The Patagonian Hare

by Claude Lanzmann

  Depending on our mood and the difficulties we anticipated, we used either the leather bag and the ‘sound-engineer’ approach that had worked three years earlier with Suchomel, or the linen bag version, though the bag was no longer stuffed with paper as it had been at Perry Broad’s apartment: the Paluche needed to breathe. It took great nerve for Corinna to agree to be alone with me with the ‘targets’, all deeply suspicious by nature. What is not clear in the film is that these people were invariably surrounded by extremely nosy family members. The shoot with Stier, ‘strictly a bureaucrat’ as he described himself – who, to me, is one of the most despicable Nazis to appear in Shoah – is a perfect example of this. Some will remember a moment in the interview when the camera goes crazy, veering around wildly. What happened is this: Dominique Chapuis, the cinematographer ‘sound-engineer’, felt that Stier’s wife and two of her friends were taking an unhealthy interest in his equipment and, fearing they would notice the video monitor in the side pocket, he began to shake the bag. It is true, too, that I felt more confident when I had a man with me rather than a delicate young woman.

  Armed with our second Paluche, we were like a circus or like the Illustre Théâtre, Molière’s strolling players, touring the towns and the Länder of Germany, continually finding new prey. It was a truly crazy time because it always worked; my interviews went on for hours and by the time they were finished everyone was exhausted, but by hook or by crook, I got my footage – in addition to those who accepted Dr Sorel’s request, I also visited some who had declined and even some who had not replied – and in the evenings, in the Steinberger hotels, only a bottle of fine red wine could revive our spirits, steeling us to sup with the devil again the next day. Euphoria and a feeling of omnipotence began to set in for me and for the troupe of strolling players, I lowered my guard, my vigilance was dulled.

  On that morning, I sensed something dire was about to happen, but instead of trusting my intuition I stubbornly carried on, as I have so often in my life when I have taken up a challenge, simply so as not to seem cowardly. Chapuis and I had spent the previous night filming until late in Mölln, at the home of Hans Gewecke, who had been Gebietskommissar in Shavli, also known as Ṡiauliai or Schaulen, the second largest city in Lithuania. Gebietskommissar was a post more or less equivalent to that of governor. Gewecke was not the worst of the Gebietskommissars, his colleague in Slonim, in Belarus, had earned himself the nickname the ‘blutigen Gebietskommissar’ [‘the bloody governor’] of Slonim. Gewecke was more like a kindly grandfather than a killer and we said our goodbyes, he and I, almost with regret. I had decided for geographical reasons – we were in northern Germany and were using Hamburg as our base – but mostly because I desperately wanted one of the leaders of the Einsatzgruppen in the film, that the following day we would tackle Heinz Schubert, the man condemned to death and reprieved by McCloy, the man who had been responsible for the terrible slaughter in Simferopol in the Crimea. Schubert hadn’t thought it worth while to answer Professor Laborde’s letter informing him of Dr Sorel’s visit. I knew a great deal about him, about what he had done and what his defence had been during his trial. He lived in Ahrensburg, an efficient, sanitized, well-to-do little town in northern Germany. There was only one possible approach: Corinna, her linen bag and me. On that sweltering day, we had four vehicles – aside from the minivan and the car I was driving, there were two others. The reason for this was that there was a lot of footage we had already shot that couldn’t be sent to Paris until the next day and moreover because an American assistant had joined us to talk to me about another fundraising campaign in the USA. When we arrived in Ahrensburg, we parked all the vehicles in a public car park in the centre of town and Chapuis, Corinna and I went to scout the location. Schubert lived in a large villa on a narrow street, the opposite pavement had a cycle path and what I discovered greatly concerned me: parking was impossible on both sides of the street. This was an upmarket residential neighbourhood and every house had its own garage. Though there were few bicycles, it being the middle of August, there were signs everywhere clearly stating that parking was strictly forbidden. But to ensure good reception, the minivan had to be parked outside Schubert’s house, not right outside, since that would be too obvious, but at the most a short distance away on the opposite side. Chapuis pointed out that to do this we would have to block the cycle path. And where would I park my own car? The minivan was too cramped to hold us all and, besides, I couldn’t risk anyone in the villa seeing Corinna and me getting out of this strange, illegally parked van with tinted windows. As we drove past the house again, I noticed a cul-de-sac a hundred metres further on that ran perpendicular to Schubert’s street and where, it seemed, parking was possible. None of us was particularly confident, common sense suggested giving up. I knew there was someone in Schubert’s villa because Corinna had telephoned that morning and, when someone answered, pretended to have dialled a wrong number. Back at the car park, I reluctantly stood while Bernard Aubouy, the genuine sound-engineer, clipped the microphone behind my tie and concealed the transmitter. Usually, I made some joke about this bizarre ceremony of being put in harness, but this time my heart wasn’t in it: the nearer the time came, the more disaster seemed certain. But I gave my instructions, instructions I would quickly come to regret: no one, I said, under any circumstances, was to be visible in the driver’s cab of the minivan, everyone was to stay in the back, make as little noise as possible and keep the sound being transmitted at the lowest possible volume. If anything were to go wrong, they had orders to make a quick getaway, to save the earlier footage waiting to be dispatched to Paris. We were to meet up in Hamburg later. They left first, planning to park in the spot we had decided on. Corinna and I arrived about fifteen minutes later, drove slowly past the minivan, checked that all was well, then turned around and parked in the cul-de-sac. Corinna, her bag, the Paluche, the silver stars and I stepped out onto the street, walked past the minivan and Schubert’s villa; I was sweating from the heat and from anxiety and wanted my heart to stop hammering before ringing the doorbell.

