The text is a semiotic analysis of the act of bearing witness in a classic documentary on the Holocaust, Shoah (Lanzmann, 1985). What is the importance of the body, of the signs which are closest to it, namely, indexical signs, according to Peirce’s semiotic taxonomy for this kind of discourse? This perspective allows the author to approach a phenomenon that is described here as the act of “embodied witnessing”, a testimony in which the body plays as decisive a role as the words (symbols). In the two episodes of Shoah which are studied closely, the testimony of the witnesses is framed overtly or secretly in an iconic setting. The witness’s speech is set in a staging in which images play a key role; they mirror a past situation. Such a semiotic strategy is called here ‘indexical mimesis.’ This cinematographic technique functions as a catalyst for the revelation of the truth, through the emergence of indexical signs which otherwise would not be likely to manifest themselves in that cinematic context.
