Professor habil. Dr. Markas Petuchauskas, an inmate of the Vilnius ghetto who escaped dramatically and went into hiding, saw every play staged at the Vilnius ghetto theater. While organizing the International Art Days to Commemorate the Vilnius Ghetto Theater event, Dr. Petuchauskas invited Claude Lanzmann to travel to Lithuania and attend. The director agreed and, arriving in April of 1997, presented his film Shoah. This was the Lithuanian premiere of Lanzmann’s film, in the Cinema Program of Art Days. It was Lanzmann’s first and only trip to Vilnius, last only a few days during which he spoke directly with Lithuanian people and gave interviews. We present Professor Petuchauskas’s recollections:

Claude Lanzmann in Lithuania

The news struck like lightning. Claude Lanzmann has gone. The memory of his trip to Vilnius rose up inside me. This is how it was.

One of the first large international art projects organized by the Lithuanian Jewish Culture Club which I founded and directed was International Art Days in 1997, dedicated to commemorating the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Vilnius Ghetto Theater.

I invited Israeli writer Joshua Sobol, well known for his play Ghetto (about the Vilnius ghetto) and who wrote he had never been to Lithuania, to take part in the International Art Days event. Coming to Lithuania for the first time at my invitation, he had the chance to get up on the stage of the theater about which he had written and to tell how he created his play.

The opening ceremony for the Days, dedicated to him, was also held in the former ghetto theater hall.

Famous film director Claude Lanzmann from France, the creator of the globally acclaimed film Shoah, got up on the stage as well. I invited him along with French director Brigite Jaque, who was already known in Vilnius and an acquaintance of mine. It was pleasant to hear Lanzmann, a man who generally avoids lavishing much praise, speak such warm words about my work in holding the Days and about their importance for recalling notable pages in the history of the Shoah.

The film Shoah travelled a difficult road to reach Vilnius. Even getting the actual film strips across the border required all sorts of permits and negotiations at that time. (This was a film strip which barely fit in over a dozen large and fairly heavy film canisters, which made their transport by airplane difficult). French cultural attaché to Lithuania Patrick Donabedian saved the day. He is an incredibly active and gregarious person with whom I had worked successfully earlier. He had the film flown in using diplomatic pouches and had it returned to Paris after the Art Days.

Lanzmann told how in selecting material for the film Shoah ha had wanted to travel to Vilnius, but the Soviet government wouldn’t allow the director in. That’s why the film doesn’t contain imagery of Ponar and the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. Claude Lanzmann visited Ponar for the first time, together with Joshua Sobol, during the commemoration of the Ghetto Theater.

I am so happy it was possible to hold the premiere of Shoah in Lithuania. I was truly happy when I presented Lanzmann to our club members. We screened the film for two days at the Skalvija cinema center in Vilnius, and Lanzmann discussed the film passionately with our viewers.

Claude Lanzmann had an infectious personality. A philosopher, a journalist, a film director and a former fighter in the French Resistance. Extraordinarily brave, a man and an artist who was remarkably uncompromising. His extreme categoricalness, something which I experienced with my own “hide,” was the source of the strength of his convictions and in opposition to the constant painful disagreements and conflicts. A close fried of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who wrote in his magazine Les Temps Modernes, later becoming the magazine’s editor-in-chief.

Lanzmann made Shoah over the course of more than 10 years, from 1974 to 1985. It is a unique film, without equal. The nine-and-a-half-hour-long film is a testimony to the genocide of the Jews. Lanzmann said he didn’t like to tell people what to think. The film doesn’t have narrative commentary overlaying the scenes. The director made it without using archival footage or adding chronological commentary. Neither does the film show a single corpse. In Lanzmann’s words, this is an experiment during which the viewer experiences what is on the screen, “incarnating into what is shown.” Lanzmann in his film/testimony using conversations to reveal the memories of those who participated in the genocide, both the victims and the perpetrators. Roger Ebert accurately noted it was a “scream of pain and anger” at genocide. He called it one of the most noble films ever made and said Lanzmann was talking about the priceless gift of God which separates human beings from animals, about what makes us human and gives us hope.

