Naturellement: Speech Variants of Holocaust Bystanders in Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah

Abstract

The article discusses the testimonies of bystanders as presented to the public in Claude Lanzmann's documentary Shoah. It proposes to apply norms and practices developed within Holocaust studies to the analysis of the victims' testimonies in the emerging field of bystander studies. The Polish bystanders' utterances in the documentary were edited and simplified through the process of interpretation and re-translation; this inaccurate rendition has been used in Holocaust debates and the lack of sensibility to this aspect of communication in Lanzmann's film may result in skewed interpretation of the bystanders' engagement in the scene of violence. The analysis proves that without renewed scrutiny to the bystanders' speech Holocaust research may lose some important insights. Signs of violence impact, traces of traumatization or brutalization, specificity of cognitive and affective response may be overlooked. The paper calls for an universalizing epistemic approach to all types of the speech emerging from the Holocaust, beyond the (debatable) divisions of its social fabric into victims, perpetrators and bystanders.