Jan Karski (24 June, 1914 – 13 July, 2000), was a
PolishPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe . Poland is bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
resistancePolish resistance can refer to various resistance movements of the Polish people against foreign invaders, occupiers or puppet governments:- 1569-1795 :*Repnin Sejm*Bar Confederation*Great Sejm*Kościuszko Uprising*Wielkopolska Uprising...
fighter and scholar at
Georgetown UniversityGeorgetown University is a Jesuit private university located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Father John Carroll founded the school in 1789, though its roots extend back to 1634. While the school struggled financially in its early years, Georgetown expanded into a branched university after the...
. In 1942 and 1943 Karski reported to the
Polish government in exileThe Polish government-in-exile was the government of Poland after the country had been occupied by Germany and the Soviet Union at the start of World War II...
and the
Western AlliesThe term Western Allies refers to a certain political and geographic grouping among the Allied Powers of the Second World War. It generally includes the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth, the United States, France and various other European and Latin American countries, but excludes China,...
on the situation in German-occupied Poland, especially the destruction of the
Warsaw GhettoThe Warsaw Ghetto was the largest of the ghettos in Nazi-occupied Europe, located in the territory of General Government in occupied Poland during World War II.-Creation:...
and the extermination camps.
Biography
Jan Karski was born as
Jan Kozielewski on 24 June 1914 in Łódź. He grew up in a multi-cultural neighbourhood, where the majority of the population was Jewish. After graduating from a local school, Kozielewski joined the Jan Kazimierz University of Lwów (now Lviv, Ukraine) and graduated from the Legal and Diplomatic departments in 1935. During his compulsory military training he served in the NCO school for mounted artillery officers in Włodzimierz Wołyński.
Kozielewski completed his education between 1936 and 1938 in different diplomatic posts in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
,
SwitzerlandSwitzerland , officially the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 states named cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities...
and the
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
, and went on to join the Diplomatic Service. After a short period of scholarship, in January 1939 he started his work in the Polish ministry of foreign affairs. After the outbreak of
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Kozielewski was mobilized and served in a small artillery detachment in eastern Poland. Taken prisoner by the
Red ArmyThe Red Army The Red Army The Red Army was the Soviet government’s revolutionary militia beginning in the Russian Civil War of 1918-1922. It grew into the national army of the USSR. Since 1946, after the Second World War, it was called the Soviet Army.The 'Red...
, he successfully concealed his true grade and, pretending to be an ordinary soldier, was handed over to the Germans during an exchange of Polish
prisoners of warA prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a combatant who is held in continuing custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
, in effect escaping the
Katyn massacreThe Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre , was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps...
.
World War II resistance
After crossing into
General GovernmentThe General Government refers to a part of the territories of Poland under German military occupation during World War II and that were a separate part of "Greater Germany"...
(the German-held part of Poland) in November 1939 he managed to escape a train to a POW camp and found his way to
WarsawWarsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River roughly from both the Baltic Sea coast and the Carpathian Mountains. Its population as of 2009 was estimated at 1,709,781, and the Warsaw metropolitan area at approximately 2,785,000...
. There he joined the
ZWZZwiązek Walki Zbrojnej was an underground army formed in Poland following her invasion in September 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union that opened World War II.-History:ZWZ was created on November 13,...
, the first
resistance movementA resistance movement is a group or collection of individual groups, dedicated to fighting an invader in an occupied country or the government of a sovereign nation through either the use of physical force, or nonviolence. The term resistance is generally used to designate movement considered...
in occupied Europe and a predecessor of the
Home ArmyThe Armia Krajowa , abbreviated "AK", was the dominant Polish resistance movement in World War II German-occupied Poland. It was formed in February 1942 from the Związek Walki Zbrojnej . Over the next two years, it absorbed most other Polish underground forces...
(AK). About that time he adopted a
nom de guerre of Jan Karski, which later became his legal name. Other
noms de guerre used by him during World War II included Witold, Piasecki, Kwaśniewski, Znamierowski, Kruszewski and Kucharski.
In January 1940 Karski started to organize courier missions with dispatches from the Polish underground to the Polish government in exile, then based in
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
. As a courier, Karski made several secret trips between France, Britain and Poland. During one such mission in July 1940 he was arrested by the
GestapoThe was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning in April 1934, it was under the overall administration of the Schutzstaffel under Heinrich Himmler in his position as leader of the SS and Chief of German Police...
in the
TatraTatra may refer to:* Tatra Mountains, a mountain range, part of the Carpathian Mountains, between Slovakia and Poland* Tatra County , an administrative division of Poland in the region of the Tatra Mountains* Tatra National Park, Poland...
mountains in
SlovakiaThe Slovak Republic is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe with a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia borders the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south. The largest city is its capital, Bratislava...
. Severely tortured, he was finally transported to a hospital in
Nowy SączNowy Sącz is a town in the Lesser Poland Voivodeship in southern Poland. It is the district capital of Nowy Sącz County, but is not included within the powiat.-Names:...
, from where he was smuggled out. After a short period of rehabilitation, he returned to active service in the Information and Propaganda Bureau of the Headquarters of the Home Army.
