Hello.
Today I talk about two books that shake, upset. It is good sometimes to let stir. I know the holidays are approaching, with the tinkling bell of reindeer, red and purple ribbons, stars in icing sugar ... But first, take, do you want a moment to approach the shadows of the Holocaust still alive who passed on earth in a flash, leaving humanity to his face. There are those who died and whose features seem to melt forever in this painting Munch, The Scream . There are those who survived and did are never forgiven. There are those, lastly, that the accident of history has turned into witnesses. Those are all kinds. There are the indifferent who cadenassèrent their eyes and ears, there is the impassive, those who risked or lost their lives because of the secrets they had surprised ... And there are those who tried to warn, to act to prevent. And they were silenced by letting them speak in a vacuum.
It is these last two authors of our day have chosen to look closely. Yannick Haenel by writing "for" Jan Karski, the liaison officer of the Polish resistance who testified before the camera Claude Lanzmann at the end of "Holocaust .
Bruno Tessarech by convening, in his novel The Sentinel , the ghosts of that Karski, Kurt Gerstein and Wernher von Braun, two witnesses Nazis who do not belong to one world or the same species. Both novels suggest a reality long flush taboo: the fact that the Allies knew fairly early (1943) that a process of extermination was under way and did nothing to stop it. The silence of the allied nations resonates terribly in our minds because it reminds us of our own responsibility in the tragedies that we skim, we participate and perhaps in our own way, even by non-assistance to persons in danger . It has been slow to say. Recall that after war, everyone wanted to tell the wonderful story of good against evil, of a France entirely populated by partisans, who had discovered a world petrified In 1945, the existence of concentration camps. Then
historians have begun to erode this legend, to show that Hitler did not take the German people hostage but was elected through a democratic process, the Einsatzgruppen, who were committing the massacres of Jewish people in the back the eastern front, were populated by nice family men ... That the French Resistance had been multiple, complex and minority ... That France had shown the auxiliary slave of the Final Solution, particularly during the roundup of the Vel d'Hiv ... etc etc.. Some truths still struggled to come to the surface, as the silence of the Allies against the Holocaust. But here are two novels
powerful, two bites into our flesh forgetful who hear the voices of those heartbreaking fallen angels, condemned to wear an endless message that nobody wanted to hear
historians have begun to erode this legend, to show that Hitler did not take the German people hostage but was elected through a democratic process, the Einsatzgruppen, who were committing the massacres of Jewish people in the back the eastern front, were populated by nice family men ... That the French Resistance had been multiple, complex and minority ... That France had shown the auxiliary slave of the Final Solution, particularly during the roundup of the Vel d'Hiv ... etc etc.. Some truths still struggled to come to the surface, as the silence of the Allies against the Holocaust. But here are two novels
powerful, two bites into our flesh forgetful who hear the voices of those heartbreaking fallen angels, condemned to wear an endless message that nobody wanted to hear
"This is a real torment live with a message that was never issued, there is something crazy, "said Jan Karski in the novel Yannick Haenel.
These "crazies", I call them angels, not because these men were saints, but because angels are messengers responsible for important news. But the message of the Holocaust was a bomb, the door was not safe. He could put you in the front line, cost you your life. He could also get a slow burn, make you a ghost in your turn, sleepless and haunted. But we do not choose to be a witness. It is chosen against his will. It probably would prefer to stay warm, do not see these people behind the peephole in the gas chamber, not having to fix his gaze on the ground to avoid these puppets of flesh hanging from hooks in the basement of Dora, have never visited by two leaders of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw. They have never uttered such words as these:
"We are human.
Do you understand?
Do you understand?
What happens to our people is unprecedented in history.