  The door was opened almost immediately by an imposing matronly woman. ‘Frau Schubert?’ I asked. She nodded. I introduced myself: ‘Doktor Sorel, a letter was sent to Herr Schubert, but I’m afraid we did not get a reply. Since I happened to be in the area and have your address but, unfortunately, no phone number, I took the liberty of calling on you unannounced.’ She was well aware of my letter and did not seem in the least surprised. She said, ‘You’re lucky to have caught us in, we are going on holiday tomorrow.’ ‘Where?’ I asked. ‘Südtirol,’ she replied. It was, I knew, a holiday spot much favoured by former Nazis. I went into raptures: ‘Ah! You’re so lucky! Bolzano, Misurina, the Tre cime di Lavaredo, I adore the Tyrol myself, both the Italian and the Austrian.’ Corinna smiled broadly as Dr Sorel went on about what an honour it would be, and what a boon to his research, if Herr Schubert would agree to answer a few questions. She told me that he would be there in a moment, invited us in and showed us to a living room that overlooked the sunny garden. She gestured for us to sit in the two armchairs facing the sofa. Between the sofa and the chairs there was not a stick of furniture, not even a coffee table.

  Schubert appeared, he had probably been pottering in his garden since he was wearing clogs and a dusty pair of trousers. He was a thin man, who looked younger than his age and very much like the photographs taken of him during the Einsatzgruppen trial. He vanished for a moment and then reappeared wearing town shoes and a clean pair of trousers. He sat on the sofa, facing us, and Corinna had no choice but to hold the big bag with the Paluche on her lap, the lens trained on Schubert. But before we could do anything, we needed to be sure that the minivan was picking up the signal, something that was far from certain since we were on the garden side. I asked Corinna to go to the car and get the Hilberg organization chart of the Einsatzgruppen. She went out, leaving her bag on the chair, and I noticed Frau Schubert looking at it curiously. Corinna came back with the documen
t, winked to let me know that all was well, sat down and placed the bag on her lap. Frau Schubert suddenly asked what the bag’s silver stars and circles meant. Not in the least flustered, Corinna said, ‘Oh, it’s a recent fashion in Paris, it’s all the rage. The bags aren’t expensive, you can get them in any department store.’ Herr Schubert and I then struck up a conversation, he seemed staggered by the extent of my knowledge. Like many of his peers, he had frozen time itself, and it was I who refreshed his memory, explaining to him how much work had been done, since these tragic events, by professional historians, and that we now possessed new analytical tools of understanding, enabling new perspectives, and that today the time had come to reconsider the facts, the role of the Einsatzgruppen, for instance, in a more objective, less rancorous manner than at the time of the trial, which, as needed to be stressed, had been decided on and conducted by the victors. Abruptly, Frau Schubert grabbed Corinna’s bag and set it on the ground, so now we were filming only feet and ankles. Unruffled, I carried on, dividing in order to rule, by explaining to Schubert that to lump together a vicious brute such as Blobel, who was responsible for the massacres at Babi Yar, with Schubert, who had not been an active participant but had simply happened to be in Simferopol (this had been his defence at the trial), was inadmissible these days, something I planned to make clear in my study. And in fact, I said – at this point I asked Corinna to get the document from her bag, which entailed shifting the focus of the Paluche from ankles to face – Herr Schubert had only ever used