What is "shoah"

Holocaust \Hol"o*caust\, n. [L. holocaustum, Gr. ?, neut. of ?, ?, burnt whole; "o'los whole + kaysto`s burnt, fr. kai`ein to burn (cf. Caustic): cf. F. holocauste.]

1. A burnt sacrifice; an offering, the whole of which was consumed by fire, among the Jews and some pagan nations.
   --Milton.

2. Sacrifice or loss of many lives, as by the burning of a theater or a ship.

   Note: [An extended use not authorized by careful writers.]

3. Specifically: The mass killing of millions of Jews by the Nazis during the period from 1933 to 1945 in Germany and German-occupied lands; usually referred to as The Holocaust. In Hebrew, the same event is referred to by the word Shoah.

Shoah may refer to:

• Hebrew word for catastrophe
• "The Holocaust of the Jewish people, the attempted planned total physical annihilation of the Jewish people, and its partial perpetration with the murder of most of the Jews of Europe;" Yehuda Bauer (academic advisor at Yad Vashem, and former Yad Vashem Directorate of The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority).
• "The Holocaust of the Jewish people, the attempt to annihilate the Jewish people;" Avner Shalev, current Yad Vashem Directorate of The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
• The Holocaust; "Shoah" is a name for this event used in Hebrew and sometimes in English
• Shoah (film), documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann (1985)
• A Shoah Foundation

Shoah is a 1985 Franco-British documentary film directed by Claude Lanzmann about the Holocaust (called the "Shoah" in Hebrew and French). The film primarily consists of his interviews and visits to German Holocaust sites across Poland, including three extermination camps. It presents testimonies by selected survivors, witnesses, and German perpetrators, often secretly recorded using hidden cameras.

As Lanzmann does not speak Polish, Hebrew, or Yiddish, he depended on interpreters to work with most of his interviewees. This process enlarged the scale of the documentary, which is nine hours and twenty-three minutes long. Lanzmann has also released four feature-length films based on unused material shot for Shoah.

While Shoah received critical acclaim and won notable awards, the film also aroused controversy and criticism, particularly in Poland, but also in the United States. A number of historians criticized it for failing to show and discuss the many Poles who rescued Jews, or to recognize the millions of Poles who were also killed by the Germans during the occupation of Poland.

Shoah was ranked one of the "50 Greatest Documentaries of All Time" in a December 2015 poll by the British Film Institute.