Witnessing for the Witness: Choice and Destiny by Tsipi Reibenbach

This last decade has been defined as "the Age of Testimony," mainly in the wake of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah and the wealth of responses it has elicited. In every country where the Holocaust survivors found a shelter, films are produced by the second and even the third generation of the "Aftermath." Designated as "witnesses by the imagination" or "surrogate witnesses," they attempt to tacitly refute Paul Celan's desperate assessment in his poem "Aschenglorie": "Nobody/witnesses/ for the witness."

These testimonial films have been prompted by the same urge: the Negationist scheme regarding the Shoah and the vulnerable condition of the aging eye-witnesses. These works summon the existence of a specific testimonial pact that provides a space of transference between survivor and interviewer and implies a particular quality of listening and empathy. Such is Tsipi Reibenbach's outstanding Choice and Destiny, the first part of her familial trilogy.