The Last of the Unjust

Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 mag­num opus, Shoah, has cast a long, lin­ger­ing shad­ow over both the career of its cre­ator and the dis­ci­pline of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing in its entire­ty. In the 30 years since Shoah’s release, Lanz­mann has con­tin­ued to devote him­self almost sole­ly to the exca­va­tion of not only the his­to­ries of the Holo­caust, but to the moun­tains of footage he him­self shot over the 10-plus years of the film’s devel­op­ment. It’s clear that the impe­tus behind Shoah, along with the now four sub­se­quent films he has cre­at­ed from the same reserve of orig­i­nal mate­r­i­al, is less a one-off project than an ongo­ing ide­o­log­i­cal and artis­tic concern.

Such a con­tin­u­um is appro­pri­ate con­sid­er­ing Lanzmann’s ded­i­ca­tion to the restora­tion and rean­i­ma­tion of past events for the present day. And in that sense, The Last of the Unjust is anoth­er mon­u­men­tal unveil­ing of a shroud­ed episode in world his­to­ry, as well as a cru­cial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of the tenets of mem­o­ry and moral­i­ty though the most cat­a­stroph­ic prism imag­in­able. Struc­tured around a hand­ful of inter­views con­duct­ed in 1975 with Rab­bi Ben­jamin Murmel­stein, the final pres­i­dent of the Jew­ish Coun­cil at There­sien­stadt and the sole sur­viv­ing ​“Jew­ish Elder,” a suc­ces­sion of Nazi-anoint­ed admin­is­tra­tors who helped gov­ern var­i­ous con­cen­tra­tion camps dur­ing the war years, the film is told large­ly through the writ­ten and ver­bal rec­ol­lec­tions of its epony­mous sub­ject, pre­sent­ing this most con­tro­ver­sial of posi­tions as a bur­den of con­tra­dic­tions pit­ted at the very crux of betray­al and benevolence.

Again using no archival footage, Lanz­mann man­ages to seam­less­ly sit­u­ate the film with­in mul­ti­ple time peri­ods, con­trast­ing and com­ment­ing upon his con­ver­sa­tions with Murmel­stein and their dis­cus­sion of his role in the embell­ish­ments of this ​“mod­el ghet­to,” with present day vis­its to There­sien­stadt where the direc­tor reads aloud from the rabbi’s 1961 book, ​‘Terezin, il Ghet­to Mod­el­lo di Eich­mann.’ For Lanz­mann, the past is not a closed con­ver­sa­tion, but instead an ongo­ing dia­logue, attain­ing new res­o­nance with the accu­mu­la­tion of time and the addi­tion of new perspectives.

For his part, Murmel­stein is a daz­zling­ly sharp and involv­ing sto­ry­teller, weav­ing first-hand details of work­ing under the dom­i­neer­ing hand of Adolf Eich­mann with, at times, dis­con­cert­ing defences for his own actions (“Per­haps I thirst­ed for adven­ture”). Much of the inter­view is giv­en over to seman­tic debate (the cat­e­gor­i­cal clas­si­fi­ca­tions of Jews, ​“East” as a pre­tence for Auschwitz, the marked dis­tinc­tion between mar­tyrs and saints), but Lanz­mann just as sage­ly allows his images to accrue an exis­ten­tial grav­i­tas, for­mu­lat­ing at once an inquiry into the capac­i­ty of our moral con­sti­tu­tion and an aes­thet­ic hypoth­e­sis for the dimen­sions of mem­o­ry itself. As such, Lanzmann’s cin­e­ma remains less doc­u­ment than tes­ta­ment, one of immense pow­er and integri­ty – a lega­cy of legacies.