BIENVEILLANTES (LES) [Paperback]

 

 

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Le livre décrit essentiellement la vie d'un SS durant la campagne de Russie nazie et la façon dont il finit sa vie paisiblement en France sans être inquiété. Le narrateur décrit de façon réaliste (avec des passages difficilement soutenables) le "nettoyage" des Juifs et des autres résistants au fur et à mesure de l'avance des armées allemandes. L'originalité du livre est de présenter ces faits du point de vue des bourreaux. Associés aux atrocités commises, on y découvre la souffrance des hommes y compris des personnages d'une vaste culture (nombre de chefs sont des docteurs en différentes diciplines), certains d'entre eux se posent des questions mais poursuivent la mission exigée d'eux, d'autres en perdent la tête, d'autres encore sont obsédés par une quelconque promotion ou faveur du système.

Écrit dans une langue éblouissante, un livre bouleversant (que j'ai dû refermer régulièrement tellement les faits rapportés sont terribles)avec des détails historiques minutieux ainsi que de grands moments de culture, un livre qui nous met au centre du mécanisme et des hommes de cette noire période.

Un livre qui continue à hanter des heures après l'avoir fermé mais à lire absolument.

Book certainly deserves "Prix Goncourt"- most prestigious French literary award. Expect, when eventually translated to English, to evoke furor of prizes and indignation (we all like to see war in black and white).
It is both tempting and hart breaking project, for this reviewer, a survivor of Nazi concentration camp, to evaluate this book
Littell's prose flows with exclusive smoothness. Excellent researching on fine details - be it geography, ethnology, languages or jargon of concentration camps. Littell's historical accounts are well researched and far from fiction. In a way book resembles "War and peace", also a lengthy war story of real historical events and real historical actors with fictitious heroes
And now short summary of events and "coloring" of those events as narrated by hero.
Hero: ex high positioned SSman, concealed homosexual, living serenely incognito and while deriving his income in lace manufacturing, feels compelled to recount his war experiences. He writes for himself. He is well to do and needs, god forbid no justifications for his past. He wants to tell that he and you, the reader, are just same human beings. After all, he concludes, "The only indispensable for human life is air, drink and excretion, and, oh yes, pursue of truth. The rest is facultatif".
And so, our hero after joining SS travels east across Russia with, at the beginning, victorious German troops. There is a lot of work to do and lot to improve. So many humans to be eliminated, so many technical problems - mowing (machine-gunning) Jews at the edge of pit turns to mess: some victims jump in, some just wounded squirming below. Good organization prevails. One orders those condemned to lay side by side, like sardines, and than machinegun them. Than top it with layer of soil, and with another human strata - ingenious. After the work it is time to relax, to have glass of cognac and listen to good music. Yes our hero is knowledgeable music lover: SS captures young Jewish boy who plays piano as a genius. They advance him to be sort of a mascot who plays in their officers club. Boy plays Bach and Chopin and Mozart to applauses. Narrator, our SSman, befriends him, has talks and share enthusiasm and appreciation of music. He promises him to have notes of Couperin to be send from Paris. One day, boy attempts to help in repairing broken lorry. In the act, his hand is being thorn. And so his fate is sealed. He is not of use. Narrator comforts him tenderly and than take him to Sturmfuhrer who will, in turn, conduct boy to execution. Before parting narrator begs Sturmfuhrer -"please be gentle with this boy". Couple of days afterward package with Couperin notes arrive.
As we advance into immenseness of Russia things are getting rough. Lousy ersatz cafe, limited food, frost bites, and those damn Russian partisans: Russian partisans (terrorists) make procedure of liberation and democratization of Russia by well wishing Germans difficult. In stead of appreciation (and flowers) there are daily attacks and sabotages. SS captures Russian partisan girl. She is beautiful and full of rage. She is led to be hanged. All witnessing officers line up by the gallows and, one by one, in line, approaches bound girl with a rope attached to her neck. One by one kiss her affectionately and gently. When all those in line passed by, stool under her feet is kicked out.
And finely battle for Stalingrad. Our hero receives bullet trough head. While in suspended mental consciousness he revives his dreams of only female, and incestuous, partner of his life - his sister. He survives, is decorated and promoted. As a convalescent returns to France visiting his mother and step father. Without ever realizing it he murders both . Back to work, this time in managing intricacies of concentration camps. He is rational, if not sympathetic, observer. He realizes needs for better food and hygiene of working prisoners as a prerequisite of efficient production. (In this section of book Author displays remarkable level of erudition and knowledge of intricacies of concentration camps). Russians are advancing. Our hero treks trough Pomeranian forest evading Russian tanks and joins his troops. Back in Berlin he witness, sort of "sinking Titanic" syndrome of partying. Cleverly and ruthlessly eliminating witnesses to his past return, under new name, to live as a successful lace manufacturer. And, for his own satisfaction, to write memoirs confined for the rest of his life to his desk drawer: The lonely and melancholic reflections on guilt and predetermination of life events.

For those who believe that that the historical novel is a powerful evocation of historical memory, this book gets 5 stars for its remarkable new view on the Shoah.

Our narrator is Maximillian Aue, retired SS officer who saw many campaigns of duty in World War II, particularly the mass executions of Jews, Bolsheviks, and Gypsies in Eastern Europe. He seemed to find himself in important jobs alongside the important, historical figures of the time, including one scene with Hitler himself. Aue recounts to us, whom he labels as his brothers, a label from which many readers will reflexly withdraw, the Stalingrad campaign (where he suffers a head injury), his work in Berlin with Himmler to determine how much food a Jewish slave would have to consume at Auschwitz to maintain himself as a profitable machine for his labors at IG Farben, and his attempts to survive end of the War Berlin.

Littell's epic volume reveals the perversions that lie in the unconscious mind of the officers at all levels of the German High Command but also, in great detail, Aue's personal inner conflict over sexual identification, incestuous love of his own sister, and his many dualities (his fantasies and experience make him French and German, man and woman, killer and student of humanity).

The reading is less than pleasant but the reader will come away with an appreciation of the daily lives of the killers whose Nuremberg testimonies make much dryer reading than the Stendahl-like pages of Littell's 1000-plus page novel.

Littell spent many years of his life participating in humanitarian service organisations in the world's killing fields. He was in Gaza, Rwanda, Darfu, and the Balkans. He observed and reflected on how and why different groups of humans kill each other. Les Bienveillantes sets out to explore this part of human existence. It presents the reader with a fictional story dealing with Nazi mass murders and some of the thinking behind them. Will the reader understand the nature of evil any more than he did before he opened this book? Perhaps. The book is a worthwile read if it allows the reader nothing more than to test his private understanding of this important issue.

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5.0 out of 5 stars A truly masterful literary undertaking
I cannot give an opinion that would extend to the recent translation into English, but in the original French, fluid and conversational, this is as fine an object of art as could... Read more

Published on May 30 2009 by X. Francois Hussenet

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