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What matters is the voice of the voiceless, the remembering of what has been forgotten precisely as forgotten. The haircutter says ‘we’. He is a voice speaking for the dead. In contrast to Spielberg, who, in Lanzmann’s view, portrays the extermination as a backdrop to the heroic feat of Schindler, Lanzmann himself seeks to confront the ‘blinding black sun’ of the Holocaust: that blind spot of horror and evil which can never be adequately conveyed by conventional ‘comparative’ or ‘comforting’ identifications. There is no consolation in the broken narratives of Shoah. There are no tears to feel with, no sensations to orient oneself, no ecstasy, no catharsis, no purgation. There is, as Lanzmann admits, ‘no possibility of crying’. By refusing the temptation of a redemptive or reconciliatory conclusion – like that of Schindler’s List – Lanzmann opts for a form of narrative memory which testifies, first and last, to the need to remember our own forgetfulness.