Biography

The interview with Glazar in Shoah (1985) was conducted in Basel, Switzerland, where he lived and worked at the time. The chosen interview location was the famous hotel "Les Trois Rois", where Theodor Herzl stayed in August 1897 while attending the First Zionist Congress. The shot of Glazar sitting on the balcony overlooking the Rhine river is an obvious visual reference to a famous B&W picture taken of Herzl in 1901 at the same location. The composition is very similar, but Herzl was standing in the picture, while Glazar is sitting. The other difference is the famous Middle Bridge in the background: Between 1903 and 1905, the old bridge underwent a renovation project during which it was rebuilt entirely out of stone.

One of a small group of survivors of the Treblinka extermination camp's prisoner revolt in August 1943, Glazar described his experiences in an autobiographical book, "Trap with a Green Fence: Survival in Treblinka", first published in English in 1995.