
A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to te... (Full plot summary below)
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A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to testify. Even though he was without a doubt the one who knew the Nazi executioner best. More than twenty-five years after Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's new film reveals a little-known yet fundamental aspect of the Holocaust, and sheds light on the origins of the "Final Solution" like never before.
Leave your thoughts about The Last of the Unjust.
| Film Journal InternationalDoris ToumarkineA rich, provocative and sometimes startling journey into Holocaust history and the mysteries of human nature. |
| NewsdayJohn AndersonMurmelstein addresses Lanzmann's skepticism and questions with earnestness, passion and -- as if the rest of it wasn't troubling enough -- what seems like total recall. |
| The ListAllan HunterThe Last of the Unjust demands patience and commitment from the viewer but the reward is an utterly fascinating, spellbinding history lesson. |
| Times (UK)Wendy IdeThe Last of the Unjust is cinema at its very best. |
| Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerThere is no need for Murmelstein to break down here. In The Last of the Unjust, it’s as if the whole world is weeping. |
| Little White LiesJordan CronkA historical restoration for a modern day reckoning. |
| CineVueD.W. MaultThe running time (like all Lanzmann's films) is not oppressive but allows for Murmelstein and his interlocutor to talk through, around and inside the context and reality of pragmatism, egoism, heroism and evil. |
| Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternThe new film may not qualify for masterpiece status, but it's an enthralling portrait of a man — an exceptionally brilliant and articulate man — who personified the courage, complexity and moral ambiguity of his tortured time. |
| The A.V. ClubBen KenigsbergThe Last Of The Unjust is demanding but fascinating, both as history and as an intellectual volley on the lure of power, the ambiguities of perspective, and the difficulty of claiming moral high ground in a context where matters of life and death are so precarious. |
| NPRElla TaylorMurmelstein died in Rome in 1989, and having witnessed the terrible dilemmas he suffered and the mass rescues he pulled off, we can only be glad that he escaped the snap judgments of the social-media age. |