisal for the Germans killed by Jews during the Uprising. See Muranowska 7: The Warsaw ghetto rising.

Finally, Lanzmann's analysis is so Judeocentric that it is completely sanitized of any reference to Polish suffering. Did you know that Poles lived in daily fear of their lives, under near-starvation conditions, during the German occupation? Did you know that 3 million Polish gentiles (including about half of all educated Poles) were murdered by the Germans? There's much more: See the Peczkis Listmania: FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST...

For further analysis of Lanzmann, please click on Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: Key Essays (Casebooks in Criticism)