In the summer of 1942 Karski was chosen by
Cyryl RatajskiCyryl Ratajski was a Polish politician and lawyer.He was the president of Poznań in the years 1922-1924, 1925-1934 and in September 1939. In the years 1924-1925 he was the Polish Minister of the Interior.From 1937 he was a member of Labour Party, Stronnictwo Pracy...
, the Polish Government's Delegate at Home, to perform a secret mission to prime minister Władysław Sikorski in London. Karski was to contact Sikorski as well as various other Polish politicians and inform them about Nazi atrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski was twice smuggled by Jewish underground leaders into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him firsthand what was happening to the Polish Jews. Also, disguised as a Ukrainian camp guard, he visited what he thought was Bełżec death camp. (It is now believed that he actually saw a nearby sorting camp of
IzbicaThe Izbica ghetto was a Jewish ghetto created in Izbica in occupied Poland during World War II, serving as a transfer point for deportation of Jews from Poland, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia to Belzec and Sobibor extermination camps. SS-Hauptsturmführer Kurt Engels was the commandant of the...
)
In 1942 Karski reported to the Polish, British and U.S. governments on the situation in Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust of the Jews. He met with Polish politicians in exile including the prime minister, as well as members of political parties such as the PPS, SN,
SPStronnictwo Pracy was a Polish Christian democratic political party, active from 1937 in the Second Polish Republic and later part of the Polish government in exile. Its founder and main activist was Karol Popiel....
,
SLThe People's Party was a Polish political party, active from 1931 in the Second Polish Republic. An agrarian populist party, its power base was composed mostly from peasants....
,
Jewish BundThe General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia , generally called The Bund or the Jewish Labour Bund, was a secular Jewish socialist party in Central and Eastern Europe operating predominantly between the 1890s and the 1930s...
and Poalej-Syjon. He also spoke to
Anthony EdenRobert Anthony Eden, 1st Earl of Avon, KG, MC, PC was a British Conservative politician, who was Foreign Secretary for three periods between 1935 and 1955, including during World War II...
, the British foreign secretary, and included a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. In 1943 in London he met the then much known journalist
Arthur KoestlerArthur Koestler
CBE was a prolific writer of essays, novels and autobiographies....
. He then traveled to the United States and reported to President
Franklin D. RooseveltFranklin Delano Roosevelt , the only U.S. President elected to more than two terms, was a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
. His report was a major factor in informing the West.
In July 1943, Karski again personally reported to Roosevelt about the situation in Poland. He also met with many other government and civic leaders in the United States, including
Felix FrankfurterFelix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.-Early life:Frankfurter was born on November 15, 1882 in Vienna, Austria, third of six children of Leopold and Emma Frankfurter. His forebears had been rabbis for generations...
,
Cordell HullCordell Hull was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is best-known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
,
William Joseph DonovanMajor General William Joseph Donovan, USA, GCSS, KBE was an American soldier, lawyer and intelligence officer, best remembered as wartime head of the Office of Strategic Services . He is also widely known as the "father" of today's Central Intelligence Agency .-Early life:Donovan was born in...
,
Samuel Cardinal StritchSamuel Alphonsius Stritch was an American Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He served as Archbishop of Chicago from 1940 to 1958 and as Pro-Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for Propagation of the Faith from March 1958 until his death later that year...
, and
Stephen WiseStephen Samuel Wise was a Austro-Hungarian-born U.S. Reform rabbi and Zionist leader.-Family background:Stephen Samuel Wise was born in Budapest in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son and grandson of rabbis. His grandfather, Joseph Hirsch Weisz, was Chief Rabbi of a small town near Budapest. His...
. Karski also presented his report to media, bishops of various denominations, members of the Hollywood film industry and artists, 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. It is possible, however, that Karski's descriptions influenced FDR to create the
War Refugee BoardThe War Refugee Board, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in January 1944, was a U.S. executive agency created to aid civilian victims of the Nazi and Axis powers...
several months later in January 1944.
In 1944 Karski published
Story of a Secret State, in which he related his experiences in wartime Poland. The book was initially to be made into a film, but this never occurred. The book proved to be a major success, with more than 400,000 copies sold in the United States until the end of WWII.
Life in the United States
After the war Karski was unable to return to communist-ruled Poland and made his home in the United States and began his studies at
Georgetown UniversityGeorgetown University is a Jesuit private university located in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. Father John Carroll founded the school in 1789, though its roots extend back to 1634. While the school struggled financially in its early years, Georgetown expanded into a branched university after the...
, 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, rising to become one of the most celebrated and notable members of its faculty. In 1954, he became a citizen of the United States. In 1985, he published the academic study
The Great Powers and Poland.
His attempts at stopping the Holocaust were forgotten. It was not until 1985 that
Claude LanzmannClaude Lanzmann is a French filmmaker.Lanzmann attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in Auvergne....
