The Last of the Unjust
Synopsis
1975. In Rome, Claude Lanzmann filmed a series of interviews with Benjamin Murmelstein, the last President of the Jewish Council of Elders in the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia, the only “Jewish elder” (according to Nazi terminology) not to have been killed during the war. A rabbi in Vienna, following the annexation of Austria by Germany in 1938 Murmelstein fought bitterly with Adolf Eichmann, week after week for seven years, managing to help around 121,000 Jews leave the country, and preventing the liquidation of the ghetto.
2012. Claude Lanzmann, at 87, exhumes these interviews from Rome, returning to Theresienstadt, the town “given to the Jews by Hitler”, a so-called model ghetto, but a deceitful ghetto chosen by Eichmann to dupe the world. We discover the extraordinary personality of Benjamin Murmelstein: a man blessed with a dazzling intelligence and a certain courage which, along with an unrivaled memory, makes him a wonderfully wry, sardonic and authentic storyteller.
Through the various periods, from Nisko in Poland to Theresienstadt, and from Vienna to Rome, the film provides an unprecedented insight into the genesis of the Final Solution. It also reveals the true face of Eichmann, and exposes without artifice the savage contradictions of the Jewish Councils.
Credits
Director (1)
Production and distribution (5)
- Executive Producers : Synecdoche, Le Pacte
- Co-productions : France 3 Cinéma, Les Films Aleph
- Foreign production company : Dor Film Produktion
- Film exports/foreign sales : Le Pacte
- French distribution : Le Pacte
Full credits (9)
- Executive Producers : David Frenkel, Jean Labadie, Danny Krausz
- Screenwriter : Claude Lanzmann
- Directors of Photography : Caroline Champetier, William Lubtchansky
- Assistant director : Laura Koeppel
- Editor : Chantal Hymans
- Sound recordists : Alexandre Koeller, Manuel Grandpierre, Francis Bonfanti
- Production Manager : Thibault Mattei
- Press Attaché (film) : Agnès Chabot
- Sound Mixer : Manuel Grandpierre
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Technical details
- Type : Feature film
- Genres : Documentary
- Sub-genre : Historical
- Production language : German, French
- Coproducer countries : France, Austria
- Original French-language productions : Yes
- Nationality : Majority French (France, Austria)
- Production year : 2012
- French release : 13/11/2013
- Runtime : 3 h 38 min
- Current status : Released
- Visa number : 131.709
- Visa issue date : 24/10/2013
- Approval : Yes
- Color type : Color
- Aspect ratio : 1.85
- Audio format : Dolby 5.1
- Rating restrictions : None
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News & awards
News (3)
Selections (18)
Delegations (1)
Unifrance Rendez-Vous in Paris
France, 2014
Director : Claude Lanzmann
Director of photography : Caroline Champetier
