Editing Shoah (film) (section)

==Synopsis==
===Overview===
{{Further|Operation Reinhard}}
The film is concerned chiefly with three topics: the [[Chełmno extermination camp]], where mobile [[Nazi gas van|gas van]]s were first used by Germans to exterminate Jews; the death camps of [[Treblinka extermination camp|Treblinka]] and [[Auschwitz concentration camp|Auschwitz-Birkenau]]; and the [[Warsaw ghetto]], with testimonies from survivors, witnesses and perpetrators.

The sections on Treblinka include testimony from Abraham Bomba, who survived as a barber;<ref name="Video Archive">{{cite web |url=http://prizedwriting.ucdavis.edu/past/2001-2002/witness-and-technique-interview-in-claude-lanzmann2019s-shoah |author=William Baker |title=Abraham Bomba: Witness and Technique |publisher=University of California, Davis campus |work=Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection |date=September 2005 |access-date=6 September 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140907010437/http://prizedwriting.ucdavis.edu/past/2001-2002/witness-and-technique-interview-in-claude-lanzmann2019s-shoah |archive-date=7 September 2014 |url-status=dead }}</ref> [[Richard Glazar]], an inmate; and [[Franz Suchomel]], an [[SS]] officer. Bomba breaks down while describing how he came across the wife and sister of a barber friend of his while cutting hair in the gas chamber.<ref>{{cite web | url=http://wearcam.org/envirotech/undressing_and_cutting_off_hair.htm | title=Excerpt 3 from Shoah }}</ref> This section includes [[#Gawkowski|Henryk Gawkowski]], who drove [[Holocaust train|transport trains]] while intoxicated with vodka. Gawkowski's photograph appears on the poster used for the film's marketing campaign.

Testimonies on Auschwitz are provided by [[Rudolf Vrba]], who escaped from the camp before the end of the war;<ref name=Vrbainterview>[https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=5009 "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection, Interview with Rudolf Vrba"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.</ref> and [[Filip Müller]], who worked in an incinerator burning the bodies from the gassings. Müller recounts what prisoners said to him and describes the experience of personally going into the gas chamber: bodies were piled up by the doors "like stones". He breaks down as he recalls the prisoners starting to sing while being forced into the gas chamber. Accounts include some from local villagers, who witnessed trains heading daily to the camp and returning empty; they quickly guessed the fate of those on board.

[[File:Jan Karski - Instytut w Rudzie Śląskiej.jpg|thumb|upright|[[Jan Karski]] was interviewed by Lanzmann in the winter of 1978–1979 in Washington, D.C.<ref name=Karskiinterview/>]]
Lanzmann also interviews bystanders. He asks whether they knew what was going on in the death camps. Their answers reveal that they did, but they justified their inaction by their fear of death. Two survivors of Chełmno are interviewed: [[Simon Srebnik]], who was forced to sing military songs to entertain the Nazis; and [[Mordechaï Podchlebnik]]. Lanzmann also has a secretly filmed interview with Franz Schalling, a German security guard, who describes the workings of Chełmno. Walter Stier, a former Nazi bureaucrat, describes the workings of the railways. Stier insists he was simply managing railroad traffic and was not aware that he was transporting Jews directly to their deaths, though he admits to being aware that the destinations were concentration camps.

The Warsaw ghetto is described by [[Jan Karski]], a member of the [[Polish Underground]] who worked for the [[Polish government-in-exile]], and Franz Grassler, a Nazi administrator in Warsaw who liaised with Jewish leaders. A Christian, Karski sneaked into the Warsaw ghetto and travelled using false documents to England to try to convince the Allied governments to intervene more strongly on behalf of the Jews.<ref name=Karskiinterview>[https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=4739 "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection, Interview with Jan Karski"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.{{pb}}
Also see Jan Karski, ''Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World'', Georgetown University Press, 2014 [1944].</ref>

Memories from Jewish survivors of the [[Warsaw Ghetto uprising]] conclude the documentary. Lanzmann also interviews Holocaust historian [[Raul Hilberg]], who discusses the significance of Nazi propaganda against the European Jews and the Nazi development of the [[Final Solution]] and a detailed analysis of railroad documents showing the transport routes to the death camps. The complete text of the film was published in 1985.

