Holocaust in Film: Authenticity of the representation of the historical event "Holocaust"

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Movies and Television, grade: 1,3, University of Applied Sciences Köln RFH, language: English, abstract: 'No one can describe it. No one can recreate what happened here. Impossible. And no one can understand it. Even I, here, now can not understand it'. These words are said by Simon Srebnik, a survivor of the Holocaust in the first nine minutes of Claude Lanzmanns documentary about the Holocaust 'Shoah'. A survivor of the Holocaust goes back to his point of cruelty, the extermination camp, where he was captivated during World War II, simply because he was a Jew. There he is overwhelmed by emotions and experiences, finds it difficult to find words to describe what has happenend and can not even understand, why it happenend. A survivor of the Holocaust, who experienced the cruelty can not find a describtion to the Holocaust. Yet, historians, the film industry, men of letters, in short the second and third generation after the events of the Holocaust try to find an explenation. In consideration of film and TV productions of the past six decades, it is apparent that especially since the 1990s many films concerning the Holocaust were produced, such as 'Life is Beautiful' by Roberto Benigni (1997), 'The Pianist' by Roman Polanski (2002) , 'Train of Life' by Radu Mihaileanu (1998) and 'Schindler's List' by Steven Spielberg (1993), to list a few examples. All of these films are fictional films, among which Schindler's List received the most attention. There are also many documentary films thematizing the Holocaust, the most significant example therefor being 'Shoah' by Claude Lanzmann (1985). All these films, whether fictional or documental have in common that they want to represent the happenings of the Holocaust. They try to bring historical events closer to the audience of these days, make history comprehensible. In order to understand history, the presented history has to match with the reality of historical events. It has to be faithful and authentic to achieve a veritable recreation of history. But the Holocaust seems like something, that not even survivors and eyewitnesses can understand, nor describe. The Holocaust is unreal even to those, who lived through it. This leads to the following questions, this paper is going to answer:-How can the representation of the Holocaust in films be authentic, if its describtion is even incredible for its eyewitnesses?-Can the representation at all be authentical? And if so, which genre provides more authenticity, a documentary or a fictional film?