the word besichtigen, ‘to visit [as a tourist]’: he vehemently agreed, so vehemently that he inadvertently gave himself away, changing the prefix of the verb so that besichtigen became beaufsichtigen, ‘to supervise’. This triggered a howl from his wife: ‘Shut up, you idiot, it was because of the “auf” that you were sentenced to death,’ and as she said this, her arm shot out like a spring, seizing the bag and setting it once more on the floor. Things were going wrong. Suddenly, the phone rang in the hall and she got up to answer it; when she came back after a moment and sat down, she again picked up the bag, only to set it down when the phone rang once more. The call was longer this time, and meanwhile I went on talking to Schubert, Corinna did not even attempt to pick up her bag. Frau Schubert reappeared and sat down next to Corinna, foaming at the mouth, her eyes almost literally blazing. Then four hulking young men suddenly appeared behind me, and the first of them barked, ‘Open that bag!’ Corinna, a model of sang-froid, used this as an excuse to pick up the bag, hugging it to her as the hefty brute informed Schubert, who was clearly his father and was sitting dumbfounded, ‘We can hear your voice from a minivan across the street, everything you’re saying is being recorded.’ I leapt up and shouted, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, I came here on my own with this young woman,’ then, to Corinna, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’ While she clutched the bag as they tried to pull it from her, I dragged her by the arm towards the door. But they began to rain blows, lashing out with fists and feet at our faces, our bodies; before long both she and I were bleeding and – shame on me – I did not have the presence of mind to call out to the team in the minivan to help us, who, although they didn’t understand a word of German, must have been alarmed by the fracas being broadcast to them. Like Charlemagne, who in Hugo’s poem ‘Aymerillot’ cries out, ‘Eustache, à moi!’, I should have cried out, ‘Bernard, Dominique, à moi!’ But I had given my instructions and, blindly, in true Germanic fashion, they obeyed. Corinna and I, covered in blood, managed to make it to the street, pursued by the baying pack, just as I saw the minivan making a quick getaway. Dragging Corinna, who was still desperately trying to cling on to the bag, I dashed towards the cul-de-sac; they were gaining on us, still oblivious to what exactly was hidden in the bag; we had to get away, to avoid the police; I snatched the bag from Corinna’s hands and threw it as hard as I could at our pursuers. This stopped them in their tracks for a moment, they had to pick it up, while I pulled Corinna, still bleeding, into the cul-de-sac, and we leapt into the car, which was parked facing the wrong way. I made two swift, vicious manoeuvres – reverse gear, forward gear – then floored the accelerator and drove straight towards the entrance to the cul-de-sac, now blocked by a human barricade. Our aggressors had been joined by neighbours and I had only one chance of getting away from them, of getting away from the police and the disastrous consequences that would ensue: I could not slow down, I had to force my way through, crash straight into them. They realized that I was prepared to injure or even kill rather than be caught, my determination was so obvious that the wall of people parted like the waters of the Red Sea before Moses. As I drove past, they thumped and kicked and spat at the car; I wheeled into the street at top speed and drove frantically, aimlessly, around Ahrensburg, unable to find the turnoff for the Hamburg motorway, begging Corinna to find some tissues so we could wipe the blood from our faces before someone noticed and stopped us.

