“Shoah” by Claude Lanzmann inscribed in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register

A film for memory, the memory of which will last for eternity. The documentary Holocaust, by Claude Lanzmann, has been included in the UNESCO Memory of the World register, whose mission is to protect documentary heritage around the world, the Claude and Felix Lanzmann Association (ACFL) announced on Friday in a press release.

9h30 of documentary to tell the unspeakable

The film Holocaust entered the history of cinema by its duration (9:30), its form (no archive images) and its purpose: to tell “the unspeakable“, the systematic extermination of the Jews by the Nazis. Its realization was a long-term adventure since the preparation and the filming took place from 1974 to 1981 and the editing lasted almost 5 years.

This documentary brought to the fore the term “Shoah”, which appears in the Bible and means in Hebrew “annihilation“, and which has since established itself in common parlance in Europe.

“Holocaust thus joins the cinematographic heritage of the Memory of the World, the archives of the Lumière BrothersMetropolis by Fritz LangLos Olvidados by Luis Buñuel, and all Bergman“, underlines the association in a press release, welcoming to confirm thus”the unique place of this masterpiece between art and history“.

Memory, subject of a film presented at the Cannes Film Festival

The candidacy of this “film-monument” was proposed”jointly” by the French and German National Commissions for Unesco, as “a strong symbol of the Franco-German friendship for which Claude Lanzmann has worked since 1947“. It was carried by the ACFL for France, and by the Jewish Museum of Berlin for Germany.

The announcement of its inclusion in the UNESCO Memory of the World register comes on the day when it is presented in competition at Cannes The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer, which shows the trivialization of horror with a portrait of a Nazi officer tasting the pleasures of life in his house near the Auschwitz camp.