Two scenes from Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: A Textual Analysis

1st scene (2 min 47 sec) The scene opens with the camera slowly closing in on a white surveillance van whilst a voice is singing (in German) a motivation song created by an SS guard in Buchenwald about heading towards an ideological goal involving a small village, Treblinka. The audience is made aware of the singer's identity by a simple white text on the screen: 'Franz Suchomel, SS Unterscharfuhrer'. The camera then cuts to two men presumably …

…the testimonies - one illuminating the fact that near to no-one Jewish person survived Treblinka, and the other presenting the horror witnessed by a Jew surviving Treblinka. The audience is there to bear witness to the testimony of both scenes. In neither scene do Lanzmann nor the witnesses instruct the audience of what to make of the testimony they are presenting, rather, his entire film is directed as evidence of the Holocaust - of Shoah.