Audio transcription

For more interviews and talks, visit the Harvard Film Archive Visiting Artists Collection page.

John Quackenbush  0:00

March 14 2014, the Harvard Film Archive screened The Specialist. This is the audio recording of the introduction and the Q&A and discussion that followed. Participating are David Pendleton, HFA programmer and filmmaker Eyal Sivan.

David Pendleton 0:22 

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first of three films that we're showing this weekend here at the Harvard Film Archive by the Israeli filmmaker, Eyal Sivan. My name is David Pendleton, the programmer of the Archive, and it’s a pleasure as always to welcome you all tonight. And I'm here just to make a few introductory remarks before bringing the filmmaker up here to the podium.

The film that we're going to see is the earliest of the three films that we'll be showing from Mr. Sivan’s career, The Specialist from 1999. Tomorrow night, we will also be joined by Mr. Sivan to talk about the most recent of the three films, Jaffa, the Oranges Clockwork from 2009. And then Sunday will be showing the film in between, the epic Route 181, co-directed with Palestinian filmmaker Michel Khleifi from 2003, all five hours of it, beginning at 4pm. For this evening, please, as a reminder, if you have anything on your person that makes noise or sheds any light, please make sure that it's turned off and please refrain from illuminating your screens while the house lights are down for the pleasure and concentration of all of your neighbors.

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, who had been a Nazi Lieutenant Colonel in charge of organizing mass deportations to death camps, was apprehended in Buenos Aires by Israeli agents and taken to Israel, where he went on trial in Jerusalem in 1962, was found guilty and executed. The trial, of course, was presented as a world historical event. It was broadcast live throughout Israel. The footage was then flown to the US daily, and was also broadcast in the US with a one-day delay. The film that you're about to see is about the Eichmann Trial, but it's not a summary of the trial. It's rather an essay about the trial, drawing on the records, we might say, left by two important spectators at the trials—spectators or participants, you might say. The participant, one might argue, is Leo Hurwitz, who was a well-known American documentary maker and a graduate of Harvard University—who's best known film is the classic Native Land from 1942—who was then blacklisted in the late 1940s, and spent the 1950s doing mostly television work—often unsigned or anonymously—because of the blacklist. But he was given the contract to work, to oversee the broadcast of the trial, and amassed many hundreds of hours over the course of the trial, some of which he made into his own film about the trial called Verdict for Tomorrow from 1961. It's, I believe, a thirty-minute film, if I'm not mistaken. The other important spectator at the trial was of course, Hannah Arendt, the philosopher, whose famous account of the trial published as Eichmann in Jerusalem, is the origin of the phrase, “the banality of evil,” since in her eyes—well, in an Arendt’s eyes—what was most monstrous or most notable, we might say, about Eichmann was precisely his normality. And the fact that—well, this is the debate—rather than being motivated out of any particular real hatred, [he] at least claimed to have been simply doing his job. And so it was the reflections of Arendt and the footage of Hurwitz that became the origin of the film that you're about to see.

Eyal Sivan has proven his talent over the course of his career working with archival footage, both tonight's film and also Jaffa, the Orange's Clockwork. Although tomorrow night's is a very different film. As you'll see it's very much a montage of interviews, still images, moving images, and a really fascinating example of the essay film, as well as that filming live events as they unfold, as you'll see on Sunday with Route 181. It's rare to find filmmakers who are good at both. But I think in the case of Eyal Sivan, both kinds of filmmaking come out of a set of core concerns about ethics, about politics, about the moving image. I think that Eyal is somebody who's worked with a moving image and cinematic experiences by using that experience as a way to promote justice and a way of exposing the workings of power, so as to implicate us. He’s somebody working within the architecture of the cinematic experience, I think, in a way. And as such, he makes something really fascinatingly cinematic out of the Eichmann Trial and out of this television footage.

He's made fifteen films to date, I believe, of varying lengths, dating back to the late 1980s. And many of them are about the contemporary politics of Palestine in Israel, the Israeli occupation, the development of Zionism over the course of the history of Israel. But as tonight, what we're going to see is a film that's really in some ways a character study, as the title indicates, The Specialist—a study of Eichmann himself.

When not active as a filmmaker, he's been working as a professor teaching at a number of universities in Europe and Israel. The film bureaucracy has even excited a certain amount of controversy, because of, I think, people's expectations that the film is going to be, sort of, a straightforward retelling of the trial. But in fact, as I mentioned, it's very much a commentary on it, an essay film about the trial of Eichmann, about the character of Eichmann. And I think that the film presents itself in that light, I think, by the simple fact of the work that Eyal Sivan has done in selecting and assembling the images, even at times slightly manipulating the images, and his work on the soundtrack adding music and also special effects. As I said, for an essay film, it's a particularly engrossing and fascinating one. And it works on a number of levels as a reflection of crime and punishment, as a work of history, and as I said, as a character study. So that's all I'll say for now. I will be back at the end, after the film to moderate a conversation between Eyal and all of you. But now, to say a few words of introduction himself, please welcome filmmaker Eyal Sivan.

[APPLAUSE]

Eyal Sivan  7:17 

Thank you very much. Thank you, David, for your warm words. And I mean, I learned about my film now. [LAUGHTER] I'm both honored and flattered to be here. And to show The Specialist which is a film [where] I'm enjoying looking. You might find it odd to enjoy looking, but I think that there's a contract between us, I mean, between spectator and makers, whatever we're doing, it's not about entertainment, but it's about guaranteeing an amount of spectacle. And spectacle doesn't mean not thinking: [on] the contrary. I hope that it will be both an enjoyable film and an object of thinking. And it would be a great pleasure to discuss with you after the film, about the film, and about this fantastic title that David found for this three films screening, which is “The Clockwork of Power,” which is good. I mean, both of us were already kind of stealing from Kubrick. Let's continue. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

John Quackenbush  8:27 

And now the discussion with filmmaker Eyal Sivan and David Pendleton.

David Pendleton  8:47 

Maybe I'll start by asking a question or two. And there's much to talk about. About this film, I wanted to start perhaps by asking you to talk a little about your work with the image, with these images, with the sound… Maybe one way to start would be to ask: what was it that draw you first to start looking at these images? Were you drawn to them? And then, what made you decide to start working with them to want to edit them?

