I understand the criticism of SHOAH. It fails in a number of things one would normally expect a documentary to deliver. It spends little or no time establishing the causes of the holocaust, nor does it even make a pretence of being an impartial document of what happened. This is an opportunity for the victims to describe what happened to them in order to ensure the world never forgets. The decision to secretly film some of the Nazi guards and camp officials grates as it deviates from this agenda and throws the partisan stance of the filmmaker into the spotlight. He justifies this on the basis of who they are and what they did - but that is a cop-out. He betrayed the integrity of the film by lying to them and proves little by it. That they have spent the years since the war ended rationalising their behaviour to themselves is hardly a surprise - if they hadn't been able to do that they would not have survived anyway. Having said all that SHOAH remains a remarkable testament from those who were there and saw and felt such things as none of us could begin to imagine. As such it is an important work that should be on every school syllabus. The people of the world who do not know, or choose not to believe, about the holocaust (and there appear to be lots of them) need to see this.
Review of Shoah
