On January 27, 2026, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, HERC commenced a four-part screening series of Claude Lanzmann’s monumental nine and half hour 1985 documentary Shoah at the Challenger Learning Center IMAX Cinema. The opening installment marked the beginning of a community-wide commemoration that will continue on March 4 and April 8 at the Florida State University Student Life Cinema, concluding on April 12 back at the Challenger Learning Center in observance of Yom HaShoah 2026. By launching the series on this date, HERC underscored its mission to anchor remembrance in rigorous historical testimony and public education.

Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah stands as one of the most significant works of Holocaust documentation ever produced. Spanning over nine hours, the film rejects archival footage and instead constructs its narrative entirely through contemporary interviews with survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators, filmed in the landscapes where the genocide unfolded. Lanzmann’s method is patient and unflinching. The decision to screen the film in four parts allows audiences to engage deeply with its witnesses and their testimony. This first screening introduced viewers to the film’s opening testimonies, including the haunting recollections of survivors who describe the realities of life and death during the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. The scale of the IMAX cinematic experience amplified Lanzmann’s visual return to the physical sites of Treblinka, Chelmno, and Auschwitz. The landscapes, fields, forests, rail lines, appear deceptively serene, intensifying the moral dissonance between present-day calm and the atrocities once enacted there forty years before the making of the film.

The continuation of the series at Florida State University’s Student Life Cinema on March 4 and April 8 broadens access to university students and faculty, building a bridge between HERC and FSU. The final installment on April 12 returns to the Challenger Learning Center in solemn recognition of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.