American-Jewish businessman, diplomat gets renowned Polish award
Ronald S. Lauder, an American businessman, diplomat, philanthropist and Jewish social activist has been awarded the Jan Karski Eagle Award, a distinction honouring humanitarian service to others.
The Jan Karski Society, which grants the awards, made the announcement on Wednesday.
"Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, founder and chairman of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, member of the International Council of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and member of the Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. A promotor of the renewal of the Jewish reality in Poland," reads a statement of the Jan Karski Society sent to PAP on Wednesday.
"He has been granted the award for proving with his actions that only just remembrance, mutual understanding, sincere respect and honest friendship can be the future of Jewish-Polish and Polish-Jewish relations," the statement said.
According to the Jan Karski Society, both Karski and Lauder are an example of how it is possible to build relations between nations which have been "destined to be together for centuries."
"This is of special significance in the time of the largest wave of antisemitism in post-war history worldwide and in light of the building of individual and collective political careers on hatred towards Jews," it wrote.
Ronald S. Lauder said he would receive the award with pride and respect for its founder Jan Karski.
The award was founded by the late Jan Karski to recognise humanitarian service to others, with a special connection to Poland.
Jan Karski, a Home Army (AK) soldier and a courier for the wartime Polish Underground State during the Second World War, informed the Allies about the Holocaust. After the war, he remained in Washington, D.C., became an American citizen and taught at Georgetown University for nearly 40 years. In 1994, he was granted honorary citizenship of Israel. Karski was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Earlier, the award was granted, among other recipients, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Poland's former president and Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, Marek Edelman (Warsaw Ghetto hero), Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci, former Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, former Israeli PM Shimon Peres, Russian dissident Alexander Navalny and posthumously to another Russian dissident, Boris Nemtsov. (PAP)
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