This week's hero is...
Jan Karski
Jan Karski was born on June 24, 1914, in Lodz, Poland. Although he was a baptized Catholic, Karski grew up in a neighborhood where most of the residents were Jewish. He attended college at Lwow University and majored in demographic studies. He originally wished to work as a civil servant in Poland's foreign affairs. Sadly, Karski's dreams were cut short when Poland was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1939. After the defeat of Poland's military, Karski joined the Armia Krajowa (the Polish underground). For the first couple of years, he acted as a courier between resistance cells.
One of the things that AK was closely observing, was the Nazis persecution of Poland's Jewish population. Karski was instructed to sneak into the Warsaw Ghetto and gather information on the atrocities that were being committed. He later described his experiences many years later, "My job was just to walk. And observe. And remember. The odor. The children. I saw a man standing with blank eyes. I asked the guide: what is he doing? The guide whispered: He's just dying. I remember degradation, starvation, and dead bodies lying on the street. My guide just kept saying, 'look at it and remember'. And I did remember."
After observing the Warsaw ghetto, Karski was smuggled by the AK into a Durchgangslager (a transit concentration camp). This camp that was located in the town of Izbica, was meant to be a temporary station for Jews being transported to the death camp called, Belzec. While disguised as a guard from Estonia, he secretly documented the atrocities being committed against the prisoners and their eventual destination.
Although he was unable to sneak into Belzec itself, Karski was able to complete at least four reports of the atrocities that he had witnessed. The AK then smuggled him out of Poland, across France, and eventually into Great Britain. Once there, he presented his reports to the Polish government-in-exile. On December 10, 1942, Polish government-in-exile published a 16 page brochure titled, The Mass Extermination of Jews in German Occupied Poland. This brochure was the first official document informing the Western public about the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe. Unfortunately, many of the people who read this report (especially in the United States) dismissed it was too incredible to believe.
For his part, Jan Karski continued to submit reports about what he witnessed. He spoke with many of the Allied leaders (including President Roosevelt) and informed them of the massacres being committed in Poland. He also spoke to religious leaders and activists. Sadly, many of his reports were brushed off by the public as atrocity propaganda. The Western Allies would not fully accept the authenticity of Karski's reports until their soldiers began liberating concentration camps in the final months of the War in Europe.
After World War II ended in Europe, Jan Karski immigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1954. He then became a professor at Georgetown University where he taught International Affairs and comparative government for the next 40 years. One of his students was the future president, Bill Clinton. Karski was also prominently featured in the 1985 documentary film, Shoah (during which he became good friends with, Elie Wiesel). He died on July 13, 2000, at the age 86. On May 29, 2012, Karski was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.
Throughout his life, Jan Karski showed great courage and dedication to helping those in need by spreading word of their plight. He put his life on the line many times and played a major role in recording the story of one of the greatest tragedies in human history and spreading the knowledge of it to the entire world. In doing so, he helped to ensure that the tragedy of the Holocaust will never be forgotten. I believe that he should be regarded as one of the greatest men in history.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/jan-karski
https://www.jankarski.net/en/about-jan-karski/jan-karski-life.html
https://www.yadvashem.org/righteous/stories/karski.html
https://blog.europeana.eu/2019/01/jan-karski-witness-to-the-holocaust%EF%BB%BF/
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