Lanzmann was born in Paris to a Jewish family that immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. His family went into hiding during World War II.He joined the French resistance at the age of 18. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria.
Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah, is a nine-and-a-half hour oral history of the Holocaust, broadly considered to be the foremost film on the subject. Shoah is made without the use of any historical footage, and uses only first-person testimony from Jewish, Polish, and German individuals, and contemporary footage of several Holocaust-related sites. Lanzmann persuaded Polish resistance fighter Jan Karski to be a witness in Shoah by calling forth—once again—his historical responsibility. When the film was released, the director also published the complete text, including in English translation, with introductions by Lanzmann and Simone de Beauvoir.
In 2009, Lanzmann published his memoirs under the title Le lièvre de Patagonie (The Patagonian Hare).
