The Patagonian Hare

by Claude Lanzmann

  The messianic call has always been so powerful that, ever since the destruction of the Second Temple, there have been continuous waves of Jewish immigrants. The magnetic power of Zion did not need to wait for political Zionism to exert its pull on mystics, those disillusioned by life, errant adventurers and others exhausted by persecution. It was not during this first visit, but on a later one, in Rehavia, the peaceful German Jewish quarter of Jerusalem: in its library, a magnificent haunt and an inestimable treasure, with thousands of books amassed over a lifetime of study; serried ranks of tall black spines of countless Talmudic volumes – it was here that Gershom Scholem – a Berliner by birth, master of all cabbalistic knowledge, an uncompromising Zionist, but open, friend of Walter Benjamin and me – read me the letters that desperate eighteenth-century immigrants in Tiberias, on the western shore of the Sea of Galilee, sent to their families left behind in Poland, attempting to describe the unbearable harshness of a life lived in this forbidding climate – the stifling heat at 250 metres below sea level, the deadly mosquitoes, the incurable malaria. Some wrote that they intended to take their own lives and it is true that, even today, among the blackened headstones of the old cemetery of Tiberias, there is a peripheral circle of graves of those who committed suicide; a compromise between fraternal mercy and the Jewish prohibition against taking one’s life. In Berlin, in the vast cemetery of Weissensee, which I visited while preparing to film Shoah, the graves of those who took their own lives, because they were too old or too disheartened to try to flee the Nazis, are similarly all on the edge of the Jewish plots of this necropolis. Joachim Prinz, whom I met in the United States, at the head of a thriving congregation in New Jersey, told me how famous he had been among the rich Jewish bourgeoisie of Berlin. He was renowned for his wonderful baritone voice and the lyrical beauty of his funeral orations: people fought to have this Jewish Bossuet officiate, and there were those who were ready to pre-empt the call of God if it ensured that Prinz, and not some other rabbi, would give their funeral oration. One day in 1936 Prinz received an affidavit from America, allowing him and his family to leave Germany within six months. In Berlin, when he announced this sad news, panic spread. Joachim, a good man, full of life and good humour, assured me that between making the announcement and the day his family emigrated, the number of Jewish suicides in the German capital rose significantly, and that in his last weeks he worked ceaselessly, sometimes spending entire mornings in the synagogue.

  Before reaching Tel Aviv, a Jew amongst Jews, lost and with no reference points, I went to visit Dahlia in her kibbutz on the Lebanese border, to the far west of the demarcation line, facing the cliffs of osh Hanikra – Ras el-Naqura in Arabic – HQ of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which, as we know, does not take kindly to flyovers by Israeli fighter planes. Gesher Haziv was my first kibbutz and I was invited to share the frugal fare of its members: warm, generous South Americans, happy, like most of the kibbutzniks, to live like sentries watching over the changing borders of Israel, never truly defined, or recognized; an epic justification for the sacrifices to which they acquiesced. Dahlia explained to me that the whole state, town and country, was going through a terrible period called Tzena, which translates as ‘austerity’. There was little to eat in Israel, people were dying of starvation, and I suffered greater exhaustion through lack of nourishment during my stay there than during the German Occupation in France. Dahlia led me to the sandy beach that ringed the olive groves of the kibbutz and I began to run, naked, my belly empty, towards the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, to dive in and, beneath the crescent moon, take an initiatory bathe. She ran beside me, shouting at me to stop and, when I did not obey, wrapped her arms around me, hugged me with her whole body, saying, ‘The sea is very dangerous, it can be deadly, you can’t swim here, we need to go further south.’ We made love that night and at dawn we bathed much further away. Drownings were not uncommon all along the coast of Israel, from north to south, although nowadays, tourism has developed to such an extent that safety measures have been taken and most beaches are supervised.

