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Jan Karski - World War II

Jan Karski - World War II: Encyclopedia II - Jan Karski - World War II

Jan Karski: Encyclopedia II - Jan Karski - World War II

Jan Karski - World War II

After crossing into German-held part of Poland, in November of 1939 he managed to escape a train to a POW camp and found his way to Warsaw. There he joined the ZWZ, the first resistance organization in occupied Europe and a predecessor of Armia Krajowa. About that time he adopted a nom de guerre of Jan Karski, which later became his surname. Other noms de guerre used by him during World War II included Witold, Piasecki, Kwaśniewski, Znamierowski, Kruszewski and Kucharski. In January of 1940 he started to organize courier missions with dispatches from the Polish underground to the Polish government in exile, then based in Paris. As a courier, Karski made several secret trips between France, Britain and Poland. During one of such missions in July of 1940 he was arrested by the Gestapo in the Tatra mountains in Slovakia. Severely tortured, he was finally transported to a hospital in Nowy Sącz, 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 he was chosen by Cyryl Ratajski, 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 on Nazi attrocities in occupied Poland. In order to gather evidence, Karski was twice smuggled by Jewish underground functionaries into the Warsaw Ghetto for the purpose of showing him firsthand what was happening to the Polish Jews. Also, in disguise of a Ukrainian camp guard he visited what he thought was Bełżec death camp^[2].

In 1942 Karski reported to the Polish, British and American governments on the situation in Poland, especially the destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto and the methodical Holocaust. He met with all of the influential Polish politicians of the epoch, including the prime minister himself, as well as members of PPS, SN, SP, SL, Bund and Poalej-Syjon. He also spoke to Anthony Eden, the British foreign secretary, and included a detailed statement on what he had seen in Warsaw and Bełżec. He then traveled to the United States and reported to President Roosevelt. His report was a major factor in informing the West, but no action followed. 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. Karski also presented his report to media, bishops of various denominations, members of the Hollywood 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 very possible that Karski's descriptions influenced FDR to create a War Refugee Board several months later in January of 1944.

In 1944 Karski published a Story of a Secret State, in which he related his experiences in wartime Poland. The book was initially to be screened, but this never occured. The book proved to be a major success, with more than 400,000 copies sold in the United States until the end of WWII.