Eyal Sivan  9:21 

Well, in fact, it's kind of a strange encounter. The Eichmann Trial and the images—some images of the Eichmann Trial—I knew as a schoolboy in Israel. I mean, we always saw images of the Eichmann Trial. We never saw Eichmann speaking because the only thing that we heard was the beginning when he's saying, “Nicht schuldig,” “not guilty.” And basically the extract that was shown to us as kids on an Israeli TV, et cetera, were the survivors—the witnesses, if you want. So I knew the existence of the material. Then it happened to be that in 1993 I did a film with Professor Leibovich, which is Israeli...was an Israeli philosopher, and was the Godfather in a way of the movement of Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories in the War of  Lebanon, this movement, which is called “There is a limit.” Yesh Gvul. And I did this film with him and I was looking for some archival material in order to make a small biography out of [the] archive of Leibovich. So I went to the Jewish Film Archive in the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which is called the Spielberg Film Archive, and I asked to look at some material and they got me into a room and I was sitting in the viewing room, and next to me there was this series of cassettes [on] which was written “Eichmann Trial, Eichmann Trial.” And the film that I did at that time with Professor Leibovich was about obedience, disobedience, relation to state, et cetera. When I'm coming back to Paris, I was talking to a friend of mine at the time, he was the president of Doctors Without Borders—Médecins Sans Frontières—Dr. Rony Brauman, and I told him, “You know, I was sitting... I saw the archived/archival material of Eichmann, it's interesting. I'm [interested] in it, I want to do something with it.” And he told me, “Do you know the book by Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: Report on Banality of Evil?” “Never heard about it.” “How did you never hear about it?” I say, “Well, I never heard about it.” It wasn't translated to Hebrew until 2000, when the film was released. I mean, from 1963 to 2000, there was no Hebrew edition. So he said, “You should read the book.” And I read the book, and I said, “Let's do something.”

And like this, we started. We started with this encounter, my encounter with the archives and the encounter with the book of Arendt. And at that moment, I went [back] to the archives, I went back to Jerusalem and said, “Well, I'm interested to do a project on the Eichmann Trial. Where are the originals?” And he told me, “Those are the originals—the ones that you saw in the room.” And I said, “Well, this is impossible.” It's impossible that those are original from the simple reason that those are BVU cassettes, video cassettes—I won't get into the technical details—that were started to be used in 1972. So it's impossible these are the originals. “Well, my dear, these are the originals that we have.” And from there [was the] start [of] the struggle that took a year, that brought us to the High Court of Israel in order to oblige the archive and the Israeli state to say, “Where are the original archives?” And it happened to be that nobody knew. Nobody knew. Where are the original archives—the original material—of the Eichmann Trial? We're talking thirty-seven years after the trial. So with the director assistant of the archive, we started to walk around and to look for the originals. And we looked, and we looked in basements, and we looked in files. Where are the originals? And we couldn't find them until one day, we're walking in a corridor in a basement of the law department of Israel University, which is not far from the archive. And there was this closed door, and I'm saying to this guy, I'm saying, “What is behind there?” He said, “There's nothing. Those are the old, unused toilets of the law department.”

“But, but maybe there's a storage…?” He said nothing. So we broke in. We broke in and we found the archive, the entire material of the archive of Eichmann put in boxes. It was big boxes, on the toilets themselves like this, you know, you open a door and you have archives. And for thirty-seven years, apparently the archive was in those toilets. So we found the material. We started to negotiate the possibility to watch it. There was no way to watch it because it was the first-ever-used video material, 2-inch MTC...2-inch, which means 70 centimeters of material. There was no machine to view it. And this starts a big work of building a machine in Israel, copying the material and we thought, This is the end; we have the material. We [made] copies. I went back to my editing room in Paris, and I took cassette number one, a copy that we [made]. But number one wasn't number one, there was nothing to know. I mean, it was just elements of the trial, and there started the work which is an archive work, it was to make the inventory and the catalogue of the [entire Eichmann material], 360 hours.

So in fact, it's the project that started in order to make a film. We finish by becoming archivists: we started to work, to restore the material, to organize it. And from the very beginning of the project, the idea was to kind of repeat or to restore the situation that was the situation of the court. I mean, the court—the Eichmann Trial—didn't take place in a court, it took place in a place which is called “the House of the People,” Beth Am in Jerusalem, which is in fact the big auditorium, two levels, like this one. And for me, the idea was, in fact, to put the spectators of today in the situation of the past, which is one of the reasons that we almost don't see the public; while I had a lot of images of the public, we see [the public three times], besides, of course, all the shots that are on the glass booth, which are the intercuts that I put [in] the image. And there was only an idea behind that that was kind of, to make a long story short, I will call it a digital attack on the notion on veracity: of what is a document, if you want. So this was the idea, it was in fact, to repeat the spectacle of the trial as it was in Jerusalem, and to consider the archival material is a space...like any reality space. I mean, in documentary we go into [a] space, and in that moment, we decide what to show, what not to show, how to deal with it. And this was my relation to the archive. It was kind of a highly secular relation to what is considered [for] some time a sacred material.

David Pendleton  17:10 

Right, right. Well, when you say the reflections on the glass are your intercuts, can you be more specific…

Eyal Sivan 17:16

Yeah.

David Pendleton  17:17 

...explain what you mean…

Eyal Sivan 17:17

Yeah.

David Pendleton  17:18

...what you mean by that, because one thing that interests me is precisely that your use of the space of the courtroom—well, Hurwitz’s capturing of it, and then your, sort of, reframing of that.

Eyal Sivan  17:26 

So just to understand this amazing thing that he is doing, Leo Hurwitz. The Eichmann Trial is not just a big event in terms of justice and a big event in terms of a trial against humanity, and a political event. It's also a cinematic event. It's the first time [there] will be recorded video outside of a TV studio. 1960, 1961. Leo Hurwitz comes to Israel. Israel didn't have at the time TV stations, so it was an American company. That was Capital City Studios that hired Hurvitz, and the Eichmann Trial officially starts on the 11th of March 1961, if I remember well...it’s a few days, right? Two-to-three days ago. But in fact, the first session of the trial is on the 10th of March, a discussion about the idea: can we film or cannot film the trial? So there is all this discussion—which is really interesting—about what will be the influence of the presence of the camera on the procedure of the trial. To make a long story short, there are four cameras that were [placed] by Hurvitz, and they were [hidden] behind walls with a small window, which means that Hurvitz couldn't do any camera movements. All the camera movements that you see, in fact, those are digital camera movement. So first, we have the digital camera movements that were done by us. The second thing was that the material is in very bad quality, much worse than what you can see on the screen, and all those shadows and the impression that there are lights were redesigned on the original image.

