[Congressional Record Volume 157, Number 185 (Monday, December 5, 2011)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2179-E2180]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               U.S. CENTENNIAL CAMPAIGN HONORS JAN KARSKI

                                  _____
                                 

                       HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

                             of new jersey

                    in the house of representatives

                        Monday, December 5, 2011

  Mr. SMITH of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, as Chairman of the Helsinki 
Commission and Co-Chairman of the Congressional Poland Caucus, I rise 
today to speak about the legacy of Jan Karksi, the Polish resistance 
fighter who risked his life over and over again to bring first-hand 
reports of the mass murder of Jews in German-occupied Poland to the 
allied governments. 2014 will be the centennial of Karski's birth, 
making this a fitting time to remember and honor the heroism of this 
man.
  To that end, a ``Jan Karski U.S. Centennial Campaign'' has been 
launched. This campaign will shine a spotlight on this historic figure 
of towering moral authority, and will increase public knowledge about 
Jan Karski's extraordinary courage and commitment. This American 
campaign is joined by a similar undertaking by the Polish History 
Museum in Warsaw, Poland.
  I would like to have reprinted with my remarks today the eloquent 
tribute to Jan Karski made recently by David Harris, Executive Director 
of the American Jewish Committee. For those who are unfamiliar with 
Karski's singular effort to sound the alarm regarding the unfolding 
Holocaust in Europe, I urge them to read David's description, published 
in the Jerusalem Post, of what Jan Karski did, and why it still matters 
today.

                            [Oct. 17, 2011]

                           Ode to Jan Karski

                           (By David Harris)

