Arnaud Desplechin wishes to “be a link in the transmission of this memory”

“I knew once the exercise of direct transmission to the Shoah memorial with an absolutely admirable man who was the former deportee Robert Wajcman, survivor of Auschwitz with whom I was able to dialogue. It is one of the most overwhelming dialogues that I saw in my life.

What can be transmitted or not in this area? It is very mysterious. My big aunt had already told me about the return of prisoners to the release of the camps, who arrived by train to Lille. She was part of an organization that brought clothes for them. It was a direct witness of this period and she cried when she talked about it.

This memory was also transmitted to school by excellent teachers. But at the time we did not think the difference between concentration and extermination.

Thanks to the work of historians and certain artists like the writer Primo Lévy then the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann, something great happened in the 1970s: this awareness of the specificity of the genocide against the Jews.

The first time I saw Shoah, The witnesses were still alive. Now they are almost all deceased. But if you are projecting this film again, they are still there and are in life again.

Witnesses who appear in Shoah remain incredibly alive by the power of cinema. Shoah is a nine -hour, harsh, film. Not everyone will see it and it doesn’t matter at all.

I put a plan of Shoah In Spectators! To offer this image to spectators, perhaps the only image of Shoah that they will never see, because it takes time to go to this work. With Spectators!, I want to be a link in this memory, testify for the young generations and communicate the idea to the public that a film or a book can change your life. »»