There was one camera that I never used, which is the camera that is showing the public. I took those images and in fact I put them on the glass booth as a reflection of the public—I mean, of you, in a way—reflected on the glass booth, and the very first image for those who maybe you [?see in it?], and it's kind of... There are two shots in the beginning that I found in those [shots of] the images of the public... I found Hannah Arendt sitting in the hall so I put her in the beginning, on the glass booth, as a reflection as if she was sitting alone over there. So we have all those layers, which are: the glass booth, digital work with the intercut of the image, we have the camera movements that are built out of different images, including that image of the camera moving around when somebody is screaming. So there is this camera that is turning, this is also kind of a...how to call it? Artificial image? Yeah.

David Pendleton  20:26 

A special effect.

Eyal Sivan  20:27

A special effect done by specialists, yeah.

David Pendleton  20:33 

Well, because I'm fascinated by, precisely by this use of space and precisely by, as you say, putting the spectator in the position of an audience member. I mean, we were talking last night when you were at Boston College a little bit about this question of—within documentary—how do you represent perpetrators? How do you represent victims? And what is the location of the audience in relation to those? I wonder if you want to say a little bit about...because you have some really interesting ideas, I think, about that.

Eyal Sivan  21:10 

I think that one of the things that it's maybe important to [remember], and I think that it's clearly—anyway in my mind—it was clearly argued, I would say, or stated in the very beginning of this film, where you have these credits which are: the attorney general, the accused, the judges in a film by Eyal Sivan, or Rony Brauman and Eyal Sivan, which is, for me, it was an indication. It's kind of part of the contract, you're not going to watch a film about the Eichmann Trial, but you're going to watch a film done out of the material. I can even emphasize it by saying, all the images that you see in the film are coming from the archive, but in the same time, you won't find in the archive today any one of the images that are in the film because they’re all reworked. So this is on one level. But there is another level, which was the question when I'm saying, it's not the trial of Jerusalem. It's not the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem. One of the things which [is] important to remember concerning the Eichmann Trial, and generally of the trials of crimes against humanity, which is the lack of interest, I will say, in the perpetrator, and the formation of the space, which is the court, the trial, the commissions of truth and reconciliation. I mean, all those spaces that allowed the victim to [speak] up. I mean, if we think about what I said before, that as a child, I knew this material, but only through the images of the witnesses, it's interesting to notice that nobody was ever interested in Eichmann speaking. Not even the trial of Jerusalem, not any of the researchers that were working on the trial. The trial of Jerusalem was a trial that gave the space to 121 or 126 witnesses, survivors, to speak up. It was the first time, also, following Second World War, that there was a possibility to hear those people speaking. Which wasn't the case in Nuremberg. The trials of Nuremberg were not about the genocide of the Jews. But in the same time, I would say, the interest in the court and the interest—the general interest—in the testimonies of victims reminds me as a filmmaker, the historical interest of the documentary practice. I mean, if we think about the documentary practice, what is the main figure of the documentary practice? [It] is in fact the victim, the underdogs. I mean, just if we think about subjects the documentary is dealing historically in the working class, prisons, refugees... I mean, always we have this, I would say to generalize, the figure of the victim is the center of the screen of the documentary practice, and I can go back to the invention of cinema, which is the Lumières and to think that their first film, it's filming the workers of the factory, right? They don't stand there, the bosses in front of the camera. No, they are behind the camera, which is a position of power, showing the workers.

I was very interested in this idea and I would say I'm [as] guilty as my fellows because my first film also was about victims. It was, if you want, it was a film about the Palestinian refugee camp. But it was my first film about victims and my last one, if you will. It happened that I can't...when you're saying, you're talking about my talk yesterday, I developed kind of a critique of this practice, which is the practice of emphasizing the victim as the main figure, by a misunderstanding of the notion of point of view. I mean, when we say, “What is the point of view of...the victim or a survivor of the Holocaust?” Usually, the idea of point of view will be: we will give him the possibility to speak. But this is not a point of view. A point of view in cinema is when you're standing in one place, and you are looking towards the other. And in fact, what will be the point of view of a victim will be to look at the perpetrator. I mean, if I'm thinking about a kind of rearticulation, this idea of Walter Benjamin, the tradition of the oppressed? The tradition of the oppressed is looking at the perpetrator. So to make a long story short, I have kind of a belief, or I articulated a critique about this representation of victim as the center of the documentary practice, as a continuation of what I call the “secular church.” I believe that cinema in this moment of its articulation, which is both modernity and secularization, replaced in a way, the church and the secular churches, what we have here. You have people sitting looking at the screen, and mainly this documentary screen came to replace the church in a way that we have a victim over there, he's suffering for us, and we are redeemed. I'm not interested in redeeming the spectator. The redeeming of the spectator is this feeling that I can have, I can feel the suffering of the other, which means that I'm a good person, right? I'm not interested in this relation of redeeming. And from that moment on, I mean, from articulation, this critique on the documentary practice and on my own practice, I started to be interested in the representation of the perpetrator. And even I would go a bit further and say the perpetrator is a main witness. And this is a distinction that was done not only by me, but was done by Primo Levi for example, when he's saying, “I'm a survivor. Rudolf Hess, the commander of Auschwitz, he's a witness.” And what I'm interested in is Eichmann as a witness. And in fact, this is the big difference in a way between The Specialist and the trial of Jerusalem. I believe, in a bit arrogant way, that this is the real trial of Eichmann, and the other one wasn't the trial of Eichmann. I mean, that trial of Eichmann that took nine months [could have finished] in 128 minutes if somebody would [have asked] him, “Mr. Adolf Eichmann, what have you done between 1933 and 1945?” And in the moment that he would [answer], we say “Well, this is what you're accused [of].” But this wasn't the interest in Jerusalem.

David Pendleton  28:14 

Are there questions in the audience before I go to...? I've got a bunch of follow-up… We'll take some questions. Yes, this gentleman here, and then you there, and then we'll move over there.

Yeah, so we can all hear the question.

Audience 1  28:28

So, you said that the Hannah Arendt book gave you the idea to make this film. But could you say more about whether you intended to make the film convey some of her ideas, and in particular, this idea of this faceless bureaucrat instead of a monster which, of course people say, based on other evidence, was an act on his part– that she was fooled. And so looking at your film, you know, it did look like this guy's just following orders, you know, getting all the details right. But having read some about what he said when he wasn't on trial in other contexts, I was thinking he's suppressing ninety-nine percent of what is really relevant here, because it's an act. But there's no hint of that in the film. So I wonder, did you mean to show a film about the banality of evil? And, did you try to engage [with] some of the criticisms of Arendt that have been made since your book?

