 Lanzmann spent the early part of his life in Auvergne.His parents, Paulette (Grobermann) and Armand Lanzmann, divorced shortly before World War II and, at the age of 12, he became a farmhand.Lanzmann was Jewish and, following the Battle of France, he, his mother and his siblings, pretended to be Moroccan Arabs in order to escape persecution by the Vichy regime.