Maybe it does shake the conscience of the world? "
(Testimony of Jan Karski in Shoah by Claude Lanzmann)
If Jan Karski and Sentinels are two novels critical of the literary season, including two novels themes and concerns come together, they are very different in how they approach them. Jan Karski, who just received the price of Allied, is centered on this character it approaches concentric circles. The book is divided into three parts, which starts in Karski's testimony Holocaust, through the tumultuous life of this former letter of the Polish government in exile to lead a party of fiction where Yannick Haenel enters head of the witness and imagines his life after. 
course, the character of Jan Karski can ask the nagging question of the passivity of the nations allied against the Holocaust. But the heart of the book is not the issue but the man and his torment, his paradoxes, and this novel gives a poignant and lived with it would not go unscathed. If Yannick Haenel has let himself haunted by Karski, the novel acts as a contagion and could haunt you in your turn. That's all the harm I wish you both a hero complex, noble and tormented, deserves your attention. Listen to him talk through Yannick Haenel:
course, the character of Jan Karski can ask the nagging question of the passivity of the nations allied against the Holocaust. But the heart of the book is not the issue but the man and his torment, his paradoxes, and this novel gives a poignant and lived with it would not go unscathed. If Yannick Haenel has let himself haunted by Karski, the novel acts as a contagion and could haunt you in your turn. That's all the harm I wish you both a hero complex, noble and tormented, deserves your attention. Listen to him talk through Yannick Haenel: "The sleepless nights are like the rainy country. When it rains, you hear the bells. I noticed that in my childhood in Lodz. If we focuses well, if we listened, then every moment it is night and night is white, and it rains. That either Poland or New York, in a prison of the Gestapo or in a hotel room in Brooklyn, whether you are happy or unhappy, or abandoned by all surrounded by love, we hear the bells. Does God died at Auschwitz? "
This part is where Yannick Haenel Jan Karski, talks to Jan Karski, is the most beautiful in the book, more precisely subjective and stronger. It resonates with you long after you close the novel. has been criticized for the author to defend Poland, using Jan Karski, but Poland really needs to be defended, as she was unloved and mistreated by history. Admittedly, this jumper distinguished survivor of the massacre of Polish intellectuals in the Katyn woods is not all Poles, but the anti-Semitic blowhard who testifies in Holocaust his glee to see the Jews move in convoys cattle do not represent. Beyond those issues where the controversy is still nestle, forgetting that Jan Karski is a novel, not a historical document ... Beyond that, we must bow low to the work of a writer who has exemplified this hero broken, tearing, sentenced listen to his message resonate in a vacuum, and which received " solitude to destiny"
" Within this sleepless night, which opened in my life, I make sure I spend my time to reject the idea that it is too late. For with the speech, the time comes. I spoke, I have not listened and I keep talking, and perhaps you will hear me : perhaps you will hear what is in in my words, and just beyond my voice, maybe in this message that I sent there over fifty years, something resists time, and even the extermination , Perhaps, inside the message is there another message . "
A cookie is a survivor first, and Jan Karski, who chose a life of risk, a life of secret agent, has survived in extremis at Katyn massacre and torture by the Gestapo. He was responsible in passing the burden of these massacres of Russian and Nazi executioners erased the traces behind. Jan Karski , or history of a message that took possession of his messenger, and left him no rest. On the adventurer who became the man crying in the wilderness to exhaust his voice. Up what words in his throat hoarse. Until her tears on your cheeks slip to you.
In Sentinels Bruno Tessarech book about a fascinating indictment of him, crossed through portraits of several involuntary witnesses of the extermination process. 