Eyal Sivan 29:35 

Well, I must say something. That of course, when you work on the adaptation of a book and  and the film is not... It's an inspiration from the book, and I would say it's even inspired– There is one chapter that I was interested in, which is “The Experts,” this chapter about the expert. But I want to take your question because it's, of course, the question that is recurrent following the screening of the film and also the critique that was posed to Arendt. I mean, there is only one way. There's only one cinematic way to make out of Eichmann a monster is by not letting him to speak. And this was the position for years, of not showing Eichmann speaking. Which means that, of course, in the moment that Eichmann starts to speak, he's not anymore that monster,

animal, bestial animal that is described by the general attorney. I would say more than that.

You said you're asking your question is...in a way, I understand your question. Did I [take] out moments [showing] that Eichmann is more than what we see on the screen?

Audience 1 31:10

[INAUDIBLE]

Eyal Sivan 31:12

No. Huh?

Audience 1 31:14

[INAUDIBLE]

Eyal Sivan 31:17

Just one second. Okay. But this is what I wanted to do... He was acting. Let's take together a [UNKNOWN] that he's acting like any accused in court is acting. Which means why, first of all, why we will ask for Eichmann to be more honest than any person that tries to defend himself? Every person that defends themself will lie. But let's decide together that he's lying. Despite the fact that he's lying, would you consider that what he says that he does doesn't make him a big criminal? [PAUSE] It's not enough?

Audience 1  31:55

[INAUDIBLE]

Eyal Sivan 31:56

No, but I'm saying even if he wants to show off, and this was the problem of Jerusalem, the Court of Jerusalem—this is what I said—the Court of Jerusalem was not interested in Eichmann because, let's imagine that Eichmann was only in charge of the timetabling. It doesn't make out of him a huge criminal?

Unknown Speaker 32:15

[INAUDIBLE]

Eyal Sivan  33:04 

Okay, so you're talking about one... You're talking about one document. You're talking about one document, just to put the public in context. You're talking about the Sassen document, which was an interview that Eichmann gave to a Dutch journalist. It happened to be that the court of Jerusalem refused to accept that document as authentic. [PAUSE] That document. But more than that, I'm coming back to the thing: of course Eichmann is anti-Semitic. But this [makes] him a man of his time. Somebody wasn't anti-Semitic in the 30s? I mean, you know about the anti-Semitic movement? Anti-racism? To be racist in the 30s in Germany or in Europe or in this country, was to be the mainstream. Eichmann was the mainstream. So to come in to say Eichmann was anti-Semitic? Of course he was! I mean, if you take Raul Hilberg’s book, The Destruction of the Jewry of Europe, Raul Hilberg, in his memory, tells the story that when he came to present his book in 1961 in Chicago University, the room was separated between White and Blacks. Okay? To talk about the Holocaust. This was in 1961. What you would say... Of course! I mean, to come in to say Eichmann is… What? If he was saying, if it was like, “I want to hate you, all the Jews,” this would have made him more criminal?

I think, and this is what I was interested in, and this is why I wasn't interested in the Trial of Jerusalem as such. I was interested in the challenge that Eichmann is giving to us, not as Adolf Eichmann the son of Carl, but the Eichmann case. I mean, for me, and this is the elementary thing in the film—for me anyway—is that maybe Eichmann—not maybe—Eichmann was killed. Eichmann was judged. Eichmann was hanged, and he’s finished. But Eichmann's mentality or logic is alive. And this is something that the Court of Jerusalem was not interested in. I mean, this kind of criminality—for me—for me, it's enough that Eichmann says what he did. It [makes him] a huge criminal. I was always wondering, what was [the attorney general thinking]? What [was he] waiting for? And I can [answer it]. They didn't want to judge Eichmann; they wanted to judge Mengele. They wanted to judge somebody that [was] touching, that was killing. Eichmann is a total challenge, both to justice and to [morality]. And this is why the question, if he was more hating Jews or less hating Jews, is not the question.

Audience 1 36:16

[INAUDIBLE]

Eyal Sivan 36:27 

Well, I will just, you know, in order not just to make a dialogue between us, but about this point, Eichmann did… I'll give you a very concrete example: there is one case—[only one] case—that Eichmann, in his only visit to Auschwitz meets or sees an old man, an old Jewish man that was a friend of his father in Austria. And he will ask Rudolf Hess, the commander of Auschwitz, to find a better job [for] that old man. In the Court of Jerusalem, he will apologize by saying, “This is the only time in all my career that [I] did something that was against the law.”  If he was such a liar, why [didn’t he] use it in order to say, “I save Jews?” [PAUSE] Why [didn’t he] use the Jewish councils to bring them as witnesses? But this is, I think, this is our big problem with Eichmann. We cannot accept what Arendt [found]. I think the most interesting element is the terrifying, ordinary man. And this we cannot accept, and this brings me back to the cinema question. I think that this is the cinema question. This is the difference between having the perpetrator on the screen and having the victim on the screen. The perpetrator [sends] us a question. It doesn't give us an answer. It sends us the question, which is the question of “I believe our own humanity,” and the need to separate the perpetrator from our humanity is our need. The problem is that he's part of us. He's part of us. I mean, this is what I'm believing, what I'm saying. Eichmann was hanged; Eichmannism is still alive. You don't need to hate Muslims, to hate Afghanis, in order to operate a drone [PAUSE] ...if it's your job.

David Pendleton  38:51 

And this is behind the moment at the very end of the film as well, where suddenly the glass cube is removed, and we see him sitting at a table and the image becomes color.

Eyal Sivan  39:01

This is twelve images—half a second—of sending Eichmann into the present. Sending him into the present in color, making him the man behind the desk. I mean, look—in Jerusalem, there were eleven indictments against Eichmann. There is one he was charging– He was condemned on ten of them. There is one that he wasn't. It’s the one that the court—the Attorney General— tries to prove that he himself killed the boy in Hungary. They couldn't prove it. They couldn't prove because Eichmann had a horrible weapon in his hand, which we cannot consider as a weapon, which is a pen. I was saying yesterday as a joke, I mean, just imagine what [would] happen if Eichmann [had] Excel and PowerPoint.

David Pendleton  39:49 

There were... I guess there are other... it's the woman right there, and then there was Irina in the back.

