Through interviews with survivors, witnesses, and former perpetrators, memories of the Holocaust unfold across the landscapes where it occurred. Over images of the Polish fields and forests that once were Treblinka, Chelmno, and Auschwitz, voices recount stories of deportation and survival.

Claude Lanzmann establishes the powerfully uncomplicated method of his immense cinematic monument to the victims of the Holocaust in Shoah: Part One. Intercutting eyewitness testimony with present-day footage of concentration camps, the director makes history shatteringly urgent.