In watching a documentary that depends almost entirely on the testimony and self-presentation of its central subject, individual viewers ultimately have to decide whether or not they believe that person, or to what extent they believe him. In "The Last of the Unjust," French documentarian Claude Lanzmann's nearly four-hour addendum to his monumental Holocaust chronicle "Shoah," the subject is Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein, the only survivor from a group of Jewish "Elders" who, in effect, helped the Nazis run some of their concentration camps and after the war were accused of collaboration.
"Shoah", tokohnya adalah Rabu Benjamin Murmerlstein, satu-satunya orang yang selamat dari kelompok Yahudi "Elders" yang menolong Nazi dalam menjalankan kamp-kamp konsentrasi dan setelah berperang dituduh berkolaborasi.
My hunch is that most viewers, whatever their previous views on this fraught subject, will come away not only fascinated but largely convinced by Murmelstein, who comes across as extremely intelligent, self-aware, sincere and honest, and whose explanations of his actions at the Czech "show" camp Theresienstadt seem eminently sensible and defensible, even as they offer a window into a strange corner of the Nazi horror. If that view prevails, Lanzmann will have performed another great service of revisionist clarification to those concerned with Holocaust.