Claude Lanzmann's lifelong work receives its final outing by bearing witness to four Jewish women who survived the Holocaust. These are the last extracts that Lanzmann edited from the 360 hours of Shoah interviews he conducted from the late 1970's to the early 1980's. The film was released the day before he died at the age of 92 in 2018. Lanzmann's documentaries taken from his extensive resource of interviews are in my view the best eye witness Holocaust testimony in existence.
1. Ruth Elias. Ruth was a 17 year old Czechoslovak girl in 1939 when the Nazis overran the country. She and her family hid and lived as farm workers until they were betrayed to the authorities and deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. Thereseinstadt served first as a Ghetto, then as a Concentration Camp and finally had a Death Camp added. Through the years of WW2 Ruth had many deadly adventures and close calls, but she also met, fell in love, married and becoming pregnant by a fellow inmate. Ruth kept her pregnancy a secret and was nearly full term when she was sent to Auschwitz. Attempting to get moved to another camp her pregnancy was finally discovered and reported to Dr Mengele. What happened next is too awful to describe here and should only be told in her own voice. Of her family and husband only Ruth survived. She remarried after the war and had two sons.
This is the third of Lanzmann's films to include the Theresienstadt Camp. The first is 'A visitor From The Living' (1999) an interview with Maurice Rossel, an international red cross official who, after the Nazi's revamped one small part of the camp for inspection, gave Theresienstadt a glowing report. The second is 'The Last Of The Unjust' (2013) a 220 minute interview with the unique and remarkable realist Benjamin Murmelstein, the last and only surviving president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council. In the context of the Holocaust Murmelstein's immortal statements, 'you can condemn me but you can't judge me' and 'they were martyrs not saints' will stay with me forever. Though exonerated of collaboration he was forced to live in exile and was buried in un-consecrated ground.
2. Ada Lichtman. The day the Germans invaded Poland all the men in Ada's village, including her father, were taken into the forest and shot dead. Her life was then a catalogue terrifying events, leading in the end to Sobibor Concentration and Death Camp. Ada was part of the uprising on October 14th 1943 and along with 50 others she escaped and survived the war.
The Sobibor uprising is described in chilling detail by Yehuda Lerna in 'Sobibor, October 14, 1943 4pm' (2001). His remarkable account, which is part of Lanzmann's series of films of which The Four Sisters is the final part, is incredibly gripping from start to finish.
3. Paula Biren. Paula spent most of the war in the Lodz ghetto. She survived by volunteering for education and then being selected for the women's police force. 45,000 people died in Lodz from starvation, exhaustion and disease. The longest lasting of all the Ghetto's, Lodz was finally emptied when all that was left of the Jewish prisoners were put into the last train to go to Auschwitz. On arrival Paula's mother and sister were immediately taken away, gassed and burnt. Her father only survived a few days of hard labour. Paula survived and went to America after liberation.
4. Hanna Marton. One of the strangest stories of the Holocaust concerns the 1,680 Hungarian Jews that were given safe passage, by train, through Germany and eventually to Switzerland. Hungary was an ally of the Nazi regime and it wasn't until 1944 with the Russian army advancing towards the border that the Jews started to be deported to the Death Camps. Rudolf Kastner a leading Zionist negotiated with Eichmann to secure (at some considerable cost) a train to take a defined and listed number of people to a neutral country. These people were selected, apart from wealth, as an 'elite'. There were times when the train didn't look as though it would make it through, but it did and Hanna was among them. The aftermath became highly contentious with Kastner accused of collaborating with the Nazis and, as part of the train deal, of not forewarning the 450,000 Jews who went to the gas chambers.
1. Ruth Elias. Ruth was a 17 year old Czechoslovak girl in 1939 when the Nazis overran the country. She and her family hid and lived as farm workers until they were betrayed to the authorities and deported to Theresienstadt in 1942. Thereseinstadt served first as a Ghetto, then as a Concentration Camp and finally had a Death Camp added. Through the years of WW2 Ruth had many deadly adventures and close calls, but she also met, fell in love, married and becoming pregnant by a fellow inmate. Ruth kept her pregnancy a secret and was nearly full term when she was sent to Auschwitz. Attempting to get moved to another camp her pregnancy was finally discovered and reported to Dr Mengele. What happened next is too awful to describe here and should only be told in her own voice. Of her family and husband only Ruth survived. She remarried after the war and had two sons.
This is the third of Lanzmann's films to include the Theresienstadt Camp. The first is 'A visitor From The Living' (1999) an interview with Maurice Rossel, an international red cross official who, after the Nazi's revamped one small part of the camp for inspection, gave Theresienstadt a glowing report. The second is 'The Last Of The Unjust' (2013) a 220 minute interview with the unique and remarkable realist Benjamin Murmelstein, the last and only surviving president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council. In the context of the Holocaust Murmelstein's immortal statements, 'you can condemn me but you can't judge me' and 'they were martyrs not saints' will stay with me forever. Though exonerated of collaboration he was forced to live in exile and was buried in un-consecrated ground.
2. Ada Lichtman. The day the Germans invaded Poland all the men in Ada's village, including her father, were taken into the forest and shot dead. Her life was then a catalogue terrifying events, leading in the end to Sobibor Concentration and Death Camp. Ada was part of the uprising on October 14th 1943 and along with 50 others she escaped and survived the war.
The Sobibor uprising is described in chilling detail by Yehuda Lerna in 'Sobibor, October 14, 1943 4pm' (2001). His remarkable account, which is part of Lanzmann's series of films of which The Four Sisters is the final part, is incredibly gripping from start to finish.
3. Paula Biren. Paula spent most of the war in the Lodz ghetto. She survived by volunteering for education and then being selected for the women's police force. 45,000 people died in Lodz from starvation, exhaustion and disease. The longest lasting of all the Ghetto's, Lodz was finally emptied when all that was left of the Jewish prisoners were put into the last train to go to Auschwitz. On arrival Paula's mother and sister were immediately taken away, gassed and burnt. Her father only survived a few days of hard labour. Paula survived and went to America after liberation.
4. Hanna Marton. One of the strangest stories of the Holocaust concerns the 1,680 Hungarian Jews that were given safe passage, by train, through Germany and eventually to Switzerland. Hungary was an ally of the Nazi regime and it wasn't until 1944 with the Russian army advancing towards the border that the Jews started to be deported to the Death Camps. Rudolf Kastner a leading Zionist negotiated with Eichmann to secure (at some considerable cost) a train to take a defined and listed number of people to a neutral country. These people were selected, apart from wealth, as an 'elite'. There were times when the train didn't look as though it would make it through, but it did and Hanna was among them. The aftermath became highly contentious with Kastner accused of collaborating with the Nazis and, as part of the train deal, of not forewarning the 450,000 Jews who went to the gas chambers.