WNET

Shoah is a 1985 French documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann about the Holocaust. The film primarily consists of his interviews and visits to Holocaust sites across Poland, including three extermination camps. It presents testimonies by selected survivors, witnesses, and German perpetrators, often secretly recorded using hidden cameras.

As Claude Lanzmann does not speak Polish, Hebrew or Yiddish, he depended on translators to work with most of his interviewees. This process enlarged the scale of the documentary, which is nine hours and twenty-three minutes long. While winning notable awards, the film also aroused controversy and criticism, particularly in Poland, but also in the US. A number of historians criticized it for failing to show and discuss the many Poles who rescued Jews, or to recognize the millions of Poles who were killed by the Germans in an extermination campaign.