===Franz Suchomel===
Corporal [[Franz Suchomel]], interviewed by Lanzmann in Germany on 27 April 1976, was an SS officer who had worked at Treblinka.<ref>[https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=5673 "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection, Interview with Franz Suchomel"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.</ref> Suchomel agreed to be interviewed for 500 [[Deutschmark]]s, but refused to be filmed, so Lanzmann used hidden recording equipment while assuring Suchomel that he would not use his name.<ref>Marcel Ophüls, "Closely Watched Trains", in Liebman (ed.) 2007, 84.</ref>

Suchomel talks in detail about the camp's [[gas chamber]]s and the disposal of bodies. He states that he did not know about the extermination at Treblinka until he arrived there. On his first day, he says he vomited and cried after encountering trenches full of corpses, 6–7 m deep, with the earth around them moving in waves because of the gases seeping from the decomposing bodies. The smell of the bodies carried for kilometres depending on the wind, he said, but local people were scared to act in case they were sent to the work camp, [[Treblinka I]].<ref name=transcript>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5046/7D940B1C-E4B1-4307-AB90-D5D915A8BE5E.pdf "Transcript of the ''Shoah'' interview with Franz Suchomel"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum</ref>{{rp|p.7–8}}

He explained that from arrival at Treblinka to death in the gas chambers took 2–3 hours for a trainload of people. They would undress, the women would have their hair cut, then they would wait naked outside, including during the winter in minus 10–20&nbsp;°C, until there was room in the gas chamber. Suchomel told Lanzmann that he would ask the hairdressers to slow down so that the women would not have to wait so long outside.<ref name=transcript/>{{rp|p.19–20}}

Compared to the size and complexity of [[Auschwitz]], Suchomel calls Treblinka "primitive. But a well-functioning assembly line of death."<ref name=transcript/>{{rp|p.16}}

===Man in the poster{{anchor|Gawkowski}}===
{{Further|Holocaust trains}}
The publicity [[Film poster|poster]] for the film features Henryk Gawkowski, a Polish railway worker from [[Małkinia Górna|Malkinia]], who, in 1942–1943 when he was 20–21 years old,<ref>For his age, [http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf "Transcript of the ''Shoah'' interview with Henryk Gawkowski and Treblinka railway workers"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (hereinafter Gawkowski transcript), 15.{{pb}}
Also see [https://www.ushmm.org/online/film/display/detail.php?file_num=5271 "Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection: Henryk Gawkowski and Treblinka railway workers"], Washington, D.C.: Steven Spielberg Film and Video Archive, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.</ref> worked on the trains to Treblinka as an "assistant machinist with the right to drive the locomotive".<ref>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 1.</ref> Conducted in Poland in July 1978, the interview with Gawkowski is shown 48 minutes into the film, and is the first to present events from the victims' perspective. Lanzmann hired a [[steam locomotive]] similar to the one Gawkowski worked on and shows the tracks and a sign for Treblinka.<ref>Stella Bruzzi, ''New Documentary'', Routledge, 2006, 99–100.</ref>

Gawkowski told Lanzmann that every train had a Polish driver and assistant, accompanied by German officers.<ref name=Gawkowskitranscriptp4/> What happened was not his fault, he said; had he refused to do the job, he would have been sent to a work camp. He would have killed Hitler himself had he been able to, he told Lanzmann.<ref>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 12, 38.</ref> Lanzmann estimated that 18,000 Jews were taken to Treblinka by the trains Gawkowski worked on.<ref name=Gawkowskitranscriptp4>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 4.</ref> Gawkowski said he had driven Polish Jews there in cargo trains in 1942, and Jews from France, Greece, Holland and Yugoslavia in passenger trains in 1943. A train carrying Jews was called a ''Sonderzug'' (special train); the "cargo" was given false papers to disguise that humans were being hauled.<ref name=Gawkoskitranscriptp8>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 8.</ref> The Germans gave the train workers vodka as a bonus when they drove a ''Sonderzug''; Gawkowski drank liberally to make the job bearable.<ref>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 9–10.</ref>

Gawkowski drove trains to the Treblinka train station and from the station into the camp itself.<ref name=Gawkoskitranscriptp8/> He said the smell of burning was unbearable as the train approached the camp.<ref>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 9, also see 14–15.</ref> The railcars would be driven into the camp by the locomotive in three stages; as he drove one convoy into Treblinka, he would signal to the ones that were waiting by making a slashing movement across his throat. The gesture would cause chaos in those convoys, he said; passengers would try to jump out or throw their children out.<ref>[http://data.ushmm.org/intermedia/film_video/spielberg_archive/transcript/RG60_5036/E6E7CAB3-68DF-49D6-B7B1-A90597265DD6.pdf Gawkowski transcript], 5–6.</ref> [[Dominick LaCapra]] wrote that the expression on Gawkowski's face when he demonstrated the gesture for Lanzmann seemed "somewhat diabolical".<ref>Dominick LaCapra, "Lanzmann's ''Shoah'': 'Here There Is No Why'", in Liebman (ed.) 2007, 213.</ref> Lanzmann grew to like Gawkowski over the course of the interviews, writing in 1990: "He was different from the others. I have sympathy for him because he carries a truly open wound that does not heal."<ref>Claude Lanzmann, "Les Non-lieux de la memoire", in Michel Deguy (ed.), ''Au sujet de "Shoah": Le Film de Claude Lanzman'', Paris: Belin, 1990, 282, cited by LaCapra in Liebman (ed.) 2007, 213.</ref>