Shoah Blu-ray

Release Year: 1985

Runtime: 566 min

Director: Claude Lanzmann

Cast: Claude Lanzmann, Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik, Motke Zaidl, Jan Karski

Studios: Historia, Les Films Aleph, Ministère de la culture

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.

Special Features:

2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

Three additional films by director Claude Lanzmann

A Visitor from the Living (1999, 68 minutes); Sobibór, October 14, 1943, 4 p.m. (2001, 102 minutes); The Karski Report (2010, 49 minutes)

Conversation between Lanzmann and critic Serge Toubina

Interview with Lanzmann from 2003 about A Visitor from the Living and Sobibór

Interview with Caroline Champetier

Assistant camera person on Shoah, and filmmaker Arnaud Desplechin

All I Had Was Nothingness (2025)

A new film by Guillaume Ribot, edited from previously unreleased footage and recounting the production of Shoah

Trailer

PLUS: An essay by critic Kent Jones and writings by Lanzmann

Technical Specifications:

• 2K digital restoration
• Uncompressed monaural soundtrack
• Color/Black & White Monaural
• In French, Italian, Polish, German, English, Hebrew, and Yiddish with English subtitles
• 1.37:1 aspect ratio