  This was not the case in 1952, nor twenty-five years later in 1977 when my life was saved by sheer miracle. A dark period for me, it was when I was filming Shoah, which amounts to the same thing. The film I had been working on for four years had already ground to a halt; I no longer had the funds to carry on and the Israelis, having seen Pourquoi Israël, which they considered to be the greatest film ever made about their country, had suggested I embark on a film about the Shoah. They had instigated and financed the initial research, but had recently informed me that, with no end in sight, they could no longer continue to support my work. One Sunday in spring, shortly after I was informed of this decision, Deborah, a Persian kitten belonging to my second wife Angelika, leapt like a black arrow from the window of our Paris apartment into the garden. I dashed down the stairs, missing a step. Fractured foot, pain, hospital emergency room, incompetent treatment, badly applied plaster cast, new plaster cast, crutches; it was twelve weeks before I was declared well again. The verdict was pronounced not in Paris but in Jerusalem, by a professor, a specialist who recommended swimming as the best means of getting back on my feet and building up my leg muscles. Why Jerusalem rather than Hôpital Cochin in Paris where the original plaster cast had been put on? Because that summer, Menachem Begin had won the Israeli election and become Prime Minister. Since it had been the defeated Israeli Labour Party that had refused to continue subsidizing my film, and while I was laid up in plaster, I decided to write to Begin, the conqueror, whom I didn’t know, but something I remembered from my first trip to Jerusalem in 1952 told me that he would listen to me. One morning – just a few days after my night beneath the stars with Dahlia – I arrived at a little square in Jerusalem: perched on a barrel – like Sartre at Billancourt – his voice barely amplified by a second-rate megaphone, his face half-hidden by thick glasses, a man is haranguing a meagre crowd. ‘That’s Begin,’ my guide tells me, translating his fiery words. With every breath and all his energy, Begin implores the Israeli government and each individual Israeli not to accept German ‘reparations’. In doing so Israel would lose its soul and its raison d’être. A desperate yet magnificent speech, since he knows well that Israel has already said ‘yes’; that Nahum Goldmann, the flamboyant president of the World Jewish Council, has arranged everything, planned everything with Chancellor Adenauer. But Begin’s campaign was just beginning: some time later, he managed to organize a massive, memorable rally in front of the Knesset, bringing together tens of thousands of people. And yet, that first speech I have just referred to was so new to me, and Begin so impressive, that I devoted several sequences in Pourquoi Israël to this central issue of Wiedergutmachung – ‘reparations’.

  The newly elected Prime Minister quickly replied to my request and a meeting was arranged in his office in Jerusalem. It was also agreed that an Israeli doctor would remove my cast later that day. Begin did not disappoint me, everything went as I had expected, as I had hoped, earning him my undying gratitude. But the details and the methods of this new funding needed to be agreed with his advisers, notably with Eliyahu Ben-Elissar, a secretive man devoid of emotions, a former member of Mossad, Israel’s first ambassador to Egypt and later ambassador to France, where he died suddenly of cardiac arrest. In return for the help that Israel was prepared to give me, I had to agree that the film would be completed within eighteen months and would run for no longer than two hours. This was so far from what I knew to be the truth that, in something of a state of shock, I promised and signed whatever was asked of me. The monies allocated made it possible for me to continue my research, though not to begin shooting; I was convinced it would take years to complete my work and that the film would be at least four times longer than envisaged. Truth be told, I felt that the help I was being offered would be the film’s death knell and I said to myself, as I had done several times before, that there was no point in persevering, that it would be better to give up. I was the only perso
n who foresaw what this work might be and I was sick and tired of trying to win over bureaucrats who knew nothing about cinema, or the Shoah, tired of having to try to communicate clearly ideas that were still opaque to me. Shoah had slowly begun to take shape, but I knew that such a film had to be an adventure that by its very nature would go way beyond any boundaries imposed on it.

  I was at my lowest ebb. Angelika, who had come to Israel with me, persuaded me to rest, to give myself time to think and to learn how to use my foot again. We left for Caesarea and its magnificent and compact sand beach, flanked by a Roman aqueduct; the sea beckoned through its arches, shimmering and inviting, while here and there between them, signposts bearing a skull or crossed bones and brief explanations in Hebrew seemed to warn of some vague, incomprehensible danger. Despite what I had been told on my first night in Gesher Haziv, I ignored the signs. The weather was fabulous, the sea that day almost glassily calm, unusual in this part of the eastern Mediterranean where the beaches are famous as a surfer’s paradise. I waded cautiously into the water, careful not to put too much weight on my bad foot; as soon as I could, I dived in and vigorously swam out towards the open sea. Striking out rather than following the shoreline has always been my practice, it would have been my motto had my birth gifted me with a coat of arms on which to emblazon it. I am a good swimmer, my breaststroke was strong and I told myself that the Israeli doctor had been right: with therapy like this, my musculature would soon be back to normal. Yet to swim away from the shore was foolish and dangerous. I must have swum out some fifty strokes; even twenty would have been too far. I tried to head back to land, the sun was at its height, the beach dazzling, clearly outlined; I swam, but the beach seemed no nearer. I swam harder, more determinedly, and suddenly realized that in fact the opposite was true: the beach was receding. At that moment, everything comes into sharp focus: Angelika’s silhouette at the water’s edge, watching me, already somewhat worried; the sun’s glare blinding me intermittently; the swell and the waves obstructing my view of the beach; and above all, subsuming these still disparate signs into a single feeling: exhaustion. It overwhelms me. I can’t go on. My foot hurts, I realize that I won’t make it to the beach, I won’t get back. I start to shout, I holler for help, I wave my arms so that Angelika, who seems small and very far away now, will notice me and I imagine her helplessly running back and forth on the deserted beach. I remember that there was not a living soul on the shore when I stepped into the water. Angelika is a bad swimmer, there’s nothing she can do to help, she would need a boat. Tragedy erupts under a midday sun, I feebly try to go on swimming, I swallow salt water, it chokes me. Then suddenly a voice from somewhere close by on my right calls to me in English. Through a curtain of spray, I see a tall fair-haired man, alerted by Angelika. My joy is short-lived; it seems to me that he too is breathless and exhausted; he says, ‘I am not a good swimmer but I will try to help you.’ He swims behind me and shoves me hard in the back, trying to push me forwards. I know this is not the right way to go about it, which he soon realizes too, and also that he is tiring himself even more. He gives up almost immediately. ‘I am very sorry,’ he says, ‘but I have to leave you, I have my wife and my little son on the beach, I am not even sure to succeed to return. Goodbye, forgive me.’ He disappears as suddenly as he had appeared.

