The Last of the Unjust

Benjamin Murmelstein survived Theresienstadt concentration camp, where he was one of the "elders" on the Jewish Council. There are mixed feelings in the Jewish community about the role played by this former rabbi in Vienna. Filmmaker Claude Lanzmann interviewed Murmelstein way back in 1975 for his magnum opus , a nine-and-a-half hour documentary containing interviews with Holocaust survivors and eyewitnesses. In the end, Lanzmann decided not to include Murmelstein in , so he used the material for this separate film. The now 87-year-old filmmaker pays a visit to Theresienstadt, the "model concentration camp" conceived by SS leader Adolf Eichmann. Here, Lanzmann reflects on the course of history. He intersperses the old material and an extensive eyewitness account by Murmelstein with extracts from his memoirs. This only surviving elder from the camp describes how for many years he attempted to negotiate with Eichmann to let 100,000 Jewish Austrians leave the country. His stories give a different impression of Eichmann’s personality, and it means the film sheds new light on several crucial events along the road to the final horrors of the Holocaust. The filmmaker also reveals the cruel dilemmas that the members of the Jewish Council faced.