Shoah: the Anti-Myth

“Shoah” is a film about the extermination of European Jews during the Second World War. My ambition was to make a movie which would reconstitute this major modern historical event in all its magnitude, a historical movie providing an insight into the history recounts, a work worthy of the event it portrays. Instead of limiting it to any one chapter or episode of the extermination of the Jewds in Europe, I decided to tackle the issue as a whole, in its every dimension and with all its consequences, which rather than fading with time have only been aggravated. The duration of the film, the size of the cast and the many temes it covers all contribute to make it a truly monumental work. No existing documents were used; all 350 hours of film were shot between 1976 and 1981 in ten stages after a preparatory investigation conducted over three and a half years in 14 different countries. “Shoah” is a non-fiction movie featuring a cast (Jews, nazis, direct and indirect witnesses of the extermination) which was involved in one way or another in the events I have attempted to bring back to life. Legend, myth and fictions have tended to water down and blur the implacable, blinding reality of the Holocaust; such trivialization leads to the worst travesties.