Audience 2  39:55  

I think in an interview, you talked about how the Eichmann Trial was interested in memory instead of history. And there are moments where you're like, “This trial is really a spectacle.” Besides the survivors, where it's really… You feel like you're actually in a trial around genocide, the entire thing feels staged. I mean, it is staged because obviously being broad–…[SIGH] it's not that… Yeah, so the prosecutor’s asking questions, but there's a theatric sort of nature to them almost. And...does that make sense? So, while Eichmann is like, “I'm this bureaucrat, this is what I've been doing,” and on and on. And there's this one scene where you have him trying to point out the diagram. And suddenly you have him right next to the prosecutor. And at that moment, I was like... It almost felt like you were removed from the context. Where it could have been a case about negligence, it could have been just a standard thing where they're at a PowerPoint, and they're pointing at it in a very technical way. And so you're already drawn into this idea of, you know, a bureaucrat who screwed up or who was just trying to follow orders, as opposed to, you know, a crime against humanity. Could you talk about that kind of both...the spectacle, but also, both sides sort of playing into that, if that makes sense, at least in terms of, [SIGH] I don't know… the weightedness, besides the witnesses who took the stand? And if that's part of the reason why Israelis never actually saw the actual trial?

Eyal Sivan  41:50 

Well, there are two points. First of all, I want to emphasize one element that you're asking that was asked before, about the notion of following orders, just obeying. And here I must use Arendt. Arendt says, “Adults do not obey, adults follow. Kids obey.” And this is [an] important point, I mean, to come in, to hide behind as an adult and to say, “I obeyed orders,” it's meaningless. Because you don't obey. We don't obey; we follow, if we are adults. I mean, we have the possibility to think [about] our acts. Kids also, but they have to... Why [am I] emphasizing it? Because I must admit that for me, there is nothing shocking, neither in the fact that it's a spectacle or a show trial, neither in the fact that it's a state that is doing it. I mean, obviously a state will have a problem to judge a bureaucrat of another state on the ground of obedience. I mean, how you can judge somebody because...on what [is Eichmann] judged? [He is] judged on the fact that he obeyed legal orders, right? So how [can you] as a state come in to say, “Well, obeying legal orders is bad.”? [PAUSE] There is an internal paradox in it. And judgment is not about, “You obey the immoral orders.” No, he was what he was doing was legal in his time; it became illegal after. So he was a man of the state the same way that Hausner is a man of the state. The fact that the court is a bureaucratic [scene], it's not a problem, as such. The problem is the impossibility of judgment as judgmental, as a structure of judgment. And as a state. To understand the nature of the crime of Eichmann, which is exactly to come in to say as a state statement, “Good men must not obey law too well,” which is of course not… it's Emerson, right? So good men must not obey law too well, but how a state can come in to say to another citizen that you shouldn't? There is a moment that you shouldn't obey the law. And this was impossible for the court of Jerusalem. So when you are coming in to [speak] about the [scene], it wasn't part of my statement.

In the film, to kind of [criticize] the fact that that state [for] its own reasons, which is Israel is judging Eichmann. My critique is that in fact, it wasn't the Trial of Adolf Eichmann. I'm following here the critique of many that the trial of Jerusalem was the trial [of what] Zionism is doing to Naziism. And that it was an instrumentalized trial for two reasons: internal and external. External, to position Israel as the country of the survivors. I mean, to give to Israel, the moral credit that still Israel benefits from ‘til today—less and less because credit is not infinite, it’s less and less credit, but there is still credit. But mainly, it was internal for the young generation in Israel, in order to emphasize a difference between two kinds of Jews. The old Jew, the one that we [still learned about] in school that went, and I'm quoting our school textbooks, “They went to the gas chambers like sheep to the slaughter.” This was [the] division that we were taught about, but we were the new Israelis, the ones that identified with the resistance. And the Trial of Eichmann was built in a way that there were four witness survivors, one resistance force survivor, one resistance. It was all the time, this kind of thing. There was the survivor: this is the old Jew, [and] that competent militant of the ghetto, the resistance, this is the new Jew, this is the one that we were supposed to identify with. So, of course, it had an internal aim, goal, and [an] external one. But in the same time, this [is] what I'm saying by saying, maybe you read it, that, in fact, memory [won] over history, that the real contribution of this trial to justice, to the understanding of the nature of crime against humanity, wasn't done yet. I mean, I won't be arrogant enough to say now it's done. No, but it's not done yet.

David Pendleton  46:58 

It seems to me, at the same time, that what's important about watching the film and the reason why the figure of Eichmann is important for the film is precisely this ambiguous position in which he puts the spectator, who is at the one hand gazing at him from the point of view of the perpetrator, but at the same time, is confronted with this figure that he has to judge for himself.

Eyal Sivan  47:19 

This is the question of spectatorship.

David Pendleton  47:22 

This is the trial. The film itself is a trial.

Eyal Sivan 47:25 

Yeah, but listen, this is the whole question about the relation to cinema—which I'm interested in—which is the notion of projection, and reflection in this double meaning of the word “reflection.” Of course there is a permanent reflection of an image of the screen; the question is the possibility of this reflection to come and to provoke, I would say, something that is lacking at Eichmann, which is the element of thinking. I mean, to watch the perpetrator, again, is not about giving an answer. It's about questioning. I mean, there is a projection which is [an] inherent part of the public, our projection of what is supposed to be a Nazi. I mean, part of what we know about what is supposed to be a Nazi is from cinema. And I always have this argument that if we look at cinema about the Second World War, this is maybe the ultimate victory of Goebbels. And Leni Riefenstahl. Because the Nazis in Second World War cinema looked like they wanted to show themselves...I mean, of course, think about it: they [are always] sharp, they speak very sharp and they look good, they are blonde with blue eyes, even in black-and-white. I mean, think about the figures in the Nazis of Steven Spielberg, in Schindler. I mean, there is no difference between that image of the Nazi and Leni Riefenstahl. But to come and to confront a Nazi, [who] is kind of a… [?Daddy?] that we would see around, this is much more difficult than this encounter between the projection (which is the screen), our mental projection as spectator [onto] the screen, and the question of the ability of cinema to provoke reflection, which will be our big debate with what we call the entertainment cinema, and entertainment is about entertaining non-reflection, I would say.

David Pendleton  49:33 

Yes, Irina?

Audience 3  49:35 

I greatly appreciated your film. But my question is actually about Hurwitz, who I think of more as a filmmaker who was a very important left-wing filmmaker here in the United States. And I'm wondering what was his relationship to the footage? So, I imagine there were just fixed four shots? Was his task to make a film out of this? Was his task to leave Jerusalem the moment the trial was over? Did the television station do something with the work in terms of making something other than news clips?

