Line #4 Film/Shoah


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shoah.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:345:[[JustFollowingOrders Job satisfaction]] is making the trains run on time.]]
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4	->''"If you lie enough, you believe your own lies."''
5	-->-- '''Franz Suchomel'''
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7	''Shoah'' is a 1985 {{Documentary}} by Claude Lanzmann about [[UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust the extermination of the Jews in occupied Europe]]. It was highly influential, and it was the first nonfiction film many had seen on the topic. It was part of the wider interest in Nazi and collaborationist atrocities which appeared in the late 1960s (and featured so heavily in the cultural 'Revolution' of May '68).
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9	The film concentrates mainly on the organized extermination of the Jews in death camps, 1942-1944. Between 1976 and 1981, Claude Lanzmann interviewed many protagonists of the Holocaust, both survivors, bystanders and former perpetrators. His film, clocking in at nearly a whopping nine and a half hours, is a collection of these interviews, interspersed with shots of the ruins of the extermination camps. There is, however, no [[StockFootage archival footage]] whatsoever, and the horror is made all the greater by the audience having to rely on [[TalkingHeads oral testimonies]] to imagine it, rather than actually being shown.
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11	Many of the interviewees viewed themselves as having been "cogs in the machine" - people just doing their jobs, regardless of what that job involved, because if they hadn't done it then someone else would've... and that that someone else might have [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIaORknS1Dk&t=1m12s made things 'worse' (somehow)]]. [[NeverMyFault The abnegation]] of [[SomebodyElsesProblem personal responsibility]] was endemic among unenthusiastic perpetrators of the Holocaust: if they didn't blame other people for 'forcing' them to do evil, they would have to think of ''themselves'' as evil. [[AndThatsTerrible And that would be terrible.]]
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13	The ordinary nature of the interviewees the film also makes it an excellent illustration of what Hannah Arendt dubbed "the banality of evil".
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15	----
16	!!Contains examples of:
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18	* AnachronicOrder: The interviews aren't arranged by order of the chronological events discussed.
19	* ConditionedToAcceptHorror: A farmer whose fields were located a mere 100 yards from the death camp Treblinka was asked how he was possibly able to work amidst the screams of the dying and sight and smell of their burning corpses.
20	--> "At first it was unbearable. But you get used to it. I find it unbelievable now, but it's true - you can get used to anything."
21	* {{Documentary}}: Possibly the most famous film documentary of the Final Solution. Lanzmann eschewed many documentary tropes--no {{Narrator}}, no StockFootage, no still photos so no [[TheKenBurnsEffect Ken Burns Effect]]. He relied exclusively on interviews, paired with contemporary footage of the former extermination camps.
22	* DrowningMySorrows: Many of the Polish train conductors were drunk during the long rides to the concentration camps. Without alcohol, they couldn't have done it.
23	* LeaveTheCameraRunning: The interview with Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, in which Hilberg explains how the Holocaust sprang from a long tradition of European antisemitism, runs nine minutes without a cut. Many other interviews feature the camera running for a long time.
24	* POVCam: Used to suggest the experiences of the camps, like a POV shot that follows the short railroad spur from the main Treblinka station into the extermination camp.
25	* PunchClockVillain: Played chillingly straight, as RealLife Nazis speak casually of their crimes.
26	* RetiredMonster: Former Nazis are interviewed; the filmmakers duped them into appearing by promising audio-only interviews and filming them with hidden cameras.
27	** Lanzmann catches Christian Wirth's former SS driver, working in the kitchen of a German beer hall. The SS man refuses to talk.
28	* SnowMeansDeath: One segment involves a Jewish survivor who was made a Sonderkommando, describing how he saw a group of Jews coaxed into the "showers" and gassed. The footage accompanying this interview was shot in the winter, with snow covering everything and accumulated snow on the roof of the crematorium.
29	* TalkingHeads: Many interviews, including Jewish survivors, Nazi perpetrators, and a few historians.
30	* WhamLine: The former Treblinka officer describes the death camp to Lanzmann with dispassionate detachment. Even singing the camp's "song" he sounds very matter-of-fact ("You wanted history, I'm giving you history."). But then he adds with pride "No Jew knows that song today!", leaving no doubt as to his true feelings.

Context Film / Shoah