40 years ago, Shoah was released, the long film by Claude Lanzmann which collected the testimonies of Jewish survivors of the death camps.
A 9:20 a.m. cinematic monument, a reference work for understanding the history of the Shoah, it will be rebroadcast this Tuesday, January 30 at 9:10 p.m. by France 2. Forty years after its broadcast, the work is still discussed in courses on the period.
“
It’s a turning point in the history of the memory of the Shoah
,” underlines Lucile*, a professor of history and geography, who addresses the question in Terminale, in the chapter “Memory and history” of the geopolitical specialty ( HGGSP) from his private high school in the Paris region.
Colleagues around him also show extracts to their students.
But the length of the complete film, as well as its specificity – testimonies from survivors, witnesses and executioners interspersed with shots of landscapes in Poland – make it difficult to access for the younger generation.
A contrast with that of their parents, whom the film had deeply marked.
Upon leaving the Jacques Decour public high school in Paris (9th), some students have certainly heard about it.
But almost none of them saw it.
“We talked about it in class
,” confirms Clara, a final year student, who chose the geopolitics specialty.
Digging through her course notebooks, she found the lesson in question:
“We talked about
Shoah
, Night and Fog, Son of Saul, Schindler's List and Amen”
.
This latest film, by Costa-Gavras, was even the subject of a presentation that she had to present to her class.
“Competition of memories”
Next to them, her two friends Eulalie and Tissem, who do not do the same specialties, did not know of the existence of the film.
But they immediately cite more recent works:
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
(2008) or
Anne Frank, My Best Friend
(2021).
A little further on, Martin and Niels, two first year students in the same high school, talk about the same works, but also
A Bag of Marbles
(2017) or
Schindler's List
(1993).
“The reference films for young people evolve over the years”
, underlines Ophir Levy, lecturer in Cinematographic Studies at the University of Paris 8 - Vincennes-Saint-Denis who has been working for the educational service of the Shoah Memorial for nearly twenty years.
La Rafle
(2010) already no longer speaks to today's high school students, even if certain
"classics"
remain essential:
"I saw
La vie est belle
(1997), and moreover I used it in a philosophy dissertation on “making people believe”
, says a student in preparatory classes, who has never heard of Lanzmann's work.
“There have always been films that evoke the genocide, since 1944
,” recalls Ophir Levy.
But unlike
Nuit et Brouillard
(1956) by Alain Resnais or
Le Chagrin et la Pitié
(1971) by Marcel Ophüls, Claude Lanzmann does not use archive images, because he chooses to only talk about the centers of to death like Sobibor or Treblinka, of which almost no image remains.
“Lanzmann allows us to understand that there remains almost no trace of the Shoah, which poses a challenge for cinema: what are we filming, when what there is to film is 'absence even of visible signs?'
Also read: Sandra Hüller: the weight of the Shoah, the shock of the scenario
“I think that our generations have not seen it because it is a film that is dated, that is long and not at all like the films that we are used to watching
,” points out Helena, a student in preparatory classes. who saw excerpts from
Shoah
in final year class.
Devoid of chronological order, the film immediately plunges the viewer into the heart of places where few, if any, traces remain.
“I believe that it is one of the only films that did not want to depict the Shoah, to stay as close as possible to the truth
,” adds Helena.
The fact remains that 80 years after the events, the subject remains sometimes sensitive to discuss.
“Especially at the moment, it’s tense
,” confides Martin, referring to the conflict between Hamas and Israel since October 7.
“There are many different communities in the high school, so these are also difficult subjects for teachers to address
,” they recall, invoking the murder of Samuel Paty by an Islamist terrorist.
“Even between students it’s difficult to talk about it
,” conclude the two high school students.
“We can have students who are in the competition of memories, of suffering,”
raises Lucile, the history teacher, while emphasizing that it is episodic and confined to certain students.
When the subject is broached,
“generally there is silence in the class, and very quickly we arrive at philosophical questions: how could they have done this?
Because “how did we get here” is precisely the subject of the history course on the Shoah?”
, she testifies.
“It’s very difficult to keep an objective eye because it’s a complicated subject,”
confirms Clara,
“but it interests everyone,”
adds Eulalie, for whom it is not a sensitive subject because,
“since the 3rd, we are used to talking about it
.
Students also discuss the Shoah in CM2 class.
“We don’t like reading”
And to better understand, films remain a favorite gateway:
“we are a generation where, as soon as we don't understand something, we go and watch a video.
We don't like reading.
Besides, for the chapter on the First World War, everyone revised with a Netflix series on it,”
concludes Eulalie.
But in the era of Netflix and TikTok,
Shoah
remains difficult to access:
“it is an exercise in patience: the film requires special attention to which current productions have not accustomed students”
, indicates Ophir Lévy .
“When I tell them that it lasts more than nine hours, the students say to me “but ma’am, that’s not possible!”
, laughs the professor.
For the two teachers, the documentary cannot be approached without a dedicated educational framework.
Without this,
“the probability that young people will discover it on their own is low
,” says Ophir Lévy.
“I also use it to debate the use of fiction to address the Shoah
,” explains the history professor.
Because
“the second aspect which characterizes Lanzmann’s approach”
is precisely a
“refusal of the use of fiction”
, explains Ophir Levy.
A few years before the release of his film, the American mini-series
Holocaust
enjoyed immense worldwide success, but Lanzmann, who had been working on his film for several years, disapproved of both its fictional nature and its title.
While the term "
Holocaust
" refers to a sacrificial rite in the Bible, he chose instead that of "
Shoah
", officially used in Israel from 1951, which helped to popularize the use in France.
The Shoah continues to fuel cinematographic works, and the rebroadcast of Lanzmann's work this Tuesday on France 2 at prime time remains a strong symbolic gesture:
"it creates an event: obviously they are going to lose viewers, but I said to myself “hey, they dare”
,” enthuses the history and geography teacher.