       He passed away in 2000, at the age of 86.
       The more time goes by, the more I miss him. Precisely when 
     his voice is needed more than ever, he is no longer among us.
       In 1914, Jan Karski (ne Kozielewski) was born to a Catholic 
     family in Poland. The youngest of eight children, in 1939 he 
     was mobilized in the Polish army just before the Nazi 
     invasion on September 1. His wartime saga as officer, as 
     Soviet prisoner, as escapee, in the hands of the Gestapo, and 
     as a Polish Underground activist and courier, is beyond 
     remarkable.
       In a world today where words such as ``courage'' and 
     ``heroism'' have been so overused--applied freely from sports 
     to entertainment to politics--as to be rendered practically 
     meaningless, Jan Karski was the rare human being who embodied 
     both.
       He put his life on the line repeatedly in defense of higher 
     principles--the struggle against Nazism and the defense of 
     his homeland, Poland. He carried with him all his life the 
     physical scars of his experience, including the wrists he 
     slit in an attempted suicide after prolonged beating by his 
     Nazi captors.
       The emotional scars never healed, either. Nor did he want 
     them to. After the war, serving on the faculty of Georgetown 
     University for four decades, he would not allow what he had 
     witnessed to fade from memory, though, given his unusual 
     modesty, he refused to make a second career from his past 
     exploits.
       He had seen the monstrous, indescribable bestiality of the 
     Third Reich unleashed throughout Poland. And Poland was the 
     epicenter of the Nazi grand design.
       In 1944, he wrote a book, Story of a Secret State: My 
     Report to the World, after he had reached the United States 
     on assignment to recount what he had seen in Poland to 
     American officials. Once here, he was told by his superiors 
     not to return because his underground cover had been blown.
       The book was an instant bestseller. Over the years, 
     however, it faded into obscurity. Now it has been republished 
     by Penguin in the United Kingdom, with, it is to be hoped, an 
     American edition to follow.
       It is a gripping account. Indeed, it should be must-reading 
     for an understanding of the Second World War from the ground 
     up.
       In effect, it tells three stories.
       The first is of Karski, especially from the years 1939 to 
     1944.
       The narrative is straightforward, unadorned, and moving--a 
     sobering reminder of what man is capable of when moral and 
     physical courage meld into one.
       The second is of wartime Poland, and especially the 
     development of the Polish resistance movement.
       There is no other story like it in occupied Europe. Not 
     only did local officials refuse to collaborate with the 
     Nazis, unlike the experience in France, Norway, and many 
     other countries, but the combined efforts of the Polish 
     government-in-exile and the elaborately woven underground 
     were beyond anything imaginable at the time.
       And the third was of the Polish Jewish tragedy.
       Before the clandestine journey that took him to London and 
     Washington, to meetings with the likes of British Foreign 
     Minister Anthony Eden and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, 
     Karski, wearing a Star of David armband, was smuggled twice 
     into the Warsaw ghetto. Later, disguised as a guard, he spent 
     hours in a Nazi camp that shipped Jews to the Belzec death 
     camp.
       What he saw in the Warsaw Ghetto and Izbica Lubelska never 
     left him.
       Here is what he wrote in Story of a Secret State: ``I know 
     history. I have learned a great deal about the evolution of 
     nations, political systems, social doctrines, methods of 
     conquest, persecution, and extermination, and I know, too, 
     that never in the history of mankind, never anywhere in the 
     realm of human relations did anything occur to compare with 
     what was inflicted on the Jewish population of Poland.''
       Then he asks: ``Is it still necessary to describe the 
     Warsaw ghetto?''
       Fortunately, he answered his own question. Unfortunately, 
     however, not everyone read his response.
       In the past decade alone, after Karski's death, we have 
     witnessed a flurry of pro-Palestinian activists--from members 
     of the British Parliament like George Galloway, Oona King and 
     Jenny Tonge, to Norwegian diplomat Trine Lelling; from U.N. 
     rapporteur Richard Falk to Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose 
     Saramago; from Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to Spanish 
     newspaper cartoonists--who superimpose Nazi terminology on 
     Israel with abandon, including obscene comparisons of the 
     Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza Strip.
       Here's Karski's reply at the time: ``So much has already 
     been written about it, there have been so many accounts by 
     unimpeachable witnesses. A cemetery? No, for these bodies 
     were still moving, were indeed often violently agitated. 
     These were still living people, if you could call them such. 
     For apart from their skin, eyes, and voice there was nothing 
     human left in these palpitating figures. Everywhere there was 
     hunger, misery, the atrocious stench of decomposing bodies, 
     the pitiful moans of dying children, the desperate cries and 
     gasps of a people struggling for life against impossible 
     odds.''
       And then, perhaps anticipating what the impact of time and 
     distance might mean for understanding this era, Karski wrote: 
     ``I know that many people will not believe me, will not be 
     able to believe me, will think I exaggerate or invent. But I 
     saw it.''
       Until his dying day, Karski stood as a guardian of the past 
     and its relevance to the present. He remained a fierce anti-
     communist and, fortunately, lived to see his beloved Poland 
     return to the democratic family of nations, including 
     accession to NATO. He served as an early warning system 
     against the recurrence of anti-Semitism. And he understood 
     the central role of Israel in the life of the Jewish people.

[[Page E2180]]

       In 1993, AJC gave Karski its highest award. In his 
     acceptance speech, he memorably declared that he was 
     confident there would never again be a Holocaust against the 
     Jews and said he knew why. He paused for a moment and then, 
     summoning his one-word explanation from the depths of his 
     soul, he pronounced each of the three syllables of ``Israel'' 
     as if they were separate words, allowing the moment to 
     linger.
       Jan Karski is gone, leaving no immediate family behind. But 
     with his eyewitness account, his recorded words, and his 
     towering example of courage, conviction, and compassion, 
     there is hope the world won't descend into an abyss of moral 
     fog and historical relativism or denial.
       May Story of a Secret State become required reading, as a 
     source of both information and inspiration, in every 20th 
     century history course. And may copies find their way into 
     the hands of those today who display their shameful ignorance 
     by misrepresenting history.

                          ____________________