Directed by: Claude Lanzmann.
Written by: Claude Lanzmann.
Featuring: Benjamin Murmelstein, Claude Lanzmann.
The
Last of the Unjust is the fifth movie that director Claude Lanzmann has made
out the footage that he shot in the 1970s and 1980s for his nine-and-a-half
hour epic documentary Shoah (1985) – which is one of the greatest films ever
made. In the years since, Lanzmann has taken some of the material that didn’t
make the cut in Shoah – mainly for thematic reasons – and fashioned other
movies out of them. Unlike the previous three films that Lanzmann made out of
the Shoah interviews however, The Last of the Unjust is more than just an
extended interview about a specific subject related to the Holocaust. Much of
the film is the interview, conducted over the course of a week in 1975 that
Lanzmann conducted with Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein. Murmelstein was the last
President of the Jewish Council in the Theresiemmstadt Ghetto in Czechoslovakia
– a ghetto the Germans used as a “show ghetto” – a place for propaganda to show
the rest of the world that they were not mistreating Jews, although even in
that show ghetto, death was a big part of daily life. Murmelstein is the only
“Jewish Elder” to survive the war, and he lived out his days in Rome, in Exile.
Some thought he was cruel – a war criminal and collaborator who should have
been executed for his role. But he was tried, and found not guilty of all
charges. This has done little to rehabilitate his image – although I have a
feeling that this film will do that.
But The Last of the Unjust is not just the 40 year old interview with Murmelstein – although that by itself would have made it a worthy film. Lanzmann also has scenes of himself visiting the locations that Murmelstein mentions, walking the grounds, telling us the story of the atrocities that happened there. The film opens with Lanzmann at the train station where the Jews who were transported to Theresiemmstadt got off to walk to their “new home”. Passenger trains fly past him, and Lanzmann grows frustrated that he cannot control the trains. Trains played a large role in Shoah, of course, as Lanzmann made great use of them to show us the routes the trains took – but back then, he could control the trains, and get the shots he wanted. But now, 40 years later, life is moving too fast for Lanzmann to control – and people have moved on. Lanzmann’s films have always been, at least in part, about memory – but today there are very few left who still have any first hand memories of the Holocaust. In the years since Shoah, we have seen countless Holocaust movies of all sorts – but very few, if any, with Lanzmann’s point-of-view. The title of the film therefore refers not just to Murmelstein, but to Lanzmann himself.
As with
all the interviews conducted for Shoah, Lanzmann is relentless in his
questioning of Murmelstein – wanting to get all the minute details of what he
did, when, and who he talked and why Murmelstein did what he did. Murmelstein
is unapologetic for what he did – like many in Shoah, he claims not to have
known what the Nazis were doing at the other camps, even when they shipped
people off from his ghetto, and new arrivals seemed to know something about
“gas”. Murmelstein was worried about what the Nazis would do to his ghetto, and
he helped them turn it into the vehicle for propaganda that they wanted it to
be – but claims he did that to help save the ghetto. His theory, and it’s not a
bad one, is that if people knew about the ghetto, the Germans couldn’t get rid
of it.
To be
sure, by the time the interview had been conducted, Murmelstein had had three
decades to rationalize his behavior and justify it to himself. But he doesn’t
really make excuses for what he did – but he does have his reasons. When you
make a documentary that is largely centered on a single person being
interviewed, the audience will inevitably decide whether or not they believe
them. In the case of something like Errol Morris’ The Unknown Known, I think
most people distrusted Donald Rumsfeld. In the case of The Last of the Unjust,
I think most will end up believing Murmelstein. He doesn’t make excuses – he
doesn’t let himself off the hook.
Perhaps
one of the reasons Lanzmann felt the need to make The Last of the Unjust was to
disprove Hannah Arendt’s theory of the banality of evil in regards to the likes
of Eichmann – which has become a widely held belief in the years since Arendt
created so much controversy with it. Murmelstein knew Eichmann better than most
– and could have provided some valuable testimony at his trial, but the
prosecution didn’t want him as a witness – they didn’t find him “trustworthy”
enough. Lanzmann has never been in the camp that believed Arendt’s theory, and
here he lets Murmelstein tell what he knew of the man.
He also
lets Murmelstein respond to those who think he himself should have been hanged
for his actions. At the end of this long (3 hour, 40 minute) film, there is a
final interview, of Lanzmann and Murmelstein walking the streets of Rome, where
Murmelstein explains what he thinks of those who think he should have been
hanged. He says “An Elder of the Jews can be condemned, in fact they must be
condemned, but they can never be judged, because you cannot take his place”.
Like all of the Lanzmann films about the Holocaust, it sheds new light on one
of the most horrific events in human history. Watching the film you will find
new insight, new information. But it’s even deeper than that. The other three
films that Lanzmann made out of the Shoah interviews were interesting. The Last
of the Unjust, while not on the same level as Shoah (as few films ever could
be), is far and away the best of the bunch since then. If it is indeed the
final film of Lanzmann’s Shoah cycle, it is a fitting way to go out.
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