The Meeting with Szymon Srebrnik from the Perspective of Communication and Performative Studies

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.

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.