Eyal Sivan  50:06 

So Horvitz had this mission to choose between the four cameras. It was [shot] as kind of what we called “direct TV.”

David Pendleton  50:19

So he was at a control booth. And he would say, “Cut to camera four…?”

Eyal Sivan  50:21 

He was in a control room behind, and he saw four monitors, and each time he was choosing one camera to be recorded, okay? Which already this is an important point. Which already, in fact, there is something that we could call biased in the image itself, because when he's showing Eichmann listening to a testimony, Eichmann doesn't hear what we hear as a spectator. He [hears] what was before. So in order to catch his reaction—which there are no reactions, but to catch the reaction—in fact, we had to [replay] the sound. So, but what was the mission of Hurvitz? To shoot, to choose the cameras, to record as much as possible. And they had the technical problem because they didn't have enough reels. So [at] the end of the trial, they started to record on the beginning. So we have holes in the beginning, this is one. It was sent to London, in fact, then it was filmed from a screen and was sent to different stations in the world. It was broadcast, I think, by ABC in America with advertising inside of Revson—it was the Revson family that sponsored the broadcast. So, the decision of the court in that first day, which is the date that they decide to authorize the shooting, was about recording the entire trial and to consider the film's material as the minutes of the trial. On this base, we went to court with the Israeli government saying, you didn't respect the court decision, of course, which they didn't respect the court decision. That was Hurvitz’ work. But there is a point about Hurvitz which is important and it happened that I got the last interview that he did with a researcher from UCLA that gave me, as a present, this material in order to do what I want with. And Hurwitz was a communist. As David mentioned, he was blacklisted. And because he had difficulties to work in America, he was the man that did the first film for the Auschwitz Museum. So he was interested. And he's saying in that interview that was done just before his death, he is saying, “I went to Jerusalem, because I was interested in fascism. But when I got to Jerusalem, I understood that the Israelis are not at all interested in fascism. They were interested in what happened to the Jews. And I wonder why they're not interested in fascism.” So Hurvitz had that clear take both on Israel and on Eichmann.

David Pendleton  53:24 

And he made a film, he edited, as I understand it's a thirty-minute film, which I don't remember much about called Verdict for Tomorrow, certainly after the trial.

Eyal Sivan  53:31 

Yeah. Immediately after the trial. Immediately after the trial, he had access. I mean, they gave him the possibility to make that film about the trial. But in the same time, he didn't do the film that he wanted to do. He wanted to do a film about a figure of fascists, but because of his relation with the producer—that was the owner of the material—he did this Verdict for Tomorrow, [in] which, in fact, he hints [at] the idea that the verdict of Eichmann should be reviewed tomorrow. This is the end of the filmVerdict for Tomorrow. This is also the reason that the film really kind of disappeared. Not many people saw it. It's difficult to access it.

David Pendleton  54:15 

If the verdict was to be reviewed the following day, what does that mean?

Eyal Sivan  54:18 

The idea of reviewing the verdict, in fact that the verdict for tomorrow will be the verdict on the fascist figure and not about the anti-semitic Nazi, et cetera. This is what he's trying to say. We didn't understand the universal importance of the Eichmann Trial.

David Pendleton 54:37  

I see. There are other hands up if, if I'm sorry, we've been moving rather slowly through them. Well, I'll tell you, we'll go to this gentleman over here. If you'll wait for the mic which is coming from behind you.

Audience 4  54:51 

I think it's worth pointing out that Arendt herself addressed the question of Eichmann's honesty or dishonesty, and that she had also read Eichmann's interview with the Dutch journalist Sassen, so that she was aware of questions about Eichmann representing or misrepresenting himself and then she addressed these in her book. And it's also worth pointing out that Sassen himself, the Dutch journalist was an SS man and...so there are questions about his own veracity in conducting the interview so that I think Arendt’s take is a very sophisticated take on Eichmann. And that a lot of these charges about her being duped by him are sort of groundless.

Eyal Sivan 55:35

And she was also a victim. Seriously, she was a victim of the fact that she was highly arrogant because the sentence, this paragraph of twelve or fifteen lines about the Jewish Councils, that she's saying they participate in their own extermination. She was arrogant because she could have [quoted] the judge of Jerusalem, right? It's Benjamin Halevy that [said] the sentence “so they participate in their own extermination.” But she took it as her own sentence, which was the big scandal after.

David Pendleton  56:18 

There was another question somewhere here near the front, am I correct? Or further in the back? Okay. Okay. Yes, I think... and this woman has a question.

Audience 5  56:31 

It seems to me that his behavior throughout the trial and his kind of, I would say, collusion between him and the prosecutor, that they're doing a kind of dance. And he's extremely finely attuned to what is required of him actually, in the situation. And he always exceeds authority. And he clearly understands that now, these people are the authority. They are now his boss. And so you actually see him acting out, in the context, what he's talking about. Was that your intention?

Eyal Sivan  57:13 

Yes, of course. And I would go—I want to thank you—and I would go further. When there is something which is, for me was striking from the beginning, when I was starting to look at the material—I'm talking about the material of Eichmann—was the fact that there's a possibility to reflect on Eichmann in the glass booth as being the Eichmann in his office. I mean, sixteen years after, he finds his paper. He finds his office. If there is one person in all the court that knows perfectly the file, is Eichmann himself. And this is the joy of the work, again, because the sentence that we put in the end—which is not the end of the trial, of course—when he's saying, “Come on, guys, I did my work well. Nobody came and told me, ‘you did wrong.’” And this is the problem. “Of course, yes. You did your work well. What we are expecting from you is to do it bad.” And this is the permanent paradox. But, of course, it was a fantastic opportunity for me to come and to have this thing that I have. Sixteen years later, I have Eichmann back in his office. It's not anymore in Berlin, but he's in the office. And we have all the relations that he might [have] had with his superiors. I mean, when the court is saying to him, “Shut up,” he's shutting up. Each time he will stand up: “please stand up.” If he was such a Jew hater, he knew anyway. I mean, he didn't think that he [could get out of] Jerusalem and go back to Argentina. It was obvious. I mean, he came to Jerusalem—he came?—he was taken to Jerusalem, and he knew the result. He never takes the opportunity to insult the court, to badly behave. He apologized all the time for the court, and this possibility to come and to have—and this is for me the nature of the documentary—if you want the documentary document, that it has...it testifies both on the moment that it was done, and it testifies about the origin of that moment where it was done. I mean, we have here two times that are collapsing, one with the other. We have, of course, the time of the Court of Jerusalem, but in the same time, we have a real possibility to reflect—now I'm talking optically—to reflect and to imagine this man sixteen years younger, with his uniform, behind his office, with all this bunch of papers, and answering and taking [instructions] in the same way that he's taking them in the court.

