[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 6]
[Senate]
[Page 8408]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING DR. JAN KARSKI

 Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I wish to pay tribute to Dr. Jan 
Karski, who, as a young officer in the Polish Underground during the 
Second World War, was among the first to provide eyewitness accounts of 
the Holocaust to the world.
  Shaped by his own personal loss during one of the darkest hours in 
human history, Dr. Karski had the moral clarity to make distinctions 
between good and evil, and the personal courage to speak out and fight 
for good and against evil. After being captured and tortured by the 
Nazis, Dr. Karski escaped and became a courier for the Polish 
Underground, smuggling information out of Poland to the Polish 
government-in-exile. Among his many missions, Dr. Karski, who was Roman 
Catholic, twice infiltrated Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto through a series of 
underground tunnels disguised as a Nazi auxiliary guard.
  Dr. Karski showed fearlessness in the face of a regime built on fear, 
and he was not afraid to challenge conventional wisdom and take on the 
enemies of freedom. In 1943, Dr. Karski traveled to the United Kingdom 
and the United States, where he was the first credible eyewitness to 
brief British Foreign Minister Anthony Eden and President Roosevelt 
about the Holocaust in an effort to build international pressure 
against Hitler and the Nazi regime. While his pleas did not lead to the 
quick action that they deserved, Dr. Karski persisted in reporting on 
the brutality that would ultimately prompt meaningful international 
intervention.
  After the war, Dr. Karski resettled in the United States, where he 
earned his doctorate from Georgetown University and taught for 4 
decades, warning generations of students about the dangers of 
authoritarianism, including one notable student: President Bill 
Clinton. During his lifetime and following his death in 2000, Jan 
Karski was and has been the recipient of dozens of international awards 
honoring his courageous work. I was proud to join my colleagues 
Senators Mikulski, Levin, and Cardin last year in writing to President 
Obama to urge his consideration of Dr. Karski for highest civilian 
honor--the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I am delighted that President 
Obama announced at the Holocaust Memorial Museum last month that Dr. 
Karski will be honored posthumously with the award later this month.
  The choice to confront tyranny is not an easy one, but it is 
America's responsibility and purpose as a Nation. Through his decades 
of devoted service, Jan Karski carried out this mission and lived its 
values. And in doing so, he was a champion of the cause that has 
defined our country since its birth--the cause that has given us an 
enduring purpose and a national destiny: the cause of human freedom.
  I am encouraged to know that there are efforts underway to ensure 
that Jan Karski's story is shared widely in the years ahead and in 
particular during 2014, which will mark the centennial of his birth. 
Jan Karski's example should inspire in us the belief that courageous 
and determined people can help to shape the course of human history for 
the better and remind us what is required to ensure that when we say 
Never Again, it will truly mean Never Again.

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