The Voice of Bronze: Filip Müller and Shoah

Abstract

This chapter concludes the volume by offering a close reading of the place of Filip Müller in the film Shoah, building on our previous discussions of the testimony that the SK offered. We read Müller’s place in the structure of Shoah, showing that he plays quite a different role from that of the equivalents to the SK in the other camps. His speech is much more heavily edited, and his voice is played over camerawork that is much more able to act out what he describes, because so much more of Auschwitz-Birkenau is extant. This produces a number of strange effects with his voice and its connection with his body, ones that trouble the straightforward sense of masculine embodied presence that some readings of the film have seen in it. This chapter, which also forms our conclusion, therefore provides a challenging new reading of Shoah as well as showing its place in a long history of the Auschwitz SK giving testimony.