The Lithuanian premieres of director Steven Spielberg’s Schindlers List and Andrzej Wajda’s Wielky Tydzien (Holy Week) also took place at the Art Days event; Lanzmann wasn’t much fond of either of these directors.

When he arrived at the Skalvija theater and saw a poster announcing both the premiere of Schindler’s List and Wielky Tydzien, Lanzmann suddenly became very upset, turned completely pale and told me he refused to take part in a program including films by these directors. I already knew about Lanzmann’s antipathy towards these directors, but did not expect this sort of reaction. Suddenly, with a face distorted by anger, he jumped in front of me and poked his finger into my stomach so painfully, that I almost doubled over. The screening of the film and the audience’s meeting with Lanzmann hung by a thread. I calmly explained for a long time that my idea was to show different kinds of attitudes, even conflicting ones, by directors towards artistic depictions of the Holocaust. Finally, exasperated, I exclaimed: “Lithuania is now a democratic country.” Lanzmann slowly cooled off and… the premiere took place.

Even before he arrived in Vilnius Claude Lanzmann demonstrated his “hard” character. He told me categorically he would only come to Vilnius if I ordered the most luxurious accommodations for him and Brigite Jaque, and only at the Stikliai Hotel. Which I did. After he entered the hotel and inspected carefully the rooms reserved for him, the director was satisfied…

The most important thing, however, was that the Lithuanian premiere of Claude Lanzmann’s film Shoah took place. Introducing the director at the Skalvija cinema center in Vilnius, I spoke about his creative career and gave him the floor. The documentary film Shoah goes on for nine-and-a-half hours, so we screened the entire thing over two days, with a little over four hours being shown each day, plus the discussions which ensued after. The temperamental and categorical director actively participated in and “conducted” both days during both the screenings and the discussions.

Of course the Skalvija theater hall was overflowing. People sat on the floor, some almost prone. There was such a crowd of people who wanted to see the film and its director that the staff at the cinema center were barely able to deal with those wanting in.

With such a storm surrounding Claude Lanzmann’s film, Lithuanian television took an interest. They asked the author for permission to show the film all across Lithuania. Lanzmann told me about this. He would consent to a television broadcast of his film only if the film was purchased and shown in Lithuania. Lanzmann said the television leadership promised to take care of this. Silence followed. It seems we had neither the desire nor the need for a film such as Shoah at that time.

Two decades passed. During those years I always felt as if somewhere, not so far away, in Paris, this wonderful person lived and continued to create. A tragic character, never satisfied with himself, demanding to the point of brutality of himself and others. And suddenly Lanzmann is gone… It’s impossible to believe.

I remember that real, profound Claude Lanzmann, living through his love of people. I remember his meetings with our viewers. In an interview with the critic Živilė Pipinytė during Art Days in Vilnius, he remembered his old, dear friends, people such as Frantz Fanon, Jean-Paul Sartre and Nelson Mandela. He remembered Simeone de Beauvoir with whom he lived for ten years, and with whom even after they parted ways he remained “best friends.” “She was important in my life, she made me who I am. She was a true constructor… If she came to Vilnius now, she would see everything. She would peel the entire city, she would take a map and methodically examine one neighborhood after another.” As with him, when she loved someone or something, it was forever, and if she hated someone or something, it was to the death…

He is buried in the cemetery at Montparnasse, in the family plot next to his 23-year-old son, the victim of chronic illness the year before. He is buried near another of his very beloved people, the place of eternal rest of Simone de Beauvoir.

It is symbolic his funeral was held the day before Bastille Day, the French national holiday. France buried Claude Lanzmann as she has buried her national heroes. French prime minister Edouard Philippe was a pall-bearer.

I believe the people of Lithuania who heard Claude Lanzmann, who watched Shoah and the other films by this brilliant director, will preserve him and them in their memory for long to come.