A Visitor from the Living

The film is a single interview. Claude Lanzmann asks the questions. The man across from him is Maurice Rossel. Rossel was a Swiss official of the Red Cross. He held the post during the Second World War. In June 1944 he went to Theresienstadt. The place was a Jewish ghetto and camp. It was dressed up before the visit. Flowers were planted and scenes prepared. A large transport had been sent to Auschwitz beforehand. Rossel wrote a favourable report afterwards, saying the prisoners were properly fed when in fact people were starving. He also put the number of deaths far below what it was, and Lanzmann questioned him about that report in 1979. Claude Lanzmann made the sixty eight minute documentary, a French production finished in 1999.