  There is no beach, no sun, I am half-blinded by the salt, choking on the sea water, I have stopped struggling. I will die. Strangely, I feel calmer and I imagine death by asphyxiation not as an end, but as a transition, a horrible moment in time, a particularly horrible moment to go through, after which I will once again be able to breathe freely, deeply, inhale great lungfuls of pure air; a strait, a fissure, a needle’s eye: on the far side, life will begin again. And so I wait for death, motionless, I no longer swim, I float on my back, allow myself to drift, I have not lost consciousness. Suddenly, a voice, another voice, with a perfect English accent, hails me from behind, ‘What is your name?’ I answer. Then, ‘What is your first name?’… ‘Claude, I will try to rescue you. Can you help me?’ I answer, ‘Yes, I think so.’ ‘Move your legs… move your arms… OK, you will help me with your legs.’ I feel myself gripped firmly under the arms and dragged, not towards the shore, but out towards the open sea. In the commanding voice of a professional, he orders me to help, kicking my legs in a backstroke. Yossi – my saviour’s first name – has us describe a long arc, out to sea then back inland much further along the shore where there are no treacherous currents, where I should have gone swimming had I been familiar with Caesarea. It takes him almost two hours to haul me back to land. Had I been unable to help him, he confided later, he would have knocked me out: it’s easier to drag a dead weight than a panicked swimmer. A law student in Tel Aviv, born in a nearby moshav founded by Moroccan Jews, where he happened to be spending the weekend with his parents, Yossi Ben Shettrit was a qualified lifeguard and, aside from the fair-haired man, had been the only other person on Caesarea beach that day. The miracle is that Angelika managed to find him. The previous Sunday, at precisely the same spot, the British ambassador to Israel had drowned and Yossi, alerted too late, had only recovered his corpse. Six employees of the Dan Caesarea hotel had died there in the space of six months. As soon as we reached the beach, Yossi took me to an infirmary to make sure I had no water in my lungs. Everything was fine, even the fair-haired man – I hope he may forgive me for referring to him like this, I have never been able to recall his name – after a long detour, managed to find his way, exhausted, back to his wife and his young son.

  I invited both of my rescuers to dinner the following evening and expressed a gratitude I did not really feel. To be alive did not have me jumping for joy. Looking back now on that strange episode, I tell myself that, having realized that the promises I had made to Ben-Elissar and to Israel were impossible to keep, I had deliberately flirted with death. This was 1977, Shoah would only be completed eight years later and I knew that, year after year, I would have to lie to all those who helped me: Israeli and French, governments and individuals, rich, not so rich, even poor. And lie to myself too, because I needed hope if I were to go on: ‘next year’, I told myself, as they say while waiting for the Messiah, ‘next year in Jerusalem’, while at the same time being completely aware that what I was telling myself, and everyone, was entirely untrue. I would be intractable and would obey only my own dictates. Shoah was a never-ending relay race: those who supported me for a while later gave up and I had to persuade others to take up the torch, and still others to replace them, on it went to the very end – even after it was finished, as once the film was completed there was no money to pay for a first print. When asked how Shoah was made, I sometimes answer: ‘If someone had said “the film has to be completed by such and such a date or your head will be cut off”, I would have been decapitated,’ despite, as I have mentioned, my particular dread of this form of capital punishment. To tell the truth, this is precisely what had happened in Ben-Elissar’s office. Even though there had been no mention of the guillotine, at least that is how I had felt. Yet I yielded to nothing and to no one, I was guided by the exigencies of the film itself, these were the only demands I followed. I was the master of time and that is, perhaps, what I am most proud of. Reading them back, these last two sentences have a gentle, peaceful ring, but I alone had to carry the burden of anxiety, I alone know what the lies, the pledges and the false promises cost me. I was like the state of Israel with its immigrants. How many times during the gestation of the film did I realize, with incredulous terror, as though woken suddenly and called to account, that two years, four, five, seven, nine, ten years had already slipped by? In the end, as everyone knows, I betrayed no one: Shoah exists as it should exist. ‘Ein Brera’ is another common Hebrew phrase – it means ‘there is no alternative’.