'Shoah' Filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, Seeker Of Truths Without Name, Dies At 92
The French documentarian died Thursday in Paris. He leaves behind his monumental 1985 film on the Holocaust, which bears a Hebrew name as elusive of definitions as the historical truths he sought.
Shoah, a Hebrew word, eludes easy definition. It has bedeviled translators, who have wrestled its multitudes into grim English stand-ins such as "catastrophe" or "calamity" or "annihilation." But no single term quite manages to bear the word's weight.
It was precisely this painful impossibility that drew Claude Lanzmann.
The French filmmaker, who at the age of 92, adopted for the title of his opus: a 9 1/2-hour film on the Holocaust that took him 12 years to make. But as he in 2012, even this
