The Film Shoah

One of the people who was interviewed that interested me the most was a man by the name of Abraham Bomba. He was a man who was kept at Treblinka during the Holocaust and performed the services of a barber for those who were sent to the gas chambers. His testimony is important to this film and to history because as a barber he was allowed to be extremely close to the victims when they were directly outside the gas chambers.

As Bomba described it, the females who were about to be sent into the gas chambers were to be given haircuts to mask the fact that they were about to be exterminated. The women would enter the gas chambers completely naked. There were benches inside the gas chamber and about fifty to sixty people were sat down in the gas chamber while sixteen barbers cut their hair. They had a very short time to do this and had to rush from person to person chopping off their hair before the doors were closed and the gas was released.

The interesting part of Bomba's testimony for me is the fact that he took a part in the preparation of the bodies for gassing. Though his position in this process is justified because he was forced into it by the Nazis, it still interests me because he was forced to be so close to the process. The results are evident when he starts to talk about cutting the hair of a woman he knows. He starts to talk about how she asks questions about what is going to happen to her and he breaks down emotionally. He asks Lanzmann repeatedly to stop the questions and says he can't continue. He does continue after much urging from Lanzmann, but it is very hard for him to talk about this experience. Being this close to the extermination process has indelibly been imprinted on Bomba's conscience. It seems that Bomba has kept this period in his life suppressed because it is too hard emotionally to remember.

Michael Podchlebnik was another person interviewed in Shoah. He was there when it all started. He is a Jew who was present at Chelmno when the exterminations commenced. Podchlebnik was one of only two survivors to come out of Chelmno, yet he smiles constantly while Lanzmann interviews him.