[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 7998]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




 PRESIDENTIAL MEDAL OF FREEDOM TO BE AWARDED TO DR. JAN KARSKI, AMONG 
                    THE RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

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                           HON. NITA M. LOWEY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, May 30, 2012

  Mrs. LOWEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to thank the nearly seventy 
bipartisan Members of this Chamber who joined with me last December in 
writing President Obama to urge him to bestow the Presidential Medal of 
Freedom posthumously on the late Dr. Jan Karski. Earlier this week, at 
a White House ceremony, Dr. Karski received that well deserved 
recognition. The announcement that he would receive the honor was made 
last month by the President at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in 
the company of Elie Wiesel.
  Dr. Karski was a man of incredible courage. While others fell silent 
and looked the other way, his conscience and moral compass led him to 
do what was right. At great personal risk, he infiltrated the Warsaw 
Ghetto and a Nazi camp so he could report authentically about the 
suffering of innocent men, women and children. As he recounted the 
tragic images in his memoir, Story of a Secret State: ``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.'' He shared his 
eyewitness accounts with the Allied leaders including British Foreign 
Minister Anthony Eden and President Franklin Roosevelt and pleaded for 
a strong response. While those pleas were not initially successful, he 
was persistent in his efforts to make the world understand the reality 
of the Holocaust and to open the eyes of those who could--and 
eventually did--intervene. He was not one to be intimidated. He was one 
who fearlessly spoke truth to power.
  Dr. Karski has since been widely recognized by the governments of 
Israel and Poland for his contributions. Israel granted him honorary 
citizenship and Yad Vashem honored him as a ``Righteous Among the 
Nations.'' He also received Poland's highest civilian award, the Order 
of the White Eagle, along with its premier military decoration, Virtuti 
Militari. Both the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation 
League have named awards in Dr. Karski's honor in recognition of his 
heroic and consistent efforts to stop the Holocaust.
  Many of our colleagues in the House and Senate know about what Jan 
Karski did to awaken the West to the horrors of the Holocaust as it was 
unfolding in his native Poland. In fact, several of our colleagues were 
students of Dr. Karski's during his forty year career as a professor at 
Georgetown University here in Washington. I know their chance to study 
under his guidance left an indelible impact on them that continues to 
serve the Nation. Former President Bill Clinton, who was also a 
Georgetown student while Dr. Karski was teaching, summed it up by 
saying ``as a professor, he continued to educate his students about the 
importance of freedom and the lessons of justice he had so courageously 
learned firsthand.''
  Those are lessons that continue to be important for all to learn. As 
President Obama said at the Holocaust Memorial Museum last month: ``We 
must tell our children'' so they know ``about how this evil was allowed 
to happen.'' Educational programs are already being planned for 2014, 
the centennial year of Dr. Karski's birth, to continue his efforts 
instill in future generations the lessons of the Holocaust and the 
critical importance speaking out against hatred. The Presidential Medal 
of Freedom is a well deserved recognition of Dr. Karski's life's work.

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