Shoah

Told by way of a sort of travelogue of sites of holocaust atrocity, and augmented most potently by survivors, their families and by former Nazis themselves, this documentary reveals in very considerable - and considered - detail the true horrors of the concentration camps. Claude Lanzmann doesn't use any actuality - and, oddly enough, that makes the actuality of the now peaceful sites all the more poignant when described by the people who lived there before, during and after these heart-rending periods of persecution. I've worked extensively with Eastern European people over the years, and what this documentary rings loudly in 1985 is still largely true, even now. There is still some considerable anti-German sentiment, but there is also still an anti-Semite one too. It took me a few days to watch this, and I'd recommend consuming it that way. It gives more time for the commentaries to sink in, for your own brain to get to grips with what you have seen and heard and it also stops it starting to wash over you a bit. The photography is nigh on perfect: intimate when you want it to be, wide and encompassing at other times. The interviews are specific and probing - not to illicit gory stories (though that does sometimes result) but to allow the contributors to feel that they are free to say whatever they wish. That man could do this kind of thing to fellow man beggars belief - maybe more people ought to watch and listen to what's gone