Audience 5  1:00:01 

[INAUDIBLE] … was when he has that brief moment of rebellion, and they ask him, “Do you think this was criminal?” He says, “I don't want to say my personal feelings.” And then the judge says, “Well, you know, you have to answer.” And he's: “Yes, right. Sorry. Okay, I'll answer.” Like, he's obedient till the end, you know? Okay, so if that's part of the game, he has to say his personal feelings, he'll go ahead and do that. It was more—I mean, it's staggering, you know?

Eyal Sivan  1:00:33 

This is what Arendt called the “conscience of a corpse.” He has a conscience of a corpse. There is this nice moment of the Attorney General, and maybe the only kind of joyful moment when Eichmann says, “I'm sorry, when I hear that I gave orders, I must answer automatically,” and the attorney is saying to him, “Yeah, we know that you're... automatically.” But this is interesting, that you are behaving automatically. But this is the only moment that there is a hint that maybe the Attorney General understands who he’s facing. The thing is that he couldn't understand who he [was] facing.

David Pendleton  1:01:09 

This woman here has a question.

Audience 6  1:01:16 

[INAUDIBLE] ...edit a film like that you spend hours and hours with...

Eyal Sivan 1:01:20

[?with the?] news, you mean.

Audience 6  1:01:22 

You know his face and his expressions really well. And, of course, we get a sense of that with this—almost like a tic with his mouth—and wondered if you had your own interpretation of what his expression meant.

David Pendleton  1:01:44 

And also his hands, because I think there are moments where you…

Eyal Sivan 1:01:46 

The hands are more...yeah.

David Pendleton  1:01:48 

...draw attention to his hands also. Both the face and the hands.

Eyal Sivan  1:01:50

I lived for years with Eichmann. We lived years. My wife was the producer of the film with Rony Brauman, my editor—we're talking about years of work. Just the editing was two years, the editing itself. We started with 360 hours of video material and 600 hours of audio material, the one that was recorded to the radio because this is what is missing, something like 240 hours are lost forever. I didn't develop any kind of, you know, kind of psychological understanding of Eichmann. I would say, even more, I wasn't interested in questioning the psychological question of Eichmann. And here again I followed others, which is Hilberg and Arendt and Browning and others, which is [PAUSE] a very political relation to Eichmann, which is: I don't care. I don't care, in fact, [about] the psychological reason and the fact if he was crying, when he was coming back [from] work to his wife and saying, “Oh, it's horrible, too much work. I have to deport…” Who cares? I mean, Arendt teaches us—or taught me—that in politics, we're judging about facts, about acts, not about intentions. Maybe he had the most beautiful intention or the worst intention. It's not about intention. But when you're coming and you're asking...after so many years, you say, first of all, he doesn't change really. He doesn't change really… [his] expression. He has a nervous tic. I mean, he's not a Übermensch. He is not a superior man. He's just a man, in court, knowing what will be his destiny. Obviously, he's nervous. I mean, all this just make out of him...human. I mean, I think that our difficulty is to understand his humanity. He's just a human person. So, I cannot say that I saw any big difference during the screening of the films—which is not... This is the second time what you see here in the film—it's the second time that the film was screened to him. The first time that the film was screened to him, he was wearing detainee clothes, it was at night and Hurvitz put on one camera without the court knowing it. So there is a stolen material of Eichmann like he's watching TV, and there, there is the only moment that you see that he discovers something. Everything he knew. But he discovers—he see things that he didn't see before. All those films, Night and Fog, et cetera. But there is one thing, which is a permanency that I try to use in the film, which is really each time that he's becoming a bit nervous, he takes his pen, you know? He takes the weapon back. You know, he have the pistol in the hand again, you know. And this was the thing that I was playing [with]. And I asked,—there's a moment with all this work of sound that we did—I asked my sound designer, in fact, to add to the moment when he's playing with a pen to [have] the noise of how...you call it in English?—this thing where does the bullets in a gun? So you hear this [MAKES NOISE OF COCKING A GUN]—it's in fact, coming from a gun. And this is the moment that you see that suddenly he takes the pen and he starts to play with it, you know. He has this...his strength comes from the pen.

David Pendleton 1:05:53 

I mean, seeing Eichmann...the way that the film, the extent to which the film forces you to see Eichmann as human is, I think, is the real charge of the film, and as you say, one of the reasons that cinema is so drawn to victims, and why we're drawn to those, precisely because the cinema is this massive machine for generating empathy. And so throughout the film, one has to constantly remember who this person is, and interrogate...

Eyal Sivan  1:06:21 

Well, I imagine. I mean, among the honest spectators, I'm sure that there are some that for moments felt pity for him. When he's there, they are all against him. I know it from people that watch the film and say, “well, but he's the victim.” But at the same time, you have to reflect. And this is something which I'm interested—not just in the Eichmann film. I mean, I'm interested in this capacity—and this was my introduction in the beginning of the night—this possibility both to be in a situation of a spectator, to answer to our duty of spectacle, because we choose the screen and we didn't choose the paper or other. There is this contract of spectacle, but in the same time doesn't mean that the spectator is not somebody that can, in the same time, reflect. I mean, project, look at the projection, and reflect. And this is this permanent conflict of a spectator, saying, “I'm fighting against the identification.” There is a relation of effect because there is a man over there. There’s a man over there, and this is part of those questions that I hear usually, which is, “but he's not the one that was in Jerusalem,” you know? This need absolutely to say he's more than what we see. He is more horrible than what we see. He should have been more horrible because if he’s just what there is there— it’s a problem for us. And this is the problem that I'm interested in.

David Pendleton 1:07:57 

Other, other…? Can I just make one more comment about this question of double time you were talking about? Because I think it relates to a quality of the image as well, which is the fact that it was born, as they say, on video. It's a televisual image, but we're watching it on film. So I'm wondering, first of all, was there ever any thought of making this digital piece or a video piece...

Eyal Sivan  1:08:19 

Never ever. The film was thought from the very beginning—and I'm insisting about it—as a cinema [film] because—and it's a film that I believe that works on the big screen, I hope. And then it can work watching it on a small screen. But there is this physical relation, which is the relation of spectatorship, which is the repetition, I mean, this possibility to have the cinema hall as part of the screen. So from the very beginning, and this was the production, I mean, in 1999, in the mid of 90s when we started...well, it was the most expensive documentary done in Europe at the time. We're talking about almost three million dollars, which is a lot as you know, for a nonfiction film, because one of the things was to bring the material to a quality that can be shown on film.

