Un vivant qui passe

In the period 1974 to 1985, Claude Lanzmann made the celebrated, eight-hour long documentary SHOAH, about the persecution of the Jews in World War II. He did not incorporate all the footage of eyewitnesses he collected back then in this controversial film. For example, the interview with the Swiss Maurice Rossel, who in the war held an important function at the International Committee of the Red Cross. Without being too hard on the old Rossel - the interview took place in 1979 -, Lanzmann acutely interrogates him about the favourable reports that Rossel wrote after his visits to Auschwitz and Theresienstadt.Particularly after his visit to Theresienstadt, the still young Rossel - he was 25 when the war broke out — was completely hoodwinked by the Nazis. Especially for the visit by the Red Cross delegation, the town was converted, some Jews were given new clothes, and only a few prisoners who still looked healthy were allowed to walk through the streets. Rossel did suspect, he confesses to Lanzmann, that something peculiar was going on, but strangely enough he did not draw the obvious conclusion.Lanzmann, who is on camera himself for a few seconds, is clearly amazed that Rossel still maintains thirty years later that he considered it very odd that during his visit to the camp the Jews did not secretly attempt to inform him of the atrocities committed. Lanzmann does not really react to this; he only recites the long list of crimes and abuses that took place behind the ignorant Rossel‘s back. Seemingly unmoved, Rossel hears it out. The impression remains that this amiable looking and eloquent man knew more at the time than he was willing to admit later on.