[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 100 (Thursday, July 27, 2000)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1346-E1347]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        IN MEMORY OF JAN KARSKI

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 26, 2000

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Lantos. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to invite my 
colleagues in Congress

[[Page E1347]]

to join me in paying tribute to Jan Karski, who passed away on July 
13th at the age of 86. A man of extraordinary courage, Karski risked 
his life to journey into the danger of the Warsaw ghetto and the Belzec 
death camp as a member of the Polish underground during World War II. 
He did this to gain first hand information and then convey the horrors 
of the Nazi regime to the Allied leaders. The enormity of Karski's task 
was confirmed after his meeting with the head of the Zionist 
organization and the leader of the Jewish Socialist Alliance. According 
to Karski, his mission was to transmit material to the Polish and 
Allied governments which ``constituted the expression and contained the 
information, sentiments, requests, and instructions of the entire 
Jewish population of Poland as a unit, a population that was at the 
moment dying as a unit.''
  After speaking with London authorities in 1942, Karski's frightful 
accounts were met with disbelief and denial. Yet he continued to 
deliver his searing report of Nazi atrocities and of Hitler's Final 
Solution, spending months briefing government and community leaders in 
Britain and in the United States. It is difficult to imagine the 
turmoil Karski must have suffered, as he was constantly called upon to 
recall the ghastly scenes he had witnessed and to recount the new 
unprecedented criminality. Because of his perseverance, Karski is 
credited with providing President Franklin D. Roosevelt with the 
motivation to establish the United States War Refugee Board, an 
organization that saved tens of thousands of Jewish lives toward the 
end of World War II.
  Born in 1914 in Lodz, Poland, Dr. Karski received a Master's Degree 
in Law and another Master's Degree in Diplomatic Sciences at the Jan 
Kazimierz University in Lvov in 1935. After completing his education in 
Germany, Switzerland, and Great Britain in the years 1936-38, he 
entered the Polish diplomatic service. His following years were marked 
by extraordinary contributions to Nazi resistance efforts. Conscripted 
into the Polish army in August 1939, Karski was eventually taken 
prisoner by the Red Army and sent to a Russian prisoner of war camp. He 
escaped in November 1939, returned to German-occupied Poland and joined 
the anti-Nazi underground. Because of his knowledge of languages and 
foreign countries, he was used as a courier between the government-in-
exile in London and underground authorities in Poland. In this capacity 
he made several secret trips between France, Great Britain and Poland. 
In August of 1943, he personally reported to President Roosevelt, 
Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, and 
other United States government leaders.
  After the war, Jan Karski moved to the United States where he 
married, became an American citizen, and received a doctorate from 
Georgetown University. Mr. Karski went on to have a distinguished 
academic career at Georgetown, and he also served as a special envoy 
and as a witness for the American government on a number of occasions. 
In 1956-57, and again in 1966-67, he was sent by the State Department 
on six-month lecture tours to sixteen countries in Asia and in French-
speaking Africa. On numerous occasions, he was asked by various 
Congressional committees to testify on Eastern European Affairs. He 
lectured extensively at the Defense Intelligence Air University, 
Industrial College of the Armed Forces, and other government and civic 
institutions.
  Mr. Karski is also a respected author. His book, ``Story of a Secret 
State'', which describes his experiences during World War II, was a 
bestseller. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to inspect Polish, 
British and French archives for his major scholarly work, ``The Great 
Powers and Poland, 1919-45'' (from Versailles to Yalta). His many 
honors also include the distinction of ``Righteous Gentile,'' bestowed 
by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Karski is also an 
honorary citizen of Israel, the recipient of a special citation by the 
United Nations, and the recipient of the Order virturi Militair, the 
highest Polish military decoration.
  Jan Karski's humility was always evident throughout his life. When 
visiting the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, he came upon the 
Rescuer's Wall, where tribute is paid to non-Jews who helped to save 
Jewish lives. He quickly passed the plaque upon which his own name was 
inscribed, instead preferring to seek out the names of his underground 
comrades. He was always quick to point out that ``the Jews were 
abandoned by governments, by church hierarchies, and by societal 
structures. But they were not abandoned by all humanity.'' He felt that 
he was no different from anyone else who tried to ease the plight of 
the Jewish people. Remarkably, he insisted that he did ``nothing 
extraordinary.''
  In an editorial last week paying tribute to Jan Karski, the 
Washington Post (July 19, 2000) observed: ``A community's heroes are 
not necessarily its noisiest or most prominent citizens. Certainly 
neither adjective applied to Jan Karski, . . . but Mr. Karski was an 
authentic moral hero.'' Despite his protestations, Jan Karski's 
contribution to humanity was indeed remarkable. Shimon Peres said, ``A 
great man is one who stands head and shoulder above his people, a man 
who, when surrounded by overpowering evil and blind hatred, does all in 
his power to stem the tide. Karski ranks high in the all-too-brief list 
of such great and unique personalities who stood out in the darkest age 
of Jewish history.'' And in the words of Elie Wiesel: ``Jan Karski: a 
brave man? Better: a just man.''
  Mr. Speaker, once again I invite my colleagues to join me in paying 
tribute to the courage and selflessness of Jan Karski. He was an 
authentic moral hero who risked his life to fulfill what he considered 
to be his duty as a human being.

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