THAT LAST OF THE UNJUST:
REVISITING HOLOCAUST MEMORY

DARSHANA SREEDHAR

The Last of the Unjust is a touching documentary based on a series of interviews with Benjamin Murmelstein, the Jewish collaborator of Nazi Germany, and the filmmaker Claude Lanzmann. The film is
not an effort to acquit Murmelstein of his collaborative guilt, but, it sheds light into the darkened annals of Nazism, reviews Darshana Sreedhar.

Twenty five years after the release of the legendary Shoah (1985), veteran filmmaker Claude Lanzmann has come up with another Holocaust based documentary— The Last of the Unjust (2013). At three hours and forty minutes, the documentary pales in comparison to the nine hour behemoth, Shoah, but lacks none of the intensity and insight that has become a Lanzmann trademark over the years and this makes it a fitting companion piece to the earlier film. The Last of the Unjust is centered on the figure of Benjamin Murmelstein, the last surviving Jewish elder from the Second World War. The title of the film itself takes from Murmelstein’s own writing where he describes himself as “The Last of the Unjust” referring to the controversial position of the Jewish elders during the War, and his own contested role as an administrator of the Theresienstadt concentration camp, which was touted by Adolf Eichmann as a “model ghetto.”