Karski (1914-2000) was a Polish resistance fighter, who through his series of reports, alerted the Allies during World War II to the atrocities perpetrated against the Jews.
He also reported on his meetings with Allied leaders, including President Franklin Roosevelt, to discuss the situation in Poland and alert them to the reality of the ongoing genocide.
[7] Regarding his own testimony, Karski noted that what he thought was the most important part, the one that describes his efforts to alert Western governments, was not inserted in the film.
He attributed this choice to questions of time and coherence, the work of Claude Lanzmann being devoted to the description of the genocide more than to the attitude of the allies or to acts of solidarity towards the Jews.
He called for another film that shows the reserved attitude of the Allied leaders, but also the solidarity of thousands of ordinary people who sought to help the Jews.
[13] Roosevelt is described as a lewd man, yawning, belching, indifferent to the world as Karski pointed out the reaction of the US president during their interview.
Lanzmann declared about Yannick Haenel's book: “The scenes he imagines, the words and thoughts that he attributes to real historical figures and to Karski himself are so far removed from any truth […] that we remain amazed in front of such ideological cheek, such flippancy...".
[16][17] Yannick Haenel responded to this criticism by claiming the freedom of the novelist: "literature is a free space where" truth "does not exist, where uncertainties, ambiguities, metamorphoses weave a universe whose meaning is never closed.".
Yannick Haenel then reproached Claude Lanzmann for not having included part of Jan Karski's testimony in Shoah because the latter's attitude "did not correspond to what he expected of him", and for making it "impossible that one can see, in his film, a Pole who is not an anti-Semite”.
[22] The same month, in March 2010, Jan Karski's book, “My testimony in front of the world”, which was out of print in its French version, was reissued by Robert Laffont editions.
[19] In the filmed interview Jan Karski describes his meeting with president Roosevelt in July 1943, to tell him about the future of Poland and alert him to the mass slaughter of Jews in Europe.
[13] Lanzmann placed, in the opening statement of this film, a quote from Raymond Aron, which evokes the information circulating on the genocide during the war: “I knew but I did not believe it.
[26] Richard Brody, for The New Yorker, appraised the film, noting : "The descriptions that, thirty-four years after the meetings, Karski summons are of a novelistic level of precision and insight that are, in themselves, literary acts of the first order.
[27] Ronnie Scheib for Variety gave a positively review of the documentary, qualifying it as "An extraordinary if belated addendum to his epic, nine-hour Shoah”.