The Last of the Unjust

The director of the Holocaust documentary Shoah tackles one of that era’s most controversial aspects—the collaboration of Jewish “elders” in running the Czech concentration camp and “model ghetto” Theresienstadt—in this encounter with Benjamin Murmelstein, the camp’s last surviving elder. Murmelstein rose to authority in Nazi-controlled Vienna and then Theresienstadt, where he saved hundreds of lives, yet also oversaw the deaths of thousands more. In 1975 Lanzmann found him living in obscurity in Rome; their interviews form the backbone of this work, which echoes between that time, the present, and the always-present past. “A monumental film” (Kent Jones), The Last of the Unjust is a haunting coda to Shoah.