THE LAST OF THE UNJUST

LE DERNIER DES INJUSTES

By Claude LANZMANN

FIL ROUGE MEDIA - as DISTR Theatrical, TV, DVD-video, VOD, ITALY, Italian speaking Switzerland

Documentary - Completed 2012

The subject of "The Last of the Unjust is life". The miracle that it conjures is that of survival. It’s a miracle that anyone came out of the camps alive. It’s a miracle that B. Murmelstein, the last "Elder of the Jews" of Theresienstadt, was able to save as many Jews as he did —and to save himself.

Festivals
& Awards

Festival de Cannes 2013
Out of Competition
Toronto - TIFF 2013
TIFF Docs
New York FF 2013
Official Selection
BAFICI (Buenos Aires) 2014
Panorama
    • Year of production
    • 2012
    • Genres
    • Documentary
    • Countries
    • FRANCE
    • Languages
    • GERMAN, FRENCH
    • Duration
    • 210 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Claude LANZMANN
    • EIDR
    • 10.5240/36D0-3C64-7283-E5CE-07B2-B
    • Synopsis
    • “The Last of the Unjust” is an attempt by Claude Lanzmann to restore something central to the Jewish world of Europe. And he achieves this through the words and the story of Benjamin Murmelstein, a rabbi who took on an unbearable burden and came through it a pariah. Murmelstein’s efforts to save Jews are revealed to be inseparable from his work, under Nazi authority, to preserve the sham of Theresienstadt, from which Jews, possessed of false hope by the promise of the “model” ghetto, were deported, most to their death. Murmelstein thinks of himself as a sort of Scheherazade who rescued Jews, and who rescued himself, by helping the Germans tell a propagandistic story. That astonishingly daring and dangerous moral calculus has a Biblical grandeur, horror, and authority.