This novel which consumes more than it reads start in 1938 at the Evian Conference, which played the plight of Jewish refugees trying to flee Hitler's Germany. Conference where nations vied indifference, cowardice and anti-Semitism, and eventually send a joint letter Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister of the Reich, asking him to find himself a " solution" to the German Jews. The letter is historic, the word "solution" is released. Always fair, never Manichean, Bruno Tessarech embraces all viewpoints, including those of allied forces, who chose to win the war first, even at the expense of millions of victims. His book is chilling because it reminds us of our human responsibility and morality. Before the sterile discussions of these nations that refer endless ball of "waste" of the Hitler regime, accepting lip Jews richest or "filled with talent," establishing a hierarchy of value between the refugees ... how not to think about the status of the stranger in our societies? Une minorité de Juifs parvinrent à échapper, à prix d'or, à la souricière nazie. Other ... others were abandoned by the world:
This novel which consumes more than it reads start in 1938 at the Evian Conference, which played the plight of Jewish refugees trying to flee Hitler's Germany. Conference where nations vied indifference, cowardice and anti-Semitism, and eventually send a joint letter Joachim von Ribbentrop, foreign minister of the Reich, asking him to find himself a " solution" to the German Jews. The letter is historic, the word "solution" is released. Always fair, never Manichean, Bruno Tessarech embraces all viewpoints, including those of allied forces, who chose to win the war first, even at the expense of millions of victims. His book is chilling because it reminds us of our human responsibility and morality. Before the sterile discussions of these nations that refer endless ball of "waste" of the Hitler regime, accepting lip Jews richest or "filled with talent," establishing a hierarchy of value between the refugees ... how not to think about the status of the stranger in our societies? Une minorité de Juifs parvinrent à échapper, à prix d'or, à la souricière nazie. Other ... others were abandoned by the world: "Now the world is split into two countries where Jews can not live, and where they can not hide."
can quibble endlessly about what the Allies should or could do to stop Solution Final. But one thing is certain, and the novel Tessarech Bruno reminds us forcefully: even before the war, well before the chimneys of Auschwitz had begun to spit their sinister smoke, the Allied nations had abandoned the Jews. Of course, our democratic and civilized societies do not want them to be killed ... Just as they were freed. Hitler took care of it, and it is not surprising that despite the rumors and stories, nobody is rushing to stop him. In Sentinels Bruno Tessarech lends these words President Roosevelt in 1944:
"We do nothing to stop the death of the Jewish people. We went up to deny the facts, as they crowded us. And now that the mass of information and evidence puts us back to the wall, unable deny the evidence, we dither. The immigration quotas, economic blockade, free access to all ocean vessels, the Palestinian question, who knows what else. We remain in politics. Not in morality. "
superb in this scene, we discover a poignant and weakened Roosevelt, plagued by doubts when leaving life:
"Suddenly malaise takes over Roosevelt's after him. Where is it past, his political courage, in the case of the Jews? The war had to exhaust all reserves. Day after day he thought it sufficient to implement the best solution, say the least bad. Then he had to invent a new one. rush things. Exit rational solutions. Fighting Nazi madness with another form of madness: that of life against that of death. "
Sentinels and Jan Karski, written at the same time, perhaps because the issues they arise are always present in these times when immigration services of our countries set themselves up judges of the "value" of a man, respond beautifully to one another. Both wear the broken voice of the tormented hero, helpless and beautiful, determined and desperate, who returned from Hell to deliver the "speech of the dead" that the killers felt suffocated. And Kurt Gerstein, an engineer at the Institute for disinfection of Oranienburg, ambivalent character, the Nazi days, witness the night, losing sleep and reason after attending one of the first "disinfection" of the camp of Belzec . Kurt Gerstein is Moreover, the hero of a film by Costa Gavras' Amen "released to theaters in 2002. But among 
Sentinels Bruno Tessarech, there are also Wernher von Braun, the engineer who created the Nazi V2 rockets in underground Dante Dora and was welcomed with open arms by those Americans who had slammed their doors nosed Jewish refugees. Vernhes von Braun, having been deaf and blind throughout the war, lowering her eyes to avoid seeing the hanged, summary executions, long lines of undead, participated in the Apollo program and was fortunate enough to see off the first rocket to the moon. 
Sentinels Bruno Tessarech, there are also Wernher von Braun, the engineer who created the Nazi V2 rockets in underground Dante Dora and was welcomed with open arms by those Americans who had slammed their doors nosed Jewish refugees. Vernhes von Braun, having been deaf and blind throughout the war, lowering her eyes to avoid seeing the hanged, summary executions, long lines of undead, participated in the Apollo program and was fortunate enough to see off the first rocket to the moon. " testifying for the witness?" asks Paul Celan. Yannick Haenel, Bruno Tessarech. And thanks to them, you don 'forget it anytime soon haunted these messengers.
Gaëlle Nohant
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