This is a fascinating companion piece to director Clause Lanzmann's epic nine-hour documentary "Shoah". "Sobibor" is a much shorter - though no less powerful - meditation on the Holocaust.
Based on an interview with concentration camp survivor Yehuda Lerner, recorded in 1979, "Sobibor" tells the story of the violent uprising of Jewish prisoners that occurred in Poland in 1943.
Fully aware that they were marked for certain death, a group of Jewish labourers at the Sobibor concentration camp decided to make one desperate bid for freedom.
Led by a fellow Jewish prisoner who was a captain in the Soviet Red Army, they lured the Nazi guards into the camp’s workhouses and quietly assassinated them one by one at 4pm on 14 October 1943.
Relying on a direct-to-camera interview with Lerner, Lanzmann employs the same incisive interview technique that characterised his work on "Shoah". He makes the events of a few minutes on 14th October the sole subject of his film.
While basing their accuracy on the memory of just one survivor, Lanzmann doesn't claim to be objective. But what he does offer is a devastating, truly moving experience.
Given the long-standing myth that the Jewish victims of the Nazi death camps never tried to fight their oppressors, the historical importance of Lerner's filmed testimony cannot be underestimated.
As a documentary "Sobibor" is fascinating. The problems of translating Lerner's Polish into French focuses our attention on the difficulty of telling this important story.
Watching Lerner's body language and listening to his emphatic Polish speech tones (while fielding the translator's corrections and hesitations), we're reminded that no matter how horrific we find this tale, it is always something that we will never have to experience ourselves firsthand.
And as the final list of victims proves, that's exactly why this is essential viewing.
French with English subtitles.
Sobibor: 14 October 1943, 16:00 (2003)