's film
ShoahShoah is a nine-hour film completed by Claude Lanzmann in 1985 about the Holocaust . Though Shoah is conventionally classified as a documentary film, director Lanzmann considers it to fall outside of that genre, as, unlike most historical documentaries, the film does not feature reenactments or...
re-discovered Karski's wartime service. According to the book of Wood and Jankowski, Karski has written an article on the film Shoah -being published in English, French and Polish- where he asked Lanzmann to produce another documentary showing what Karski had to tell about his task towards "the West", though praising the quality of Lanzmann's
Shoah despite of that omission. In 1994,
E. Thomas WoodE. Thomas Wood is an American journalist, historian, and freelance writer. He currently works as a reporter for NashvillePost.com, a local business and political news website in Nashville, Tennessee....
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 EagleThe Order of the White Eagle is Poland's highest decoration awarded to both civilians and the military for their merits. It was officially instituted on November 1, 1705 by Augustus II the Strong and bestowed on eight of his supporters, four Polish magnates, three Russian field marshals, amongs...
(the highest Polish civil decoration) and the Order Virtuti Militari (the highest military decoration awarded for bravery in combat). He was married in 1965 to the 54 year old dancer and choreographer, Pola Nirenska, a Polish Jew most of whose family had perished in the Holocaust. She committed suicide in 1992. Karski died in
Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790...
in 2000. They had no children.
Why no rescue
During an interview with Hannah Rosen in 1995 Karski said about the failure of most of the Jews' rescue from mass murder:
Honors
In honour of his efforts on behalf of Polish Jews, Karski was made an honorary citizen of
IsraelIsrael officially the State of Israel , is a developed state in Western Asia located on the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Lebanon in the north, Syria in the northeast, Jordan in the east, and Egypt on the southwest, and contains geographically diverse features within its...
in 1994. In
JerusalemJerusalem is the capital of Israel and its largest city in both population and area, with a population of 747,600 residents over an area of if disputed East Jerusalem is included...
a tree bearing his name was planted in 1982 in the Alley of the
Righteous Among the NationsRighteous among the Nations , which may at times refer to the B'nei Noah or Noahides as well, is a term used in Judaism to refer to non-Jews who abide by the Seven Laws of Noah and thus are assured of meriting paradise.In secular usage, the term is used by the State of Israel to describe non-Jews who...
.
Statues honoring Karski have been placed in New York City at the corner of 37th Street and Madison Avenue (renamed "Jan Karski Corner") and on the grounds of Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Georgetown University,
Oregon State UniversityOregon State University is a coeducational, public research university located in Corvallis, Oregon, United States. The university offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees and a multitude of research opportunities. There are over 200 academic degree programs offered through the university...
,
Baltimore Hebrew CollegeBaltimore Hebrew University was founded as Baltimore Hebrew College and Teachers Training School in 1919 to promote Jewish scholarship and academic excellence, it continues to be the only institution of higher learning in Maryland devoted solely to all aspects of Judaic and Hebraic studies...
, Hebrew College of America, Warsaw University, Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, and University of Łódź all awarded him honorary doctorates.
Remembering Karski's mission
The former Foreign Minister of Poland Władysław Bartoszewski in his speech at the ceremony of the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 27 January 2005, said: "The Polish resistence movement kept informing and alerting the free world to the situation. In the last quarter of 1942, thanks to the Polish emissary Jan Karski and his mission, and also by other means, the Governments of the United Kingdom and of the United States were well informed about what was going on in Auschwitz-Birkenau."
See also
- Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact
- Polish Secret State
The Polish Underground State is a collective term for the underground resistance organizations in Poland, both military and civilian, that remained loyal to the Polish Government in Exile in London during World War II...
- Witold Pilecki
Witold Pilecki was a soldier of the Second Polish Republic, the founder of the Secret Polish Army Polish resistance group and a member of the Home Army...
- Shoah
Shoah may refer to:*The Holocaust*Shoah * A Shoah Foundation...
- Szmul Zygielbojm
Szmul Zygielbojm, sometimes spelled Zygelbojm or Zigelboim, was a Jewish-Polish socialist politician, leader of the Bund, and a member of the National Council of the Polish government in exile...
- Edward Bernays
Edward Louis Bernays was an American pioneer in the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public...
- List of Righteous Among the Nations by country
- Irena Sendler
Irena Sendler was a Polish Catholic social worker who served in the Polish Underground and the Żegota resistance organization in German-occupied Warsaw during World War II...
- Bermuda Conference
The Bermuda Conference was an international conference between the United Kingdom and the United States held on April 19, 1943 at Hamilton, Bermuda. Discussions included the question of Jewish refugees who had been liberated by Allied forces and those who still remained Nazi-occupied Europe. The...
Further reading
External links
- Interviews with Jan Karski
- Excerpts from biography of Karski and audio of his recollections
- Biography of Karski at The Wallenberg Endowment
The Wallenberg Endowment of the University of Michigan awards the Wallenberg Medal and Lecture to outstanding humanitarians to honor Raoul Wallenberg...
, University of MichiganThe University of Michigan, Ann Arbor is a public research university located in the state of Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university, the flagship campus of the University of Michigan, and one of the top public universities in the world...
- Jan Karski, a silent messenger by Jack Fuchs, June 1, 2001
- Obituary of Karski from The Times
The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785 when it was known as The Daily Universal Register....
, July 17, 2000
- Interview with Jan Karski, 9 February 1995, at his home