David Pendleton 1:09:18 

And also, I mean, there's something live or present about the video image, and then there's the passiveness of the film, and so it's precisely that play with those two, which is…

Eyal Sivan  1:09:27

And there is the game inside, which is the nature of the material and something that I'm working [on]—I’m trying to continue to work [on]—for those who will have [the] patience to come to see a short film this time. One of my shorts is this Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, which is the physical nature of the image, you know, this physicality of the image itself that I'm interested in. Which is the fact that first of all, a person on the screen is always alive [even] when he's dead. But this is a relation, this is a physical relation. I mean, Eichmann does not exist, but in the same time, he's still alive all the time on the screen. But the physicality of the material, it's the permanent questioning of not only what I'm watching, [but] what I'm given to see. Which is, the one we remember [at] the beginning of the film, there is a moment that there are scratches, big scratches, and it looks like a real document. But this is the only fake image in the film because, in fact, there are no scratches in video. I put it in order to play, “This is a document, and the rest is not a document.” But this is also kind of part of our projection of [the] spectator. Black-and-white means the past, color means the present. Those are, of course, those are mental projections. Scratches mean old, non-scratches new, in that moment that you were talking [about] before, when Eichmann is going out of the glass booth, suddenly, we are shifting into TV. Suddenly, it's an event, right? He's standing and there [are] those lines of TV, which are also fake. And there is the moment where there are those witnesses, one after the other, the survivors. There we kept the material in its original shape. It's very bad with a lot of noise...

David Pendleton  1:11:24 

...and it's smaller.

Eyal Sivan 1:11:25

...and it's smaller, and this is the material. This is how [the original material looked], because one of the ideas was to give it the status of the original document, right? but at the same time, it cannot be because there is the grain of the film. So obviously, it looks as if somebody filmed a TV. So all those different mediations, I mean, these possibilities, which are part of what I believe [is] our perception of history—and especially when we're talking about history in this context and inside [the] court, which maybe we have to [remember] that—for those who are not lawyers, and were not brought to court from different reason—our knowledge of court is from cinema. In fact, cinema court is a genre of cinema, and this is part of the genre. I mean, the idea was to build a cinema drama, I mean, a court drama, in the tradition of court dramas.

David Pendleton  1:12:25 

And is it also fair to say that some of this play with mediation—with making the image more mediated—could almost be seen as a kind of a Brechtian, sort of, an alienation effect, precisely to interrupt these moments of empathy or this movement of empathy...

Eyal Sivan 1:12:37

It's to cut.... but this is something that... [PAUSE] I hate the word intuition, but I must say that it's something that I built up inside my work for many years, and I realized that I need, even for myself, the reminder that what there is on the screen is cinema. And this is maybe the first shot– All my films start the same; they don't start always with an empty cinema hall, in fact. The empty chairs, this is what we see, which is specific to the scene when he opens the door of the cinema and goes to look for a place to sit, right? Suddenly, you have the reflection of the empty cinema on the screen. But my idea is this rupture, as you called it, of reminding: it's cinema. I mean, there is a mediation over [it]. And cinema is not just this relation of spectatorship. Cinema, for me, it's the permanent—and I would say nonfiction cinema—it's the permanent reminder that the screen is about hiding. It's not about showing. I mean, some of my fellow filmmakers say “We are showing you nonfiction, we are showing you, we are giving a window to the world.” I'm preferring to be as honest as possible and to say, “In order to make an image you have to hide.” When you put four blank elements, and then you can see, which means that our work is the closest to censorship, and it explains also why totalitarian regimes and totalitarian figures loved [cinema so much], because it's the possibility to master time and space, which is the totalitarian idea. So in the same time, it's a permanent critique of cinema. I mean, I'm making cinema, but at the same time, against cinema.

David Pendleton  1:14:36 

Are there any final questions or comments? [PAUSE] Oh, I'm sorry. Yes, down here.

Audience 7  1:14:50 

[INAUDIBLE] [LAUGHS] ...because it was very funny and then I realize it’s very serious. You know, the rest were prosecutors...[INAUDIBLE]

Eyal Sivan  1:15:07

Well, there are several...

David Pendleton  1:15:10 

For people who didn't hear the question... was to talk about the moment where this confusion over Chelm, Chelmno, Kulmhof... She said there's a sort of like a “who's on first” kind of routine.

Eyal Sivan  1:15:17 

Well, first of all, there was this moment that, I mean, it was hilarious. I mean, much longer in the original than what it is here. I mean, they are confused: what was it for that? I mean, there is this moment, there is this thing that even within this moment, which is so heavy and emotional and we're talking about the heavy event, life is stronger. Even then, there is this moment and it's becoming funny. This was important. But there’s a—I would say—a private joke over there. It's unfair to put a private joke on public space, but for those who don't… a little bit Jewish story: There are a lot of legends and a lot of stories and a lot of jokes [that] Chelm is a place where these dumb people live and a lot of Jewish jokes, Western Jewish jokes, they're about Chelm. Chelm is a place [LAUGHS]... And when we fell on that moment, which is Chelm, Chelmno, it was almost incredible that around that place, that in the history of, I mean, for those who read Bashevis Singer and [UNKNOWN] and Peretz, I mean, all those writers of Eastern Europe, Chelm is always the place where... Chelm is kind of a connotation of dumb people. And so this is the appearance of Chelm over there, but there was also this thing of, that Eichmann keeps as serious as possible exactly the moment that he has no sense of humor whatsoever, whatsoever. He doesn't have any sense of humor. And he's really trying to be serious and he's shocked from the court. He's more shocked from the court... and you've seen that scene, which is much much longer. They have almost an hour discussion about this Chelm, Chelmno, Chelm Kulmhof, and et cetera. Yeah, but I love this idea that even there, even in this moment, which is so heavy, and there is life, it's stronger I mean, laughing, but I mean for those who believe in the kind of Orientalism, they say yeah, this is Jewish humor.

David Pendleton  1:17:48  

Well, I want to thank you, Eyal, for being here tonight. I want to thank all of you for staying.

[APPLAUSE]

Eyal Sivan 1:17:53

Thank you very much.

David Pendleton  1:17:48 

Tomorrow night, we have a different archive at work in Jaffa, the Orange’s Clockwork, come back then. Thank you. Thanks, Eyal.

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