‘Shoah’ Director Tells His Story In ‘Patagonian Hare’

Seventy years ago, in the middle of World War II, a couple of hundred miles north of Toulouse, Claude Lanzmann was a high school student — and an assimilated French Jew. Every day he faced the risk of arrest.

When Lanzmann was a teenager, both he and his father independently joined the Communist Resistance. He writes about that in his newly translated memoir, The Patagonian Hare.

For most of us, the hare may have lost a public relations battle with the tortoise back in Aesop’s day. But for Lanzmann, the hare is a nimble and crafty creature, even brave. Ever since he was a boy, he says, seeing a hare has excited him.