When Claude Lanzmann, the French journalist and documentary filmmaker, premiered "Shoah" in Paris in April 1985, it marked a turning point in how the Holocaust was perceived. It was the first collection of eyewitness testimonies. During the 1970s and 1980s, Lanzmann and his collaborators Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt-Levy had conducted extensive interviews with survivors, perpetrators, and other witnesses. For Lanzmann, this work was a lifelong commitment.
To mark what would have been his 100th birthday, the Jewish Museum Berlin is showing the exhibition "Claude Lanzmann. The Recordings" from November 28, 2025. The exhibition makes public, for the first time, the filmmaker’s extensive audio archive: around 220 hours of previously unreleased recordings from the years of research leading up to Shoah. Visitors will be able to explore the origins of the film until 12 April 2026.
Making History Audible
Through selected original recordings, visitors can follow the research journeys of Lanzmann and his team. The exhibition reveals how people in the 1970s remembered the Holocaust - and how they tried to make sense of what they had experienced and endured. Six thematic listening areas guide visitors through key topics, including Lanzmann’s approaches and experiences as an interviewer; his first visit to the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial; how perpetrators reflected - or failed to reflect - on their crimes as well as the Holocaust in Lithuania.
Visitors are invited to move freely through the exhibition space wearing headphones, following translations of the multilingual conversations on monitors. Original documents from Lanzmann’s private archive, a video interview with his collaborators, and additional materials and film excerpts help contextualise the recordings.
- Exhibition dates: November 28, 2025 – April 12, 2026
- Venue: Eric F. Ross Gallery, Jewish Museum Berlin
- Admission: Free of charge
- Opening hours: Daily from 10 am to 6 pm
For more information about the exhibition, visit the website of Jewish Museum Berlin.
The Claude Lanzmann Audio Archive
In 2021 and 2022, the Jewish Museum Berlin received a total of 152 magnetic tapes from the Association Claude et Félix Lanzmann (A.C.F.L.), represented by Dominique Lanzmann, the filmmaker’s widow. Alongside interviews with survivors and perpetrators, the recordings also include conversations with writers, resistance fighters, clergy, intellectuals, politicians, German businesspeople, and historians. In 2023, the archive - together with the film Shoah - was inscribed in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.
Following the donation, the museum began digitising the recordings in collaboration with the Selma Stern Centre for Jewish Studies Berlin-Brandenburg (SSZ) and the Center for Digital Systems at Freie Universität Berlin (CeDiS). The project is funded by the Alfred Landecker Foundation and the Federal Foreign Office.
More information about the Claude Lanzmann Audio Archive can be found here.