Claude Lanzmann 2

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

In a way, I am incapable to substantiate of my claims. Either one understands 
 them or one does not. It is a bit like the Cartesian ego: at the end one 
gets  stuck, that is the ultimate knot, you cannot go further. The holocaust is 
unique  in that, with a circle of fire, it builds a border around itself, which 
one  cannot transgress, because a certain absolute kind of horror cannot be 
conveyed.  To pretend that one is nevertheless conveying makes one guilty of an 
offence of  the utmost rudeness. Fiction is a transgression, I am deeply 
convinced that  there is a ban on depiction. Schindler's List evoked the same sort 
of  sensation I got from the Holocaust series. Transgressing or trivializing, 
in  this case they are identical. The series or the Hollywood film, they 
transgress  because they trivialize, and thus they remove the holocaust's unique  
character. 
Shoah is not a documentary, not for a second, because that is not my  way of 
doing things, of thinking. The question can be posed like this: if one  wants 
to testify, does one then invent a new form or does one reconstruct? I  think 
I have created a new form, Spielberg has chosen to reconstruct. If I had  
found an existing film-a secret film because filming was highly forbidden-shot  by 
an SS-man, that shows how 3000 jews, men, women, children die together,  
choking, in a gas chamber or crematorium, then not only would I not have shown  
it, I would have destroyed it. I cannot say why. It speaks for  itself.
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