  Losing the second Paluche was a disaster; I did not know how I would be able to carry on. It was also obvious that someone had probably logged the French number plate of the minivan and the number plate of my hired car: I needed to return it before the police caught up with us. Once on the motorway to Hamburg, I drove as fast as I could to the hotel where we had stayed the previous night and which was a headquarters of sorts, but neither the minivan nor the other cars were there: we were the first back, and there was every reason to believe that the others had been stopped and arrested by the police. I was desperate to know what had happened, how the hulking brutes had been tipped off. One thing was clear, we had to get out of Hamburg as quickly as possible. Corinna, whose father lived in a large house in Cologne, suggested we head there; we could drive through the night and then stay there long enough to heal our wounds and consider our next move: I would have to change all my plans. Finally, the others arrived and, seeing we were battered and bruised, explained that they had had to look after themselves as best they could. My orders that everyone stay inside the minivan had been reprehensible and impracticable: the van got so hot they thought they would suffocate and, eventually, unable to bear it any longer, the sound-engineer slid back the partition between the van and the cab and climbed into the driver’s seat with his Nagra. My voice and those of Schubert and his wife had been distinctly heard by neighbours and passers-by, who started to hover around the suspicious vehicle. They had phoned the Schubert house and Frau Schubert had alerted her sons. Not wanting to show up at the car-rental office covered in cuts and bruises, I gave the rental contract to Chapuis and asked him to return the car. We paid our hotel bill and headed off in convoy towards Cologne, the minivan leading the way.

  Obviously, this was not to be the end of the matter. The Schuberts had called the police and handed over the bag and the Paluche, hired a lawyer and, on his advice, pressed charges. Though I had a passport in the name of Dr Sorel, I did not have a driver’s licence: Sorel was a phantom, it had been Lanzmann who had rented the car. We changed our plans and bravely went on with our shoot, out in the open this time. We would arrive at people’s houses all smiles, as I did in Munich with Franz Grassler, the deputy to the Nazi commissioner of the Warsaw Ghetto, who had repeatedly refused to be filmed, telling him I had not come to talk about him at all, that it would be very brief, employing a gentle pressure to which he could not but yield. The German police investigation took some time, it was even a while before they worked out that the Paluche was a camera; we were filming in Berlin with a standard camera when I was informed that a summons had arrived at my Paris office, stating that legal proceedings had been initiated against me. I called Spiess, the prosecutor in the Treblinka trial, to ask his advice; I was quite open with him about my methods. He did not reproach me in any way, saying he was prepared to help me, advising me, however, not to evade the law but to hire a lawyer. I did so, picking a name at random out of the Hamburg telephone directory and arranging an appointment. I got it. And I travelled from Berlin to Hamburg, outlined the facts for the lawyer, unable to disc
ern whether he was sympathetic to or horrified by what I had done. The most serious charge, apparently, was that I had made unauthorized use of die deutsche Luft, German airspace, German radio frequencies, German air. According to my lawyer, there was a risk that the sentence passed on me would not be symbolic, but serious. I was forced to spend considerable time and energy fighting these charges. In the end, after an intervention from Spiess, I wrote a long letter to the public prosecutor of Schleswig-Holstein. I explained to him that I was working in the service of history, of truth; that, as a Jew making a film about the extermination of my people, I needed the testimony of Nazis. I explained how for years I had been honest and straightforward and that it had been the perpetrators’ abject cowardice that had forced me, like them, to resort to deception and subterfuge in order to break through the wall of silence that was poisoning Germany. It was a very beautiful letter – I regret not keeping a copy of it, but at the time I was not thinking about such things. It turned out to be very effective too, because the public prosecutor, a man of genuine rectitude, wrote back to say that he was persuaded by my arguments and would not pursue the matter. Furthermore, he told me that after the interval of a few months imposed by law, the bag, the Paluche and the silver stars would be returned to me, which indeed they were – Corinna went to pick them up.