Before a wall map of the Warsaw Ghetto at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Jan Karski recalls his secret 1942 missions into the Nazi prison-city-within-a-city. Photo by E. Thomas Wood, 1994. Dr Jan Karski (24 April 1914 - 13 July 2000), Polish resistance fighter, was born in Łódź as Jan Kozielewski. He received a Master's degree in Law and Diplomatic Science in 1935 at the University of Lwów. He completed his education between 1936 and 1938 in different diplomatic posts in Germany, Switzerland and Britain, and went on to join the Diplomatic Service.
Mobilised at the outbreak of war in 1939, Karski was taken prisoner by the Soviet Army. Two months later, in November, he escaped from a prisoner-of-war camp and returned to the General Government in German-occupied Poland. There he joined the underground Home Army (AK). His knowledge of foreign languages proved to be very useful when he was sent as a courier between the Polish government-in-exile in London and the AK in Poland. As a courier, Karski made several secret trips between France, Britain and Poland.
In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the Polish, British and American governments on the situation in Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the methodical extermination of the Jews.
In the late summer of 1942, Karski was twice smuggled by Jewish underground functionaries into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him firsthand what was happening to the Jews. He also entered a concentration camp disguised in the uniform of a camp guard, believing it to be the Bełżec death camp. However, the descriptions he gave are incompatible with what is known about Bełżec. His biographers Wood and Jankowski later proposed that Karski had actually been in the Izbica Lubelska "sorting camp" rather than in Bełżec. Many historians have accepted this theory, as did Karski himself.
 Jan Karski, 1944. In July 1943, Karski personally reported to president Franklin Roosevelt about the situation in Poland. He also met with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including Felix Frankfurter, Cordell Hull, William Donovan, Samuel Cardinal Stritch, and Stephen Wise, but without success. Many of those he spoke to did not believe him, or supposed that his testimony was much exaggerated or was propaganda from the Polish government in exile.
After the war Karski was unable to return to Poland and made his home in the United States and began his studies at Georgetown University, where he received a PhD in 1952. He taught at Georgetown for 40 years in the areas of East European affairs, comparative government and international affairs. In 1954, he became an American citizen.
In Story of a Secret State (1944), Karski related his experiences in wartime Poland. In 1985, he published the academic study The Great Powers and Poland. In 1994, E. Thomas Wood and Stanisław M. Jankowski published Karski: How One Man Tried to Stop the Holocaust.
After the fall of Communism in Poland in 1989, Karski's wartime role was officially acknowledged there. He received the Order of the White Eagle (the highest Polish civil decoration) and the Order Virtuti Militari (the highest military decoration awarded for bravery in combat).
In honour of his efforts on behalf of Polish Jews, Karski was made an honorary citizen of Israel in 1994. In Jerusalem a tree bearing his name was planted in the Alley of the Righteous Among the Nations. Georgetown University, Oregon State University, Baltimore Hebrew College, Hebrew College of America, Warsaw University, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, and Łódź University all awarded him honorary doctorates. He died in Washington in July 2000.
See also
External link
|
