12:49 pm – Claude Lanzmann, a great smuggler

Journalist, filmmaker, writer, great smuggler, Claude Lanzmann, who died Thursday at the age of 92 in Paris, will have marked the history of the 20th century with "Shoah", a memorial film about the extermination of Jews by the Nazis.

"I'm proud of what I've accomplished," said the director about this 9:30 film, released in 1985, which has won awards around the world (including, in France, a Caesar of Honor in 1986) and was seen by tens of millions of spectators.

"One hundred lives, I know, would not tire me," said this recklessly intellectual, even deceptive, death-driven existence.

Grandson of Belarussian Jewish immigrants , Claude Lanzmann was born on November 27, 1925 in Bois-Colombes (Hauts-de-Seine) of a decorating father and an antique mother. He must face antisemitism very early, especially at the Parisian high school Condorcet.

In 1940, his resistant father took him to Brioude (Haute-Loire), with his younger brother Jacques (deceased, writer and songwriter singer Jacques Dutronc) and his sister Evelyne (who will be an actress and commit suicide) .

There, he leads them to disappear without leaving any traces, simulating raids. "Through the branches, we saw his SS boots and we heard his anguished voice of Jewish father: + You moved, you made noise +", said Claude Lanzmann in his memoirs, "The Patagonian hare" (2009) ).

Encouraged by criticism, this book is his only "real" book, the others are collections of articles and texts of his films.

At 18, he joined the Resistance, participating in the maquis d Auvergne. After the war, he went to study philosophy in Tübingen in Germany, became a reader of French literature and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin.

– "Master of the time" –

Upon his return to France, he will earn his living, for years, as "rewriter", in newspapers of Pierre Lazareff's group, such as France-Dimanche or France-Soir.

In 1952, Claude Lanzmann met Simone de Beauvoir and Jean-Paul Sartre. He becomes their friend and joins the editorial board of the magazine "Modern Times", founded by the couple.

He lives a love story of 7 years with the feminist philosopher.

The first time he sees Sartre, after spending the night with Simone, he has "a little apprehension". It was not worth it: Sartre "blessed this union (…) .It radiated the visible happiness of the + Castor + (ndr: Simone de Beauvoir's nickname), testifying to me a joyful and true friendship", has it -he writes.

After their breakup, he and Simone will stay very close. In 1986, after his death, he became director of the prestigious magazine.

Around the 60s, after a stay in Korea, he became involved in anti-colonialist struggles and became one of the defendants, among the signatories of the Manifesto of 121, who denounced the repression in Algeria. He moved politically away from Sartre after 1968.

Then he became a filmmaker. He turns first "Why Israel" (1972). Then it's the epic "Shoah" whose filming, very demanding, will last 12 years. "I was the master of time," he explained about this major work, made without archive footage.

Claude Lanzmann also shot "Tsahal" (1994), "Sobibor, 14 October 1943, 4 pm "(1997)," A pbading living "(2001)," The Karski Report "(2010)," The Last of the Unjust "(2013)," Napalm "(2017) and" The Four Sisters " "(2018), films sometimes made from about 340 hours of unused footage for" Shoah ".

Released in theaters in France on Wednesday, his latest film," The Four Sisters ", consisting of images filmed during the twelve years of work on "Shoah", brings together the testimonies of four Jewish women, witnesses and survivors of the Holocaust.

Great defender of the State of Israel, the author of "Why Israel" denounced with force "anti-Zionism", "one of the masks of anti-Semitism", he told AFP in 2015.

Father of two children, one of whom, Felix, died the year last of a cance r At the age of 23, he was married to actress Judith Magre before divorcing and remarrying twice.