soul

French Filmmaker
Claude Lanzmann Dies At 92

of blessed memory

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EMILY ERIN SITRON, 24, of
West Bloomfield, died June
29, 2018.
She had an infectious
smile. She was witty and
never afraid to speak her
mind. She was always will-
ing to help her family and
Sitron
friends, including running
errands, picking up treats or
making special deliveries to her cousins.
Emily loved to read and travel. She had
recently started a quest of visiting presidential
museums. She was also a board member of
NEXTGen, a young adult division of Jewish
Federation of Metropolitan Detroit.
Ms. Sitron is survived by her parents, Bruce
and Susan Sitron; sister and brother-in-law,
Hayley and Patrick Greenleaf; aunts and
uncles, Beverly Goldberg, Peter and Marge
Fein, Penny and Vernon McGarity, and Marilyn
Dizik; cousins, Jessica McGarity and Keith
Nichols, Stacey and Bob Shelton, Michael
Byck, Seth and Samantha Byck, Robert, Amy,
Zachary, Jordyn and Olivia Singer, Alyssa,
Joshua, Cady and Charlie Tobias, and Jason
and Emily Dizik. She is also survived by
her extended family, Suzie Merkle and Alan
Silverman, and their children, Brittany, Brad
and Jenna.
She was the loving niece of the late Howard

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July 12 • 2018

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Goldberg and the late Ted Dizik; the cherished
granddaughter of the late Mildred and the late
Sidney Wise, and the late Ruth and the late
Harold Sitron.
Interment was at Beth Abraham Cemetery.
Contributions may be made to Congregation
Beth Ahm, 5075 W. Maple Road, West
Bloomfield, MI 48322, www.cbahm.org; Jewish
Senior Life of Metropolitan Detroit, 6710 W.
Maple Road, West Bloomfield, MI 48322,
www.jslmi.org; or to a charity of one’s choice.
Arrangements by Ira Kaufman Chapel.

MARVIN SPINNER, 93, of Royal Oak, died
July 6, 2018.
He is survived by his daughter, Shelley
Spinner of Royal Oak; brother and sister-
in-law, Chuck and Judy Spinner of Shelby
Township; daughter-in-law, Estelle Spinner;
grandchildren, Rachel Spinner and Sam
Lahasky, David Spinner; great-granddaughter,
Maya Lahasky; nieces and nephews; cousin,
Cynthia Valencia.
Mr. Spinner was the beloved father of the
late Warren Spinner.
Contributions may be made to Kadima,
15999 W. 12 Mile Road, Suite 2, Southfield,
MI 48076; or to a charity of one’s choice.
Interment was held at Clover Hill Park
Cemetery in Birmingham. Arrangements by
Hebrew Memorial Chapel. •

C

laude Lanzmann, a French
filmmaker perhaps best
known for the nearly
10-hour oral-history project Shoah,
died July 5, 2018, at the age of 92.
Originally from an Eastern
European Jewish family who
moved to France, Lanzmann was
born in Paris on Nov. 25, 1925.
He, his brother Jacques and his
parents, Armand and Paulette
(Grobermann) Lanzmann, went
into hiding during World War II.
From an early age, he was moti-
vated to fight power through the
means he had at hand. At age 17,
he joined the French resistance.
He opposed France’s war in Algeria
and signed the anti-war “Manifesto
of the 121.”
War remained a resounding
theme in his life. He made numer-
ous films that touched on its many
themes, including Israel, Why
(Pourquoi Israel) in 1973; Sobibor,
Oct. 14, 1943, 4 p.m., in 2001, about
a partially successful uprising
against camp guards; and two
years later, The Last of the Unjust,
an interview with Rabbi Benjamin
Murmelstein, a Jewish administra-

tor of the Theresienstadt ghetto.
His life’s work, however, was
Shoah, comprised of interviews
from World War II survivors —
both victims and those who perpe-
trated crimes. Viewing it has been
described as a journey, emotion-
ally and physically, through a long,
meandering treatment on film that
is replete with both words and
significant gaps of silence. The film
pointedly did not include actual
footage from the war; it concen-
trates on the after-effects, on the
lives of those who lived through it.
Natan Sharansky, outgoing
chairman of the Jewish Agency
for Israel and a former Soviet
refusenik who spent nine years
in Russian prisons, said, “Claude
Lanzmann was single-handedly
responsible for keeping the
memory of the Holocaust alive in
the hearts and minds of so many
around the world.
“May his memory be a blessing.”
Lanzmann married three
times and fathered two chil-
dren, Angélique, 68, and Félix
Lanzmann, who died in 2017. For
most of the 1950s, he lived with
French writer, philosopher and
feminist Simone de Beauvoir. •