The article offers a performative and communicative analysis of one scene from Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah, in which the director talks with the inhabitants of Chełmno on Ner. I will be particularly interested in the theatrical character of the conversation outside the church. In Lanzmann’s film one can find many individual gestures that connect the interlocutors with the described story and place. That is why I will discuss the ways in which they behave, theit gestures and the way they speak about past events and the crime scene in front of which they stand with the survivor Szymon Srebrnik, many years later. Although they seem to form a choir, the individuality of their experience is crucial for the residents of Chełmno, and, what is more important reveals the emotions evoked by the recalled story.
Artykuł dotyczy testamentu – gatunku będącego na pograniczu prawa i literatury dokumentu osobistego. Autorka analizuje różnice w rozumieniu terminu oraz jego uwikłanie w czas i miejsce powstania, zwłaszcza testamentu, który został napisany w czasie Holocaustu. W artykule przedstawiono przypadek testamentów ostatnich więźniów obozu śmierci Kulmhof (dzisiejsze Chełmno), między innymi takich autorów jak Izrael Żurawski i Szymon Srebrnik – dwóch więźniów, którzy uciekli z Kulmhof w styczniu 1945 roku. Autorka artykułu śledzi również wszystkie sprzeczne informacje na temat wyżej wymienionych testamentów.
EN
The article is about a testament as a genre which is classified on the border between law and personal document literature. The author analyses differences in understanding of this term and how it depends on the time and place it was written in, especially in the case of a testament written during the Holocaust. The article presents cases of testaments of the last prisoners of the Kulmhof death camp (today Chełmno) including Izrael Żurwaski and Szymon Srebrnik – two prisoners who escaped from Kulmhof in January 1945. The author also tracks every contradictory information concerning these testaments.
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