We spoke to Dr Tamar Lewinsky, Curator of Contemporary History at the Jewish Museum Berlin, about the significance of the Claude Lanzmann audio archive. In this interview, she explains how the material opens up new perspectives on the Holocaust, the challenges involved in processing it, and why the immediacy of these recordings offers such a powerful way of engaging with memory.
The Claude Lanzmann Audio Archive includes 220 hours of previously unreleased interviews with eyewitnesses. What is the significance of this archive for Holocaust research and education?
Tamar Lewinsky: The Lanzmann recordings offer insight into the origins of the film Shoah, while also reflecting how different groups recalled the Holocaust in the 1970s. As in the film, Claude Lanzmann speaks with survivors, perpetrators, and third parties. The archive reveals what was known about the systematic extermination of entire groups of people at the time, the ways people tried to explain it, and the individual approaches in how they coped with its legacy.
Unlike many other oral history projects, these are not professionally produced interviews. They are raw audio recordings of a wide range of encounters, created internally to help prepare for filming. This makes them strikingly direct and spontaneous. The level of reflection in these recordings is also unusually deep and thought-provoking.
The film Shoah profoundly changed how the Holocaust is perceived. What new insights or dimensions do you expect the audio archive to reveal?
TL: What stands out is how the audio recordings and the film footage complement one another. Only a handful of individuals appear in both. Most of the material is entirely new in terms of content and expands our understanding of the years of preparation and travel that preceded the shoot.
It becomes clear that a range of topics explored during the research phase did not make it into the final film. Analysing the archive allows us to better trace how Lanzmann gradually refined his focus, how he developed his interview techniques, and which themes he ultimately chose to leave out—and when.
Are there any recordings in the archive that you found particularly moving or surprising—ones you consider especially significant?
TL: There are many powerful and touching moments throughout the recordings. Sometimes it’s just a short passage, sometimes an entire conversation. One example is a preparatory conversation with a woman who, despite Lanzmann’s requests, refused to appear on camera. Another instance is that of Ilana Safran, who speaks about her deportation to Sobibor, her escape during the uprising at the extermination camp, her time with the partisans, and her later confrontation with the perpetrators in court in Hagen. Some of the interviews with perpetrators reveal the fearless and uncompromising approach taken by Lanzmann and his team. In one, Lanzmann is heard sitting in the living room of former SS officer Lothar Fendler and reveals that he is Jewish. In another, German-speaking Israeli Irena Steinfeldt-Levy confronts Edmund Veesenmeyer with confidence and conviction, challenging his attempts to question the value of the project.
What specific challenges have you and your team faced in digitising, transcribing and cataloguing the recordings?
TL: Thankfully, the tapes overall were in surprisingly good condition and were fully digitised with the help of an audio restoration specialist. But there have still been many challenges. Poor audio quality often makes transcription slow and tedious: there are gaps in the recordings, background noise interfering with understanding, and some passages are entirely unintelligible. The multilingual nature of the material adds another layer of complexity—and then many of the speakers were not native speakers, and often several people speak at once. Because of this, automated transcription wasn’t possible. Another issue is that many tapes were unlabelled, so identifying speakers and dates has been difficult. Nonetheless, we have managed to transcribe most of the recordings and to assign nearly all the voices to specific individuals. We’ve also begun to piece together the chronology and sequence of the recordings. The interviews are now being carefully translated into German—and will soon be available in English. At the same time, our contextual research continues to uncover new findings every day.
What does the archive material reveal about how Claude Lanzmann and his assistants, Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt-Levy, worked together?
TL: One thing that becomes clear is how the small team shared the work. From the recordings, you can trace how Lanzmann, Coulmas and Steinfeldt divided their roles and coordinated geographically and within joint conversations. It’s also clear how thoroughly prepared they were. Their questions reveal deep background research, a solid grasp of sources, and—in the case of the perpetrator interviews in particular—remarkable courage in confronting their subjects.
Of course, the recordings represent only part of the research and preparation that went into Shoah. Thanks to the support of the Alfred Landecker Foundation, we were also able to conduct a video interview this year with Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt-Levy, which adds important dimensions to the history of the film project.