Amos Oz
STRONG NERVES AND GERMAN IRONY
For forty years now we have been teaching ourselves that the
murder of European Jewry can be explained but not understood.
It
was
pronounced incomprehensible because,
"if
you were not there yourself, you
are incapable of ..." and so forth. Yet it could be explained because there is
"context" and "meaning." And so explanations piled upon explanations: from
Jean-Paul Sartre to Friedlander, from Hannah Arendt to Viktor Frankl, from
Elie Wiesel to Menachem Begin.
It
has been explained from a Marxist per–
spective and in a theological context. The intellectual significance and the po–
litical background have been explored. And it has been explained in terms of
historiosophy and by psychoanalytical methods, among others.
Claude Lanzmann tells us the exact opposite: There is no point in ex–
plaining, but, for once, let us
try
to comprehend.
Comprehension is possible, provided we are willing to immerse our–
selves in the most minute detail. What time was it? Where did they put their
clothes and shoes? How cold was it? What color were the death trucks?
How many minutes did it take to get from the platform to the crematorium?
Who paid for the transports? How did they load and unload? What exactly
did they do with the thighbones that were too heavy to be burned in the
regular way?
This microscopic detail is what gives Lanzmann's creation a Tolstoyan,
Joycean, Proustian dimension. The film
Shoah
resembles
War and Peace,
and
in another sense it resembles
Ulysses
and
Remembrance of Things Past.
It
is
a journey into memory that aspires, ideally, to document everything: each
fraction of a second multiplied by four years, multiplied by six million. As we
said: an obsession with detail. Ideally, this is a film without an end; a film
seeking to have the screening time of one thousand years and more. We are
told that Lanzmann shot three hundred and fifty hours of film, ofwhich he
has shown us less than ten. As a matter of principle, this film ought to con–
tinue until the end of time.
I am man , but You are God, You have a Creator's
imagination.
Surely You were there among Your flocks
Editor's Note: Copyright
©
1989 by Amos Oz and Am Oved Publishers, Ltd. Tel
Aviv. English translation copyright
©
1989 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
Published by arrangement with Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
