Jan Karski est un drôle de livre. C'est l'histoire vraie et tout à fait fascinante d'un homme messager de la Résistance polonaise auprès du gouvernement en exil à Londres, pendant la seconde guerre mondiale. L'homme traversera l'Europe en guerre, subira la torture, sera le témoin d'atrocités indescriptibles, notamment celles qui se perpétuaient dans le ghetto de Varsovie. Trente-cinq ans plus tard, il témoignera dans le Shoah, le film de Claude Lanzmann.
Si Jan Karksi est un drôle de livre, c'est par l'intention qu'a eu l'auteur d'en faire également un témoignage fictionnel, et nécessairement teinté de visions personnelles. Bien que non dénuées d'intérêt, les interprétations historiques rapportées par Yannick Haenel sur la passivité complice des alliés face à l'extermination des juifs paraissent le résultat d'un procédé assez osé et même fallacieux, à partir des mémoires d'un aventurier et d'un Juste ayant véritablement existé.
A cet égard, il apparaît indispensable de compléter la lecture de ce livre par celle des mémoires de Jan Karski lui-même (Story of a secret State). ( )

This is an odd but compelling book. Written by a French novelist, the first section consists of an interpretation of Claude Lanzmann’s interview with Karski concerning his observations of the Warsaw ghetto, German actions to exterminate the Jews and his mission to the Allies to report that these horrifying events were taking place. The second section consists of a summary of Karski’s book published in 1944 concerning the same events as well as his other experiences in the Polish Underground. According to the author, the last section is fictional. It consists largely of Karski’s own thoughts concerning the terrible of events he witnessed and his disappointment that the Allies did nothing in response to his reports, as well as covering events in his own life in the period from the end of the war until the 1990s. Much of this last section takes the form of stream of consciousness (there are only two paragraphs and it is the longest part of the book). Because it is described as fiction, one does not know which of the described events or views are true and which may have been the author's own interpretation or even imagination (such as the pivotal role of Rembrandt's Cavalier Polonaise seen by Karski in the Frick). One has the feeling that the author believes that what is said in this section truly occurred and was believed by Karski but given that the author was writing up in his own words the thoughts and feelings he was ascribing to Karski, he felt he needed to describe it as fiction. Maybe the biography of Karski will shed some light on this last section. ( )

I have been thinking about this book all day. I don't think I can come up with a good review but this perspective does sum up pretty well: "The extermination of the Jews of Europe was not a crime against humanity, it was a crime by humanity - by what can no longer be called humanity. Pretending that it was a crime against humanity means sparing a part of humanity, and naively leaving this part outside the crime. But the entirety of humanity was implicated in the extermination of the Jews of Europe; it was universally implicated because, with this crime, humanity totally lost its characteristic of being humane. We should all recognize that, after the extermination of the Jews of Europe, humanity no longer exists, that this notion is obscene, that we can no longer call upon humanity as a criterion that protects us and exonerates us from our responsibilities: with the extermination of the Jews of Europe, the very idea of humanity died." ( )

L'objet du livre ne fait pas débat et on ne peut qu'être élogieux sur la façon dont Yannick Haenel s'empare avec courage de ce thème difficile et obsédant - la Shoah.

Mais la forme est un peu dérangeante et on peut être surpris devant la dernière partie du livre, celle où l'auteur se met dans la peau de Jan Karski et lui prête des pensées qu'il n'a peut-être pas. Difficile avec un personnage historique lointain, mais on touche alors à l'histoire romancée, encore plus avec un personnage vivant. ( )

la troisieme partie devrait être lu par tous les polonais et ceux qui persistent à croire que toute la pologne est antisémite ( )