Poland commemorates Holocaust reporter Jan Karski
This year marks the 75th anniversary of Polish World War II resistance fighter and courier Jan Karski's famous mission, in which he reported on Nazi atrocities in Poland to the Polish, British and US governments.
Karski's (see: NOTE 1) 1942-begun reports focused especially on the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, Nazi-German concentration camps and the Holocaust of Polish Jews.
The anniversary observations were officially inaugurated Tuesday at the Warsaw Uprising (see: NOTE 2) Museum in Warsaw. Planned during the observations are a Jan Karski competition and a conference co-hosted by the Polish Senate (upper house). Also presented will be the second volume of a trilogy about the Polish war hero.
On June 24, which would be Karski's 103rd birthday, a special mass will be said for him in Warsaw's Holy Cross Church. Subsequently flowers will be laid under a Jan Karski memorial plaque on Warsaw's Czerwonego Krzyza (Red Cross) Street. "Inferno", the second of a three-volume narrative about Karski's exploits by Waldemar Piasecki, will be presented on the following day at the Big Book Festival in Warsaw.
NOTE 1: Jan Karski, birth name Jan Kozielewski, a young Polish Roman Catholic diplomat during the early days of World War II, witnessed first-hand the Nazis' treatment of fellow citizens of Jewish descent in ghettos and concentration camps.
To learn the fate of Polish Jews, Karski was smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto by the Jewish underground and to the Belzec death camp in the disguise of a Ukrainian guard. He travelled across occupied Europe to England, and eventually to America. Karski personally reported to the Polish Prime Minister in London, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, Britain's Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, US President Franklin Roosevelt and many other prominent figures. His description of the systematic annihilation of European Jews was met with disbelief and passivity.
After having been given by Karski a recount of German death camp attrocities, then American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was quoted as asking the Polish messenger about "the situation in the Polish countryside", and how it was in Poland with... "the horses and cattle".
Karski remained in Washington, D.C. after the war, became an American citizen and taught at Georgetown University for nearly 40 years. He died in 2000.
He was decorated with Israel's Righteous Among the Nations medal (see: NOTE 3) and the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish distinction. Karski, widely regarded as the "man who tried to stop the Holocaust," was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian state distinction in the United States, by President Barack Obama.
During the fateful ceremony (30 May, 2012 - PAP) Obama in his address, while referring to German death camps applied the term "Polish", for which a misnomer he later apologised profusely.
NOTE 2: The Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944 as the biggest resistance operation in Nazi-occupied Europe. Initially intended to last several days, it continued for over two months before being suppressed by the Germans. The uprising claimed the lives of 18,000 insurgents and around 180,000 civilians.
After the insurgents surrendered and the remaining 500,000 Warsaw residents were expelled from the city, the Germans methodically burned down and blew up Warsaw house by house. By January 1945, 85 percent of the buildings had been destroyed.
NOTE 3: The Righteous Among the Nations distinction is awarded by Yad Vashem Institute, Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. Most trees planted at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to commemorate those who saved Jews during the war are dedicated to Polish people. In all, worldwide there are more than 6,700 Polish people among the 26,000 Righteous Among the Nations. (PAP)
mb/
